Some guy in Virginia didn't like this op-ed by David Barash, and didn't like being characterised as an "illiterate troglodyte," so he set out to demonstrate that he was an illiterate troglodyte. He wrote a letter that's simply non-stop bogosity.
While it is a fact that Gregor Mendel proved a general theory of evolution in the mid-1850s, there is no scientific evidence that Darwin's theory of evolution is scientifically valid.
I don't blame you if you feel like stopping right there and not going on. It's kind of a show-stopper, isn't it? You can safely assume the writer knows nothing about basic biology. Mendel reported his result to the Brünn Natural History Society in 1865, and published in 1866. What he demonstrated was an abstract mechanism for inheritance that was the foundation of modern genetics. Not evolution, genetics. They're different, you know.
And of course, there is lots of evidence for evolution.
Mendel's theory stated that through natural selection a species would change over time to meet the changing requirements of its environment. He never proved or claimed to prove that species would change into new species, only that they would change in ways that would allow them to survive in their new environment.
Mendel's theory said nothing about natural selection or the effect of the environment, or their ability to survive in an environment. He explained inheritance in terms of unit factors that were present in pairs in the organisms he studied, and that were passed on as single units in the gametes, and then reformed as pairs at fertilization.
In science, two separate terms are used to describe scientific thought. Science uses the term "law" to denote a proven fact that can be relied on in all circumstances. Science uses the term "theory" to label assumptions or concepts that are still unproven.
I note with interest that science has never labeled Darwin's concepts as laws. They have always been, and in my opinion will always be, listed as an unproven theory.
He has a mistaken notion of what a "theory" and a "law" are. A theory is not a guess. It's an integrated collection of observations and explanations that provides a framework for understanding new results, and for guiding the generation of new experiments and tests. It is not inferior to a law, and a law is not "a proven fact"; for instance, Dollo's Law is more of a guideline, belike, as are the laws of piracy.
Barash states that the problem is that these events happen over long periods of time and are hard for "illiterate troglodytes" to comprehend. The fact is that if this really happened, there would be a complete and consistent fossil record of the changes. There is no such record.
Can the writer show me the skull of his great-great-great-great-grandmother? Almost certainly not, and not because he's squeamish or respectful. It's because it almost certainly doesn't exist anymore. Bones decay, and the fate of almost all bones is that they crumble away. We do not expect a complete fossil record. It would be a little bit freaky, a lot crowded, and probably better evidence for god than evolution if a complete array of all of our ancestors was available for inspection.
While I will readily admit that I am somewhat illiterate in all of the ins and outs of scientific research, I am sufficiently educated to both read and understand that there is no proof of evolution.
First clause is correct. Second clause is obviously wrong—he is not sufficiently educated. We also do not discuss "proof" in any science — that's for mathematics.
Show me the scientific proof of even just one instance of a species changing into another, and then I too will believe. Until then, please leave me in my ignorance and belief that an all-powerful creator of the universe created everything we see.
Here's a list of transitional fossils, and another list of observed speciation events. I don't think he'll ever notice these links, though, so I guess we'll just have to leave him in his admitted ignorance and god-belief.
Now for the really sad part. The fellow's name is Richard Carr, and…
Carr teaches computer science at Hollins University and Virginia Western Community College and is an ordained Baptist minister.
Parents, I strongly recommend that you do not send your children to the computer science programs at Hollins University or Virginia Western Community College. You can do better than that.
The "ordained Baptist minister" part didn't surprise me in the least.
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Sad as it is, I have given up hope for some people (and how did he become a professor of anything, even at a Community College?)
They're hiding in computer science departments! Get 'em guys!
What is it about:
- engineers
- mathematicians
- physicists
- comp sci people
... that makes them more vulnerable to woo? Is it just me confirming my bias and remembering when I see these people saying stupid things? (when, because of their professional achievements I expect better of them...)
Is this a trend? Do biologists have higher rates of atheism / pure rationality?
"Is this a trend? Do biologists have higher rates of atheism / pure rationality?"
I don't know about biologists specifically, but there are definitely higher rates of athiests among scientists (about 60% of them I think). There was some other statistic I'll try to look up.
Here's a sign for the biology departments: You don't have to be sane to work here, but it helps!
This guy is just one more reason why scientists should never label their concepts as "laws." It's a term with misleading connotations that never should've been used to label any concept of science. "Absolute certainty" and "proof" and other things connoted by the term "law" arguably have no place in science.
Just my opinion.
AL: It's a little late for that. But, what would you propose?
I'd just like to say, on behalf of computer scientists and engineers everywhere, that we're not *all* thick-skulled tools. Or Libertarians. (But I repeat myself.)
Of course, I never finished college, so there's that.
Whoa there Silver
I trained as an engineer, extractive metallurgy, and I believe in evidence before pronouncement.
Recently I've become a sports coach and guess what it's all about what you can and can't do now.. evidence in the here and now is what's important so please lay off the group identity thing.
All my instructors and my personal experience both in engineering and sports have stressed that evidence and validated data is essential in all things. Maybe it is because I was trained in Britain.
Sooooo may I suggest you revise your list to include the specific term " North American" or "Provincial" before you use the terms:
- engineers
- mathematicians
- physicists
- comp sci people
Snobbery is relevant when talking about Universities that used to be polytechnics in the UK or are resident in the US bible belt and I have no problems in pointing it out. But engineers and coaches don't do things on a wing and a prayer they do things because experience and evidence tells them what works and doesn't.And the successful ones do not have a god complex that makes them inerrant, we leave that shite to medical doctors.
Adding on to my earlier comment (#3), another statistic is somewhere in this video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1150978581009235713&hl=en
I can't find the spot where he says it, but 85% of the National Academy of Sciences is atheist.
It's one of the best videos on religion and ID I've ever seen, so you won't be wasting your time by watching it.
AL: It's a little late for that. But, what would you propose?
I'm not asking for the word "law" to be expunged from all scientific literature, but at least scientists should refrain from using it to label new concepts they develop (e.g. Moore's Law in computer science).
It's a holdover term from when early scientists believed they were simply enumerating descriptions of God's ordered universe, and when God orders things, they must be inviolable orders, and thus rightly called "laws" to connote inviolability. Of course, modern science recognizes that scientific descriptions (including the so-called "laws") are subject to revision, and that there is no a priori way to know that some scientific law is inviolable. There are, however, ways to find out if a law is violable, and historically laws have been "violated" all the time, although we refer to them as "falsifications," rather than "violations."
Typical. No evidence. Unbelievable.
Dave C:
Like, for example, Dr. Egnor?
You know, there is a pattern of misinformed anti-evolutionism amongst engineers and MD's. The assertion that members of certain professions seem "vulnerable" to these kinds of errors is not equivalent to an assertion that all members have uniformly and without exception succumbed to said vulnerability. Kinda basic logic, actually, ain't it?
Anyway, it's nice to have you on this side and not that side.
I might add that I have another ulterior motive for wanting to do away with the notion of "laws." The concepts of "miracles" and "supernatural occurrences" are usually defined as things which are capable of violating scientific "laws." We really need to do away with the silly idea that there are inviolable things that when violated, constitute evidence of the supernatural. Obviously, it should be straightforward to anyone that an inviolable thing that gets violated was never inviolable to begin with, thus no supernatural occurrence ever took place. So when people talk about how some Tibetan mystic can generate energy ex nihilo from his hands, thereby violating the laws of thermodynamics, we can say that if this is true (a big if, of course), it means thermodynamics has been falsified and scientists need to rework it, not that this is some supernatural event that is beyond the examination and scrutiny of science, and science therefore has no say. It'll do away with another "the tools of empiricism can't touch this, this is strictly the domain of religion/spirituality" nonsense.
"Carr teaches computer science at Hollins University and Virginia Western Community College and is an ordained Baptist minister."
Hey Orac, can I borrow that paper bag of yours? You know, the one you always wear when physicians say stupid things about evolution?
Hey now, Mr. Contreras, don't go slandering my majors based on this lunatic.
It's logical that scientists should have a rational mind. But most people compartmentalize knowledge of science and blind faith and dare not allow their brain to explore unchartered territories. That explains surgeons praying before surgeries and scientists performing prayers before launch of spaceships ;)
I admire you pharyngula. Keep up the good fight.
Not every one of those people get caught up in the ID woohoo, but I see you point. Just by grazing the list of dissenters against Darwinism and more prevalent anti-evolutionists, a trend can be seen. But if I were to take a gander, the majority is from an improper association of scientific methodology with an elementary approach to scientific inquiry. By example...
Engineers and Chemists: Used to seeing order and purpose in design, it isn't too hard to see them attributing macchina naturae to organisms.
Mathematicians: Some may be too hard pressed to believe that nature comes from evidence; that is, nature must come from mathematics. Every now and then an eccentric anti-empirical mathematician appears on the grid, but his words seems to die in the tide of time.
Physicists/Astronomers: Most astronomers I meet are anti-ID, attributing our existence to coincidence. However, some-who-won't-be-named are alighted by the concept of fine-tuning and their gazing into the stars. Again, most physicists I meet could care less about orthodox religion, but those who do tend to be dealing with materials (eg. solid state physics). Perhaps these suffer from the same fate as the chemist/engineer, as these physicists can sometimes hardly be told apart.
Computer Science: I can only imagine boredom. Boredom of an intelligent being leads to reading, and all it takes is for an intelligent being to read the wrong material and his mind goes to mush.
/opinion...don't eat me!!!
oi, oi! we're not more vulnerable to woo! i'll have you know my Computing Science department is the most woo-free department in the whole University, thankyouverymuch.
Lepht
Unfortunately for me, Lepht, last I checked the computer science department at my university (Louisiana State University) wasn't accredited. So I don't know how much woo is wondering in the halls. Plus, they share their corridors with the Department of Religious Studies and Philosophy as well as a number of other smaller non-science departments. A lot of woodoo-voodoo I sense from that building.
I am happy to report that Leonard Susskind's The Cosmic Landscape & The Illusion of Intelligent Design lives up to its title, even if the concept of "the landscape" is itself a bit of a contentious matter for a number of respectable physicists.
Besides, anyone with any sense whatsoever knows that strings are spaghetti and closed strings are SpaghettiOs, FSM be praised.
Interesting this post comes up today when there is an excellent post addressing part of what this snapper-head is spewing about laws and theories.
The post is over at Bad Astronomy here, and links to a further article about this scientific nomenclature.
AL also read, laws are not scientists' "concepts", though I agree with you about people touting miracles as violating laws.
Only reason I can think of that someone teaching CS to fall for this is that at work you only need to know a lot about programming (& associated other fields) but only a very small amount of the field for which you are building tools. It seems to be easy to fall into the trap then to think you know enough about this unknown field to actually be able to comment on it.
I OBJECT!
I'm a physicist (first degree & engineer (MSc) and I think I'm impervious to "woo"
Oh - "ring species" ...
The list in Talk Origins misses out a classic:
There is a ring-species set of gulls around the arctic.
In England and along the European coasts, we have to separate, mutualy-infertile gulls (among lots of others) - the Herring Gull, and the Lessr Black-Back Gull.
But if you travel East, the Lesser BB shades into another species, which shades into another whic ... shades into the US Herring Gull, which shades into the (European Herring Gull ....
A clsssic, as I said.
'The assertion that members of certain professions seem "vulnerable" to these kinds of errors is not equivalent to an assertion that all members have uniformly and without exception succumbed to said vulnerability.'
In fact, those members of said professions who have NOT succumbed to said vulnerability ought to take it as a compliment. We usually give extra kudos to those people who succeed when the odds are against them rather than in their favour.
This is the best study by discipline I could find:
It initially appears that by measuring disbelief fewer biologists than physical scientists actively disbelieve. However it seems when it comes to measuring belief biologists are the most godless. The difference is biology seems to have more agnostics, maybe we are more comfortable with looking at so much stuff we simply don't know about. When it comes to champion woo pushers... stand up Mathematicians!
So it seems you have to be careful which questions you ask.
Before being allowed to write *any* sort of science-based article, even on a website, there should be a mandatory test to make sure that you don't think that the term scientific theory is equivalent to `guess'.
I'd also like to identify as a rational engineer-type, even though I am drifting towards biology at the current time due to working on generating 3D reconstructions of neurons. Then again, I've done plenty of work with evolutionary optimisation and some on Artificial Life, and listening to Dembski bullshit about the No Free Lunch theorems and optimisation in general always makes my blood boil. People use evolutionary algorithms because they work, not because they have a duty to uphold the evil atheistic evolutionary hegemony.
Try dealing with journalists for a decade- not only do they buy into damn fool that gets them a headline, the suddenly become very-important-experts in the field.
I still shudder at some of the crap I heard during the anthrax attacks.
It's not about engineers, etc. but the delightful English comedian Linda Smith (who died far too young in 2006, breaking my heart) was president of the British Humanist Association, and she (I think) said that most comedians are atheists. She (or whoever it was said this) thought it might be a side-effect of their incessant search for new material, requiring a questioning approach as they observed the quirks, nonsensicalities and contradictions of social behaviour and the human condition.
It's a mistake to pretend that people choose a/theism as a rational choice. Yup, we atheists can generally construct a rationalisation, but the real reason is simpler: it's because we look around and it's crushingly clear that god and religious stuff is just drivel that doesn't "fit".
oh bother, no link. excuse my absolute absence of HTML... Lets try again:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/sci_relig.htm
No, it can't be THAT bad. This was a joke, right?? The Onion or something? Well, I will go duck my head in the sand and pretend that people (even people with some formal education!!) simply DO NOT, and CAN NOT, believe such things. I can't take it. It's common over in this part of the world too; in fact, I'm surrounded by these sorts of folks. But I can do nothing about it, so I simply refuse to believe it and live in self-manufactured world of books, magazines and computers. Nothing can be done!! I quit. It's not REAL, I tell you. You are making this stuff up.
A nice link with explanations of the terms "Theory" and "Law".
http://www.notjustatheory.com/
AL, I don't think it would matter if terms were relabelled as you suggest, with "absolute certainty" replacing "law". The woos would still find ways to mangle the meaning. An illustration of the case in point:
I was once arguing with a woo who opposed cloning on the grounds that clones "didn't have souls", to which I sarcastically retorted, "Congratulations. You've just insulted every identical twin who ever lived."
"What do you mean?" she spluttered, so I explained that monozygotic twins are clones because they share identical DNA.
"But that's not what cloning means!" she protested. "Cloning means 'grown artificially in a laboratory'." (And, she didn't add, "by a goggle-eyed loon in a white coat who intends humanity harm", such is the woo romantic distrust of science.)
Woos arbitrarily redefine scientific terms to suit their prejudices anyway, so changing scientific jargon won't have any impact, as the problem isn't with the misunderstanding or misuse of terms, it's with the prejudice that informs the misuse. One of the hardest things ever is to correct the common misunderstanding that scientific laws cause events, such as the law of gravity causes objects to fall, rather than the law of gravity being a description of how the universe operates. This confusing observation with causation is on a par with believing that a sports commentator reporting on a football match causes the outcome of that match. But you try convincing the woos; because of their promiscuous teleology, they see the Hand of God in everything, and so are prone to confuse observation with causation.
Good thing I'm not observed when I'm causing trouble online, really...
AL:
Perhaps, and as much as I dislike the concept for its layman conflation with immutable laws, but it is a convenient term for labeling general observations (from data or theory).
And the different concepts of laws are as conflated in other areas. We have contingent juridical laws, yet there are confused people who believes in immutable moral "laws". Of course, ultimately often for religious reasons as you note for empirical descriptions. But we don't solve the general problem by specifically changing scientific praxis.
Nitpick: when we say that laws are violated, we mean another thing though. For example, the first law of thermodynamics on energy conservation can be violated, locally and briefly, by quantum fluctuations. That doesn't mean the law doesn't hold, it means there are exceptions for known reasons.
That would be some serious rework! Really, if we could create energy from nothing and the first law of thermodynamics were falsified, it would probably mean that there is no physics. By way of Noether's theorems it would mean that physical laws can't be time invariant since no entity like energy can be, in effect there are no laws.
On the other hand, we know from such things like Ramsey theory and ergodic theory that there is no such thing as complete disorder, but patterns must emerge. So I think it is a basic mistake that many do, especially the religious, when they wave their wand and claim presto, miracles unconstrained of current nature.
But there are constraints to the types of physics we can have, just as naturally as not any rules works for number systems. If we would see something like above it is just because causality broke down and something "other" intruded. (The only way to get around that is to discuss unique events in the form of improbable and uncontrollable quantum fluctuations. Which would work as known violation, not falsification.)
Now, anything and all of the above could be wrong - without some serious modeling it is mere handwaving from intuition than anything else. Perhaps my larger point is only that miracles may be harder to make than most people think. :-P
Wow. That ring species example is fantastic.
I can see how such a thing can exist, but it's harder to imagine how it came to be in the first place.
For the gulls, presumably at some point there had to be a gap or gaps, the largest gap being in the UK. The single species then slowly radiated (tentative use of tecchie term here) into their respective sub-species. The gap closes and we have a complete ring, but the 2 ends do not overlap. Hows that?
Federico (#2), as an engineer (EE, analog circuitry and signal processing), I ought to feel deeply offended. Unfortunately, I can't. I know too many deeply religious engineers, and I think what it boils down to is a god complex - that these engineers believe they're mimicking god in their design of crap.
ID might be particularly dangerous for these folk since they're used to designing archaic devices using formulae no one else understands. From an engineering standpoint, I find ID absolutely fascinating, and I'm particularly enamored with genetic programming and A-life experiments like Avida. From a religious standpoint its absolute crap. From a scientific standpoint, its a good analogy, but a horrible accurate representation of the way the world works. Engineers generally don't end up learning the scientific method outside of their intro chem/physics classes. The ones who came away with something a little more than rudimentary knowledge of that... they're the lucky ones.
i'd like to know if the paper that published his letter knew he sounded like an idiot. i hope they weren't using his letter to further their own views...because that would be sad.
Astromcnaught:
I am not sure exactly what you meant by "presumably at some point there had to be a gap or gaps." A great example of a ring species is the "greenish warbler," which I like to use to point out to ID'ists who are all googly with micro-evolution but think there is some way to stop micro- from becoming macro-evolution.
Dr Darren E. Irwin
They are still greenish warblers, but they don't interbreed. In geologic terms it doesn't take much time for ring species to form, so it isn't difficult to understand how over the hundreds of millions of years since the pre-cambrian that this has led to "endless forms most beautiful" considering that geographical barrier to gene flow is but one of the mechanisms of evolution.
re: #2
I don't know any mathematicians that don't accept the theory of evolution. Do you? Indeed, the mathematics of evolution are not hard at all and make the field fairly obvious for mathematicians.
The usual suspects are engineers and MDs, IIRC.
ID is the kind of idea that mathematicians would scoff at. The theory always seems to rest on the implied notion that unlikely events never occur. From a mathematical standpoint, this is a ridiculous notion. Mathematicians are handy with infinitessimal concepts and are unlikely to be bamboozled by somebody who says "the probability of X happening is 10^-25, therefore it must not have happened!"
It is true that many mathematicians believe in God, but most who do are of the order-to-the-universe concept of God. (Yes, as PZ has pointed out recently, this is just a compromise concept that lacks any relationship to religion as it is practiced by most people except for the fact that it is also on an intellectually shaky foundation, albeit in a considerably more subtle way.) Paul Erdos is famous for calling God "the supreme fascist". Of course he was young in Hungary in the 1940s, so I can see where the idea came from.
On the whole IDiot engineer thing: I think it's more a tendency for IDiots to spout their profession in order to maaaaagically give them the almighty authority so that they can intimidate us into backing down.
Glad I've never seen it work.
I'll be very brief (as it's too hot to go onto a long philosophical discussion right now): Many, if not most mathematicians and logicians, in my experience and from reading through history of the subject, have extraordinary difficulty accepting the idea that mathematical entities (numbers, classes, sets and so on) do not exist as something OUT THERE in the world (as opposed to just in the mind (conceptualism) or as dots on paper (nominalism).
They find it extremely hard to explain the "unreasonable efficacy of mathematics" and its seeming independence of human epistemology (after all, 2 and 2 really do make four always and everywhere right?) in terms of subjective mental operations, creative imagination and so on. So, they adopt an ontologically promiscuous Platonic view of this realm of entities (see e.g. Godel, Penrose, even Quine and Putnam, etc,..). This view of the reality of all sorts of abstract entities, objects and processes leads, in many cases, to mystical explanations of how these alleged "third-realm" entities epistemically interact with human minds. This, in turn, leads to odd speculations and dispositions to accept all sorts of other mysterious entities and phenomena without any empirical evidence or proof. The same holds for many philosophers obviously.
Mike H: Thanks for the reply.
What i meant was that if, say, a species of seagull emerged somewhere and then that single species populated a ring, and then the species radiated then there would be no incompatible overlap anywhere around the ring.
However, if the species radiated as it populated the ring then, indeed, there could well be an incompatible overlap as we see with the herring and bb gulls.
One distinction has to be made: there are computer scientists, who do experiments and study software and hardware, and then there are these kinds of business people who know how to use a spreadsheet and a word processor and get into colleges to teach young people the basic mechanics of how to use a computer. I suspect Mr Carr is one of the latter.
Most engineers my age who were brought up in the U.S. had little or no discussion of evolution in their high school biology classes, and had to go to church every Sunday, if only to uphold their parents' standing in the community.
People who study physics or biology or geology, on the other hand, are forced to confront evidence about the age of the universe and the ways it has changed over time.
So I think the nuture of people who go into engineering has as much to do with it as their nature.
Although, as I've said before, once you actually start designing complex machines as an engineer there is little excuse for not seeing how evolution works (trial and error, lucky accidents, incremental changes over time, survival in competitive market places). Nothing just "poofs" into existence. That watch Paley metaphorically found in the woods had a long fossil trail of hourglasses, water clocks, and sundials behind it.
That is less evident in computer programming, but even there large programs evolve over time. That's how "spaghetti code" develops - although that could be seen as evidence for the FSM I suppose.
(Thanks to Peter Ashby at #27 for the link.)
My English composition instructor at my hometown community college was an ordained minister. He was a part-time faculty member hired to cover the evening class in which I was enrolled. My friends and I sniffed him out pretty quickly. He didn't announce his occupation, but his writing assignments and examples gave him away. I remember a supposedly sterling example of an essay he offered to us as a model of tightly reasoned composition: an attack on the Kinsey report. The essay was insubstantial fluff, railing against what the writer claimed Kinsey said and intended without ever sharing with us any of Kinsey's actual words. We eviscerated the essay with a barrage of questions about what the writer sought to prove and why we thought he hadn't.
The prof folded like a house of cards and his line of retreat was to congratulate us on our diligent consideration of the essay. Had that been his intention all along? I don't think so. He really seemed quite dismayed.
Funny thing: It turned out to be a thoroughly educational class in its own odd way.
Oh, I dunno... It's OK for a rigidly predictive mathematical statement, such as Newton's Laws or Motion, or the Laws of Thermodynamics.
I would also take issue with describing this fool as a "troglodyte". There's nothing wrong with cave-dwelling.
He might not be. Expertise in a narrow subset of scientific knowledge is no guarantee of knowing anything about other parts.
Stop dumping on engineers, and computer programmers! It is getting stereotypical. Surgury can produce Egnor and Orac, Computer science can produce a complete engoramus like this idiot, but also really cool stuff:
http://www.genetic-programming.com/
Easy there cowboy. I'm an in that field and my job is nothing but stress and lots of keeping up with current technology. There is zero boredom.
Maybe comp sci people with shitty jobs. But that can be applied anywhere.
(I am changing "Friend of Charles Darwin" to "Friend of David Carr")
This whole thread is typical atheist Pharyngulite piling on of a recognized computer scientist, just because your "proofiness" doesn't match up to his "truthiness." If reality has a well-known liberal bias, then it is time to start thinking with our guts.
Do I stand alone in defending poor Dr. Carr? Anyone have the guts to join me?
AL wrote: I'm not asking for the word "law" to be expunged from all scientific literature, but at least scientists should refrain from using it to label new concepts they develop (e.g. Moore's Law in computer science).
As a physicist working in the semiconductor industry I would like to point out that very few people (apart from some journalists working for the Register or Semibiznews.com) have ever mistaken the marketing strategy labled "Moore's Law" for a law of nature. Furthermore, Moore's Law has very little to do with Computer Science. It is a target that the semiconductor industry sets for itself and it is only seriously discussed by physicists, electrical engineers, chemical engineers, and materials scientists at meetings of the ITRS committee.
http://www.itrs.net/
Furthermore, it is a moving target -- the "Law" has been recast in terms of different metrics many times since Gordon Moore's first 10 year extrapolation of a trend he'd observed in 1965.
And Frederico, let me add my voice those rejecting the premise of your question regarding the susceptibility of "engineers, mathematicians, physicists, and 'comp. sci people'".
First, the use of the term "comp sci people" is unwarranted. There are computer scientists who do actual science. If you are going to idnetify everyone with a physics degree as a "physicist", then you ought to extend the same courtesy to computer science majors.
Next, I would challenge the construction of your category. There are engineering disciplines which are informed by biology -- making a distinction between engineers and biologists, while not making a similar distinction w.r.t. physicists, mathematicians, or computer scientists, is misleading.
Finally, as a scientist, I require data from a statistically valid sample that:
1) People with biology degrees are, in fact, less likely to be superstitious troglodytes than people holding degrees in other scientific disciplines.
2) The superstitious troglodytes who identify as engineers, physicists, mathematicians, or computer scientists have any standing in their respective professional communities.
You know, the arguments about which type of education or degree is most likely to believe in creationism and reject evolution is way too narrow. Yes, it's true that ID takes advantage of people with post graduate degrees who misunderstand evolution for their arguments from authority, probably because the general population gives more credence to someone with those credentials. However, I'll betcha that there are folks with all kinds of doctorates - History, English Literature, Art, Linguistics, and so on - who are equally credulous. Throw in people who don't have those advanced degrees, and you have a huge pool of credulity. The problem isn't the fact that people with advanced degrees in smart-guy sorta-sciency stuff are being deluded, and their ideas disseminated, but that there are so many people out there who never learned the basics of science enough to see them for what they are. I don't know what schools everyone went to, but I attended a pretty well-funded school system, and learned a smidgin about Mendel and genetics, and evolution may have merited a sentence or two. Did we learn about what makes a theory a theory and a law a law? Nosirreebob. I now have a middle school child and a just about to start high school child, and for certain, I can tell you that their education in the very good system we have now covers about the same stuff. The high schooler will take one year of "earth science" (just enough to pass the state tests) but would have to be bound for a science career to learn any more. In fact, she'd have to be bound for a biology career, because the advanced classes are divided into biology and chemistry, and never the twain shall meet. What my kids know about the real world comes from my being a curious stay at home mom who takes them to museums, libraries, nature preserves, and who shows them movies and TV shows about science and nature that spark questions and answers. . .it's a very unusual situation.
I understand that the focus on which type of discipline is more or less likely to believe misinformation is based heavily on who's being used as ID pawns. I believe, though, that arming the people early on with truth would be the best way to combat this. Rather than waiting until obtaining a degree in a science that depends on evolutionary theory, or natural skepticism and curiosity, lead people to question these claims, we should be starting from early on. It certainly wouldn't be hard. First Grade, instead of everyone growing identical bean plants or marigolds, give them both pole beans and bush beans; scarlet runner, hyacinth bean vine, limas and favas! Second Grade, they're doing a unit on the jungle, so the common ancestry of the different types of monkeys can be touched on. There are opportunities wasted every elementary, secondary, and high school year, which, taken, would protect people from giving a moment's thought to the authority of a computer guy's statements about evolution. Sure, it'll take longer than trying to debunk the know-nothing fellows with letters after their names, but it'll have a much longer lasting effect.
Something is working at Hollins University:
http://www.hollins.edu/undergrad/compuscience/compusci.htm
"Computational Sciences: This program is suspended for the 2006-07 academic year."
Guess this guy doesn't believe in the germ theory of disease. Toss those vaccines, antibiotics, and whatnot, germs don't cause disease.
What is funny, among all the reality denier "movements", is one that does deny that germs cause disease. Voluntary ignorance is always popular.
Nothing in science is EVER shown beyond doubt. Even if the demonstrations themselves didn't contain irreducible uncertainty, science is always open to new data - so the moment new data become possible, old results become uncertain.
New data is potentially available every new moment.
In science, a theory is a conceptual description that has survived repeated tests and has been shown to be consistent and predictive of the available evidence. It's very hard to make a hypothesis become a theory.
In comparison, spreading lies is almost unimaginably easier.
Let not these fools trick you into thinking Computer Science / Engineering folks are all this dense. I have a BS in Computer Science from NC State, and believe me, I'm as interested in proof as any Missourian.
The secret is probably the religious belief, which contaminates the brain so that "eevilution-doesn't-exist" is taken as true. Then of those people, we notice most the irony of those who have a degree in anything like a physical or mathematical science; and because they're "educated" they feel more confident in making pronouncements.
They're hiding in computer science departments! Get 'em guys!
What is it about:
- engineers
- mathematicians
- physicists
- comp sci people
... that makes them more vulnerable to woo? Is it just me confirming my bias and remembering when I see these people saying stupid things? (when, because of their professional achievements I expect better of them...) [Emphasis mine]
I can't explain the other four, but I have a hypothesis (notice the correct usage) about engineers. Arrogance. They design things, and they think that since the machines they make are designed, everything else must have been also. At least, this is the same argument I've heard from every Creationist engineer.
There's a really good explanation of theory for the uninitiated. Whether they'll still get it, I doubt. But it's worth a shot.
By the way, not all engineers are Creationists, or even believers. I'm an engineer and an atheist. It's a very small club, but a fun one to belong to. ;)
Less evident? Compare win95 too winXP. Obviously, there's been some evolution, and obviously, some of the mutation was not due to intelligent design ...
(I think you forgot that most people get new software more frequently than they replace material objects.)
Cranky engineers might be explained by pragmatism and the nature of their education.
Engineers rarely discover something new about nature. We don't create knowledge, we apply it, and since most of time engineers design human-scale artifacts, we only use human-scale physics. The huge time scales used in biology, geology or astronomy are out of our reach, for example. Our scientific training limits to problem-solving and (basic) mathematical modeling; it doesn't involve a lot experimental work.
The result is that some engineers are not familiar with the principles, methods and subtleties of pure science because they have never done it. After all, a machine either works or doesn't; that's the only evidence we need. And without a good scientific mindset, an engineer is as prone to believe in crap as any other people.
And bear in mind Mr. Carr is a Baptist minister. Hoy many engineers and computer scientists are also religious ministers?
I'm surprised nobody mentioned the Salem Hypothesis yet:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_hypothesis
Will this hypothesis ever become a law?? ;-)
Regarding that silly "no transitional forms" dodge, I wonder what such people think happened with the development of the languages based on Latin. Do they expect to find every conceivable intemediate between Latin and Spanish, French, Portegese, Italian, and Catalan? Are they baffled that there's no Spanch or Frenish, Catagese or Portalian? I know it's not perfect, but that's a pretty powerful metaphor to demonstrate just how disordered is creationist thinking on transitional features.
llewelly @ #56:
You're right, I was thinking of the process of creating new designs in mechanical engineering vs. computer programming, rather than the perception of consumers. A steam turbine may last over 30 years, but the team that designed it should recognize that their design process is very similar to natural evolution, whereas a programmer might write small modules and consider them to have poofed into existence in his or her mind.
From a consumer point of view, I agree that it is easier to see evidence of rapid change in software than in, say, cars. (However, that might make the connection with natural evolution harder to see, as in the limit as evolution becomes instantaneous, it may look like pure creation.)
uri:
One might want to add Ray Kurzweil to that list. Bloody "Law of Accelerating Returns." Law of I-don't-understand-log-log-plots is more like it.
You'd think that anyone who'd taken a basic algorithms course would be immune to this nonsense--if anyone should know how a clever algorithm can cut its way through a truly gigantic search space, it should be someone educated in computer science.
I guess I know a little of how Orac feels now. Paper bags all around!
Capitalism is a bitch. From the Google ads at notjustatheory.com: "Creation vs. Evolution: Is evolution just a theory? You can prove creation. Order free booklet." D'oh.
Berlzebub, I don't think you necessarily need explain why the physical sciences people are less accepting of evolution than biologists, they are still more accepting than the general populace, lets be grateful for what is there. The reason biologist are such a bunch of non believers is simple, Dobzhansky got it right: nothing, absolutely nothing in biology makes sense without evolution. If you are a biologist this hits you between the eyes so much it seeps through your skin so you don't even remark on it anymore unless a woo practicioner wanders by. Our genome sequence is intrinsically interesting but why are we using all the capacity to work our way through everything else? because as PZ pointed out in his synopsis of the jellyfish genome paper we can learn an awful lot about ourselves even from a bag of jelly BECAUSE and ONLY BECAUSE of evolution. If evolution were not true we could learn absolutely nothing about ourselves from the jellyfish genome. And that is just one example. Mixing and matching enzymes from viruses, bacteria, fluorescent jellyfish and lots of other stuff is now so routine it is technology not science anymore. Who would have thought you could make fluorescent mice or pigs or fish with a jellyfish protein?
Most people who are not biologists never encounter this stuff so don't get it rammed between their eyes on a daily basis. I lost my faith gradually, the more biology I learned as an undergrad and then postgrad. There was no great epiphany, just the day I realised the old position of 'well god might have intervened in evolution' was no longer tenable. Deep breath, thinks 'I am I an agnostic or an atheist?', well I should be an agnostic as a good scientists but some things, like Lamarkism and the Aether get to the stage that suspending disbelief is just silly. Deities I thought fitted into that, all way from fairies and tree sprites through hammer wielding maniacs and blood thirsty sun gods to invisible sky fathers.
I admire people who have not had my educational benefits and yet still accept evolution. so give credit where it is due and don't dump on those who have not too hard. Educate them instead.
From here:
Newton, Einstein, Darwin, Mendel ... are my heroes.
As a physisict, I specialise in quantum cosmology. But my current bedtime books are "Wonderful life" by S.J.Gould, "the selfish gene" by R.Dawkins and "Stumbling on Happiness" by D.Gilbert.
I can only be an amateur in those fields, but I am trying to learn from them to see if we can develop better models in quantum cosmology
Yet I believe in God.
Because science will never provide the recomfort needed to a father who just lost his child.
As a frenchman, one piece of advice to my scientific friends in America, you will not win the battle over creationists by denigrating those who believe in God. You have to show that there is no incompatibility. This is what you have to focus on.
All the best.
I completely disagree Shawn (in fact, I disagree so strongly, I had to go find one of those computer-scored sheets so I could fill in the #5-Strongly Disagree circle. My mark was heavy and black.)
I would suggest that one of the marks of intelligent individuals is that they're able to read nearly anything without their minds turning to mush. Whereas an unintelligent (actually, I prefer undisciplined and untrained) individual reads with the questions "Do I want this to be true?" and "Does this make sense to me?" in the back of his or her head, the non-mush head is guided by the questions "Does this fit with what I've previously observed to happen?" and "If this were true, what would I expect to see?"
The point of science education should be to innoculate people against mush-headism.
#21, #32, #35: Another ring species is the California salamander Ensatina, which diverged as separate populations migrated south from Oregon along paths in the Sierras and the coast, meeting again as distinct species in the south. These and the warblers are both described here at a good popular level by the warbler researcher, D. Irwin (as of 2002): Unusual Demonstrations of Speciation with links to primary & other reports. And since Bioscience is targeted at teachers in all levels of biology, it even links to a high-school lesson plan for ring species, which do have great truthiness potential - good match of intuition and data.
Greg: re 'transitional languages' there is portagnol - common in brazil, spanglish - commom in miami, franglish - common in expat communities near geneva, and deutchlich - common in expat communities around zurich...
but then there are really secondary derivatives of the latin derivatives..... hey! Evolution happening *right now*
;)
...of science, or anything else for that matter. Indeed, I have a cousin who is a research geophysicist at a fairly prestigious institution over here in Eye-taly. Well, she's no creationist of course, but she is a big fan of extreme woo-woo like The Celestine Profit$, da Vinci code and so on. I once tried to explain something about functionalism in philosophy of mind and she said it was "just too materialistic!!". End of conversation.
I'd be cautious with the linguistic analogy when sharing it with someone whose knowledge of biology is limited.
The only reason I suggest this is because languages, like bacteria, are not limited to longitudinal transmission of elements, and unless you're really prepared to sit down and explain what it means when bacteria exchange plasmids and languages borrow words, you might run into a little trouble.
Having said that, I think Greg's suggestion is otherwise a very good one.
Yes.
Then we're in real trouble, because there IS an incompatibility, and we won't 'demonstrate' something that isn't so.
Caledonian, I probably didn't explain myself well enough.
Recent statistics in France show the following :
believe in evolutionary scientific theories : 85% (FAR higher than in the US)
believe in pseudo scientific creationist theories : 15%
-------------------------------------------------------
believe in some form of God : 80%
You see my point ? I am a hard line scientist and am very convinced with the theory of evolution. As a quantum cosmologist, I am studying how the same conceptual framework could be applied to explain the whole history of the universe, including the standard model of particle physics, an explanation for the cosmological parameters, etc...
I do not need to be convinced that the theory of evolution is right. This is even a much more fundamental aspect of nature, not only life on earth.
But don't try to convince me that I am wrong if I believe in God.
Best regards
That's probably because we separated RELIGION from GOVERNMENT more than 200 years ago. We have no discussion here (nor elsewhere in Europe) about teaching creationists ideas in schools. Our public schools are laic, because that is the role of governement.
But we still have religious institutions and they take care of many other things than forcing creationists pseudo scientific doctrines in our education system.
Cheers
Barash's piece is concise, well composed, almost lyrical -- poetry in a prose guise. It packs a lot of information into a short space, a lot of good thought with a wallop.
Carr's piece plods, stumbles over cliches, and collapses every time it runs into a scientific idea.
Ancients had this superstition that the gods endowed those favored by nature, by the gods -- by God, if you're Christian or Jew or Moslem -- with eloquence that would make people smile, and help persuade them to the divine cause.
I'll bet Carr would differ with that idea. Divine intervention doesn't seem to be his area of expertise.
No one tries to explain evolution by denying God exists.
It's besides the point. There's evidence for evolution, none for god. That's really when it comes up, and that's when we're talking to creationists that insist ID be taught or that evolution is wrong and that the earth is younger than 10,000 years.
Arguing for evolution is a seperate issue than arguing against superstition, unless of course you're arguing with someone who brings up one to deny the other. "God exists therefor evolution is false."
However, belief in God is just goofy. Does it hurt my argument? Nope. It's true.
Um, I've never sensed a disproportionate amount of woo floating around among other computer people. I did, however, notice a lot of wrong thinking about politics in my department when I was a poli sci grad student, however.
How can you possibly believe something on the grounds that it's more comforting to do so? I'm sure I'd be very comforted by the belief that fairies have made me immune to cancer, but somehow I still don't believe it.
Creationists are not your target audience. That's obviously lost cause.
The people / the government are those you need to convince.
Assume most of these do believe in some form of God, and if you start with "there is evidence for evolution, none for God", you are already playing the cards of the creationists.
SCENARIO Where EVOLUTIONISTS WIN (the people are judge)
Creationists : "God exists therefore evolution is false"
Evolutionists : "These are the facts that support evolution and the predictions it makes + yes some of us do believe in God, but this hypothesis is not required"
SCENARIO Where EVOLUTIONISTS LOOSE (the people are judge)
Creationists : "God exists therefore evolution is false"
Evolutionists : "These are the facts that support evolution and the predictions it makes + there is no evidence for the existence of God"
It's all about PR.
What statistics are you thinking of? A Harris poll from late 2006 found that only 27% of the French believe in some form of God. A Le Monde poll from 2003 found 33% declaring themselves to be atheists.
Creationists are not your target audience. That's obviously lost cause.
The people / the government are those you need to convince.
Assume most of these do believe in some form of God, and if you start with "there is evidence for evolution, none for God", you are already playing the cards of the creationists.
SCENARIO Where EVOLUTIONISTS WIN (the people are judge)
Creationists : "God exists therefore evolution is false"
Evolutionists : "These are the facts that support evolution and the predictions it makes + yes some of us do believe in God, but this hypothesis is not required here, there is no incompatibility"
SCENARIO Where EVOLUTIONISTS LOOSE (the people are judge)
Creationists : "God exists therefore evolution is false"
Evolutionists : "These are the facts that support evolution and the predictions it makes + there is no evidence for the existence of God"
It's all about PR.
Christian,
I think you meant LOSE (as opposed to win) rather than LOOSE (as opposed to tight).
It's all about PR.
as in:
the way xianity is maintained?
Leon, couldn't Christian have meant it both ways?
After all, it is the claim of theists that us atheists have no morals and are therefore loose. That's why so many of them are so adamantly against sex education that includes anything but pre-marital abstinence.
Christian, I'm only joking, so please don't take too much offense at my putting words in your mouth.
here is the complete report carried out by the CSA in 2004 :
belong to a religion : 73% (page 7)
here is another report from SOFRES in 2007
http://www.csa-fr.com/dataset/data2004/0401664.pdf
belong to a religion : 69%
http://www.tns-sofres.com/etudes/pol/050407_religion.htm
NB these figures do not include those who believe in God and do not belong to a religion (such as myself) as the question was not worded that way. I so somewhere else that this was somewhere around 10%
Give or take a few %, rounded to 80%
Wheather 70 or 80% the message is the same : HUGE OVERLAP between those who believe in God and those who believe in the theories of evolution.
Call us delusional or whatever, we don't seem to see an incompatibility.
NB : I guess the figure of Harris you are refering to are practising religion, which is of course much smaller.
Cheers
For many that is the case, Christian. However, there is a large proportion here in North America that do see an incompatibility and are working hard to ensure that the Bible trumps all in case of a dispute between it and science.
But herein lies the incompatibility of religious belief with science. How do we come to a consensus between the disparities among the faithful within a religion? You endorse evolution and believe in God; Michael Egnor does not and cannot do both. Which of you is right? How do we determine that?
If such a debate took place within science, it would be studied, experiments would be carried out, evidence scrutinised, more experiments would be carried out, learned discussions would take place, and after some amount of time we would reasonable expect a consensus one way or another.
With faith, no such consensus can be reached. God has refused to come down and clarify whether he hates homosexuals, Mary ascended to heaven without dying or not, what constitutes a 'day' during creation week, and so forth. All the theological thought in the world on such topics remains only that: thought which has no relationship to truth unless coincidental. Bring other religions into the mix and there can only be less agreement, not more.
You know, I think Christian is right on. It's the dreaded framing issue. I don't care one way or the other about theist-atheist boxing matches, but framing the evolution issue as Evo vs. God does play into the hands of the religiously-motivated anti-evolutionist crowd. Why? Because that's EXACTLY how they see it -- and it's the wrong way to see it. We all know that God is irrelevant to Evo. So why ever deign to discuss the two in the same breath?
Even here in the benighted US of A, the overlap is significant. There are undoubtedly far more theists who accept evolution than there are atheists who accept, well, anything at all! (As is their wont. Hahah.)
The problem here can be reduced to two basic aspects:
1. Mediocre science education
2. The growing (and profoundly incorrect) perception that one must choose between Evo and God.
It's all about PR.
as in:
the way xianity is maintained?
Probably right, Ichtyic, so what ? You now have to be better at it.
It would be sad if pseudo science would enter Americam schools because you have done bad PR.
That would be about as impossible as it would be for a man to abuse his wife because 'she asked for it'.
The only way a man can abuse his wife is if he makes the choice to do so, and the only way pseudoscience can be taught in American schools is if people choose to have it taught.
No matter how militant atheists get, it will always be a theist who writes the bible.
Actually, a more significant factor is that many of the French who belong to a religion do not believe in God. The SOFRES poll you link to says that, although 69% of the French belong to a religion, only 38% believe God exists; the rest are agnostic or actively deny his existence.
Again, the CSA poll from 2003 found that 33% of the French labelled themselves atheists, even though only 27% declared no religion. As the SOFRES authors conclude, French religion is largely a social matter and has relatively little to do with belief.
Finally, the latter poll also found a 50/50 split over whether scientific advances make it harder to believe in God. So no, there isn't a huge overlap between theists and those who believe in evolution, and there is a huge chunk of the population who think science and theism are in conflict.
No, the Harris poll was specifically asking about belief "in any form of God or any type of supreme being."
Again, the fraction of the French population which identify with a religion is much larger than the fraction which actually believe.
note the immediate jump from "religious" to "believes in god".
methinks thou art projecting too much, christian.
ah, anton cross posted.
We all know that God is irrelevant to Evo.
Kseniya, I keep seeing you say that, but I don't think you understand what that means to a xian fundamentalist.
that IS what scientists have been saying for decades now. It's the fundamentalists that interpret that as scientists saying "there is no god".
so, no, there is no need to change the message to capitulate to those who willfully will not hear it.
the question as to whether religion itself is boon or bane is an entirely different one, and has nothing to do with the "framing" of the evolution issue.
Anyone remembers what happens to Joddie Foster in the film "Contact" ?
Send a 50/50 mix of your best scientists who endorse evolution and believe/not believe in God and you will trump Michael Egnor. They will show that the existence of God is irrelevant. No incompatibility because not required as a hypothesis.
Send those scientists that are adamant about their atheism and I wish you good luck.
...because we should make all our important decisions based on what happened to people in science fiction movies, obviously.
Anyone remembers what happens to Joddie Foster in the film "Contact"
anyone remember what happened to the first selected traveler in that film?
yeah.
If 50% of biologists believe in woo, and only 30% of MDs, Comp Scis, and Engineers believe in woo, you still end up with more woo from the latter group.
So consider population size when making generalizations, too.
Yeah, Ichthyic, I see your point. It's the Theory itself that threatens their faith in their god-of-the-gaps, regardless of what the theory does explain or how it is presented.
It's still worth trying to avoid feeding into that, though, isn't it? :-/
Mmm, Contact, I did enjoy that one.
Don't think about YOU making the decision, but about the people / the governement making the decision. And then that movie becomes relevant.
That movie is not a "basis" to make a decision, but gives a fairly probable description of how govt will react faced with such a decision.
That's one beef I have with Dawkins; he does count evolution as evidence against God, because he finds the design argument otherwise compelling.
But I'm not really sure how to get rid of that problem. Most of the scientists who were strongly religious in the first place are the same ones who did look for empirical evidence for their beliefs, and therefore rejected religion when they didn't find any. Naturally they're not going to be in line with the "God has nothing to do with science" position; it doesn't describe the God they grew up with.
Don't think about YOU making the decision, but about the people / the governement making the decision. And then that movie becomes relevant.
you mean the fictional "government" group that decided NOT to send Jodie Foster's character because she was an atheist?
and the "people" who made the "decision" to blow up the first launcher, even though they were now sending a "believer"?
I rather think you have projected yourself onto your recollection of the themes in that movie as well.
I'm sure you have just as fictional a viewpoint on Sagan himself.
oh well, enjoy your delusions.
That's one beef I have with Dawkins; he does count evolution as evidence against God,
you need to clarify that.
it's not that he holds evolution as evidence against god, it's that he holds evolution against an IDEA of god, as defined by the apparent majority of "believers".
for example, nobody can hold evolution as evidence against a theistic evolutionist; the only thing that can be argued against that position is that it simply isn't necessary.
OTOH, it's quite easy to hold evolution as evidence against a YEC, and ALL of us often do that.
so, can you yourself then say, honestly, that you don't hold evidence against the concept of god held by the vast majority of creationists?
Ichthyic, call me delisunal if you want, don't see what it adds to the debate.
As far as the guy who blows the first launcher, he doesn't represent "the people" but the extreme theist, like that guy who sends threatening letters to biologists.
Holy Shiite, and Sunni too. The editors at the Roanoke Times must have been howling at the chance to run this, from a professor no less. Despite the fact that Roanoke is in Bible Belt country, the paper is suitably liberal and has a field day with of a lot of the small-town goings-on, like the group of indignant parents who wanted to change the name of a local school's mascot "Blue Demons" or something to a "non-Satanic" one a couple years ago.
It would be fun to shred this to bits, but really, it's just too stupid to bother with, at least not in a way that's not so outright cruel that the paper could never publish it.
Engineers in particular frequently mistake themselves for scientists because they are required to incorporate the results of well-established science into their engineering projects. Therefore they believe they "know science." Little do they realize this is rather like a civil engineer's customer saying he "knows bridges" because he happens to have crossed a number of them. He is a consumer of the end product who knows what it looks like and roughly how it works, but has no idea what went into putting it there. Likewise, an engineer typically wouldn't know the scientific method from the rhythm method. In his line of work it just doesn't come up. At least I hope the architects of the bridges I cross aren't attempting to falsify any hypotheses.
This is not to say that all engineers suffer this malady, but it is indeed a rampant affliction, and not just with regard to creationism. Tune in to any local talk radio program (if you're lucky enough to live in a market with more variety than Angry White Man Radio) and listen any time a science-oriented topic comes up. I'd put money on the odds you'll hear a "scientist" call in, offer up an uninformed lay opinion on the subject at hand, have the host or guest expert drill down into the caller's qualifications and find his "scientific" training consists of an engineering degree.
The Hollins University page on Computer Science shows Carr as a "lecturer" of computer science.
Oh, and you can dither over whether or not computer science is really "science" or not. I don't think it is. Comp-sci doesn't engage in hypothesis testing but in debugging. I'm wondering if someone should write to the president of Hollins University to tell her that having someone of Carr's [in]abilities in understanding the basics of the philosophy of science could be a bad thing for them...
I lied. I just sent this to the paper:
Richard Carr's letter ("Troglodytes Unite," July 20) is such a comedy of errors that I am wondering if he, a college professor, penned it as an elaborate joke.
First, Gregor Mendel was a geneticist, not an evolutionary biologist. In castigating a field with which he is flamboyantly unfamilar, Mr. Carr is no doubt thinking of Charles Darwin, who truly modernized biology by clarifying the concepts of natural selection and descent with modification -- principles which today guide all aspects of life science, from the development of antibiotics to agricultutal innovations to the breeding of domestic animals.
Mr. Carr also has no grasp of the definition of a scientific theory, which he conflates with "wild guess." A theory is set of explanatory statements about observations of the natural world, one that attempts to relate facts; evolution, then, is both a fact and a theory. Mr. Carr claims that evolution lacks rigorously tested factual support, but his claims -- from those he makes regarding new species to his comments on the fossil record -- hearken to a mind that is unencumbered by knowledge and determined to ward it off at all costs in favor of dated superstition.
Many who share Mr. Carr's faith have welcomed the knowledge they believe their creator wants them to embrace. That Mr. Carr, an educator, cannot or will not is further testimony to the ramshackle state of the American public's relationship with science, both as a means of progress and something to celebrate for its countless delights.
Dot Yurize
Ann Cross Yurteeze
Morris, MN
That's my degree, and you're right, it isn't. There's more to it than "debugging," particularly if one is on an academic track instead of an industry track, but even that "more" does not typically fit the qualifications of what right-thinking people would consider science. At the edges there are some fascinating intersections with other disciplines that have some science-like characteristics, but one generally has to seek them out based on a pre-existing interest and one could easily make the case that the other disciplines bring all the science to the table. The most math-like foundations of computer science are typically considered either solved or unsolvable, and therefore uninteresting and unmentioned. My exposure to the Church-Turing hypothesis, for instance, came only through self-directed work with my alma mater's philosophy department (which work also, incidentally, included philosophy of science).
The sad truth of computer science education is that not only is it possible to get out of a CS program with nothing but technical skills, but it is possible to get out of most CS programs without technical skills. If you can implement a bubble sort and get it to compile on a menu-driven lab computer, you can graduate with a CS degree and know neither anything theoretical nor anything practical.
Gelf, I second that. I can't speak to the educational side of it, but in the working world at least, "computer science" is all about using technology, not figuring out what makes the world tick. We use a lot of trial and error in troubleshooting, but no real hypothesis testing.
One advantage IT has over the "social sciences" is that at some level there's no way to fudge things: a Cat3 cable won't support a 100Mbps transmission, a dead monitor is a dead monitor, a PS/2 mouse won't fit in a USB slot, etc. Unlike say in poli sci, you can't squeeze your eyes shut and insist that it'll work if people just use this "theory" I've constructed.
Unfortunately, as with some other disciplines, the solid understanding of on-the-job realities doesn't necessarily intrude on non-job-related things that people want to be true (and conveniently aren't in a position to test for themselves).
Ichthyic, call me delisunal[sic] if you want, don't see what it adds to the debate.
already did.
I'll add that you're a horrible speller. Now that really adds something to the "debate".
Aw, Ichthy. Smacking non-native speakers for poor English spelling? Tsk.
"If you can implement a bubble sort and get it to compile on a menu-driven lab computer, you can graduate with a CS degree and know neither anything theoretical nor anything practical."
Not that I don't agree with your sentiment, but really bubble sort is something someone does in their very first programming
course. A reasonable comp sci program will weed out the pretenders early. Or should.
COmputer science isn't science. Engineers are not science literate as a general rule. Most think they are however. I am an engineer (electrical)and speak from extensive experience.
If this chart (from this page) is even close to accurate, then you would need only about 6.25% of engineers to match 50% of biologists. And that's not counting "information technologists", who are counted with mathematicians.
The troglodytic "I'm not a troglodyte" letter reminds me of a news story twenty years ago. A mother punished her son by tying him up on the front porch and putting a sign over his neck saying "I'm a little piggy" and putting a pig mask over his head.
When the press made a big deal over this she said, ... anyone want to guess?....
She said, "What's the big deal? My parents always did it to me and I came out fine."
I didn't mean to suggest they give you a degree on completion of your first bubble sort, but only that if you can accomplish a task like that, you're sufficiently competent at jumping through academic hoops to get a degree. A sufficiently hardworking student with two brain cells to rub together can get an undergraduate degree in anything regardless of aptitude. You would think the program could weed out "pretenders," and in fact "hardcore" CS students are particularly prone to the belief that nobody could fake their discipline, but the quality of job candidates coming out of those programs tells a different story. We often lament a 90% or so failure rate on technical interviews, usually on the first question, and not because we try to be especially tricky.
Grrr. Just grrr. Please excuse my brief digressive rant: CS may not be "science," but likewise IT is not CS. It's like comparing an aeronautical engineer to the guys in orange jumpsuits who inspect the plane before takeoff. Not that those guys aren't important, but the engineer wouldn't want the distinction there to be fuzzed over. It's a bit of a sore spot when people don't know the difference between a highly skilled programmer and the kid down at Geek Squad, particularly when the kid himself doesn't know either, as is usually the case.
However, it's still worth bringing this back around to the original point and admitting that the seeming validity of the "soft" form of the Salem Conjecture makes me a little embarassed disclosing my CS degree in this context. I emphatically reject the "hard" form of the conjecture.
But he also thinks that this particular idea of god is the most natural and persuasive, if you don't know about evolution. Hence his "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" line. Dawkins finds the Paley-style design argument to be extremely compelling, although not logically airtight, and he thinks an atheist would necessarily be "unsatisfied" before Darwin provided an alternate explanation of design.
Yet Dawkins has gone beyond that. In the essay "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God," he argues against the creation of the universe by any "personal intelligence", using a probability argument I find virtually worthless. He doesn't just say it's an unnecessary hypothesis, he says it's a demonstrably improbable one.
Certainly I do. But creationists believe in a god which is exceptionally vulnerable to evidence, since he worked lots of huge obvious miracles in recent history. You don't have to retreat to deism to avoid the evidence; you simply need to throw out any specifics as to what your god did, and where and when.
I do like Dawkins' willingness to point out that even most moderate Christians have not actually done that; they still make claims about Jesus' life and the miracles he performed which are perfectly amenable to scientific investigation. But I think he overreaches himself in trying to shoot down a hazier theism.
This has been one of the better dialogues I've seen posted. The article was very nicely dissected and shown to be in great error. I thoroughly enjoy reading what intelligent people have to say and this is one of the more intelligent groups I've seen.
I wish I had something to add, besides kudos, but I am not qualified to engage in scientific talk as my knowledge is priori and not posteriori. Therefore, I would be accused of tautology logic. But, I am definitely not a teleologist or a Xian. (more of a stand-up philosopher)
Ichthyic has straightened me out on radiation and speciation. And others have helped me discover the differences between hypotheses and theories. And, I have taken advantage of many a recommended link to gain more education.
My education is BS, MBA (both in business). As some of you have already run across me, I'm sure you'll attest to the BS.
Gelf, if it makes you feel any better, I just assumed IT workers fell under "Technician". I could see computer scientists being grouped with mathematicians, but sysadmins? Not so much.
Whether you believe in ID or not if you fall off a cliff you will hit the ground thanks to Newton's "Theory" of Gravity. Yeah, I guess you are right. The word "Law" has no place in science. lmao! Darwin and others like him who help us to better understand the world we live in are among God's better creations, and that's no joke!
Yet Dawkins has gone beyond that. In the essay "Why There Almost Certainly Is No God," he argues against the creation of the universe by any "personal intelligence", using a probability argument I find virtually worthless.
but that's not using evidence for evolution now, IS IT.
do try to separate his arguments from one another, if you intend to attack his arguments at all.
But creationists believe in a god which is exceptionally vulnerable to evidence, since he worked lots of huge obvious miracles in recent history.
so which god makes "sense" then, eh?
how many less "miracles" do we allow a god before we put it in a gap somewhere? How derived a deity should we wish for?
I do like Dawkins' willingness to point out that even most moderate Christians have not actually done that; they still make claims about Jesus' life and the miracles he performed which are perfectly amenable to scientific investigation. But I think he overreaches himself in trying to shoot down a hazier theism.
nope, he reaches the only logical conclusion, which you are right at the edge of, but unwilling to let yourself see.
it's like you're miffed at Dawkins for shooting down a hazier god that's essentially nonfunctional (iow, has no tangible qualities whatsoever), and has very little relevance to the text that supposedly is the historical basis for its works and existence.
Moreover, the funny thing is, I think you will find the evangelicals to be just as pissed (and in some cases more so) at those who follow this "hazier" theism as they are to those who are atheists.
they view it as their own form of "intellectual dishonesty".
let me go back again to what you said, literally:
"a god which is exceptionally vulnerable to evidence"
so if you have a god which isn't vulnerable to evidence...
how is that different from the FSM?
Yes, actually, it is. Because part of his argument is that the only probable means of producing creative intelligences is via evolution. In this essay, he's a little tentative about that claim:
"Intelligent, creative, complex, statistically improbable things come late into the universe, as the product of evolution or some other process of gradual escalation from simple beginnings. They come late into the universe and therefore cannot be responsible for designing it."
But in TGD, he's more definite:
"Instead I shall define the God Hypothesis more defensibly: there exists a superhuman, supernatural intelligence who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it, including us. This book will advocate an alternative view: any creative intelligence, of sufficient complexity to design anything, comes into existence only as the end product of an extended process of gradual evolution."
There can't be a divine designer who created everything, because all designers are produced by evolution. How much more blatantly "Evolution versus God" can you get? And note that both theist and deist gods (some of them, at least) are covered by the above. The only gods Dawkins explicitly exempts from his discussion are the ultra-hazy "God is Love"-style ones.
The creationist god could make sense, since his existence actually has consequences. Unfortunately, his existence has thereby been disproven. The hazier gods couldn't make sense under any circumstances.
His conclusion, I'm fine with. But it's how he gets there which is more important. I wouldn't like it if someone denied the existence of God because "Rael said he doesn't exist," either.
I'm not. I'm miffed that he doesn't shoot it down simply by pointing out that it's nonfunctional and has nothing to do with the supposedly relevant texts.
Quite true. Many fundamentalists have said they respect atheists more than liberal believers, and vice versa. Moderates like to point to that as proving that everyone else, religious or nonreligious, is an "extremist." Of course, what it really shows is that fundies and atheists alike don't see why they should believe in something unless it does stuff, and is logically consistent with their other beliefs.
Hence why YEC is much closer to science than ID or liberal theistic evolutionism. YEC is just wrong; the other two are not-even-wrong.
It's not. But you don't dismiss the FSM because you don't see spaghetti sauce everywhere; you dismiss it because it's an unnecessary hypothesis.
This topic becomes so polarized after a time that one would think that evolution v. creationism is a black and white argument. Meaning that, both the fundamentally religious and the militant evolutionists believe that only their way of thinking is correct and that the other side cannot disprove the belief of the other. I do believe, just from observations on many blog sites, that there are those who believe that these arguments are moot as they are not interested in changing their views or changing the opposing views; they each just want to understand the other's perspective.
Now, I know this will not sit well with those that "know" the real truth, but unfortunately, it seems those that are privy to an extreme view are "mostly" arrogant, condescending, and in general, don't play well with others. I have patiently waited to witness intelligent dialogue between opposing views, and it happens for a time, but then the extremists come along and start all the name calling and "well, if you don't see things my way! Humph!"
This kind of interaction reminds me of high schoolers or others with narrow views and not enough of a well rounded education to use a civil tongue to go along with their vocabulary to merely accept that not everyone wants to be an evolutionist or creationist clone. Some people just want to hear the views and/or evidence each side has to present and make up their own minds as to what it means. That is called freedom. Freedom to be an idiot if one chooses, but still freedom.
Evolution and creation are incompatible to the extremists, but not necessarily "mutually exclusive" to those in the middle. The extremists are uncompromising and that is their problem. Those in the middle are asked to polarize, but do not wish to, and that is frustrating to the extremists. Deal with it.
Now, those of you who feel attacked by what I just wrote about are more than likely the extremists I referred to. Please, dissect my little desk chair lecture and tell me how I have it "all wrong." Or, better yet, call me some names and use big words, because that's what you're good at. Or, prove me wrong and actually say something intelligent that will logically prove your point without the overflow of your frustrations and condescending attitudes poisoning your position.
Hint to fundamental creationists: Using the bible to prove god exists won't work. Using the bible to prove itself is a circular argument. Explain how someone who has no concept of god is to believe in god.
Hint to militant evolutionists: Just because evolution seems the most likely and logical explanation for man's existence, how does this disprove the existence of a god?
For those evolutionists that don't like the term "militant evolutionists" I am probably not talking about you. This is for the intolerant percentage that would eradicate any belief, other than their own, as being detrimental to one's individual and social growth.
Ah, yet another person who thinks that reasonable standards of truth are forms of fascism.
So trite in your condescending attitude, yet utterly meaningless in explaining your "reasonable standards of truth." And, as I predicted you reduce yourself to name calling. How convenient. Gives and air of superiority, but apparently it's all in your mind as you've sidled around my challenge. But, thank you for clarifying who you are.
Who here has claimed that evolution disproves the existence of god? The only thing I can see that's anywhere near that is my claim that Dawkins uses evolution to argue against the probability of certain gods; but even with those he doesn't claim to have disproved them.
So, not really for anybody here, then. I haven't seen anyone calling for purges and thoughtcrime punishment.
Unless by "eradicate" you mean "argue against," in which case, yeah, I guess we're intolerant that way.
Demagogue, you brave soul, I would have thought that by the end of the "Don't Debate Creationsits" posts you would have realized that if one claims to have a scientific world view they are immune to the human flaws of which Bacon warns in the opening article of this thread: "The human understanding resembles not a dry light, but admits a tincture of the will and passions, which generate their own system accordingly: for man always believes more readily that which he prefers.... In short, his feelings imbue and corrupt his understanding in innumerable and sometimes imperceptible ways." You can't disagree with someone, on either side of a debate/discussion, who is convinced they hold the only "reaonable standard of truth"... which, if I'm not mistaken, was the underlying premise of your most recent posts here and provoked such ire in the other thread. Good luck, my friend.
Oops! Yes, I do know how to spell "reasonable."
David,
Thank you for the empathic response. Some people do see the fruitlessness of "arguing with a creationist." However, I think it goes both way; "you can't argue with an evolutionist." Some here have made their views very clear (through inference) that they are "militant" evolutionists and that "only" the belief in evolution is logical and hence should be what all others believe.
As for being a brave soul, it doesn't matter. I have made no claim in my statement that I agree or disagree with either side of the debate. If someone thinks that I am an evolutionist or a creationist it is only from their own interpretation. Therefore, this is not a challenge to prove me wrong, as I haven't taken a position of "pro" or "con."
What I am against are blatant statements by both sides that can only be answered in the philosophical realm. My soul purpose was to give the polarized elitists, from both sides; an opportunity to elaborate on what they think should be "obvious" to the rest of us.
Anton Mates,
Who are you defending and what are you defending them from? Have you been elected speaker for the masses? This is an open question to individuals of this thread. Your response shows that you are probably not who I am speaking to, but thank you for your opinion.
The logicalness of evolutionary theory is not a faith position. It's an observed fact.
Ah, but we're clearly epistimological fascists who insist that positions other than our own are wrong, which is wrong in itself, because no position is ever wrong. Right?
Demagogue
Precisely - I was under no illusions from our previous exchanges, that you necessarily agreed with me or my world view. (Or that you necesarilly didn't, for that matter.) But at least we could exchange thoughts without resorting to negative assumptions about each others motives, intelligence, or character. In fairness, this thread has been much more civil and insightful than the other one, as you pointed out earlier.
Caledonian -
You asserted, "The logicalness of evolutionary theory is not a faith position. It's an observed fact." I would suggest that would only be possible if everything of relevance has already been observed, our ability to make observations are complete and flawless, and all our conclusions about their implications can be accepted without raising any further questions. Wasn't the point of the Barash aricle that, as long as human beings are doing the observing and concluding, such certiantiy is not likely (or perhaps even possible?) Hence the unavoidable last step, even in a scientific process, is always deciding whether to put some measure of faith in the evidence we have so far, at least until we find out that, "Well, what do you know, the earth wasn't flat after all." etc.
Caledonian,
You have become like a broken record. If you don't have anything "real" to add, then you merely become an antagonist. It doesn't take any abstract thinking to keep using the same circular argument and then think that "because I said so" it is fact. Or, someone smarter than me said so and it must be true. Plus, I've got the support of "groupthink" and it is aligned with what I choose to believe.
I contend, "To not question the evidence would be bad science." Therefore, I serve a purpose in making you reach for higher ground when it seems you've become complacent with your current knowledge.
Your statement, "The logicalness of evolutionary theory is not a faith position. It's an observed fact." I never said I disagreed with evolutionary theory not being faith based. So, maybe we aren't even having the same discussion. But, for some reason you seem compelled to throw your two-cents in as if it meant anything.
I will give you the one last courtesy of responding to your post (directed at me), but if you persist in talking to the crowd instead of me then you'll find yourself barking at the moon.
Azkyroth: I think one can overcome most of the trouble by using "law" to mean
objective pattern, and "law statement" as the (always imperfect) linguistic reconstruction of such. (A theory, as used in math and some other contexts, then, becomes a set of law statements closed under deduction.)
Francesco: The funny thing is that functionalism is not a materialist hypothesis by itself, so - yikes!
Slacy: Actually, in a typical research oriented department of CS one can find pure science (theory of computation), applied science, and technology. (There's a paper on this on my website.)
AL:
Perhaps, and as much as I dislike the concept for its layman conflation with immutable laws, but it is a convenient term for labeling general observations (from data or theory).
And the different concepts of laws are as conflated in other areas. We have contingent juridical laws, yet there are confused people who believes in immutable moral "laws". Of course, ultimately often for religious reasons as you note for empirical descriptions. But we don't solve the general problem by specifically changing scientific praxis.
Nitpick: when we say that laws are violated, we mean another thing though. For example, the first law of thermodynamics on energy conservation can be violated, locally and briefly, by quantum fluctuations. That doesn't mean the law doesn't hold, it means there are exceptions for known reasons.
That would be some serious rework! Really, if we could create energy from nothing and the first law of thermodynamics were falsified, it would probably mean that there is no physics. By way of Noether's theorems it would mean that physical laws can't be time invariant since no entity like energy can be, in effect there are no laws.
On the other hand, we know from such things like Ramsey theory and ergodic theory that there is no such thing as complete disorder, but patterns must emerge. So I think it is a basic mistake that many do, especially the religious, when they wave their wand and claim presto, miracles unconstrained of current nature.
But there are constraints to the types of physics we can have, just as naturally as not any rules works for number systems. If we would see something like above it is just because causality broke down and something "other" intruded. (The only way to get around that is to discuss unique events in the form of improbable and uncontrollable quantum fluctuations. Which would work as known violation, not falsification.)
Now, anything and all of the above could be wrong - without some serious modeling it is mere handwaving from intuition than anything else. Perhaps my larger point is only that miracles may be harder to make than most people think. :-P