First Luskin, now Vox Day rushes to say something incredibly stupid (so what else is new?) about the new hominin fossils.
It doesn't matter what the evidence is, evolutionary biologists are happy to change their story to suit.
Errm, what?
There's a problem in principle with his objection: yes, that's what scientists are supposed to do. They're supposed to follow the evidence where it leads, not cling to a story in spite of the evidence. Religious fruitcakes like Day are the ones who think sticking to a falsified story in spite of the evidence is a virtue.
There's also a problem in detail. He's buying into one of the many extremely poor media stories about this discovery that claims the difference in ages of the two specimens means Homo habilis could not possibly be a human ancestor. In this case, the media aren't entirely to blame — some of the authors have been making similar claims — but it's still bogus and contradicted by the conclusions of the actual paper.
Day also complains that there are different versions of the theory of evolution, and cites this story as an example. He's screwed up pretty thoroughly: while there are different mechanisms that play a role in evolution, this is an example of a historical detail, not something broadly related to theoretical concerns, and it does not call into question any mechanisms. In particular, scientists arguing about the precise relationships of species within a specific mammalian lineage does not mean there's room for god-went-poof explanations.
These guys should just read John Hawks, who actually knows something about the subject.
But this idea of contemporaneity of H. habilis and H. erectus is neither interesting nor new. Recall yesterday's story about the African and Asian clade hypothesis? News stories had the same lede -- "hominid family tree more complex than thought." This is the ultimate paleontological "dog bites man": "Human Evolution A Bush, Not A Ladder." It's just not interesting anymore.
He goes on to say that there are very interesting things about these fossils: they just aren't the ones that a poorly informed media or the actively delusional creationists are battening on.
- Log in to post comments
It's sad how turned off I'm getting toward this discovery, due to all the shitty news stories about it. I love discoveries like these; I hate people who can't grasp what the hell they actually mean or change.
Well is that any suprise? Vox is after all a truly clueless git especially fond of arguing against various straw men. For his remarks this time it's clear that he has no idea how science works at all. Perhaps it's all a case of steroid abuse on his part.
Comparing him to a turkey is an insult to all turkeys everywhere.
That quote is priceless. Clearly we need to quote-mine the nutbags more often.
That's not a quote mine -- it accurately reflects his personal, misbegotten opinion that revising a hypothesis in the light of new evidence means there's something wrong with the whole overarching theory of evolution.
A quote mine has to distort the intent of the author.
It doesn't surprise me that Vox rails against the scientific method. I seem to recall that he is of the "science blows, engineering rules" school of anti-science crankey. Its one of the more interesting ways I've seen cranks like Vox rationalize the fact that they hate science while enjoying it's benefits.
Buy his books.
"In The Wrath of Angels, Book 3 in the War in Heaven series by Christian Fantasy author Theodore Beale (aka Vox Day), the saga begun in The War in Heaven and continued in The World in Shadow is brought to its thrilling conclusion."
From the chilling reviews:
and
Uh, no -- don't buy his books. It'll only encourage him.
They're supposed to follow the evidence where it leads, not cling to a story in spite of the evidence
What science needs is a book of answers. Definitive answers, you know, about life the universe and everything. Then you can tell those religious nut jobs to STFU.
What? Am I missing something?
Ahhhh...Graham? Are you being sarcastic!?
I too, have long felt the need of such a tome, but I have to content myself with an old copy of Hills Manual which includes a model Letter for Proposing Marriage and Emigration.
It doesn't matter what the evidence is, creationists wil never change their story to suit.
The Vox Day commenters are good at reinterpreting any argument to fit their side. Somehow, they managed to conflate the ideas of 'necessary' and 'sufficient'.
It's like fencing with the wind. You can't get a touch because they are completely insubstantial.
Graham: LOL! Maybe I'm just tired but I thought it was pretty funny.
When I was in Fifth or Sixth grade, I learned that the scientific process is a flexible one and is something that is always open to change as new information is gathered. It really wasn't a difficult concept to grasp, and I think just about any ten year old with an average intelligence can handle wrap their brains around it.
Nonetheless, if I learned this when I was 10 freakin' years old, I can't imagine what Vox Day is having trouble with. Maybe he just needs to see it in bright, colorful pictures? I've got crayons if you think it would help.
Uups, I have sprinkled links to Hawks' post all over the site before I read this post.
Oh, I guess a handful of links is worth two on the web.
As an antidote to Vox, and the other gits, here's someone in the midst of what is (likely to be, seems to me) a deconversion.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=nNE0E77XpTo
Great to see somebody coming to grips with using their brains, and you can empathize with the guy as well. It's plain to see it's not an easy process. This has fuck-all to do with the topic at hand, I suppose, but it's a good vid, so, WTH.
What I want to know is how these guys think languages evolve. Did everyone in Italy all of a sudden go from Latin to Old Italian, without any overlap? Clearly Old Italian is descended from Latin, but which day was it that people decided to stop speaking it?
I'm neither a biologist or a linguist, but the more I learn about both the more it seems that linguistic evolution can serve as an example to lay-people about how evolution occurs. It's not centralized. There's not one person who invents English based on Old German and sells it to the others. Languages are constantly changing. Further, each person has a *slightly* different language than everyone around him. Most of the world's languages will be extinct by the end of this century because of competitive advantages of a select few. Would they believe Hindi, Russian, French, and English are all members of the same family?
The analogy is not perfect. Languages evolve much faster than animals, possibly because language itself is very young. Of course, many IDers will dismiss the analogy because it deals with non-physical evolution. But I don't think even they would argue that languages evolve, and for a lay-person having a hard time understanding how creatures can evolve, the language analogy might help.
And I immediately find an article on EvoWiki about Linguistic Evolution.
Apparently linguistic evolution is Lamarckian, so they're not identical models, but very related.
whoa whoa hey now. it's still interesting. it's just not news. and it shouldn't have the "zinger" effect, either -- at all. it shouldn't ever have been surprising. because since when is evolution ever a ladder?
Evolving languages? That's heresy, Steve!
Wouldn't it make sense that a species descended from another would exist at the same time? It's not like one homo habilis would be born and homo erectus would disappear. They would have to w=exist together for a short time before the new species overtook the old.
But I'm just a cop. What would I know?
[ *** riffles through The Book Of Answers *** ]
Hah!
Languages didn't "evolve" - they all came into being at once, just before the Tower of Babel fell over. Sheesh, why do you guys have to make things so complicated with your ridiculous evidentiary fictions?
Holy crap skemono. I'm showing this to my friends with PhD's in linguistics. I think they're starting to understand what biologists are up against.
DiscordianStooge: It's such a simple concept isn't it?
Even a 5th, 4th 3rd grader can understand that if a new species of Dog were to evolve some place, it doesn't mean that all the other dogs on the planet would just drop dead.
And if the old species could still continue to survive then it might never die out.
Of course, I'm not a biologist and I'm not even in school any more...
Perhaps people have sorta internalized that old graphic which shows a serial progression of creatures leading up to woMan, which clearly implies that the new version replaces the old. So much is made of lineage, the branching/bush model just isn't present in most people's minds.
So sad. You hardly have to be an expert to know how wrong his take is. I'm a frikkin' computer scientist and I knew about the whole bushy family tree thing. It's a shame that someone who professes to be enough of an expert to criticize one of the main findings of biology can't be bothered to learn as much about it as someone in a far distant field and self-educated in biology knows.
But what do you expect from someone with the arrogance to name himself Vox Day (read "Dei").
Holy crap skemono. I'm showing this to my friends with PhD's in linguistics. I think they're starting to understand what biologists are up against.
Crackpots are a dime a dozen in the field of historical and comparative linguistics. Check out sci.lang sometime.
I saw the general story in the newspaper yesterday, and groaned when I read it. The headline and the opening paragraphs clearly indicated that physical anthropology had been sadly misaligned all these years and that anthropologists were scrambling madly to redraw their dotted lines before the critics could take note. The article quoted scientists mainly admitting that the new finds made them rethink how many hominid species coexisted at one time, and which ones were progenitors of which others. The tone seemed almost gleeful. And this was in a staid local Gannett newspaper.
It reminds me yet again that understanding evolutionary development is hard. Once you grasp it, those who haven't look boneheaded. But nonlinear relationships are very tough on the human mind. Humans are born with a preference for point-to-point cause and effect chains. Postulating a god is just one way to short-circuit chaotic systems and draw a straight line where one doesn't truly exist. It takes much education and experience to become comfortable thinking in stochastic or chaotic terms. I teach stats, and it's one of my biggest challenges. Students don't handle probabilities very well. I imagine PZ encounters the same barrier in his classroom. I really don't think that evolutionary critics on the right are always doctrinally rigid; I think often they're just trapped in determinism.
Ironically, Christians might understand the nature of evolutionary activities if they knew more about the history of their own gospels. The oldest manuscripts are fragments, and although they differ among themselves, it's by no means clear which ones are the older texts and which the derivative ones. Scholars debate the issues. It could very well be that several texts influence one or more later ones, making the history of any particular text a network rather than a straight line.
Crackpots are a dime a dozen in the field of historical and comparative linguistics. Check out sci.lang sometime.
Or for a few laughs, check out the recent "search for the first human language" story:
I think the Chechen have it about right.
Vox and I will soon be tangling, for those who enjoy a kerfuffle.
I like how he describes pharyngula as a "target rich environment", and infers that he, Dawkins, and PZ are all "fellow scientists". How precious!
I also like that his millionaire daddy is a board member and stockholder of WingNutDaily, where Theodore incidentally has his own column... just like a real grown-up.
I always wonder, why is it that biologists get all the flame, and not, let's say, us Physicists. It's unfair.
This Vox guy is just again an example that straw men are not addressing the claims of evolutionary biology, but its predictive ability. He doesn't understand that what he calls the theory of evolution doesn't claim to be able to predict the exact dates and branchages of the tree.
In the same way as the theory of gravitation doesn't pretend to be able to predict the existence of the earth, nor its age or why it is at the distance it is from the sun.
Saying that these two fossils show that the theory of evolution is wrong is the same as saying that the discovery of Pluto showed that the theory of gravitation was wrong.
It just shows a complete misunderstanding of what science is about.
I was wondering about the links on the right gutter; and I do give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps as a video game fanatic he is setting his readers up for a final ambush, a "punk'd" moment in the future when he reveals he was playing the "Ignoramus' Advocate" all slong in order to lead people to think. The "fellow scientists" tags for the Dawkins and Pharyngula links, the link to Chtulhu's coven, referring to National Review as one of the Target-Rich environments.
Is he leaving hints?
NNNAAAAHHH
Ahahaha.
I don't know if I'm dead from laughter or from exasperation at the stupidity.
Steve P. @ #17: it may not be a unique idea, but it was new to me, so thanks. The fact that there are competing "creationist" and "intelligent design" explanations, as others have pointed out, makes it an even better teaching example, I think.
I was under the impression that these kinds of discoveries were proof that science is actually working.
Cool stuff. Cool people doing super cool stuff.
Yippee for scientists!
Life without them would be awful awful.
Sure, you guys may have hominin fossils all well-understood, but I'd like to see you explain THIS recent humanoid discovery:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/08/08/1999202.htm
What this says about a biblical 'creator', I'd like to know...
Languages didn't "evolve" - they all came into being at once, just before the Tower of Babel fell over.
Ha, shows how much you know. My version of the Book of Answers interprets it as the languages coming into being just AFTER the Tower fell over. I hereby split off into the alternate church of afterfall, and now my group will make fun of yours and say that we're the only ones with the REAL answer, and if you disagree too strongly we'll sic an Inquisition on you.
Posted by: Kseniya
Sorry, didn't mean to leave the 'posted by Kseniya' on there - my copy and paste skillz leave a lot to be desired.
Heretics, all of you! It happened during the fall.
Hey, Carlie and RamDude, haha, uh, yeah, what's a little schism betweeen amongst friends? I ask you!
* nervous laugh *
BRB, gotta find my double-bladed waraxe. I just need to polish it, of course.
Anyone interested in language evolution, there's a new book out dealing with the subject. There's a review in the NY Times, which is pretty dreadful as a review. I haven't finished yet, but it seems like a good overview, and written for the layman.
"BRB, gotta find my double-bladed waraxe. I just need to polish it, of course."
Oh, I'll be right here when you get back. (Smiles with creepy, predatory stare and edges closer to the knife drawer.)
Sigh. We're having one of those beautiful, Kodak moments. I love how religion brings people together!
There are no fewer than two distinct versions of the movie Star Wars. This clearly proves that the theory of filmmaking is a theory in crisis, and should be abandoned.
Dan:
"When I was in Fifth or Sixth grade, I learned that the scientific process is a flexible one and is something that is always open to change as new information is gathered."
The scientific process is not really what is flexible - what gives us credibility is that the process is fairly well fixed. What is flexible, is the direction our conclusions must take, or even our theories, based on evidence generated according to well established, rigorous process.
Well, from an outsider's perspective it would seem that the anthropologists have this sort of thing coming, to a certain extent. They've always been awfully quick to construct elaborate evolutionary scenarios based on very exiguous evidence, generally investing a great deal of ego in their constructs to boot. It should be obvious that we're still a long way from being in any position to reconstruct the true story.
and that is how religions evolve, this is fun!
If I remember correctly Voxys daddy was on the run from the feds for tax evasion and/or fraud. Any one now how that turned out?
"Robert Beale's tax problems came to a head in August 2006, when he failed to appear for his trial on federal tax-evasion charges. He hasn't been heard from since."
http://conwebwatch.tripod.com/stories/2007/wndbackers.html
So is there some Godwin's-type law that predicts the likelihood that an evangelical Xian won't interpret Matthew 22:21 literally ("Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's")?
Wow. Linguistic creationists. I had no idea.
Vox Day, like most creationists, define their belief system as an absolute truth, totally above the skeptical scrutiny that should be applied to any claims that violate laws of nature. At the same time, he demands results from science that are 'absolute' and unchanging. Carl Sagan, in his book "Demon Haunted World" said it best:
" ... scientists are usually careful to characterize the veridical status of their attempts to understand the world - ranging from conjectures and hypotheses, which are highly tentative, all the way up to laws of nature which are repeatedly and systematically confirmed through many interrogations of how the world works. But even laws of nature are not absolutely certain. There may be new circumstances never before examined - inside black holes,say, where even our vaunted laws of nature break down and, however valid they may be in ordinary circumstances, need correction. Humans may crave absolute certainty; they may aspire to it; they may pretend, as partisans of certain religions do, to have attained it. But the history of science - by far the most successful claim to knowledge accessible to humans - teaches that the most we can hope for is successive improvement in our understanding, learning from our mistakes, an asymptotic approach to the Universe, but with the proviso that absolute certainty will always elude us. "
"It doesn't matter what the evidence is, evolutionary biologists are happy to change their story to suit."
Generalize that to "scientists" instead of just "evolutionary biologists" and you have my new favorite definition of science.
P.S. "Evolutionary biologist" is redundant, and has been for over a century.
From a comment I left at Ed Brayton's blog this morning:
Didn't we talk a few months ago about how poor a job scientists in general seem to be doing in communicating with the non-science public?
This is, sadly, another example; either that, or yet another example of how lousy journalism in general (not just science reporting) has become in, say, the last 30 years or so.
There was a Soviet linguist named Nikolai Marr who proposed much the same thing. He called his theory the Japhetic theory.
Old Uncle Joe Stalin put the nail in the coffin of this theory (proposed by a fellow Georgian) in 1950.
There should be some kind of shorthand for mentioning Vox's loopier beliefs. Off the top of my head, I remember that he'd chop toddlers if Jesus told him to, he thinks women shouldn't have the vote, and he considers universal suffrage to be bad for accountability from elites.
A guys walks into a saloon in a strange town. He sits down at the bar, orders a beer, and after a minute or two begins to notice that every now and then somebody in the room shouts out a number, which prompts any number of responses such as moan, groans, and cries of "What a freakin' idiot!"
He turns to the bartender and asks, "Say, bartender - what do those numbers mean?"
"Well, stranger," the bartender explains, "Y'see, there's this guy who writes for WingNutDaily, and..."
My faction is currently underground, holding secret meetings to plot the overthrow that will be a complete surprise. No one expects the inquisition!
Damn. I guess I shouldn't have said that out loud.
Um, well, this is awkward. Apparently while I was out getting everyone some pierogi, they got into a fight about whether the original language was PIE or the King's English, and, well, they seem to have, um, left.
[whistles nervously]
So, Kseniya, RamblinDude, wanna go out for a beer or something? 'Cause, you know, we're really on the same side and all, right? Same book! Minor doctrinal differences don't really matter...
Wait, I know, let's go after the PIE splitters! They're the real heretics! Yeah! Look! Over there! It's an apostate!
[runs away]
Everybody knows the Bible was written in King James' English, and if that was good enough for Jesus, well dammit that's good enough for Texas!
Margaret: But wouldn't there be biologists who speciality is in evolution?
MMMmmmmm......split PIE! With beer!
Shouts after the receding figure of Carlie, "Less filling!!"
Uups, I have sprinkled links to Hawks' post all over the site before I read this post.
Oh, I guess a handful of links is worth two on the web.