Gods Children and Monkeys Uncles:Evolution and Creationism for Common Folk

Richard Dawkins

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It makes no predictions. It has no research testing any ideas. It cannot be falsified. In short, though evolution deniers claim that ID is a theory, it is not. Every fossil, and indeed every living creature, is transitional between an older form and a newer or yet to come form. We have a pretty good collection of fossils that show a transition from older forms to newer forms, such as the transition of large land mammals to whales. Scientists using the Theory of Evolution have even predicted a transitional form and where to find it.

This transitional fossil, tiktaalik, was found based on these predictions. Nothing in the Theory of Evolution denies the existence of god or any other deity. All that the theory of evolution does is show how everything came to be the way it is without the need for god s. The Theory of Evolution says nothing about the origins of life. Rather, the theory examines how life changes over time and across environments after it already exists. There is a branch of science, however, that is examining the origins of life: But, that is currently separate from the ToE and is still in its infancy, scientifically speaking.

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The only controversy is that which has been manufactured by creationists and intelligent design proponents. Sure, there may be specific elements where one scientist may disagree with another scientist, but those are specific mechanisms and particulars of the theory, not the entire theory itself. First of all, the earth itself is not a closed system. The sun provides a great deal of energy for order to be built from. Suffice it to say that all in all, deniers of evolution consistently show a poor understanding of nearly all aspects of science.

This list is probably one of the most dishonest pieces of propaganda out there. Also, the initial statement as presented to some scientists was twisted as to project a meaning different from what the actual reputable scientists contend. Just because a certain aspect may be in question, the entire theory is in no danger of suddenly falling out of favour. This video may give you some insight into the nature of that list.

Again, this shows a fundamental misunderstanding and denial of basic chemistry, physics, and even biology. Not only that, the majority of processes are not at all left to chance, but rather follow very natural and orderly constraints of the universe. Every single item of irreducible complexity has an answer, however creationists and intelligent design proponents will keep throwing out examples of complex systems until they hit upon one that their debate opponent may not have all the facts on.

As soon as they find that one thing that someone may not know the answer to, they proclaim victory for their entire side, totally ignoring all the other instances where their argument was trounced. Most of the things that creationists and intelligent design proponents will throw out are horrid misunderstandings of the basic biological mechanisms at work, so not only are you debating evolution with them, but you need to correct them on how whatever strawman they have thrown out is wrong from the sense of basic biology, not only from an evolutionary standpoint.

They sometimes make the handiest references around. I put a copy on hold for myself to keep the circ. The children who need to see this the most are the ones least likely to see it. If they happen to find it , they be pressured to not read it. I remember when I was 8 years old I found a book by Issac Asimov on evolution. Of course I was totally confused because I had been taught that humanity started with Adam and Eve.

My parents were horrified by the questions I was asking. I was intimidated, to the point of tears, impressionable 8 year old into returning the book to the bookstore where I had gotten it. Once I reached adolescence, I started thinking for myself and horrified my parents again when I declared that I believed in evolution and thought all the stuff I was taught when I was younger was the equivalent of believing in Santa Claus. I did not let myself be intimidated into recanting the second time around.

The entire argument seemed driven by the spill-over and almost not at all reflective on Natural Selection. Coynes video presentation at the AAI this year is really well done and entertaining. Lots of great stuff on youtube from thunderfoot, nonstampcollector, donexodus and others. I found Flock of Dodos film informative also. On topic I cant wait for solstice and gift time. This looks like something I have been looking for.

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All that fitness amounts to is that an individual organism lives long enough to reproduce. All that a successful genome needs is to not get the host killed before making babies. But one thing we can say is that it is good to find the holes in the theory, if they exist.

In most countries, perhaps, but here in the U. These people are so mean ironic, considering they purport to be advancing the word of God and so unreasonable that debates I once would have found stimulating have essentially led me to give up the fight. Among other things, they criticize my looks, my income and my family…anything but the point at hand. They literally hoot when I attempt to make a point!

Mind you, many of these same people and their loved ones might have died if not for the tireless work of many scientists over the years. Oh well, I degress…. I know what you mean. I was raised catholic, had entirely read my copy of the bible at the age of ten and was later completely stunned in disbelief when I first encountered the concept of young earth creationism and the fact that some people actually believed it.

It properly stresses the distinction of ways of knowing, and what science, religion, and philosophy are good for. Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. Hi, has anyone checked out the truth project, http: But the illustrations and historical sidebars are outright fascinating, making this edition fantastic. Worth at least thumbing through, even if you read a more modern title instead. Ask him why the majority of xtians are fine with evolution.

How come there are still monkeys?

Pointing out conflicts in the Judaic creation myth at the beginning of Genesis is a hoot, too. Does this book also deal with the issues concerning evolution and the difficulties that still exist? Does it deal with the use of genetic mutations, by definition errors in copying the DNA, as the driving mechanism for the variations that natural selection requires. Does it document any good mutations in nature without bringing up the worn out example of bacterial resistance to anti-biotics which is all to do with plasmids, not genetic mutation?

Does this book deal with the assumptions of radiometric rock dating and the fundamental flaws each of these assumptions make? Even if there is no arrogance in this book, I have seen those in the evolutionary community just as arrogant as the creationists they set out to refute. How can you have organic evolution without first having rules of chemistry that determines how biological molecules behave?

Does that mean separating chemistry and biology is a cop-out? How about separating physics and chemistry? After all, the rules of chemistry are all based on physics. If you mean, however, the imaginary difficulties like you mentioned, no, because they are not real difficulties. What is the problem with this? In this context mistakes are simply changes, and changes can either be good, bad, or neutral.

The vast majority of mutations are neutral. If anything, resetting a radioisotope clock would make things look younger than they really are, not older. So I must be not be understanding what you are saying. Migration of decay products is dealt with by comparing decay products to other components with similar properties, using self-checking isotopes, using decay products that do not migrate, and so on. This is not a difficult problem to deal with with the isotopes used, in fact they were chosen specifically because they lack these sorts of problems.

Isotopes that have half-lives that can vary are not used. We can tell that the half-lives of the elements we use have not varied in various ways. Further, if the half-lives varied the ages would not agree. How can fossils migrate independently of the rocks they are embedded in? Especially if they are imprint fossils, which are simply shapes pressed into the rock. The samples used in those volcanic studies were explosive volcanic eruptions, they simply moved old rocks from one place to another. If just moving rocks around was enough to reset the radioisotope clocks then they would not be useful for dating as you pointed out earlier.

They did nothing of the sort. Re fossils, some are imprints, but I have in my possession a fossil ammonite and it is not an impression it is like a stone model of the creature. As for arrogance, sometime people like Richard Dawkins do come across that way, and I have one evolution book, Becoming Human by Ian Tattersall who criticises Richard Dawkins for how he comes across. Re setting the clock to zero, the way we were taught that radiometric dating worked was that you assumed no daughter product was there to start off with and then you measure ratios of parent to daughter and by reference to half life you get a reading.

Of course it used the same style as a nature documentary, that was the whole point. But they never claimed it was on the same level of certainty as a nature documentary. It was presented as an crocodile hunter-like hands-on show involving time travel. Are you going to criticize them for making people think time travel exists?

Great, you found one person who one other person claimed comes across as arrogant sometimes. Hardly a very damning indictment of evolutionary scientists. Frankly it is irrelevant anyway. What matters is evidence. The scientific community does. It is not an assumption. In still others, it is by looking for two ratios that are different in different samples, but fall along a straight line. But it is never simply assumed that there are no daughter products in the original sample.

The isotopes used are not picked randomly, they have been chosen specifically because they have the properties necessary to make them reliable clocks. And even if you are right and it is reliable, the fact is they all agree with each other.

If radioisotope dating was unreliable it would be giving inconsistent answers. If decay rates were changing they would be changing differently for the different isotopes, giving widely different answers. That is, of course, assuming they are used properly, lots of creationists love to intentionally misuse radioisotope dating in an attempt to disprove it the volcanic eruption case being a great example, but there are many others. What is more, we actually have direct evidence that radioactive decay was basically the same as it is now as much as 2 billion years ago.

Around that time a natural uranium fission reactor, almost identical to our modern reactors, formed in what is now Africa. If radioactive decay rates were different back then for uranium an important element for radioisotope dating , then the behavior of the reactor would have been radically different since uranium fission reactions depend on spontaneous uranium decay, and are highly dependent on decay rates. What is more, the properties of the reactor are highly dependent on exactly when the reaction took place, so if the uranium dating method was wrong then the way the reactor actually worked would have been radically different then the way it did work.

So radioactive decay rates could not have been different within the last 2 billion years, and the methods used to date the reactor must be accurate up to at least 2 billion years. And even if we throw out radioisotope dating, there are probably thousands, if not millions, of other things that proves the world is far, far older than 10, years. Pretty much every field of science directly contradicts that age, including physics, chemistry, biology, meteorology, epidemiology, geology, astronomy, cosmology, climatology, hydrology, ecology, even history, you name it I bet it has evidence contradicting the idea that the Earth is less than 10, years old.

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In particular, compared to what? I am confused as to what you are saying here. I did not intend to say that all those working in the evolution field are arrogant or come across that way, sorry if I seemed to say that, some are or were very circumspect. Even Charles Darwin listened to critics and made revisions and later included some of them in his Ascent of Man.

Richard Dawkins style does come across sometimes as arrogant, which is a shame because on quite a few things he rails against, I am in agreement with him on, such as dowsers, alternative medicine et al. As for the rock dating, I vaguely remember watching a video or DVD I was loaned where some guy said that some mineral with I think it was polonium was causing difficulties for the conventional dating methods, I wish I could give you more to pin down who it was.

All I remember is that it seemed convincing at the time. By Phil Plait February 3, 7: The public appetite for wonder can be fed, through the powerful medium of television, without compromising the principles of honesty and reason. There are barriers that we have set up in our minds and certainly the barrier between Homo sapiens and any other species is an artificial barrier in the sense that its a kind of 'accident' that the evolutionary intermediates happen to be extinct.

Never the less it exists and natural barriers that are there can be useful for preventing slippery slopes and therefore I think I can see an objection to breaching such a barrier because you are then in a weaker position to stop people going further. Another example might be suppose you take the argument in favour of abortion up until the baby was one year old, if a baby was one year old and turned out to have some horrible incurable disease that meant it was going to die in agony in later life, what about infanticide?

Stop whining, will you. Yes, yes, I know you had your genitals mutilated with a razor blade, and. But stop whining, will you. Think of the suffering your poor American sisters have to put up with. A man in a hotel elevator invited her back to his room for coffee. I am not exaggerating.

He invited her back to his room for coffee. And you, Muslima, think you have misogyny to complain about!

For goodness sake grow up, or at least grow a thicker skin. The Economist , vol. Now a lot of people find great comfort from religion. Not everybody is as you are — well-favored, handsome, wealthy, with a good job, happy family life. I mean, your life is good — not everybody's life is good, and religion brings them comfort. There are all sorts of things that would be comforting. I expect an injection of morphine would be comforting — it might be more comforting, for all I know.

But to say that something is comforting is not to say that it's true. Full text here dead link archives have an archived copy f8ofb. Lecture, BBC1 Television It's been suggested that if the super-naturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week.

I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television? Yet under Stalin almost the entire Orthodox priesthood was exterminated simply for being priests, as were the clergy of other religions and hundreds of thousands of Baptists. Wikipedia has an article about: Retrieved from " https: Pages using ISBN magic links.

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