Intelligence for Dummies

Man, and when I read the headline I thought I was in for another bit on Iraq!

I’m pretty much an apatheist, but if I DID believe in God it would be the kind of god who, billions and billions of years ago, struck a cosmic match on the soul of his shoe for the Big Bang and set the cosmos into motion. Ever since then he’s been sitting back in his La-Z-Boy, just watching, sometimes amused, sometimes outraged. Once in a while he may get up and adjust the color or the horizontal hold, but other than that, he’s been pretty much hands-off.

He doesn’t say much, either. But when the first coral reef appeared, and Tyranasaurus Rex, and the first creature flew through the air, and man discovered fire, he WAS heard to mumble “Damn — this is gettin’ good.”

“A White Lab Frock and a Pink Crustacean”

Can we put stickers in all the Bibles in Cobb County that say, “Biblical creationism is just a belief. Consider the possibility that Darwin might have been on to something.”?

Actually, You can thank ID for your local municipal zoo.

That’s right boys and girls, around the turn of the last century, all of the Museums of Natural History started springing up around the civilized world. One of the purposes of these museums was to educate the masses on the history of nature (including the theory of evolution).

Well, some of the of the folks who weren’t too keen on the whole evolution idea started funding public zoological parks to show the same masses the enormous variety of creatures around the world. The variety itself, as Adam points out in his wonderful column, is supposed to defy the theory that all life evolved from a single source.

Of course, this is just a historical theory.

This intelligence behind ID seems pretty smart, complex even. Who designed it? Why something even more intelligent, of course. Therefore, may I be the first advocate of Intelligenter Design?

Are there any fellow believers in IerD out there?

Emmarie,

After the last election, I’m leaning toward “We’re just one big mess inside.”

Mike Z- if only they followed such advice when it comes to Foriegn Intelligence.

The very beauty of ID is that you can’t argue against it. For every inconsistency and stupidity that you bring to the attention of the ID’ers, they just say, “God works in mysterious ways” or some such nonsense. They have the ultimate bailout. You certainly can’t say that about science! We scientists have no such lifesaving, all-purpose mantra.

I wonder how much of the societal resistance to evolution is due to a simple lack of understanding of evolutionary principles and natural selection. If people are basing their opinions on the notion that humans evolved from chimpanzees, then no wonder they’re anti-evolution. [Not that there’s any sense to being anti-evolution; that would be as meaningful as being anti-gravity.] Still, it seems that many people have closed off their minds to even considering evolution, much less accepting it.

Do any of these ID pushers have pure-bred dogs? How do they suppose the different breeds of dogs came to be the way they are? Dachshunds, long and skinny. Poodles, curly hair. We, as a society, have no problems accepting that artificial selection can mold species into vastly different forms. Why is it so hard to accept that the environment can do the same thing? It must be that since the environment has no intelligence, it can’t direct the evolution of species lineages. What hogwash.

As for the zoos, I find that the amazing diversity of life proves natural selection. The supporters of ID claim that the diversity of life is too complex to be explained by a “simple” mechanism such as natural selection, then tout their own even simpler “because God made it so”! Speciation via natural selection is not simple at all, although the basic principles aren’t that complicated. The fact that we don’t yet understand it completely is due to our own human ignorance, not the mystical incomprehensibility of the universe. We just haven’t gotten there yet.

By the way, I’m too lazy to look it up myself, but does anybody know what ID has to say about all of the species that have gone extinct?

Allison -

Regarding extinction, essentially it’s another “all part of God’s plan” kind of explanation. God decides that a) it is time for a certain species to go away, or b) it is time for a species to be dramatically updated (this one’s used to explain the progression observed in the fossil record).

The main thrust of their arguments (their real ones) are aimed not so much at “micro-evolution” such as dog breeding or microbial antibiotic resistance, but rather at the speciation that is assumed to have happened throughout the millions of years of history. That is: While we have indirect evidence of speciation in the fossil record and elsewhere, we have never actually observed one species evolve into another. Therefore, evolution is mere speculation.

Perhaps it is no surprise that the proponent of ID that has caused most of the post-”Inherit the Wind” court battles is a lawyer rather than a biologist–Phillip Johnson at Berkeley. Lawyers (criminal defense lawyers, anyway) only need to show that there is reasonable doubt in order to win. Johnson showed that there is reasonable doubt concerning evolution, so his followers claim scientific victory.

The current administration is proof of evolution since anyone of them could be the missing link.

Mike Z:

……Regarding extinction, essentially it’s another “all part of God’s plan” kind of explanation. God decides that a) it is time for a certain species to go away, or b) it is time for a species to be dramatically updated (this one’s used to explain the progression observed in the fossil record)……..

I really hope The Giant Lobster decides to make Bible-Thumping-Republicans go away. The amusement value MUST be wearing thin by now.

Hey, I can dream, can’t I? Imagine waking up one morning and all of the BTRs have just vanished in the night. (Kind of like the Apocalypse, but much more straight-forward) THAT must be what is meant by the term “heaven on earth”.

Wow. A funny and accurate critique of Intelligent Design here at Fanatical Apathy. “Adam Felber’s site, where The Panda’s Thumb meets Fafblog”. Do this sort of thing much more and you’ll replace Charlie Pierce as my favorite WWDTM panelist.

I for one welcome our Lobster overlords

The Giant Lobster’s 1st antennae are much reduced compared to the 2nd antennae. I’m sure that if we prayed right, TGL would tell us what he/she/it uses them to do and why they’re so small.

MikeZ — Thanks for setting me straight about ID’s position vis-a-vis macroevolution and microevolution. I probably should have figured that out for myself, but reading their arguments makes me too mad. Anyhow, it’s a cruel diety that would create species and then, as part of its grand scheme, have them vanish into extinction.

The argument that has always bemused me is that all those fossils in the rocks were placed there by God (this was a 19th century version when they still said God). There was never a good explanation why; but since God created everything, He must have created the fossils. I don’t think the ID folks are still using this…

I found myself (at what was supposed to be a pleasant staff lunch) trying to defend the scientific method against a pair of raging fundamentalists whom I didn’t know (to begin with) were - I don’t know why the concept that if you can’t disprove it, it’s not science, is so hard for them to understand. I think next time I’ll talk about the A’s.

Bring on the Giant Lobster. Can’t be any worse than what we have.

The Condi Rice quote that scared me was in a news analysis the other day. She met with James Zogby of the Arab American Institute (I may have the institution name wrong but I’m sure of his) to be briefed on the Middle East; and the article quoted him as saying she responded “too often” by saying “The President doesn’t agree with that,” as if that settled the whole point. Are they really stupid enough to believe that just because Saddam didn’t really have WMDs, the Iranians really don’t have them either? I wouldn’t bet a nickel on it either way.

ID is a Bushism, like Cleaner Skies. It means that people who have limited cranial capacity are admitting that almost ANYTHING is too much for them to comprehend, so the universe was created by someone or something more intelligent than themselves. Oh, yeah, and more intelligent than Steven Hawking too, because his ideas are just theory, whereas the Bible is fact.

And those fossils, found on mountains that used to be seabeds? Why, they’re just further proof of the Great Flood! Because no one has ever seen a mountain rise, Mt. St. Helens doesn’t count, Jesus was a white boy, and we’re the only planet in the entire universe that God chose to show divine intervention to.

Given the results of the latest election, coupled with all the people invoking his name to advance their causes, I have a bigger question to ponder: If he/she/the great sky being exists, WHERE THE F*** ARE THEY NOW?

I don’t buy the pbj/beer scenario. I’m thinkin” blackout bong hits. Because if the world, etc, was created in 7 days, one of God’s blackouts might be longer than normal in reverse proportion.

To believe in Intelligent Design is to believe in God, and that is a simple act of faith.

To not believe in evolution is a simple act of willful ignorance.

The big problem with ID, is that it tells us nothing. Evolutionary forces Macro/Micro or whatever, are still in effect. Evolution MUST still be going on. Does this mean the ID is still happening? Then the Giant Lobster is trying to kill us! Our time is done! The end is nigh!!! Repent! Repent!

If God is a giant lobster, then why did he invent melted butter? How come earth lobsters are so dumb? Why is heaven in the sky when lobsters can only survive under water? Is stealing lobster traps a deadly sin, or does is make me a deity?
I’ve got soooo many questions. I think I’ll consult my local fisherman for spiritual guidance.
“Praise to be Lobstah!”

OK, in one corner are the evolutionists who believe that natural selection favors certain forms of life that evolve to be more competitive. In another corner are the creationalist who say that God created the world in 6 days about 6006 years ago and anyone or anything who says otherwise is condemned to the lowest depth of hell to forever watch Howard Cosell reruns. And in the third corner are the IDs who have to admit the evidence is on the side of evolution but need to squeeze God in there somewhere.

We can argue till we are all blue in the face or we can settle it once and for all.

I propose that we fight it out.

Each side will pick it’s smartest, best informed, and most fit, voluptuous young female and they will wrestle it out in a big mud pit,(to simulate early earth conditions). (No divine intervention allowed).
Hey, this makes at least as much sense as Creationalism or ID.

As far as theories go, you better hang on to your ass because gravity is only a theory also.

What determines the difference between a theory and a law? Nothing really, the ones we feel comfortable with we call laws and those we don’t, are theories. Newton’s laws of gravity were amended by Einstein’s theory of Relativity, so even laws are’t written in stone.

Only a hundred years ago no one understood Relativity or Quantum theory either. But your GPS units work because they take those theories into their design. The complex questions are being answered every day and in a few short years it is likely that all of the issues that the IDers pose will be addressed.

Allison’s analogy to dogs is a good one. IDers are looking at things backwards, they see a greyhound and say natural selection couldn’t have come up with a dog that has a pointed nose, huge chest, long legs, and small feet, so that the dog could run fast. What they miss is that if you take a Dachshund and St, Bernard and keep selecting the fastest offspring, it will automatically end up with the characteristics of a Grey Hound because this is what is necessary to run quickly.

Intelligent design? Made in God’s image?

He sure did a lousy job on man.

Even I could come up with a better design for humans.

Look at our necks and throats. Our neck is far too vulnerable and who would make a throat that uses the same tube to eat and breath? This only makes sense if you are a fish. Our lungs are closed sacks. Any student knows that a flow through system is much more efficient (like birds). Why only 4 limbs? I’m convinced that intelligence took so long to form on earth because the original pattern had only 4 limbs. Locomotion is 4 times as efferent with 4 limbs, so it was a great sacrifice to give up two legs for 2 arms and a tool manipulating capacity. This is the only scenario where real intelligence is an evolutionary advantage. Had our initial fish ancestors had 6 limbs, (very successful in the insect world) 4 could have been dedicated for movement and 2 for tools (like a centaur), I think that intelligence would have evolved numerous times.

If God made us in his own image why did he give the squid a better eye?

Our blood vessels in the retna are on the surface which interferes with the rod and cone placement, the squid has the vessels behind the retna and avoids the problem.

If you look at a human, its design only makes sense if you think in terms of a given basic pattern, similar in all land vertebrates (head, body, 4 limbs and tail). What we have, is the best you can evolve from a fish that had that original pattern.

Not that intelligent in my book.

“The complex questions are being answered every day and in a few short years it is likely that all of the issues that the IDers pose will be addressed.”
Good point Murray. Over the past 100 years or so, the creationists have always been thrown back on their heels by science. They’ve been constantly changing their stance on issues. They’re forced to adapt their beliefs to the facts we’ve discovered. How can you argue for your beliefs when you’re always being proven wrong?
That’s where the IDers come in. They cut right to the chase. They know science can’t make evolution a hard fact. It’ll ALWAYS be a theory. (Unless science invents a time machine…which would be so cool!) IDers stress the THEORY of evolution to imply some element of doubt. It doesn’t make their side correct…but then again, that’s how conservatives always argue their point.

I just read this in the latest issue of Discover Magazine

“Language is an information medium, as is DNA. Language gets transmitted and transformed from generations to generation, just as the information in DNA gets transmitted and transformed, Many languages have appeared, changed and vanished over the centuries, but nobody has ever seen a new language spontaneously appear. (Except Esperanto perhaps) (parenthesis mine). Nevertheless, people accept that languages evolve and that modern languages derive from earlier ones that were, in many cases, considerably different. Why then is it so hard to accept that the same process might happen to the information in our DNA?”

Seems I heard the ID thing way back in History class (when there was a whole lot less history to learn) under the title of the Prime Mover Theory. Guess they had to make up for the faux pas of leaving out the “Intelligent” part the first time.
If so, it just goes to show that if you wait long enough, anything will come back into style - which is why I kept my Colonial Williamsburg costumes.

ID is founded on the premise “I can’t believe that evolved by chance.” Richard Dawkins calls it the argument from personal incredulity. Evolution is smarter than they are.

Great post, Adam!

Re Murray’s citation from Discover Magazine: We have seen new languages spontaneously appear. The emergence of Nicuaraguan sign language is a well documented case in point.

Damn, this is GOOD!!! Congrats to all the informed, articulate and witty folks commenting on this post.

You did, however, usurp all my informed, articulate and witty comments. So I am left with just this:

An old, simple argument of Creationism (now ID) is that if you look at a watch, you “know” that a random falling-together of atoms just couldn’t have created it. There had to be a “watchmaker.” What they never address is, if God made the universe, what made God?

Personally, I think the Lobster UberGod must have made our local God, and our local God is in deep doo-doo over the whole “boiling pot, drawn butter” thing.

Cobb county even made it into Scientific American. In the Feb. 2005 edition, Steve Mirsky has his own stickers for various textbooks. The last one, for the cover of Modern Optics, reads: “CAUTION! Dark ages in mirror may be closer than they appear.”

Pick up an SA and check out the rest.

The “Intelligence for Dummies” essay is hilarious. I’ve spent about two months in the National Geographic forum that spun off from their Nov 2004 article on evolution (”Was Darwin Wrong?”), and with that background of jousting with creationists and with pseudoscientists on another topic in another forum, I offer some additional observations to the preceding posts here:
(1) Evolution of species HAS been observed in the laboratory, and it is demonstrated when microbes evolve resistence to antibiotics. But the best evidence for evolution is emerging, not from paleontology or breeding experiments, but from genetics, where the study of DNA is showing evidence of common descent linking virtually all living beings.
(2) In this thread I’ve seen the term “theory” used as creationists use it — as an intermediate step in a hierarchy between speculation and fact. The Theory of Evolution encompasses all of the evidence, explanations and predictions of evolution. Evolution is both a fact (it happened) and a theory (the explanation and data from multiple disciplines that explain the fact).
(3) Creationists don’t accept the analogy between dog breeding and speciation as described by evolutionary theory. They say dogs remain dogs. In fact, creationists consider dog breeding to be evidence of a “designer,” because there’s some limit of deviation from the dog “kind” that cannot be exceeded.
(4) One post here seemed to imply that maybe the right evidence would convince creationists, and if we could only come up with it, we’d all be happier. My experience is that creationists/IDers are happy to argue all day about the evidence and whether it’s any good (mostly not, in their view), but, in the end, the evidence doesn’t really matter. To a creationist the Christian Bible was written by God, it is inerrant, and anything offered that disagrees with it is wrong or is misinterpreted or is an invention of Satan, no matter how convincing you and I might think it is. If you point out some place where the Bible is demonstrably wrong (the Bible clearly supports a flat-earth, geocentric cosmology) or morally offensive (endorsement of slavery and the subservient status of women), then they use “special pleading” to explain away the problem. “It was written so it could be understood by the people of the time” or “It simply acknowledged the existing social order” — i.e., God was unable to explain himself at times. They refuse to concede that their claim of biblical inerrancy collapses when they attempt to explain away the uncomfortable parts. I should point out that there are a very few creationists who DO seriously believe the earth is flat and that the sun and planets revolve around the earth. There’s an astronomer named Bouw, who apparently has advanced degrees from prestigious European universities, who has a whole website about the idea that post-Copernican cosmology must be wrong because it disagrees with the Bible. I haven’t seen any of these people in the NGS forum, though.

Anyone remember the big dinosaur in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure? It is on Interstate 10 west of Palm Springs. It is a gift shop that sells plastic dinos and fossils and books about how there is evidence that humans and dinos existed at the same time. See, it was the Great Deluge that wiped out the dinos! It all makes sense that way.

Just thought I’d pop out of lurk-mode for a change and address the whole Law-vs.-Theory thing. (I get plenty steamed about the radical right, religious zealots and other such topics, but nothing gets me more steamed than pseudoscience. So steamed that my soft flesh becomes tender and succulent, my hard outer carapace turns a bright red, and I become very tsty with a lemon butter sauce…)

Ahem. Scientific Theory vs. Law (a Primer)

Many people, and several on this board, seem to think that there is a progression from hypothesis, to theory, to law. This is not so.

A scientific law is just a (usually mathematical) generalization of something observed or measured. A theory is an explanation of a phenomenon. (Law = “what is happening”, Theory = “why does it happen”). Laws often take the form of equations, like Newton’s law of gravity:

F = G [(M1*M2)/r^2]

This law simply tells you how to find the gravitational force acting on two objects - if you know their masses and their distance from each other, you can plug ‘em in and figure out the force exerted. If you’re into this sort of thing, it also tells you that the masses of the two objects are equal factors in the total force, but their distance from each other is a REALLY BIG factor.

Notice that this law says NOTHING about WHY objects attract each other. That’s what the THEORY of gravity is for, and Newton didn’t really have one. Einstein eventually comes along and provides one; the theory of general realtivity explains why gravity works, why this force whose properties were described by Newton’s law works the way it does.

In terms of evolution, the theory explains the origins of species, the relationships between them, the fossil record, all that (it’s the Grand Unification Theory of biology, basically). It’s an explanation of the how’s and why’s, and it’s an excellent one. But it isn’t the kind of thing that would be labeled a “law.” like the laws of motion, the laws of thermodynamics, the ideal gas law. Those are just equations. Evolutionary theory is way bigger and cooler than that!

Clear so far? Good. This is why when ID and other creationists say “Evolution is just a theory,” what they’re realy saying is “Me am scientifically naive.” (Incidentally, in the legal profession, the word “theory” is used in a different manner, closer in definition to a scientist’s “hypothesis”. This is not the scientific definition/usage, but it’s probably why the IDers get away with using it that way. People tend not to make the distiction.)

Hey! You waded throught the whole thing! Congratualtions!

Thank you, Smallberries. That explains _why_ a woman I know who has two masters degrees (math and physics) can still be comfortable telling me that evolution is “only a theory”.

Oh, but wait. As someone trained in science, she should already understand the distinction between a scientific law and a scientific theory.

Oh, well. “My mind is made up. Don’t confuse me with facts.”

Hm. Minor point on Elven as developed by Mister Tolkien–it’s a lift from another language with nips and tucks. Basically it ends up being something like an offshoot dialect of old Norse. I don’t remember the exact language he modified to build it.

Klingon… I have no idea. May in fact be a total from-scratch build. I’m not so big a nerd that I have -that- particular piece of useless encyclopaedic knowledge at hand. -wry grin-

The Intelligent Design guys are using stuff out of Thomas Aquinas - not that that is BAD, just a bit old-fashioned. Design is a function of *perception*: I can see three beer bottles (empty) on the bar, but the threeness isn’t in the bottles, it’s in the counting. The design we perceive in the universe is a function of our perceptive mechanisms, eyes, nerves, brain etc. These organs evolved to see designs, so they do. Last summer I was sitting on my porch smoking some good weed and watching the fireflies light up on the lawn. Each time a few of them would light up at once, my imagination would connect the points of light with imaginary lines, making truly awesome geometric figures. I made the design - the fireflies are not working from a blueprint supplied by Mr. Invisible. Beer bottles, weed - these are the tools to defeat ID.

The supporters of ID claim that the diversity of life is too complex to be explained by a “simple” mechanism such as natural selection, then tout their own even simpler “because God made it so”!

Hmmmmm. Yes….

Perhaps that is one good rejoinder to the IDers. Why not ask them to prove that an “intelligent designer” is indeed capable of producing all the diversity that we see? I for one am rather doubtful about this unsupported claim, and I think it only fair for them to show that such is indeed possible. Call me a sceptic, but I suspect that we have quite a bit more evidence for evolution producing various bits and pieces of the natural world than we do for any space lobsters doing any such little part. . . .

Turn about is fair play, no?

Cheers,

Thompson: My personal Tolkien expert (my wife) told me that Elven was derived from Finnish, which is a Finno-Ugric language and unrelated to Old Norse, which is a Germanic language. The Germanic languages (English is one) are part of the Indo-European family.

PS: I am not suggesting for a moment that an innate human language faculty, if such a thing exists, is not the result of Darwinian evolution.

In 1957 Martin Gardner wrote Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science. Carl Sagan’s 1997 book, Demon-Haunted World, seems to suggest that our society has become LESS rational in the intervening 40 years.

Some time ago I read Uncommon Sense, by Alan Cromer. The author, a physics professor, contends that objectivity is not natural for us. Science defies ‘common sense’. (Science is hard.)

I agree. I think our nature is to look for simple cosmic truths. Fire -> hot. Sabre-toothed cat -> bad. We look for purpose, for good, for bad. (For millenia the ‘purpose’ of astronomy was astrology.)

I can understand the appeal of ID. (Hey, I wouldn’t mind some purpose to my life!) But I can’t forget the sign posted in a geophysics lab I worked in. “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it”.

Chris Brockett:

I guess the Nicaraguan case just doesn’t strike me as being particularly spontaneous: You have a group of kids who each probably had some sort of gestural language to communicate with their familiies and then shoved them together. I figured that with the need to communicate, some gestures get adopted, others discarded, and ideas need to be communicated through grammar. Either that, or my uneducated speculation on linguistics is preventing me from understanding the logistics of what went on in these kids’ heads.

Though now I feel the need to commit a sin and eat the sacred offspring of the The Big Lobster in a salad with consomme on the side. Thanks — I WAS on a budget.

Another good book on this is “Finding Darwin’s God” by Kenneth Miller. He does a good job of explaining the distinct positions within the broad “creationism” or “intelligent design” categories.

Wow, don’t look away from this site. You blink and Adam gets infinitely more popular (or controversial). Either way, keep it up. I love his wit, and the community that we see in the comments section is amazing. Too bad the forum is dead….

I’m with Dee on the La-Z-Boy theory. I don’t attend a church anymore, but was brought up with a bit of varying takes. I went to synagogue when I was in preschool, spent more time at Bible Churches in youth groups, and attended a Catholic high-school (still proud of the fact that they only class I ever cheated in was Ethics!).

I’ve got to say as a scientific minded, non-church attending Christian, I’m a huge fan of what used to be called Theistic Evolution (at least as I understood it). When I first heard of ID (not to be confused with ED, although there are similarities) I thought it was just a new name for my little belief. Um, no.

To me the scientific theories of evolution are amazing. And I don’t have a problem with it (or any other real science) at all. It’s just when you go back to the Big Bang and you get to the ‘What was before that?’ question, I don’t have much of a problem leaving it to God, the Lobster, or some other force beyond my comprehension. And I don’t think that belief is hypocritical at all. But it’s certainly not this new pseudo-science called ID.

Thanks for discussion and the comedy (which I desperately need after listening to Ms. Rice all day yesterday and today on NPR).

God/Lobster/Allah/Mother Nature help us all.

The only soul I want mercy on is the bottom of the left of my favorite Converses. The poor thing is near to breaking.

…I hope this doesn’t post twice. The Internet is as tricky as the universe sometimes.

Sorry, but there are just WAY too many responses to read them all. Still, I would like to thank you, Mr. Felber, for writing this particular entry. As a hard-core, super-duper, far-beyond-what-you-can-possibly-consider-”healthy” evolutionist, I am just astounded by how creationists and “ID”-ists keep coming up with arguments supporting their so-called “theory” (and I use that term loosely) against evolution. Evolution is not “just a theory.” This particular phrase is the result of the ignorance of the lay-bible-pusher. A “theory” in normal English is synonymous with “guess,” “prediction,” or “hypothesis.” This is not so in the case of science. Scientific terminology defines a “theory” as a statement or set of statements that has been backed up by volumes and volumes of research, just short of becoming scientific LAW.

Dammit. I just read some posts above and it turns out I’m going to look like a major copycat. I could just delete everything above this, but I think I’ll just leave it. Still, I don’t know why some of you guys don’t fight for the right and duke it out with those ID-ers! I, and this may be just me, get my daily kicks from laying the smackdown on the Big Guy’s self-appointed science-killers. There are counter arguements for every single one of ID’s counterpoints, even going all the way back to questioning His existence if you have to. It hardly ever goes that far, but if they get to the point of physical violence, it helps to bring some friends. And fire extinguishers (for the torches).

BTW, Geni, LOVE the quote. ^^

Allison,

Don’t be so hard on those genetically defective folk. If I didn’t have glasses, my next bike ride might be my last.

A friend of mine makes a point that we are going backwards genetically. Look at which people have the most children and who has the least.

I’m confused; I always thought that lobster was food of the gods.

I apologize if someone snuck this comment in somewhere up there already, but it is also interesting to note that (as far as I’m aware) this whole movement to keep evolution from being taught in public schools is a uniquely American (USA) phenomenon. I’m not sure what to make of that, exactly, but it seems like it must tell us something deep about the Christian far right in this country.

Sean F.

Does the “you” in your comments refer to me? or to a general, rhetorical “you” that does not include me?

This may come as a shock to most of you out there but I KNOW that the world is 52 1/2 years old. It sprang into being, whole cloth, the moment I was born. The light from the Andromeda Galaxy, the 250,000 annual snow layers in Greenland, my parents, grandparents and older brother, all popped into being when I arrived. Feel free to claim that you are older and remember being around prior to July ‘52, but your memories were planted into your own fully grown body when you were created to fill out my world.

Prove it didn’t happen!

One more comment. Intelligent Design equals Creationism equals Religion. Religion should be kept out of school. There are too many people with different views who should not be subjected to one particular religion or point of view. Religion should be taught at home and at a religious institution — whether it is a church, synagogue, mosque, whatever. I was taught at home to have a healthy skepticism of science and their theories, and I made it through school just fine. It is not proper to subject children to the proselytizing of certain religions in a school setting.

I AM THE WINGED PUPPY, MESSENGER OF THE LOBSTER GOD, PRAISE ITS PRIME ANTENNAE!
TLG WISHES TO COMMUNICATE THE FOLLOWING:
1) Fossils are aminals who had developed WMD.
2) An hypothesis (and by extension, a theory in this context) MUST predict things not yet seen. How does ID do this?
3) ID implies an intelligent designer, QED. (Or QEND) The Great Lobster demands this be proven.
4) If Condi had less devotion to Bush and more belief in her own abilities, this winged puppy would like to make little winged & scaled puppy-lets with her.
5) Don’t tell It I told you, but garlic butter is _way_ better than lemon butter with you-know-what…
6) The Great Lobster is just another name for the Infinite Radiant Is (to paraphrase Richard Bach, andother well-known crustacean)
7) Adam, you really can’t help yourself. But thanks!
HERE ENDETH THE LESSON.

Murray,

Depends on how interesting this 52 1/2 year old world I sprung fully ten years old into from the left headlight of a 1942 army half-track is. If it’s as nutso as my nearly 63 year old universe is quickly becoming, neither one of us had any business being seminal factors. If, on the other hand, our life stories are simply nightmares in the mind of someone living in a universe that makes sense, but who ate some you-know-what that had been in the fridge too long…

On the other hand, perhaps this intertwining of fundamentalism and government makes sense in a nation which has just extended the reign of its first cult leader, the Grand Aya-boots-and-bullshit brainless horned toad.

God is NOT a Giant Lobster.

But the Medium Lobster is quite godlike….

Off topic, but I have to defend Tolkien.

Tolkien’s invented languages really are invented; the individual words, prefixes, suffixes, and grammar rules were chosen pretty much arbitrarily to please the author. He used grammatical features and ideas from many languages, notably Finnish and Welsh, but no Finnish or Welsh speaker could read one of Tolkien’s Quenya or Sindarin poems without training.

Maybe we can get David Salo (who wrote the non-English dialog for the Lord of the Rings movies) to say this right.

Adam: brilliant cut at the IDiots.

Murray, I wish you’d explain this comment:

“A friend of mine makes a point that we are going backwards genetically. Look at which people have the most children and who has the least.”

You can’t really mean to say that genetically inferior people are having more children, can you? Or are you confusing genetic fitness with socioeconomic fitness? I’m guessing that you mean low-income people, or devout Catholics, or third-world people, but none of these groups are genetically inferior.

I know some people who think they’re genetically superior because they’ve acquired a higher education and made lots of money, but they’d be dead meat if they had to survive on their physical skills. What society values and rewards can change quite quickly and doesn’t necessarily reflect evolution.

Gary wrote:

“Intelligent Design equals Creationism equals Religion. Religion should be kept out of school.”

While I see where he’s coming from, I actually think this is the wrong solution. I think religion *should* be taught in school. Wait a sec.. stay with me here..

I’m a computer science major, but some of my favorite classes in college were the religion and philosophy courses I took. I believe one of the major problems we Americans have is that shockingly few people have even a cursory understanding of any religion outside of their own. And more importantly, generally these same people have never considered the nature of religion from a scientific/sociological perspective.

Therefore, I believe Intelligent Design should be taught in school. It should be taught in chapter 5 of the religion textbook: “Christianity: Beliefs of Origin”.

Jeff N -

Religion is as much a part of our (social) world as is electricity. I agree, to produce well-rounded citizens, an understanding of what various peoples and segments of society believe, and why, is essential. But I think the topic should be under “Religions of the World”, Chapter 5, Origin Myths. Taught in a sociology class.

So, I guess the evangelicals are onto the whole lobster/undersea creature theory…they say Sponge Bob is gay.

This is why they don’t have the time to study science.

Why, oh why, if this “designer” isn’t the God of Abraham, David, and Jesus is he/she/it always referred to in the singlar? If, scientifically speaking, there can be one designer, why not two? Or ten? Or a thousand? Any physicist will tell you that the universe (multiverse?) is sufficiently idiosyncratic that it is entirely possible that it was put together by a committee.

Take the platypus, for example. Or the faces we make when we have sex. Or lobsters. Mmmm… lobsters…

Amen to your last sentence, Jeff N!!! But I am going to hold fast to classifying it under sociology, or at least ethnography.

I am going to call you on this (and please don’t take it amiss, you obviously are intelligent and thoughtful, but the obfuscation of the ID/Creationists seems to have gotten you!)

While there might not be any scientific evidence to support ID, I would hesitate in claiming proof that it’s false.

Their claim is what is called in skeptical circles an “extraordinary claim.” It flies in the face of a vast amount of evidence. It is therefor incumbent on them to show proof, not on us to ‘disprove’ their assertions.

Again, my bitch is that they fail in their own faith…they claim that a book filled with internal inconsistancies is the ‘inerrant’ Word of God. They make God out to be some sort of powerful, smartish redneck that they can commune with on an equal level because of Jesus’s agony. And they want to impose their ignorant, small-minded, egocentric view on the REAL science I want my kids to learn.

I agree with JeffN that religion probably should be taught in schools. Not as the ‘gospel truth’, but as a study of all (or at least most) beliefs. Of course you include your own, but you also give fair representation to others. In a sociology context. But most definitely NOT in the science class.

Two of my favorite classes in Catholic high school were ‘History of the Church’ and ‘World Religions’. Both of them were taught by a secular Jew(!) and really showed me why I’m not a Catholic.

Understanding is what this education thing is about.

I just want to add something re: evolution. Selection pressure is really only applicable to an organism until it reproduces. Hence, anything that affects you in your old age is really not going to be selected out. Of course, in species where extended care of offspring is part of the life cycle, one can expect longer adult lifespans, to ensure the survival of offspring.
Look at many insects that die right after mating (males) or laying eggs (females). They don’t take care of offspring at all.
Humans and elephants, whose offspring take a long time to mature, have longer lifespans. But after a point, beyond reproductive age, you start to become a drain on resources to the younger population. Hence, when elephants finally grind down that last pair of molars, that’s it.

“Yeah, they’re a bunch of intolerant, luddite retards who are clinging desperately to the beliefs created by a primitive culture who ascribed everything to supernatural causes.”

sean, you made me blow dr. pepper out of my nose with that one. nice.

by the way, can anyone tell me what the heck qed is supposed to mean? is this some cool blogger lingo that i have yet to pick up on?

excellent post and comments; you’ve helped me waste 1 1/2 hours of work time.

Murray,

Thanks for clarifying. But I still think you’re wrong. You say that many of those having more children are not the smartest in our gene pool. This seems to be a circular argument, at least as you’ve presented it–are you saying that it’s stupid to have large families, therefore the people who have large families must be stupid?

If I put words in your mouth and guess that you are tactfully NOT saying “low-income, uneducated people,” I again disagree. I doubt very much that there’s any significant genetic difference between an illiterate street thug and my poetry-spouting-doctorate-in-physics cousin. My bet is that it’s mostly a difference in upbringing and education. It might be diet, too, but that’s not a genetic factor. And if we had to fight off wild animals, I’d rather be with the street thug!

Finally, age or maturity of the parents is also not a genetic factor, except that older parents (both mothers and fathers) run a greater risk of genetic defects. Immature parents aren’t genetically inferior to wise parents. And if they’re having more children, any childhood deaths owing to their incompetence would be offset by the numbers!

Ann,

Ignore social-economic differences. Several of my friends are brilliant and not at all cut out for higher education and I live in a very poor depressed area, (median income is $16,000/ annum. Ignore who can take on a lion (or woodchuck), my wife would come out second best in most every fight and few are as bright.

Today I subbed for a learning support elementary school teacher. I worked with children who are REALLY behind. As I am able to gather, their parents are young and they are from larger families. Of all of my friends who have PhDs (11) I can think of 2 that have 3 children and the rest have 2 or less, and none had children early.

I believe that there is no longer a natural selection pressure for greater intelligence. Humans have met critical mass. Enough intelligent people marry other intelligent people to keep the population afloat. But I think that the gap between people who can understand and progress science and those who can’t find where they live on a map, will continue to diverge. I also think that the number who don’t know the duration of one earth revolution around the sun, will grow compared those who can calculate it to the nanosecond.

QED - Quod Erat Demonstrandum - “that which was to be demonstrated” - used to say “Ha, told you so”

(He says while listening to the local NPR station - KQED)

Thanks, Sean F.

Actually, you may have misinterpreted my approach. I think it is bizarre that evolution draws so much wrath from the religious right in this country, and the fact that this tends to happen only in the U.S. supports my suspicion that this is really more about politics than about either science or religion.

In fact, I just heard from someone today that another place this is popping up is in Italy, where the Burlusconi administration bears many similarities to Bush’s. Of course, this may support the point even more, especially since the Vatican officially favors Darwinism.

On a separate point within this discussion, it has never been clear to me what they mean when they insist that schools “teach” creationism (or ID or whatever) alongside evolution, or “give it equal time.” One can’t teach two contradictory theories as if both were true.
My approach is to present both as honestly as I can, and then evaluate them. It can often be very useful to show students the structure of a flawed theory in order to show exactly how the scientific process works to eliminate it. For harrassed public school teachers out there, perhaps this may be a way to appease the complainers (or the lawmakers) while staying true to your ethical standards.

Murray,

I think I must disagree with you on the part of the intelligence factor for the people with big families; it seems to me that it has much more to do with socio- rather than the -economics bit in your example. The kids from giant families born to younger parents get less likely to get individual attention, were probably exposed to poorer nutrition, and less educational opportunities compared to their more educated and smaller family-unit counterparts. I’ve actually met a number of very bright people who came from the enormous Morman families, but it seems to be primarily derived from educated parents and a social system that is geared toward caring for their members with gobs of children pouring out until uteruses (or is it “uteri”?) collapse in exhaustion.

Of course, I’ve also noticed the youngest of these children tend to be somewhat maladjusted and less ambitious than their older sibs — probably from their mothers’ attentions being divided between too many children and so they tend to slip through the cracks pretty readily.

I know the idea of a giant lobster a la Fafblog is intriguing, but I think we are seriously underestimating the possibility of a super-intelligent cherry pie here.

Murray,

I agree with you about having reached a “critical mass” regarding evolutionary pressure on human intelligence, but I think it happened much sooner than you apparently do. I doubt very much that our species is more intelligent today than we were 2000 years ago, let alone 100. The proportion of the population who can understand science has always been small, and it may in fact be larger today than it was 1000 or 500 years ago. Certainly literacy has increased in most parts of the world over the last couple of centuries.

I still think you’re making a mistake in equating education with intelligence. You simply CAN’T ignore socioeconomic factors in assessing the educational progress of the children you’re working with! It’s only very recently–perhaps in the last couple of generations–that it has been unwise to have a large family. Are you suggesting that most of us suddenly got a lot smarter and therefore had smaller families, while the genetically inferior people didn’t get the message?

Finally, you still haven’t explained why the age of parents is an issue, except if you mean that people who start breeding earlier can produce more children. But that’s not a genetic issue. Whether a given set of parents had children when they were in their early 20s or in their mid-30s would not change their genetics. None of this is a genetic issue, and thus it’s not evolutionary.

I’m sorry to seem argumentative, but with all this discussion about scientific method, I do think we ought to be rigorous here! Can anyone with more information about human genetics jump in here?

Molly’s right. It’s not too controversial to say that - barring a cataclysm - significant physical human evolution is over, and that goes for innate intelligence as well. For those of you who were hoping for a second set of thumbs somewhere down the road… sorry.

As far as “Fafblog” is concerned - I don’t read it so I hadn’t noticed the similarity. But now I have and… I have. The guy definitely beat me to to the superlobster (it’s also a really funny site). My interstellar lobster evolved from the pincers analogy. I suppose it’s a case of convergent evolution, though one consequence of that theory is that it raises the alarming possibility that mine is a marsupial lobster.

“The very beauty of ID is that you can’t argue against it.”

Yes you can. That is why you keep doing so, after all.

“For every inconsistency and stupidity that you bring to the attention of the ID’ers, they just say, “God works in mysterious ways” or some such nonsense.”

No they don’t. I can tell that you have not talked to very many. If so, that’s ignorant.

“They have the ultimate bailout. You certainly can’t say that about science! We scientists have no such lifesaving, all-purpose mantra.”

Ridiculous…how many times will “scientists” use technology to argue the benefits of science? Yet look at technology, it relies on the creative (creationism) invention, ingenuity and design (intelligent design). While in contrast, the scientism nit wits have the mantra, “Nature did it. That’s science. Me scientist, so me know!” That is their ultimate cop-out in dealing with ID. They change scientia from the traditional pursuit of knowledge and truth to the pursuit of naturalistic explanation. Then all they have are various naturalistic explanations with huge gaps in them, widening now. Yet they seem surpised by finding only what they seek. As if that is not the only thing that they are looking for.

“By the way, I’m too lazy to look it up myself, but does anybody know what ID has to say about all of the species that have gone extinct?”

That would be a prediction of typology. I.e., random mutations are generally destructive and deformative, not formative. So you will have less and less.

The prediction is accurate. That is not the only thing that typologists of the late 1800s predicted accurately. Their views are verified by the evidence. Darwin is proven wrong by it. Yet, people cling to Darwinism for many other reasons, some just neurotic.

“The main thrust of their arguments (their real ones) are aimed not so much at “micro-evolution” such as dog breeding or microbial antibiotic resistance, but rather at the speciation that is assumed to have happened throughout the millions of years of history. That is: While we have indirect evidence of speciation in the fossil record and elsewhere, we have never actually observed one species evolve into another. Therefore, evolution is mere speculation.”

There are numerous ways that the mythological narratives of naturalism could have been proven. You have to wonder what Darwinists would do with some actual proof, instead of banging their head against the evidence for typology all the time.

But at each point where it could have been proven, it has been disproven. I’m using “proven” in a soft way to indicate a pattern of evidence found.

But the fossil evidence goes against the sequencing necessary for Darwinism. The anatomical evidence goes against it, in favor of types and typology. Now, the biochemical evidence has also gone against it and validated the typologists of the late 1800s.

Some Darwinists try to argue against the fossil evidence by saying that it is incomplete. That is a long way from Darwin’s “infinitude” of sequence.

In response,
“….when estimates are made of the percentage of living forms found as fossils, the percentage turns out to be surprisingly high, suggesting that the fossil record may not be as bad as is often maintained. Of the 329 living families of terrestrial vertebrates 261 or 79.1% have been found as fossils and, when birds (which are poorly fossilized) are excluded, the percentage rises to 87.8% (see Figure 8.5).

G. G. Simpson recently estimated the percentage of living species recovered as fossils in one region of North America and concluded that, at least for larger terrestrial forms, the record may be almost complete! In another approach he compared the number of living genera of various categories such as insectivores, carnivores, etc in a particular region with the numbers of fossil genera of the same categories in a region of similar ecological make-up in the past. Two such ecological regions are recent Portuguese East Africa and Middle Oligocene Dakota. After comparing the composition of these two faunas, Simpson concludes:

These comparisons and some other considerations suggest that surely half and probably two-thirds or more of the Middle Oligocene genera are known and that those not yet known are mainly carnivores (indi vidually much less abundant than herbivores) and very small mammals (with less recoverability than large mammals by previous collecting methods).

According to an article by Wyatt Durham in the Journal of Palaeontology, as many as two percent of all marine invertebrate species with hard skeletal components that have ever existed may be known as fossils. Assuming ten to twenty species per genus, this means that for certain groups, such as molluscs which are ideal fossil material, the percentage of genera known could be as high as fifty percent. There are, therefore, grounds for believing that in the case of some groups appealing to the imperfection of the fossil record as an explanation for the gaps is not a particularly convincing strategy.

It is significant in this respect that many professional paleontologists, those actually familiar with the facts, have always regarded the appeal to imperfection as a way of explaining away the absence of transitional forms with a good deal of skepticism.”
(Evolution: A Theory In Crisis
By Michael Denton :189-190)

“People just need to be educated - for example there is so much fascinating research going on right now in molecular evolution, which will eventually explore how complex life could arise from the classic “Miller organic soup”….”

I had to laugh at that.

Antony Flew, a leading atheist philosopher, recently began to become a deist. I.e., a believer in ID. Why? It’s because what you just said about the biochemical evidence is absurd.

As to Flew, that is like Billy Graham saying, “Because of the evidence, I might become an atheist.”

“But those who have a great and dogmatic faith in the mythololgical narratives typical to Darwinism (Once upon a time there was a primordial pool. And well, Nature did it somehow!) do no like to be questioned.” Sounds like you’re describing some pompous prof (some of whom really are, but most of whom aren’t), the pre-antisepsis European medical profession, George Bush, or Jerry Falwell.

To state the obvious, science does not proceed on faith. Science is rational, faith is non-rational. Individual pompous asses do not define science, although they do make great televangelists.

It is reasonable to hypothesize that there was a primordial soup, and yes indeed, life did somehow happen. Science is onto the whats and proximate whys like gangbusters. The progression in my lifetime has been stunning, amazing, exhilarating, uplifting in real ways, not the phoney uplift of Bush’s coronation speech.

Mynym, I apologize for the rudeness of my first reaction to one of your postings. We are all ultimately just individual consciousnesses trying to figure out What the f***?

Generally, Bush is not a bra at all. He’s a set of falsies. Cheney is the bra (boneheaded reactionary a**hole)

You can be as rude as you like. I’ve seen worse.

“Science is rational, faith is non-rational.”

What is your rationale for rationality?

If I had time I would write a parable about a geek calculating the odds before he goes up to a girl and says, “Wanna go out? I want to beam down to your planet and shoot you with my phaser.” It seems that all the ratios have to be just so, for geeks.

“It is reasonable to hypothesize that there was a primordial soup, and yes indeed, life did somehow happen. Science is onto the whats and proximate whys like gangbusters.”

Not once geeks who have a myopic faith in mommy Nature get ahold of it. Their glasses grow ever thicker, thicker. They cannot quite see.

But as to the evidence for the mythological narrative about a primordial pool….Dean Kenyon, like one former atheist came to the conclusion that abiogenesis is, quite simply, impossible. Note that he sought a naturalistic explanation and then realized that he was looking at something else entirely based on the evidence he found.

But some things are held to for irrational reasons, and so:
“When Kenyon taught the prevailing naturalistic theories of biological and chemical evolution in his large introductory biology course for non-majors, he also explained his own skepticism about whether these theories were consistent with the evidence and argued that intelligent design was a legitimate alternative to naturalistic evolution. A handful of students complained, and the department chairman immediately endorsed their complaints. He announced that he would not allow Kenyon to teach this course in the future, on the ground that the professor was improperly introducing his ‘religious opinions’ into the science curriculum.”
(Colorado Law Review
SPRING, 1995 66 U. Colo. L. Rev. 461
ESSAY: IS GOD UNCONSTITUTIONAL?
By PHILLIP E. JOHNSON )
http://right2leftists.blogspot.com/2005/01/left-and-censorship.html

Johnson, that might get some people upset, which would be funny. It seems that there are those minds that cannot think through their conditioned brains.

“You don’t actually believe in the ‘Miller organic soup’ and the mythological narrative of naturalism, “Once upon a time, there was a primordial pool….” etc.

Do you?”

It’s not a fairy tale, it’s a logical sequence of events based on what we know about the primordial earth. Perhaps it’s not an exact replica, but I’m a lot more inclined to believe a rational model involving only simple and observable elements like electricity, pressure, and molecules than one that conjures an unnecessary level in a “divine force of intelligence”. In perhaps 100 years the idea that simple elements needed an intelligence in order to reorganize into organic molecules and eventually life will seem as ridiculous as the idea that angels were needed to push around celestial spheres.

What I said about the biochemical evidence was incredibly simplified and archaic because I don’t think it’s necessary to type out a review article with citations in this forum. Mentioning a PHILOSOPHER who turned deist because of his understanding of biochemical evidence does very little to convince someone who has studied this biochemical evidence in some depth in the context of rigorous molecular biology training that preliminary ideas about the generation of life aren’t worth consideration.

I don’t think that intelligent design shouldn’t be taught in schools, but it surely shouldn’t be taught in biology classes.

Mynym,

Rationale for rational/non-rational. I’m working from what I think is a generally understood meaning of those two terms, although as a retired language arts teacher, I understand very well what a minefield that is. If I polled a random sample of people reasonably expected to be familiar with those two terms (in the spirit of dictionary researchers), and found that there was no general consensus, I would have to abandon those terms.

Insofar as the Founding Fathers used the terms Nature and Nature’s God, they were moving into myth, which is a fundamental force in human history, but fortunately, they chose the least constraining myth. Mommy Nature mythologizes whatever you can ascribe to it as a basis, because it personifies nature as a sentient force - Mother Nature, Father Sky. I don’t think scientists generally do that, except maybe in their personal lives.

Is God Unconstitutional? What an odd question. God is neither constitutional nor unconstitutional, so I don’t see the point of the inquiry. I do see the point of academic freedom vs. professional subject area responsibility. I do not see a problem with personal asides in class. They make for a more honest student/instructor relationship.

Whatever conclusion Dean Kenyon or other former atheists come to is fine. Toss it out there into the debate. But don’t assume it is proof of anything, except possibly a personally rational need to satisfy a non-rational urge.
Certainly his conclusion that abiogenesis is impossible might rest on a logically consistent proof. Doesn’t mean he proved anything about reality.

Back to the arrogant scientists of whatever stripe. Stephen Hawking is proof that an honest-to-god genius can make a fundamental mistake. The beauty of that man’s mind is that he found it and published it.

Adam,

Yer dropping yer bucket down a dry well.

You know, I really miss Jerry. Jerry the conservatroll. I may not have agreed with him most of the time, but his arguments were generally well thought out. They made you think. And they were in complete sentences.

David, et all.

I’ve done a poor job of explaining myself.

I don’t disagree with any thing that you, Ann, Tess and Molly have said

Evolutionary changes either need very strong environmental pressure, or isolation, for there to be any significant changes. (And a fair amount of time).

Neither of these is present now and I believe that the human race will be very similar (if we haven’t really screwed things up or artificially changed things) a thousand years from now. Our gene pool is constantly being stirred and mixed up.

What I think, that many might disagree with, is that I doubt, as a race, we will be any more intelligent in 1000 years than we are now. I think that we have a good chance of being slightly less intellect.

Not only is there no environmental pressure to increase our intellectual capacity, but because we can (and should) protect those who 10,000 years ago would have perished, hence not passing on their genes.

In the wild, for most animal species, there is little pressure to change, but there is a pressure to stay fit. By constantly weeding out unfit individuals, the species as a whole retains its fitness. (Slow rabbits, hawks with poor eyesight, and deer with orange concentric circles on their sides).

This is what humans have eliminated. This is not a bad thing, except as it relates to our species in the long run.

Who knows, we may figure out the smart gene and learn how to augment it in our offspring, eliminating the Republican Party.

Murray,

I do like your conclusion. I also think you might be right about people 1,000 years from now, but I don’t think it will have anything to do with genetics. That has already been forged over millions of years.
It will be geopolitical/sociological. And that depends who emerges post-Bush and the retro-radical imperialists masquerading as conservatives.
We are learning so much so rapidly about the growth and nurturing of the human brain that we can evolve ourselves at this point, and I don’t think it has much of anything to do with our marvelous technical advances. It rests on our advances in our understanding of human potential, and this is where I think secular humanists, using the research potential of the technology at our disposal, are key.
Interestingly, some of the best civic secular humanists I know are deeply religious in their personal beliefs, including those who seem to me to have a clue what a man we refer to as Jesus was apparently trying to say.

Don’t worry about who has children. Worry about the utter failure of societies to nurture and expand the brains and minds of those children in any generally prophylactic way. And worry very much about the constant assaults on free, universally available public education shaped by intelligent, informed secular humanists with large spirits and an understanding of religious faith as a private, not a public, matter.

I’m hoping the European Union will pick up and travel on. Americanconservatism is a civic trainwreck in the making, and the worst of the worst is at the controls of the locomotive.

All right, Adam,

I apologized to mynym, and he/she accepted my apology. So why did my submission elicit a hold for being insulting and tell me to wait and then resubmit, which I did, only to discover the first submission had actually been accepted.

I am easily enough confused as a newcomer to cyberspace, without you (or Lobster) throwing curves at me, especially after I found a haven of sanity in the craziness of Bush/Cheney.

David,

Agreed.

David - there are no “holds” on your submission or anything, nor does my site scan for “being insulting.” I’d guess that there was some traffic on the line, or something. I don’t know.

mynym - If I were you I’d call for backup. With all due respect, you could use a logically-minded and clear-writing counterpart to help you and your cause. As long as things don’t get nasty, I’m sure everyone around here would enjoy that.

Murray - it’s an interesting point, but I remain unconvinced that intelligence is quantifiable enough to make any guesses about mankind’s genetic future. My guess is that the intellectual potential of our current genotype hasn’t been tapped yet, and that our intelligence is governed by factors as disparate as education, prenatal care, family dynamics, nutrition, and myriad cultural factors. The lack of any sort of selection pressure on our species means that certain non-beneficial mutations may survive in the short-term, but that same lack of pressure means that such mutations probably won’t have much effect on the genome as a whole.

I completely agree, Adam.

I think what’s being inhereted in Murray’s case (not the case of Murray himself, but the case he presented to us) is not so much low-IQ genes, but rather it’s sub-standard parenting, sub-standard finances, and sub-standard nutrition. It could very well be that genetic relatedness closely covaries with these other factors, making it seem as though genetics could be the causal factor.

One other thing I could add to this “evolutionary future of humans” issue is that when selection pressures are removed, the thing to expect is a much greater diversity of traits. If every trait produces just as much fitness as any other trait (as long as it doesn’t result in infertility or something like that) then they all survive in the population. The population does not converge to a narrow set of traits in order to best fit the environment. Instead, it spreads in every direction possible. So humans are both genetically smarter and genetically dumber than in the past, and we will likely see that trend continue.

OK,

You have beaten me into submission.

What is intelligence? Knowledge? Knowledge capacity? Quickness of understanding? Ability to make connections of disparate things? Humor?Creativity? Ability to recognize kitsch?

Hellifiknow.

But to paraphrase Justice Steward, “I can’t define it, but I sure know it when I see it”.

As someone with a scientific background I know that you live and die by definitions. When none exists, you might as well grab a beer and solve the rest of the world’s problems.

What makes us genetically fit? In the far past it was intelligence, communication and tool manipulation. Now it’s nothing, virtually anyone can breed.

Does that pull us all down slowly, or does it diversify the human population. Again I don’t know. In a couple of thousand years let me know.

I do know that this exercise has clarified my own thinking on the subject, and given me a number of different issues to think about.

Thanks for your help.

Ann,

Oh shit! Sorry. My mind’s blitzed.

Mary Kay — refer to my above comment.

Hey, it’s Spencer _Tracy_, not Tracey. And you’d be better off referencing his Drummond to Clarence Darrow. But, yeah, that movie meant a lot to the cause. William Jennings Bryan never recovered.

Science is all proof with no faith. Religion is all faith with no proof.

Isn’t it better just to let everyone choose their own superstition and (gasp) move on?

The Magic Kingdom is Born-Again Religion as Scientology?

I was dipt, but apparently it didn’t take.

RE: comment by Deno the Untergeek on Jan 20, 2005 9:05 pm

I know this is waaay up the thread, but I am afraid my original post (at Jan 20 2005 5:09 pm)was misinterpreted as an argument for ID. It was not.

The sticky card argument was in response to ID folks who use math to demonstrate that the odds of randomly getting a complex molecule like RNA are so low as to be practically impossible. But the ID folks assume that each chemical reaction and subsequent arrangement is equally likely.

It is not. As certain combinations of types of atoms assemble, some are more stable than others. This is akin to the 3 of hearts sticking to the 4 of hearts. Like I said in my original post, this is a GROSS OVERSIMPLIFICATION. It was meant to illustrate that some atomic/molecular arrangements are more likely than others, due to the chemical nature of each element. Obviously, each individual atom of each element is indistingushable, but each element does not interact with each other element identically. For example, the noble gases don’t interact with any other elements, while carbon is quite gregarious.

So, my point was that generation of pre- or proto- biotic molecules through mixing and energy input is far more likely than creationists would have you believe.
(Creationists’ 747 out of a tornado in a junkyard is NOT an applicable analogy.)

If there is an Intelligent Designer, I want to sue his ass for false advertising and poor performance. Here I am losing my vision, suffering with chronic back pain, and to top it off, I only have an average sized penis! I want my money back and some more for the mental anguish he’s caused.

“Do any of these ID pushers have pure-bred dogs? How do they suppose the different breeds of dogs came to be the way they are? Dachshunds, long and skinny. Poodles, curly hair. We, as a society, have no problems accepting that artificial selection can mold species into vastly different forms.”

They are of the same genus. They are not new life forms. They are different species, not different life forms.

This, like everything else mynym says, is false; all dogs are the same species. If they weren’t, then Creationists would have a really serious problem, because they claim that speciation hasn’t been observed (it has, but they ignore the evidence; ignoring dogs would be harder though).

mynym has never studied evolution and knows nothing about it but that doesn’t stop him from pontificating extensively on the subject. Like others who do that sort of thing, he’s an arrogant ass and there’s no point in dabating him or otherwise paying attention to what he says.

For those of you who do not believe in the God of the Bible, I wonder if any of you have ever studied it, or just believe your college professor who said it was full of myths and contradictions.

Someone please explain to me which Bible prophecy is not true. Tell me who Jesus was. When He said He was the Son of God was He lying? Be careful! Was He crazy? How could one man that never wrote a book, ran for political office, or ever travel more than 200 miles from his birthplace change the world for so much good? He only spoke publicly for 3 1/2 years. They killed Him when He told them who He was and broke their rules. Pretty intolerant would you say.

Can anyone in this group of intelligent people prove He was a liar or crazy?

Please try!

Spencer Tracey settled the issue? If you think screenwriters and actors are the answer, you’re the greatest proof that ID doesn’t always result in intelligence.
Grow up