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Putting Anti-Evolution Candidates On the Spot
Posted by
kdawson
on Fri Aug 17, 2007 07:06 PM
from the take-it-as-a-given dept.
from the take-it-as-a-given dept.
hmccabe writes "YouTube is currently taking submissions for their next debate, in which the Republican candidates will answer questions. This seems like a good opportunity to challenge those candidates who say they do not believe in evolution. But since I am not an expert in the subject, I would be interested in how you all feel the question should be presented. For my own part, I think it is important to present the overwhelming body of evidence on the subject as incontrovertible fact, much the same way DNA evidence is presented during a criminal trial, and ask why the candidate feels they can pick and choose what facts they believe in. Moreover, I am wary of coming across like Christopher Hitchins, so vitriolic the candidate will defend themselves rather than answer the question. Perhaps the most important aspect of posing the question is to inform the viewers who watch the debate that this is really not a matter of opinion, but of science. So my question is: 'Hey geneticists, have you considered addressing evolution in the YouTube debates? Can you do it in 30 seconds?'"
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Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you truly skeptical of global warming, or have you been told to be skeptical?
Do you see weaknesses in data, or have you been told there are weaknesses?
Have you been getting your information from sources that have much to lose if the status quo changes?
Are your sources known for their rigorous scientific reporting, or do they only talk about evolution and global warming?
THAT would be a good start on the road to skepticism.
Parent
Re:Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Insightful)
People who reject evolutionary theory are either ignorant of that theory (in which case, they shouldn't comment on it at all) or have a serious issue with reality. If they're ignorant but unwilling or incapable of admitting it, they shouldn't be running a country. If they have issues with reality, they shouldn't be running a country.
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Re:Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Informative)
No. It isn't. And if you think that passage somehow definitively states that the Earth is a sphere, you are either crazy or an idiot. There are other passages of the OT you can selectively quote to support the Earth being flat.
Also, that phrase in Hebrew is literally translated to "the circle of the Earth" not "the sphere of the Earth" which, especially when taken in context, makes it highly unlikely that the passage is making a claim about the physical shape of the Earth. Even for literalists, that's a stretch.
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Re:Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, between a rational person and an irrational, person full of faith, I'd probably take the rational one I disagreed with over the irrational one I disagreed with. Because I'd have a chance of reasoning with the rational person. It's hard to change someone's mind when they ignore evidence and logic.
Parent
Re:Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, if he honestly believes the world is only 6000 thousand years old, who knows what other wacky shit he goes to bed with comfortably at night?
And before you think I'm trolling, I'll ask all of you here this: Would you, or would you not, vote for somebody to believed the biblical rapture was close to happening and that their main priority was laying the groundwork for it to kick off?
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Re:Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Insightful)
Someone who believes that their ancient "holy book" is a better guide to questions of objective fact than the best scientific knowledge, has a bad relationship with reality, and should not be trusted with authority.
If someone's religious beliefs interfere with their perception of reality, it will definitely interfere with the way they govern.
Indeed, maybe the best thing is to broaden the question: "Mr. Candidate, while we all have our own internal spiritual lives, which are very important, we also all share the same objective world. What do you believe is the best way to learn about that objective world: observation and experimentation, or ancient religious texts? And why? (And if ancient religious texts, how do you know which ones?)"
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Re:Is YouTube really an appropriate platform? (Score:5, Insightful)
Imagine if an atheist ran for president.
I want someone... for a change... who represents my view. We don't need to keep electing more-of-the-same candidates who are "willing to listen" to my side of things. It's about time the other sides actually had... well... actual representation in government.
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Accordingly, evolution (as it stands today) has considerable merit and quite a bit of explanatory power. Intelligent design has no substance to even consider for this question. As a result, the famous words of physicist Wolfgang Pauli (uttered for other crackpot fantasies of his time) are most appropriate when judging ID or Creationism - "it is not even wrong".
To address the subject of this thread - "Do you believe in evolution" is hardly a useful question to ask anyone because both affirmative and negative answers signify ignorance of subtly different kinds. The answer that science would put forth is that a scientific theory does not require your belief for it to be correct. Bernoulli's principle works every time an airplane flies. You do not need to believe in it for it to work. THAT is the reason why science has come to dominate the way we think today - it works.
This semantic trap is also the reason why scientific issues cannot be constructively debated in a public forum. It is not simply a lack of detailed knowledge on the part of the public at large that messes things up. On the contrary, a well-informed public can be quite knowledgeable about certain things. The idea of using tools that WORK is something the layperson tends to forget and instead ends up espousing his/her pet cause, regardless of the details. Thus we have a rabid eco-terrorist movement, stemming from an activism based largely on ignorance. Further, we have the abortion debate, where the arguments have left the realms of legitimate scientific inquiry and degenerated into opinion polls.
Science philosophers, in my opinion, are responsible by way of shirking their duty of informing the public about the paradigms of evolving theories and definitions of truth insofar as it pertains to natural law.
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Interesting)
We likewise cannot disprove that we were created by an intelligent creator. Even if we found it was easy in our pocket universes for complex life to thrive, that would not be proof that our specific origins were not special.
We could only offer absence of proof, and never proof of absence. This puts the definition of "fact" quite contrary to anything to do with intelligent design, unless we all one day in some afterlife meet the creator and are shown how we were created. We can neither prove nor disprove intelligent design, so it is outside the scope of science.
I rather like what my high-school biology teacher said about evolution. This is not verbatim by any means, as it was erm... a while ago that I was in high school
In case anyone's wondering, the teacher was Southern Baptist and didn't believe in evolution as truth about the past at all. She did, however, believe what she said about it being necessary to understand it because scientific progress was being made based on it. I never asked whether she thought intelligent design should be taught in public schools, but another student tells me her opinion is that it should be mentioned in passing that some people believe in it if a student asks, and the class should get right back to evolution.
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Funny)
STACK OVERFLOW
++NO CARRIER
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, the whole theory is nothing but a contradictory, pseudo-scientific ploy to force God^W an unnamed creator who could be God but doesn't have to be God into the public schools. Even the creationists would have found the whole theory absurd back in the day before they became afraid to call themselves creationists in public.
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Funny)
RAmen!
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. Intelligent design is a thesis, a philosophical position. It's not testable.
Which is exactly why that nonsense has no place in a science classroom.
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A hypothesis is a testable conjecture (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Believe in evolution? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a car analogy: suppose you're at the scene of an auto accident, and you point to some aspect that doesn't make sense. That's a gap in our understanding of how Newtonian physics led to the evidence we observe. And if scientists studied that crash, they would probably have different theories of how it happened, and those theories would change over time. But unless you were driving at a significant fraction of c, there won't be anything that contradicts Newtonian physics. Despite the gap you found, it's still appropriate to teach physics to our high-schoolers.
The same goes for evolution - the gaps are in the details, but the theory as a whole is very solid.
Parent
Hitchens? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti-Evolution (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Anti-Evolution (Score:5, Informative)
(Grammar Nazi side-note: no apostrophe needed for the plural candidates).
Parent
Re:Anti-Evolution (Score:5, Funny)
Outlook, Notes, ccMail....
Parent
What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
What's the point of bringing it up in an election debate? Aside from educational funding, stance on evolution really isn't even on my radar for politicians.
If I was going to ask a question, I'd ask "How will you calm the media down from distracting issues like evolution and focus on real issues for which governmental action is appropriate?"
Now that is a question I want to hear politicians answer!
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Progressive answer (Score:5, Insightful)
The NSF and NIH are far from perfect, and as taxpayers (I'm a scientist, as well) we are entitled to many critical improvements in transparency, but they are vastly more efficient than equivalent systems in Europe (I don't know so much about asia) which are riddled with hidebound cronyism, or than private systems in the US which are extremely wasteful and seldom private anyway (see next paragraph). I really shouldn't need to defend DARPA on slashdot - maybe computers are not your thing though.
Anyhoo, the reason we have computers, container shipping, automation, tele-operation, intelligent drug design and genetic engineering is because the US Federal government payed the R&D costs. Sometimes they provided outright subsidies, but they also provided an initial customer base without which many of these technologies couldn't have been developed to the point that became viable as consumer-oriented enterprises. Personally, I think that the general public is entitled to some of that money back, once technologies developed at public expense become profitable, but this is penny-pinching on my part: the return on the investment in computer technology, for example, has been absolutely fabulous.
Now, a lot of this was done through the military system - but what the military *buys* seldom really has much to do with what the military really needs. DARPA, in particular, is in the business of providing a military cover for technology that is in fact being developed for the supposedly-ancillary civilian purposes. They also do research which really does have a military motivation: it's about 50:50.
If you're some kind of fanatic who believes in the infinite grace of market forces:
1) You are about as connected to reality as a creationist.
and
2) You are proposing that we scrap the most powerful engine of technological and economic growth in human history because it doesn't groove with your ideological fantasy worldview. If you have a big bushy mustache, that's *two* things you have in common with Stalin.
Parent
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anybody who believes in creationism is unfit to lead in any capacity, because it is a symptom of a mind gone bad. They refuse to listen to reason, lack the ability to think rationally and are incapable of formulating solid factual ideas. They are utter morons and the fact that they believe in creationism is just a sign post to their idiocy, much as if they believed (truly believed) in santa claus, the easter bunny or crop circles.
I don't want anybody in a leadership capacity who is capable of believing in something so provably false, whatever that may be. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans are just as stupid, so it probably doesn't really matter anyway.
A politicians stance on evolution is a huge indicator of their state of mind. They are either liars, stupid or both. Which bodes ill for all the decisions they would be making, and their reasoning (as it were) behind those decisions.
Would you vote for somebody, who was asked simply in a debate if they believed in the Sun, and they said "NO"? That doesn't seem to matter much, unless you look at it from a larger point of view. Obviously, somebody who doesn't believe in the sun is a supreme idiot or is totally insane.
Parent
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Interesting)
Delusional people can be much more dangerous because they do have intelligence and behave normally, and are able to apply their delusion to direct and meaningful actions.
And no, I don't think we should elect a delusional man as our leader, even though we have a history of doing so.
=Smidge=
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Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Stuffing... do you mean like forcing everyone else to pay the share of various taxes that churches should pay? Or do you mean like putting religious slogans on money? Or do you mean like putting religious slogans into the national oath, and the pledge of allegiance? Or do you mean by making laws about what you can and cannot do on Sundays? Are you referring to that whole "put your hand on the bible" thing in court? Perhaps you're talking about how atheist and non-Christian soldiers are treated in the military? Or do you mean how the government tries to control religious leaders who get up into the pulpit and speak according to their beliefs against or for a particular candidate? Or are you talking about the recent CBS news affiliate story [ksla.com] where it is shown that the government has been going to various religious leaders and telling them to encourage the citizens to give up their weapons in a time of martial law? Is it the presidential speeches that end with a distinctly presumptuous "God bless America"? Or the congressional sessions that are infected with prayer?
Personally, I've been feeling like government has been shoving religion down my throat since I was in first grade public school. But hey — that's just me.
Parent
Quick question of my own... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Quick question of my own... (Score:5, Informative)
First, let me thank you for posing a good question in an intelligent way. It's why I posed this question to /. instead of someplace else.
Honestly, it's mostly the latter, but not because they're GOP candidates. Rather I feel the overwhelming problem in politics on both sides is a refusal to look at facts. After 6+ years of the Bush administration, there has been almost constant controversy regarding the administration's refusal to admit things that are painfully obvious to a critical observer. (e.g., Saddam's involvement in 9/11, the WMD justification, etc.) We would not tolerate this of judges or police, but politicians are given a pass. If this is a chance to make someone defend what I feel is an indefensible position, I feel it is important to take it.
As another poster already said, it's a question of character. When a candidate goes on record saying something like this, it's because they are either pandering for votes, or because they truly deny the mountain of physical evidence that shows how evolution works. I feel that in either case, it shows someone who is unfit to lead this nation.
As an aside, my personal favorite example of someone who dealt with science in politics correctly was a Republican: Eisenhower. He responded to the Soviets in the space race by increasing the funding for science education, showing the USSR that we were up to the challenge to being more brilliant than them. I would modern presidential hopefuls would demonstrate the same kind of character.
Parent
But won't this just help the candidate? (Score:5, Insightful)
The pro-evolution camp might win the debate, by lose the election.
Having a lack of belief versus its application (Score:5, Insightful)
Candidates which don't "believe in evolution" may be in the habit to reject other scientific evidence which conflicts with whatever goes on in their minds.
bad idea... (Score:5, Insightful)
Anti-evolution?! Hardly the most important (Score:5, Insightful)
Romney- You once said you want to "double Guantanamo." Why do you condone, rather, endorse one of the darkest spots on America's record? Should we continue to deny them rights in the Geneva Convetnion?
Giuliani- Are you running as anything but the 9/11 candidate?
McCain- You've supported continuing the Iraq war voceriferously, when do we call it quits? After 1,000 troops are dead? 10,000? You joked about invading Iran, would you consider it?
Paul- You oppose abortion. Would you enact legislation to counteract (or severely restrict) Roe v. Wade?
There's a bunch more candidates, but why pick evolution? It is a fairly unimportant topic (considering the others at hand) and it is unlikely that a President will seriously impact what is taught in the tens of thousands of school districts across the nation (who pick their own cirriculum generally).
"Please answer with numbers." (Score:5, Interesting)
Because (believe it or not) there are people who don't know the difference between "the universe", "the Galaxy", and "the Solar System", and there are fundies that actively exploit that ignorance.
It's easy to screen out the radical fundamentalists. They answer "6000 years" and are at least honest about their base.
But the dangerous ones are the ones who "teach the controversy", because "Them crazy scientists can't seem to agree on anything! Some of 'em say everything's 14 billion years old, and some of 'em the world's just 4.6! They can't both be right!"
Vote only for a politician who is smarter than a fifth-grader; that is, one who knows that "The Universe", is approximately 14 billion years old (I'll take any number between 10B and 15B) is much bigger and older than "The Solar System", which is 4.6 billion years old (hell, I'll take anything between 5 and 4.5).
Sure (Score:5, Interesting)
Mr. Candidate, sir, given the overwhelming body of evidence from hundreds of different scientific fields ranging from archeology to physics to zoology, can you explain to us how you can seriously believe that the world was created 2,000 years after the Babylonians invented beer?
Simple Question (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
Disclaimer 2: I'm a lifelong democrat and don't care what the Republicans say at this point.
There are simply so many more important things that we could challenge the republicans on: Why are you all so fucking incompetent? Why are you even more crooked than the Democrats? Have you no shame? I could go on.
Funding for the sciences is something of an important question - and I'll acknowledge a link between acceptance of objective reality and support for scientific funding. But as a scientist I will happily say that federal support for my work is far lower on the list of priorities than clean and transparent government, sound economic and social policies, better/cleaner funding for general education, and a foreign policy based on something other than bellicosity and greed. If someone wants to challenge the republicans on their failure to deliver any of those things, I might listen.
But even so, these debates are sheer pablum - I'm sure all the Repubs favor clean government which is why they want no limitations on lobbyists. The odds of getting any of these people to seriously engage on real questions approach nil.
Re:Evolution is not fact (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're going to try and correct people, get your own terminology correct before doing so.
Parent
Re:Evolution is not fact (Score:5, Informative)
From wikipedia: "In science, a theory is a mathematical or logical explanation, or a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation. It follows from this that for scientists "theory" and "fact" do not necessarily stand in opposition. For example, it is a fact that an apple dropped on earth has been observed to fall towards the center of the planet, and the theories commonly used to describe and explain this behaviour are Newton's theory of universal gravitation (see also gravitation), and general relativity."
Creationism is NOT a theory. If isn't even a conjecture or hypothesis. It is nonsense. There is no data whatsoever to back it up. There is no experiment that can show it to be true. There is nothing.
Evolution is a fact. It can be tested in a laboratory. Unless you don't believe in things like tuberculosis, drug resistant tuberculosis actually. We can evolve bacteria easily. There is solid evidence in the fossil record, in the linkage between DNA sets, in fucking DOG BREEDS.
It is not open for debate, it is not one of several competing theories, it is the ONLY theory there is for the existence of life and how it got to where we are today. There are no other theories. I am using the PROPER usage of the term here. Why this is something people have to argue about is beyond me. Why don't we argue about the existence of the moon while we're at it. It is just as stupid an argument.
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Re:Focus on the "science" portion. (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, take the opposite approach: Ask them what evidence would convince them that evolution is valid - and, as a followup, you could also ask why they feel the current body of research fails to fulfil these criteria. If they dismiss the theory out of hand, it shows an element of close-mindedness. If they don't, you open the avenue for the discussion of what the actual evidence is.
Of course, such a line of questioning is more valid for a real debate, rather than a 30-second talking point which the candidates respond to.
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Sure it can. (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it can be.
If a dog ever conceives a cat, then evolution has been falsified. It's as easy as that.
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Re:fact: God hates liberals (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:fact: God hates liberals (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:fact: God hates liberals (Score:5, Funny)
Look, just because you took the blue pill...
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