Why Evolution is true and why many people don't like it!

Post Reply New Topic

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW9G2YVtBYc[/youtube]Murica! Luckily Im one of the few Americans that accept evolution as a fact because we have all the proof and evidence backing it up and no longer allow me to be a thrall to a book of fairytales.

I would say most people in the US, especially outside the "Bible Belt," believe in evolution--sometimes side-by-side with their belief in their religion's creation myths.

Most people who deny the reality of evolution are very, very, VERY badly misinformed about this subject. It is shameful how many distortions and falsehoods are spread by so-called Christian sources about this subject. IF evolution and its evidence were as the Young Earth Creationists describe it, then of course it would be ridiculous for anyone to accept it as a fact of nature. But such sources misrepresent evolution, ignore much of the strongest evidence, distort or deny what they do not ignore, quote people out of context in a blatantly dishonest manner known as "quote mining," and also show a complete lack of understanding of how science works. They shame Christ and make Christianity look really really STUPID if not batshit crazy.

The Bible, or any religious text, doesn't enter into it as far as I am concerned.

What concerns me is this idea that once the Theory of Evolution is in place, it becomes one big over simplification.

But part of the beauty of evolution is that it explains so much so well with so few starting assumptions, and of course what counts is that it is supported by every observation yet made and falsified by none. Evolution is one of the greatest unifying and explanatory scientific ideas known to man. Who knows what medical or other breakthroughs may develop from our increased understanding of this subject, IF the fundies don't succeed in dumbing everybody down!

I still think it oversimplifies things.

If I were religious once again but with logic I would simply say that evolution would be gods intelligent design! Think about it, although I am skeptic of the existance of god, if there was one he would be a biologist designing life forms to adapt to changes in the environment and dismiss the fairy tales of the Earth only being 6000 years old etc! A real god would be a scientist imo but there is no god it just happened and if there was one he mearly made the big bang then preset the genes of all life forms to adapt and evolve then went afk forever for other universes to make!

I have an entry-level textbook on evolution on my windowsill. It is just shy of 600 pages long. 15 pages are dedicated to references, of which there are approximately 345. What is being simplified again?

That is known as the God the Watchmaker analogy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watchmaker_analogy
It is a classic in that it has been around for centuries.



I think the durability of this meme is because it allows people to reconcile the evidence found by studying nature with their own theistic beliefs. It relieves cognitive dissonance. You have to be comfortable with cognitive dissonance to be a Young Earth Creationist in the face of massive geological evidence. But if you use the watchmaker analogy, the cognitive dissonance goes away. Big Bang becomes 'Let there be light' and God becomes the author of the physical laws governing the universe.

Exactly. It's a very vocal minority that believe in "creationism". Unfortunately, they are pandered to by one of the two major political parties, so they have influence that is way out of all proportion to their numbers.

The way evolution is presented in pop culture it often oversimplifies things because evolution itsself is often presented in a dumbed down simplistic way.

For example: the idea of "missing links" is pure Thirties pulp fiction. Evolution is not a linear chain with links (missing or present). Its a family tree of lineages that branch off from each other. What might be "missing" are crotches in the tree branches (or forks-in-the-road, to use a different metaphor). The crotches in the tree branches and twigs (present, or missing) are the last common ancestors that one extant organism has with another (ie Fruit flies,and houseflies, had some common ancestor millions of years ago that no longer itsself exists as a species). But reporters in the media will still ask the paleoanthropologist who finds the latest homid fossil find if his find "could be the missing link?".

Evolution is superb at explaining some things, but weak on others. Its good at explaining how life on Earth developed over time once life itsself got started. But its a little weak at explaining how life got started from nonlife. Few theories are perfect. Genisis in the Bible (if taken literally, and read as a geology textbook) is mortally wounded by its lack of internal logic before you even start to worry about its lack of external logic. So Genisis (if taken as a geology textbook) is certainly also perfection challenged.

Uh, you are conflating evolution with abiogenesis which is one of the many annoying things Creationists do. Evolution also is weak at explaining such things as how to tie your shoe because that is outside the scope of what it addresses and what it does explain very well as you point out.

Evolution also does not address the origin of the universe, another common conflation of confused creationists. But just because evolution cannot explain everything (answers to all possible questions, a theory of everything) does not mean that it is no good at explaining what it does address.

And yet they still keep getting elected and that's what scares me.

I'm tired of people saying humans evolved from apes, when actually both apes and humans evolved from a common ancestor. I don't know why, but a lot of people don't seem to grasp that idea. Then some Christians point to monkeys (which are not EVEN apes) and say things like, "I didn't evolve from no monkey!" That's right, Billy-Bob, but not for the reasons you think.

Humans are often included in the list of Great Apes (human, chimp, gorilla, orang utan), so you could say that not only are we descended from apes, we are apes.

Firstly it is far from simplistic, for you to think this gives me the impression that it is you who has the overly simplistic understanding of Evolutionary theory not the other way around.

Then of course we have the concept held dear to the scientific method which holds that the hypothesis with the least assumptions should be selected over one with a greater amount of assumptions. This does not mean the latter might in the end prove correct but, in the absence of certainty, the one with the simplest explanation, with the least assumptions should be followed. "God did it" is far from a parsimonious hypothesis.

Parsimony does not mean the hypothesis should be simple, it means that if you need to unsubstantiated assumptions to make you model fit with experiment and there is a competing hypotheses which does not need to make these assumptions to agree with experiment, then you take the "simpler" hypothesis. In this way the naturalistic concept of evolution not only agrees with experiment, it has far less assumptions than the "God Hypothesis"

This is also known as occam's razor and has been used to great effect in helping move scientific discovery forward. A great example of this is einstein's special theory of relativity where he threw out the complex concept of the Luminiferous Aether which had been used to explain how time could be universally constant, by removing the aether he could demonstrate that time is not universally constant. Without this application of parsimony we would not have GPS today.