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U.S. population lags in accepting evolution

ponderingturtle said:
I thought that in this context the accepted term was crank not quack.
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I thought that the difference was one of intent. A "crank" is well-meaning and mostly harmless but incompetent (the kind of person who spends twenty-five years trying to duplicate the cube in an attic), while a "quack" is a malicious liar, actively attempting to deceive, for example, by selling snake oil.

The history of ID is littered with examples of deliberate, knowing, untruths and attempts to deceive, many of them by the self-same Discovery Institute. I don't think that anyone can possibly claim that any Discovery Institute member or associate is "well-meaning."

They're liars telling malicious falsehoods, acting in bad faith, and hoping to skip out of town before their true agenda is known.

And Sternberg is one of them.
 
drkitten said:
I thought that the difference was one of intent. A "crank" is well-meaning and mostly harmless but incompetent (the kind of person who spends twenty-five years trying to duplicate the cube in an attic), while a "quack" is a malicious liar, actively attempting to deceive, for example, by selling snake oil.

The history of ID is littered with examples of deliberate, knowing, untruths and attempts to deceive, many of them by the self-same Discovery Institute. I don't think that anyone can possibly claim that any Discovery Institute member or associate is "well-meaning."

They're liars telling malicious falsehoods, acting in bad faith, and hoping to skip out of town before their true agenda is known.

And Sternberg is one of them.
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Except that the only third parties -- OSC and the Washington Post -- disagree with you.
 
Rodney said:
Except that the only third parties -- OSC and the Washington Post -- disagree with you.
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Yawn. As has been pointed out, their "neutrality" in this issue is disputed.

Come back when you have some evidence.
 
Gee, I was glad to see that the number of undecided had TRIPLED from 7% to 21%. Yes, the number believing had decreased slightly, but the number overtly not believing had decreased. This indicates that Americans are now seriously considering the issue. You can't change the minds of the relegious faithful, but you can present logical arguments and facts to the undecided, and they are the source of the majority. As for the rest of the world, I don't really know what their knowlege base is so I can't judge them.
 
Rodney said:
But what's an "objective" editor? You seem to believe that any ID proponent is hopelessly biased, but that is not true of Darwinists.
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There is no such thing as a Darwinist. This seems to be your major misunderstanding. The argument is between ID proponents who believe certain things and try to find evidence to support this, and real scientists who gather the data first and then decide what to make of it, in this case accepting natural selection as the most reasonable theory. Any ID proponent is hopelessly biased. Any scientist without an axe to grind would immediately see this paper as worthless.
 
Cuddles said:
There is no such thing as a Darwinist. This seems to be your major misunderstanding. The argument is between ID proponents who believe certain things and try to find evidence to support this, and real scientists who gather the data first and then decide what to make of it, in this case accepting natural selection as the most reasonable theory. Any ID proponent is hopelessly biased. Any scientist without an axe to grind would immediately see this paper as worthless.
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Yes it is a fundamental error to made by many(on both sides) to equate science with religion. When science properly operates you don't need to believe it in or not, it is self evident that its predictions are valid.

So ID is really rather like the flat earthers in that they do not reject their beliefs(which they call theories) when contradictory evidence emerges.
 
Cuddles said:
There is no such thing as a Darwinist. This seems to be your major misunderstanding.
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So those who call themselves Darwinists are also laboring under a misunderstanding?

Cuddles said:
The argument is between ID proponents who believe certain things and try to find evidence to support this, and real scientists who gather the data first and then decide what to make of it, in this case accepting natural selection as the most reasonable theory. Any ID proponent is hopelessly biased. Any scientist without an axe to grind would immediately see this paper as worthless.
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In your opinion. But Sternberg contends that the Meyer paper passed peer review with three scientists. If you think he's lying, show me some evidence.
 
Rodney said:
But Sternberg contends that the Meyer paper passed peer review with three scientists. If you think he's lying, show me some evidence.
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The publisher contents that it didn't (cite above). If you think they're lying, show me some evidence.
 
Rodney said:
So those who call themselves Darwinists are also laboring under a misunderstanding?
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I have never heard anyone refer to themselves as a Darwinist. I have only ever heard it from those arguing against them as a straw man. I believe this point was also made by Dawkins several times in his books. If you show me evidence of someone who described themselves as a Darwinist I will be very surprised and would consider them to be just as biased as an anti-Darwinist.

In your opinion. But Sternberg contends that the Meyer paper passed peer review with three scientists. If you think he's lying, show me some evidence.
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I never said he was lying. If you read my post you'll notice I say "any scientist without an axe to grind". I have no doubt that he could easily find three friends who agreed with all his beliefs. Presumably this is why the Smithsonian wanted to take the unsual step of reviewing the referees, so that they could see if there was bias involved. I should also point out that peer review has many failings and there have been examples where it was shown the referees hadn't even read the papers they were reviewing.
 
ponderingturtle said:
Yes it is a fundamental error to made by many(on both sides) to equate science with religion. When science properly operates you don't need to believe it in or not, it is self evident that its predictions are valid.
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Thanks for pointing this out. This is a concept which figures prominently in the JREF Challenge rules, and one which cranks and quacks who don't like Randi's conditions have a difficult time comprehending.
 
hgc said:
Thanks for pointing this out. This is a concept which figures prominently in the JREF Challenge rules, and one which cranks and quacks who don't like Randi's conditions have a difficult time comprehending.
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It just bugs me when people compare science to religion. Properly science does not work like that. Now many people even people who like what the scientists tell them fail to understand the distiction.

It is rather like people who fail to understand how ID is not a scientific theory as it makes no testible predictions, so there is no way of verifying or important in any testible prediction the possibility of an outcome that falsefies it.
 
As a complete aside to the debate about that petition by scientists saying they doubt Darwin's theory, the original article on acceptance of evolution prompted me to wonder if there might be some connection between the level of atheism in a particular country and it's position on the issue of evolution.

This in turn made me read up on studies on atheism in various countries, which was quite interesting in it's own right.

If anyone is interested, the "results" (with no claim as to the scientific accuracy of this, I was just bored at work ;)) are here : www . nicolas-lefebvre.eu/blog/?p=12 (wish I could provide a real link... sorry)


PS: I don't know if this sort of thing (linking out to a personal site) is frowned upon or not; please tell me if it is and I'll remove the link. Considering the length of what I wrote and the use of links and images, I figured I'd have a hard time copying this here.
 
drkitten said:
The publisher contents that it didn't (cite above). If you think they're lying, show me some evidence.
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Sternberg's claim is this: "In the aftermath of this controversy I met with the Council of the BSW and asked them to clarify and make explicit the rights and responsibility of the managing editor vis à vis the associate editors. At a meeting in November 2002, a near-unanimous Council backed me up completely (only the associate editor in question and one of his cronies voted against me) and formally decided that the managing editor has control over every aspect of the Proceedings and can choose and supervise the associate editors at his or her discretion. The Council ruled that the managing editor has the final say in the publication of manuscripts."

The publisher's response is this: "Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history."

So, the publisher's response contends that what Sternberg did was contrary to TYPICAL editorial practices, but it does not deny that at the November 2002 meeting it gave Sternberg as managing editor "control over every aspect of the Proceedings and [the right to] choose and supervise the associate editors at his or her discretion." Don't you find it at all curious that the publisher doesn't contradict Sternberg's account of the November 2002 meeting? So I'm not accusing the publisher of lying -- only of weasel-wording to make it appear that Sternberg had done something he lacked authority to do.
 
So, still no scientific evidence for ID? I didn't think so. Thanks Rodney, come again when you have some evidence.

What you fail to understand HotRod, is that it doesn't matter how many scientists support ID or deny evolution. 4 Billion scientists could support ID and deny evolution, without evidence, every single one of their opinions is irrelevant.
 
thaiboxerken said:
So, still no scientific evidence for ID? I didn't think so. Thanks Rodney, come again when you have some evidence.

What you fail to understand HotRod, is that it doesn't matter how many scientists support ID or deny evolution. 4 Billion scientists could support ID and deny evolution, without evidence, every single one of their opinions is irrelevant.
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(1) Oh, I don't know about that: Four billion scientists would constitute a majority of earth's population, so that would be pretty relevant to most people, evidence or no evidence. :)

(2) ID is not necessarily opposed to evolution, only to contemporary Darwinian Theory.

(3) My posts on this thread have not addresed this Theory pe se; rather, they have addressed scientists who have challenged this Theory.
 
Rodney said:
(1) Oh, I don't know about that: Four billion scientists would constitute a majority of earth's population, so that would be pretty relevant to most people, evidence or no evidence. :)
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Nope. Alfred Wegener was still right (and his opponents still wrong), even when he was the only person who believed that continents moved.

Science is not a democracy.
 
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