Love, Gravity, and Hummingbirds

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In Randi's latest commentary at http://www.randi.org/jr/2007-01/010507phil.html#i9 , he laments that:

I get observations thrown at me – How do you explain love? Why is there gravity? Who made hummingbirds? – and then an unctuous smirk that indicates The Perfect One-Up-Manship Ploy to which I’m expected to be powerless to respond…

Well, personally, I think these three questions are EASY to respond to!

1) Evolutionary psychology.

2) Because more fundamental laws of the universe require it to exist.

3) The hummingbirds' parents. (Who may or may not have loved each other, and who constantly struggled with gravity.)

 

[Eos of the Eons]

I was reading what Fundies said on another site about the "theory of gravity" and how birds apparently "defy it". My mind boggles at the ignorance.

 

[Slimething]

I can't figure out the question about hummingbirds. Per their thinking, odern biological theory can explain all creatures except hummingbirds? Did I miss something?

 

[robinson]

The letter "m".

 

[robinson]

 

[Slimething]

The letter "m".

LMAO! Thank you, robinson, for such an on target reply!

 

[TsarBomba]

Perhaps, just perhaps, they were writing about the amazing habits of the Ruby-Throated Hummingbird, that migrates approximately 800km (about 500 miles for the metric challenged) across the Gulf of Mexico. This is an amazing feat for any bird, but for a bird with the extremely high metabolism of a hummingbird (in some cases over 1000 heartbeats per second), it used to be thought that there was no way that the bird could actually store enough energy in its body to make the trip. Hence it was "impossible by the laws of nature," ipso facto it must have been the result of some kind of "divine" or otherwise otherworldly influence. Research has shown that the birds actually increase their body weight by approximately 50 percent before the migration by storing a lot of fat, so the loonies (pun intended, but that's a different kind of bird, isn't it?) don't have a wing to flap on.

Maybe had they mentioned the bumblebee it would have made more sense.

 

[Margaret]

I was reading what Fundies said on another site about the "theory of gravity" and how birds apparently "defy it". My mind boggles at the ignorance.

According to the fundies, we all defy gravity:

"Do we not suspend or overcome the law of gravitation everyday? Every time we move a foot or lift a weight we temporarily overcome one of the most universal of natural laws and yet the world is not disturbed." -- William Jennings Bryan (of Scopes trial fame)

 

[Eos of the Eons]

According to the fundies, we all defy gravity:

"Do we not suspend or overcome the law of gravitation everyday? Every time we move a foot or lift a weight we temporarily overcome one of the most universal of natural laws and yet the world is not disturbed." -- William Jennings Bryan (of Scopes trial fame)

 

[Zep]

Clearly Bryan was trying to make a point at the time. Given that even a reasonably informed schoolchild could have disabused him of this silly notion suggests that the jury in that trial were abject dopes.

 

[Eos of the Eons]

That quote from the trial would be funny in a sarcastic tone

 

[Margaret]

The William Jennings Bryan quote is not from the trial. In the days before TV preachers, William Jennings Bryan (like a lot of others) toured the country entertaining folks with speeches. One of Bryan's oft-repeated speeches defended the existence of miracles with the idiotic words I quoted before.

(Sorry I can't give a precise source -- I got it from one of Stephan Jay Gould's books, but I wrote down only the quote and not which of Gould's books mentioned it, or where he got it from).

Gould also said that a "friend and supporter" of Bryan wrote that Bryan was "almost unable to think in the sense in which you and I use that word. Vague ideas floated through his mind but did not unite to form any system or crystallize into a definite practical position." I find the fact that someone who recognizes such idiocy could still consider himself a "supporter" scarier than the idiocy in the first place.