What regular people think "evolution" is

Jimbo07 said:
Except that there are atheists who are blatant, both in their adoption of evolution and their disdain for religion.
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Sorry, but I fail to understand how can one be blatant in adopting evolution?
 
Rustle said:
Dawkins and Ted Haggard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmNjfpoRZpE&search=ted%20haggard

I'm sure y'all have seen it but, its on topic so w/e repost time!

My dream video clip: dawkins has this talk with this guy, and then at the end Buzz Aldrin comes in and smacks Haggard in the face.
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I hadn't seen that clip before and it's phenominal! Thank you.

I especially liked when Haggard criticises evolution because it says that an eye "just formed somehow". He obviously has no understanding of evolution, as Dawkins pointed out.
 
I'm glad you liked it. I came across the "Root of All Evil?" show on youtube.com, and tracked down the whole thing. There were 2 episodes, and a good portion can be found in small clips on youtube. Its really phenomenal. I wish we had that kind of broadcasting in the states.


Anyway, yeah Haggard rounds a lot of the usual bases. Example: the way he talks about evidence. He obviously likes to use the word, but clearly doesn't understand what it means in the context of science.
 
Rustle said:
I think that more people should be blatant in their disdain of religion.
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hmmm... I think this is the sort of statement I'm referring to.

Small population: "You're all idiots."
Larger population: "Fine. We're not listening to you."

Kaarjuus said:
Sorry, but I fail to understand how can one be blatant in adopting evolution?
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Sloppy language on my part...
 
Jimbo07 said:
Small population: "You're all idiots."
Larger population: "Fine. We're not listening to you."
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Don't forget:

Small part of the Larger Population: "hey! there's another way to think!"

Also:

Large Population: "love the new clothes emperor!"
Small Child: "he's naked!"

In my neck of the woods, people will use arguments like, "everyone knows that the bible is a work of astounding wisdom", or "everyone knows that there is a god of some sort". I think that fewer people would make these assumptions about what "everyone" believes, if more people were vocal and blunt in the face of absurdity.

To me, its a conversational sort of vote. If you suppress your own dissenting opinion, you're not voting. And if you're not voting, you're basically casting a vote for the majority candidate, be it ID, psychic powers, or what have you.

So say you are in a room with oh, 9 other people. One person stands up and says "I believe humans were designed by a higher intelligence". No one says anything, including you. In the minds of the 8 other people, you've basically just cast a vote for ID.

Scenario two:

Same room. One person stands up and says "noah literally put 2 of every animal onto the ark". You fall down laughing and say, "what, diplodocus too?" Some people are going to be offended. But hopefully at least one person is going to laugh along with you.
 
Sure, someone could sit there and calmly drone on about how that is a very interesting idea, and can we examine the logical structure of the assertions, and blah blah blah

...but there are going to be people that you will lose with that approach, and will reach with just an honest and open reaction. (and simple!)

Sometimes when crafting your message, you have to think, What Would MTV Do?
 
Rustle said:
So say you are in a room with oh, 9 other people. One person stands up and says "I believe humans were designed by a higher intelligence". No one says anything, including you. In the minds of the 8 other people, you've basically just cast a vote for ID.
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Depending on the reason I was assembled in the room with these other people, I might simply ask, "What lead you to believe that?" Then again, if the setting is one where this type of discussion might be frowned on, I might just state, "Good for you." and leave it at that. Of course "Well, I don't." is another fine answer, but if you don't get the inflection just right, the person making the original statement might confuse this with an invitation to a discussion.
I think I read an interview with Douglas Adams once where he said he describes himself as a militant athiest. He said that detered people from further discusion on the subject
JPK
 
Rustle said:
Dawkins and Ted Haggard

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmNjfpoRZpE&search=ted haggard

I'm sure y'all have seen it but, its on topic so w/e repost time!

My dream video clip: dawkins has this talk with this guy, and then at the end Buzz Aldrin comes in and smacks Haggard in the face.
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You know that exchange kind of makes my toes curl. I mean, Dawkins just Godwin's it with the first question. The clip that we saw of the event is nothing like a Nuremberg rally. Dawkins is just being provocative, and he doesn't need to be. Once he gets down to discussing brass tacks, he's lucid, persuasive and leaves Pastor Ted blustering and floundering. Why start by poisoning the well?
 
Kaarjuus said:
Sorry, but I fail to understand how can one be blatant in adopting evolution?
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I too find it far from obvious.

It's easy to be blatant in one's disdain for religious belief, I've been at that since my early teens (an aunt of mine married a Christian who will simply not give up on me. Politeness didn't work. Nor has blatant disdain. Waddya gonna do? Blatant disdain is all I'm left with, can I help it if it I love it?).


Blatant adoption of evolution is syntactically correct, but semantic nonsense.
 
Regular folk don't know much and don't think much. They believe what they've been told, and they believe it all means what they've been told it means. By people that, you know, know and think about these things. Priests and politicians and such. Regular folk don't question the norm. Gossip is the field of enquiry for regular folk. When the goss they hear about evolution is "Did you know that most scientists are losing faith in evolution?" they won't question it. Creationists understand gossip and exploit it, science understands gossip and can't stoop to that level.
 
NobbyNobbs said:
Originally Posted by Arkan_Wolfshade View Original:
These, coupled together, lead to questions like, "Why do we have poor night vision?" or "Why can't we also breath underwater?" or "Why don't we live longer?"
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In the interest of having ammunition against IDers, can you provide the answers to those questions? Not being a biology major, they seem to make sense initially to me. I wouldn't know how to refute them.
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The reason we don't have night vision, can't breath underwater, don't live longer, can't fly, etc is fairly simple.

Evolution is not a matter of nature saying "gee, good night vision would help this species survive, I think I'll do a mutation that gives them good night vision.

Evolution is matter of a random mutation gives some individuals in a species better night vision. That mutation gives them a better survival rate, therefore more of the individuals with that trait tend to survive and reproduce. Eventually (over many thousands or millions of years), all the members of that species have that trait.

If no random mutation ever occurs in a species giving it the ability then it will never develop in that species. Or it may have occured in a species but the drawbacks outweighed the benefits and therefore those members of the species didn't have a better chance of survival.
 
The whole issues seems to relate to the question
"Which came first, the chicken or the egg"

My Opinion - This insistance on a clear line between one species and next seems to be one of the major misunderstandings on evolution and is something the IDers have used to confuse the issue and seem as though they are scoring points.
 
I was lied to so much about evolution when I went to church camps. Then there is that stupid evolution picture that shows an ape turning into a man, which is not used at all when actual science discussion is involved.

Heck, you just need to go to the Discovery Institute site and Answers in Genesis to read all the lies for yourself.

If I had never actually gotten secondary education, then I would still have no clue as to what evolution is actually about. There is far more access to the lies than actual education. All you have to do is go to camp or church, and you'll get heaps of lies. It took thousands of dollars and a lot of time to learn the truth.
 
There is a lot of arrogance on both sides of this. Try not to be so judgmental. I am 99% an atheist, so I guess that 1% make me an agnostic. I do believe in evolution. It just makes more sense to me than some cosmic being snapping its fingers and here we are. If people want to believe in creation, that’s fine. They have that right. You don’t have to agree with them, or convert them to evolution theory. You are probably as annoying to them as a Jehovah Witness is to you. When you call people a “regular guy” it is very condescending. If you talk to people, instead of down to them, they are more willing to listen.

Lets not forget that it is the evolution theory; it has not been proven, yet. Science has been wrong about a lot of things in the past. Don’t be so cocksure of yourself.
 
The Painter said:
Lets not forget that it is the evolution theory; it has not been proven, yet. Science has been wrong about a lot of things in the past. Don’t be so cocksure of yourself.
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The fact that you underline the word theory shows that you have learnt what "theory" means from a creationist rather than a scientist or a dictionary.

Read the article : [swiki]Evolution is just a Theory[/swiki] for a rebuttal of this insipid creationist nonsense.
 
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