Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

The idea that the universe is big enough for evolution and a deity is sometimes referred to as "theistic evolution," and has been slowly gaining ground in western religion over the last few decades. Interestingly, the current process has many parallels with the slow acceptance of heliocentrism (the idea that the sun is at the center of the solar system), which got kicked off when Copernicus published his hypothesis in the 16th century.

Originally the church (both Catholic and Protestant) stood stoutly against the idea of a sun-centered solar system; it had long been considered both common sense and holy doctrine that the Earth was the center of all things. Various Bible verses (specifically Psalms 93 and 104, as well as Ecclesiastes 1:5) seemed to support the geocentric view. Heliocentrism, it was argued, undermined Christianity to the point that the views were mutually exclusive. Legal action was taken against heliocentrist astronomers (most famously Galileo), and the related sciences were broadly denounced by the clergy. Martin Luther himself spoke out against Copernicus.

At first only a handful of astronomers supported heliocentrism, but as the decades went by and the evidence mounted the scientific community made a steady shift towards acceptance. The church continued to resist, but it was a constantly losing battle; by the 18th century heliocentrism was the accepted view and the church was forced to capitulate.

I think we're going through a similar process with evolution today. It's fully accepted in scientific circles, to an extent that convinces some people that scientists are obviously a bunch of heretics who are actively opposed to Christianity (an idea which couldn't be farther from the truth). However, the knowledge is slowly seeping outward, and bit by bit religious opposition is dwindling.

Mike

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Logical fallacies ahoy! I'd also like to say: graaaaagh!

I'm not quite sure how to say this, but there is in fact opposition within the scientific community. A sizeable percentage of scientists today have qualms with evolution and various concerning theories. You can see this merely by the fact that there is debate that is ongoing about this, because otherwise if it was merely an issue of public verses science, then there would be no debate. Today's public is far more educated and open minded than the public of the days of Galileo, and if the general scientific community says something, then people tend to listen. However, there are discrepencies, both within and outside of the scientific community. Inteligent Design, after all, is held by many scientists that aren't neccesarily religeous. You have to consider the possibility that evolution opponents don't need to be religeous. I've seen plenty of agnostics, and even the odd atheist (no pun intended) take critical eyes towards the established theory.

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That depends. I've heard some statistics say that life is so unlikely that there is still a very small chance life could exist anywhere, taking the size of the universe into account. But I don't really trust any statistics like that - there are so many different numbers out there that I don't think anyone's accurate.

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You'll need to cite sources for these sorts of claims. The Discovery Institute and similar organizations have spent the last several years propogandizing that there is a raging controversy in the sciences over evolution, but in fact there is none. Scientists question each other constantly over the details, but the theory overall is universally accepted. It is in fact such a cornerstone that modern biology is entirely based on it.

The following links might be helpful. They are statements from the National Association of Biology Teachers, the Interacademy Panel on International Issues, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Academy of Sciences. These documents outline the position of the scientific and education communities on evolution.

http://www.nabt.org/sub/position_statem ... lution.asp
http://www.interacademies.net/Object.Fi ... tement.pdf
http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2006/ ... tement.pdf
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309064066/html/25.html

As for the second statement, bear in mind that Galileo was prosecuted not by the common people but by the clergy, which was one of the best educated segments of society at the time. Many clergymen were themselves observational astronomers in those days (sky watching was necessary at the time to keep the calendar on track).

Mike

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Logical fallacies ahoy! I'd also like to say: graaaaagh!

Exactly. When you look at the opposition to the teaching of evolution in schools and such, the opposition is virtually never other scientists.

your source?

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if you could choose your ancestors, and grow just like a weed
pick a stud to congeal your blood and get your earlobes free

This is lazy hand-waving, but... the burden of proof is not on me, there, fossilise_apostle.

There is some truth to that, though: it should be easier to produce sources with scientists opposing teaching evolution in schools, if there are any, than to produce sources that state the contrary. For the former, all you have to do is find a source and post it. For the latter, you'd have to poll a bunch of scientists.

It's also worth noting that the scientists in question should also have some scientific interest in evolution, i.e., paleontologists, biologists, etc. If some physicist or chemist doesn't believe in it, that doesn't really matter, does it?

- Kef

you're just guessing. in future if you are going to make wild claims hows about ya back it up, baby?

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if you could choose your ancestors, and grow just like a weed
pick a stud to congeal your blood and get your earlobes free

Not really, except it serves as a good counter-example to "ALL SCIENTISTS KNOW EVOLUTION IS REAL!!1!!ONE!!!!" (fortunately, nobody with any intelligence here has said that)... Otherwise, you're right, as an atmospheric scientist, it means nothing that I don't support evolution as the only possible source of life as we know it.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

I think cases for and against evolution should be taught. I completely disagree with evolution but don't mind it being taught as one of the explanations. I don't like how it's being treated as the only explanation. All explanations should get an equal chance. This poses the problem of the many explanations out there. I think that all students should be given a chance to go up in front of class and say how they belive life began.

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Acually, I don't think Homestar wears pants.

I don't think I'm the one making the wild claim. It's the claim that there is some debate in the scientific community, or however it is worded, that is wild. I feel that if somebody makes such a claim, and I say "OK, how many scientists have you heard of disagreeing with the theory of evolution?", then that should be able to be answered.



Perhaps so, but only evolution is considered science. Creationism is not irreconcilable with science (although I do believe the strictly literal interpretation of "six days" is), but it's still not science.

- Kef

not trying to be a jerk, but the idea of everyone gets a fair chance at time to tell class what they think smells a lot like getting trophies for last place. not literally, but if you follow me, i'm getting at stuff like the guy who made up the church of the flying spaghetti monster. he said that if Intelligent design must be taught, then his religion must be taught to everyone too, as a distinctly scientifically possible cosmology. of course, he was being absurdist, but the point is that if we give equal footing to everything in the classroom, kids will be so confused. it would be a waste of class time and to get to the most basic point, school is not a place for kids to share their beliefs, its is a place for learning.

One 7 (From One 13), One 8.

But because Evolution is a theroy, you can't just teach that as being correct. Not to mention, what about others and their beliefs? With me being Christian, Evolution doesn't fit into my beliefs. So by teaching someone something they don't believe in, how is this correct?

I think that Evolution should be treated truthfully. As a theroy.

To be honest, I think it would be best if schools didn't teach any of this, but instead left the childrens parents to do so. As I've stated before, because Evolution and Creationism are still theroy, they are both in the same respect untill proven otherwise.

Evolution IS treated as a theory in biology class, just as relativity is treated as a theory in physics class. Even Newton's "laws" (a word that seems like it should have more weight than theory) are not presented as absolute truth, because they're only really accurate in classically-sized systems. The "IT'S JUST A THEORY!" supporters are using the word out of context: they imply that it means evolution is not verified by the evidence of the fossil record, which it is. Creationism and Intelligent Design are not theories, they are hypotheses. Six-day Creationism can easily be disproven by examination of the fossil record (or even non-biological studies, like looking at stars more than 6000 lightyears away). ID is more debatable, since it boils down to whether a biological structure is irreducibly complex or not, which we have no way of measuring. But there is no way Creationism is on equal enough ground with evolution theory that it deserves to be taught in a science class.
(Honestly, I'd like all science classes to stop giving the students the impression that we know the absolute facts about the natural world. Science is our best guess, but that guess is constantly being improved upon.)

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You, my friend, are a smart man. Don't let people tell you that God put the stars light at a certain distance so we would be able to see the stars right away.

ID is bunk anyway. It just takes what we know about the universe and plugs the holes with God. Hopefully when I have kids the only place they'll hear about ID is in history class.

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if you could choose your ancestors, and grow just like a weed
pick a stud to congeal your blood and get your earlobes free

DG's a girl, fossil.

The Bible doesn't necessarily say that the universe was created literally in 6 days; as Didy has said on other threads, that part of Genesis is not literal. It's a metaphor.

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My mistake re the gender.

The whole damn bible is a metaphor.

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if you could choose your ancestors, and grow just like a weed
pick a stud to congeal your blood and get your earlobes free

And your proof is...where?

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You can teach it as being science, which it is. It is an important part of science, and it would be neglectful to leave it out just because it's incompatible with some religious beliefs. Should it be taught as fact? No, probably not. Could it be taught as being very likely factual? Yep. That's what scientific theories are. They're the best approximation of the truth available to us. The only way it could be more solid is if we had mathematical formulae to back it all up.

- Kef

we do. Evolution is fact because all the evidence points that way. In NZ on a small island there is a breed of lizard that has three eyes, and generation by generation they are watching that third eye slowly disappear. That's evolution.

Last year a picture was taken of a Gorilla using a stick a cross a river, something that has never been seen before.

That's evolution.

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if you could choose your ancestors, and grow just like a weed
pick a stud to congeal your blood and get your earlobes free

I don't think we're really witnessing evolution on a large scale like that. Gorillas probably had that kind of mental capacity for many thousands of years, but we rarely get to witness it. (It could also be possible that it was a particularly bright gorilla, and such a gorilla may not be more common now than before.) Evolution in the sense we usually mean it is a process that takes thousands of years. But it is indeed an obvious extension of empirically observable microevolution.

- Kef

the word "theory" is too broad to describe in any way how something should be treated. DG made this point well already. Gravity is a theory. relativity is a theory. evolution is a theory. string theory, even ID is held by some as a theory.

status as a thoery gives nothing any clout, nor does it diminish the truth of a well-held principle. i'm pretty sure i'll be stuck on the ground later today, but oh no... Its just a theory!

WAAAAAAGHHHH *ejected from the planet floating in gravityless nothingness*

No, that was a gorilla using a stick to cross a river. I changed the spark plugs on my car the other day. I had never done that before. Was that evolution?

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

According to Wikipedia:
See? It's not fact.

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We already know that. Fossile's the only one saying it's a fact.

Yes, I'm getting really tired of this "LOL theory != fact" argument. A theory represents the closest thing to a fact you can get in science. It is indeed falsifiable, as is any scientific theory, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it has any real chance of being falsified. Evolution is a theory. Creationism is not a theory; it is, at best, a hypothesis. Therefore, in science, creationism is waaaay behind. When creationists argue that "evolution is a theory", they are actually weakening their own argument!

So let's put this "theory" mess to rest. Please?

Three 2, Twenty-Three, Six, Twenty-Six.

I agree with Furry. We don't need to be so concerned about theorys any more.

But there is something I would like to say.

Just because Evolution has more evidence pushing towards it then Creationism, doesn't mean it's correct.

There have been many popular scientific idea's that have been proven incorrect. Including the famous theory of the Earth being the center of the universe. Or that light travels consistently without faltering.

Furry, may I ask you a question. Why do you think so many people refuse to accept the theory of Evolution?

Yes, science is always correcting itself as we discover more about nature and the universe. You mentioned the old idea that Earth was the center of the universe...that was, as far as I know, entirely religious-based, just as Creationism is religious-based. So if we're to use that as any sort of key, it's to show that religion is generally wrong when it comes to defining the science of our universe.

As far as why people refuse evolution, I think that largely has to do with sociolization as well as personal psychology--some people live their entire lives revolving around their religion, and for anyone to suggest that any part of it (as they personally interpret it) could be factually incorrect is as good as saying the entirety of their religion is wrong. They live in such a black-and-white world that they can't accept that the Bible might be wrong on some parts yet still okay with other parts.

Oh, and what do those numbers mean at the beginning of your post?

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Earth being the center of the universe wasn't a theory, either, it also was a hypothesis. Thee was no testing involved in finding out if it was true, and there was no evidence pointing to it being true.

4 of the 6 powerball numbers, of course...

Ok, my boss and I talked about this today, just because we were getting bored of work stuff. On the theory vs fact thing, he stated (as his M.S. and PhD advisors before him) that there are no facts. There are only understandings and guesses of what is happening. There are no laws, only theories (for a law, something has to be shown to be true with no exceptions). The goal of science is not to prove the correct (as nothing can be fully proven until EVERY possible combination of conditions is tested, which is impossible, as there are an infinite number of them). Instead, science seeks to disprove the false (still no small order, but simpler than proving). I didn't quote him exactly, as I don't remember his take, verbatim, but this is very close.

From that, it's easy to see why "it's a theory" is a weak argument against something, just like, "facts" are just as weak an argument FOR something...

So, there you have it, science, as discussed over Cajun food at Tim's Cajun Kitchen, Huntsville, AL.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.