you know what's intelligently designed? science!

[rone]

Fresh off sciam is a writeup on the World Summit on Evolution, held (where else?) at the Galápagos Islands (sure, cute, but shouldn't we try to curtail human activity there?  holding the conference there is, frankly, a matter of vanity).

I wonder how long it'll take to find a Creationist or ID response to the conference.  I suppose it wouldn't matter, since they're just a bunch of vapid twits... but now i'm just being gratuitously mean.

VAPID.  TWITS.

Anyway, where was i... ah yes.  Although i'm basically rehashing the final paragraph, i'll point out regardless that the fact that the writeup lists people who present off-kilter theories (such as Provine's White Whale) or pooh-pooh currently held ideas (such as Margulis's declaration of the death of neo-Darwinism [whatever that means]) should put the lie to anti-evolution (let's call a spade a fuckin' shovel, yes?) proponents who claim that the state of science today is one that is intolerant of deviation from "scientific dogma", although some nuts will probably cling with desperation to small things like the one anonymous person who felt it impolitic to criticize Margulis because she was going to be awarded an honorary degree.

I did take issue, however, with one Richard Fortey quote: "Evolution was experimenting with many wondrous varieties..."  Although it's only a figure of speech, it anthropomorphizes science, and (i repeat myself) it's the sort of thing that the nutbar fringe will seize as proof of science's elitist attitude that dares personify and equate Evolution with Our Creator™.

Despite a few things that were over my head (duh, i last took a biology class in high school), it was an enjoyable read.

Comments

Va-pid.

[alphajager.livejournal.com]

It does my heart good to see wourd like "vapid" used in regular speech. However, to comment on your post in a more general sense;

As a geologist, and as such at least a superficial scientist (as I do not yet work primarialy in the world of academia, and consitently spell words like "the" wrong in my conversational typing) I must conceed that evolution, and the planetary acretion theory for the creation of Earth do more than what is necessary to put my mind at ease as to how the world was created and how life on this planet started and has grown since. I have also, however, been in extremely heated arguments (and ones not so heated) with people over this very subject of evolution. In particular, I dated a girl, who was getting her degree in geology no less, who had been raised to believe the creationist view of the world. She had a lot of problems with what she was being taught in the college classroom, and what she had been brought up to believe. But, when it came down to it, she chose science over scripture, at least academically speaking.

Evolution as a theory has been proven time and again through observation, and labrotory testing. Come on people, evolution is THE reason why our overuse of antibiotics is creating more deadly illnesses in developed countries. To ignore all the evidence for the sake of what you were told by your parents, who were most likely no authroity in either biology, nor theology, is silly. Ignoring your senses is the root of ignorance.

VAPID!!!!

[talus21.livejournal.com]

Ok will admit up front haven't read the article yet. But I have always wondered what the big deal with creationist and science has been. Seems to me that evolution works would be pretty good proof of a higher power. I don't see where the two disagree. Unless you take every thing in that book written by a bunch of 3rd century(?) CE greeks to be absolute fact. But yeah I am sure Hercules really did all that stuff they wrote about him too.