Dawkins on Evolution

My statement was a shot at you and Rich for continuing to but heads with someone who obviously knows the specific topic far better than you. I don't worship or blindly follow anyone, but anyone who doesn't respect expertise is in for a long ignorant life..

Is your concept that we should submit to ALL opinions of those who are more expertly educated?

Rich -- even when I disagree with you I find many of your posts valuable and contributory. But the above is wild, baseless paranoia -- 'eavens to betsy that they should teach science instead of "Creation" in science class.

Science teaches science.

would you consider Dawkins essay science?

Science?? It's a sonnet about science, a wistful poem about the sublime world as revealed by science. But science it's not. It's him seeing a beautiful, elegant, fascinating world into which he cannot fit a god concept. But that's not science.

This is science -- all basic evolutionary biology research, and you'll have to point out where they talk about god.

PLoS Genetics: Sequences From First Settlers Reveal Rapid Evolution in Icelandic mtDNA Pool

PLoS Biology: High Functional Diversity in Mycobacterium tuberculosis Driven by Genetic Drift and Human Demography

PLoS Biology: Genetic Signature of Anthropogenic Population Collapse in Orang-utans

Uh no. I define it as change in allele frequencies as a function of time. Leave all interpretation, like whether it's adaptive or not, out of the conversation.

I didn't say he was my hero -- I just said I liked his books and I thought he was a better representative of evolutionary science than Dawkins.

I don't really acknowledge "adaptive process" as a mechanism of evolution, so enough of this repetitive crap already. All, 100% of animals (or at least chordates), begin embryogenesis in highly similar ways. They all form similar early embryos with similar early germ layers. All gut-derived organs including the lungs are produced by modification of endoderm. The central nervous system is a modification of ectoderm. So at least at the level of early embryogenesis, the same organ systems exist in animals -- they're all just highly modified once development is complete. And thus the way an apparently new organ system comes into being is by modification of early developmental gene regulation -- and this can be studied fairly easily with gene knockouts, with transgenic embryos, and in humans who have a developmental defect.

But you told me already that you already knew all this.
Comparative Embryology - Medpedia

You're right, I'm guilty of elevating my case in response. Can you make the same admission?

The way you phrase this inherently evinces assumptions, such as the prospect that something did the creating, or that a whole organism somehow just came into being (as opposed to developing out of constituents). There are a LOT of incomplete organisms in this world -- mycoplasma, ureaplasma, and the entirety of viruses, for instance.

If you extend your complaint beyond one author, and if you systematically look at "representations to the public", and if you learn the meaning of the word "theory", and if you develop a credible knowledge base such that you KNOW the areas of controversy, then your argument may have a bit more meat on its bones.

It's not proven -- but it's parsimony. Indulge the following reasonable assumptions:

1) life didn't always exist
2) at some point or after some interval it did exist
3) there is no evidence for supernatural forces
4) living things have the same chemical constituents as nonliving things
5) living things are fully susceptible to natural phenomena

Based on the above, it would be a work of fantasy to say that life came into being in any way other than by natural processes. So why should I even care about your "I'll never buy that"?

OK. I believe what Dawkins is saying is much closer to what is being taught in public schools than what you are saying.

So when Johnny asks: Did God create the Universe, the Teacher responds, no Johnny, it was natural selection that created all. So the teacher looks smart. The teacher always needs to have an answer.

Aedes wrote:

3) there is no evidence for supernatural forces

We don't know enough about nature to know what is 'super' to it.

Have it your way.

I know that not to be the case, so many of my friends are educators and my mom is a school administrator, and in particular people are highly cautious about raising firestorms by accidentally offending religious people.

"The National Center for Science Education, in Oakland, CA, where I work, has tracked hundreds of attacks on evolution education in 48 states in the last five years. In the last two years alone, 18 bills in 10 states have targeted the teaching of evolution. These bills, like the flawed science standards approved by the Texas Board of Education in March, don't ban evolution outright. But they do authorize teachers to omit evolution or include creationism at their whim."

Expert opinion is often useful, though, if it turns out that your assumptions about a field are erroneous or incomplete. That turns out to be the case for you -- but it's your life, it's your intellectual appetite, and if you are content with how you've come to understand evolution, then god bless.

You clearly did not read my post.

. . . some of your positions are contrary to an evidence-based understanding of this science. And this subject is a lot less controversial than you think.

Further, I do not claim as you do to have had a "debating career". But if I were to characterize any tactic as "arrogant BS", I might start with the feigned offense, the feigned indignation, and the twisted misrepresentations that constituted your last post.

I live in the midwest, and I know that many of the schools around here, through high school, will never even mention evolution or the name of Darwin. I took biology in high school around a decade ago, and there was no mention of it.

In every state curriculum that I have googled so far, natural selection has been part of the standard curriculum. (I posted this previously).

It may technically be in the curriculum of many states, but that doesn't mean they're teaching it in all the schools. Much of it depends on the community.

The first time I had any real formal instruction on evolution was when I got to my college "intro to evolution" class. Right away, we got into a discussion about everyone's background on evolution, and nearly all of these students, who came from similar high schools as mine, scattered around the rural midwest, had never been exposed to it in the classroom.

There is plenty of evidence that evolution is happening. There is plenty of evidence that natural selection is at work.

Who's listing the "evidence"? Foxes in the hen house?

And who are those you are claiming there is no disagreement among?

I am always amazed that the same people who cannot figure out simple things in life, for example, is it going to rain today?, are so quick to give pat answers on what happened millions of years ago. Talk about intellectual honesty.

Natural selection is a very simple idea to inject into science so that science can say that they know what caused creation.

But scientists are generally doggedly resistant to the idea or to any evidence for it, whether it be in the form of Sheldrake's morphic fields or the reality of telepathic communication (which shows that mind exists on a completely different level to matter).