While the Creationist Noise Machine continues annoying the public with its endless mantra of "there's no evidence for evolution!" and "teach the controversy (that we've made up)!", over in the real world, scientists continue to ignore such nonsense and concentrate on the actual research those people don't do.
There's an interesting report today about new discoveries in convergent evolution, where it's been found that similar mutations in species of Asian monkeys and South American monkeys have led to genes that appear to confer resistance to HIV. The implication is that HIV possibly isn't a new outbreak, and that similar diseases have afflicted primates in the past. Neat. The article doesn't say if this research can lead to new, genetic treaments for HIV in humans, but it quite possibly could. You'd have to ask Abbie Smith about that — that's her line.
Observe. This is exactly the kind of beneficial research that no creo has ever done. The kind of research that would be kicked in the balls if they got their wish of confusing students' educations by introducing non-scientific ideas like ID into classrooms, shoring it all up with bold proclamations of conspiracy theories declaring scientists are evil thought police trying to control outside-the-box thinkers. Has the Discovery Institute produced any research that points to findings like the ones above, and do they have a way to explain these developments using ID? (And don't tell me, "No, because teh eebul Darwinistas at the universities won't let them!" because we all know how independently well funded the IDiots are.)
Of course not, all the ID crowd ever does is glom onto the latest research real scientists have done, then bitch about how it's all wrong and shows biases against the supernatural and whatnot. As always, the IDiots have nothing to bring to the table, except their Dunning-Kruger-enhanced egos and pitiful need for attention. When it comes to advancing knowledge, they're left sitting on the sidelines like the sad ugly kid at the school dance.
This doesn't surprise me, since the theory is that AIDS/HIV started with one single monkey.
ReplyDeleteI hear that a lot of creationists are advocating home schooling for their children so they aren't "ruined" by the terrible godless public schools. I just hope this will cause them to quit pushing so hard for creationism in schools since one of these days I may have a kid myself.
ReplyDelete...of course that is wishful thinking...
I ran across something the other day, which I think is disturbing - scientific proofs of evolution that have turned out to be hoaxes, but are still taught in high school and college textbooks. I'll get a link to where I found it, but it was "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", and the moths in Britain that turned black - apparently hoaxes. Thoughts on that?
ReplyDeleteYou're probably referring to things that were brought up in Jonathan Wells' book Icons of Evolution. Short version: Haeckel's embryo drawings were wrong, and there are photos of peppered moths that appear in textbooks that were staged for illustrative purposes. But in neither case is it accurate to call either case a "hoax." Well's book is full of misrepresentations and falsehoods and has come under a great deal of criticism.
ReplyDeleteFor more details: Haeckel's embryos ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") and peppered moths. Here also are complete rebuttals of Wells' book by Nick Matzke and Alan Gishlick.
One thing that is consistently absent from this whole creationist rhetoric is what will it do for science? Seriously, exactly what does it bring to the table? How do you apply "god did it" to research, to experimentation, to working out new theories that will benefit humanity? I have yet to hear anything like this from them. In short, what's the point of creationism?
ReplyDeleteScientifically, none. Psychologically, there's a huge point, which is to defend belief in the face of an onslaught of robustly supported facts.
ReplyDeleteChristianity's most cruel and pernicious bit of programming is to convince believers that if it is untrue, then their lives mean nothing. In a sense, a number of religions shackle their believers through similar psychological manipulation. But it seems that both Christianity and Islam are the most aggressive and overt in brainwashing their believers into being absolutely convinced that nothing means anything unless the religion is true.
Philip Johnson has harped on this as a major pitch in his whole anti-evolution campaign. If evolution is true, then we didn't come from a God, and thus there's no reason for morals, for love, for living at all. The pitiful uneducated rubes lap it up.
Deep down Christianity knows it's really just mind-slavery. And anything that threatens to break those chains and emancipate the enslaved must be fought tooth and nail, if Christianity wants to continue to have any relevance in what should have graduated into a wholly enlightened and rational, scientific culture centuries ago.
How's that for a "sermon"? :-D
I know. I just don't understand why this isn't asked more often when the issue comes up. The discussions are always with them attacking evolution and scientists or us laymen doing one of two things, either defending evolution or showing how creationism isn't a proper scientific theory since it's unfalsifiable. What I don't hear posed to the creationists is, "so what does your idea bring to science?" I think that should be asked, because they can't answer it any way other than non-scientifically, which should submarine the whole idea of it being spoken of in the same circles as science. Essentially, they'd be "expelling" themselves with their answers.
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