"One of our aims in holding this conference is to go some way towards redressing the impression that some of the general public have that Christians are anti-science and anti-Darwin."

Damn - how many damn times to these guys have to move the goalposts before they give up?

Benevolent Misanthrope: Damn - how many damn times to these guys have to move the goalposts before they give up?

Nah, the wind is something passed down from generation to generation... something you'd have to inherit, if you will.

I'm thinking maybe a beagle of some kind.

Angry Drunk Bureaucrat: Nah, the wind is something passed down from generation to generation... something you'd have to inherit, if you will.

I'm thinking maybe a beagle of some kind.

I heard that those Beagles can have quite a barque.

Wow - that's a subtle and non-obvious headline.

Had to share something I found out. Has anyone here seen those commercials for the new made-for-TV movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr., where he plays an incredible neurosurgeon who rose to he top of his field? Well I just heard an interview with that neurosurgeon - dude's a creationist.

What the FRACK!?

FTA: "One of our aims in holding this conference is to go some way towards redressing the impression that some of the general public have that Christians are anti-science and anti-Darwin."

Certainly not ALL Christians are anti-science and anti-Darwin.
However, I expect existential proof that SOME Christian is anti-Evolution should be along in due course.

FTA: Mr Stead said many Christians wanted to celebrate Darwin's huge contribution to their world view. "This is a chance to set the record straight and to explore how it is possible for faith to sit alongside Darwin's views," he said.

Quietly?

No wonder his beard is so long. He probably hasn't shaved in, like, 100 years or something.

DamnYankees: Well I just heard an interview with that neurosurgeon - dude's a creationist.

Yup. Please consider "conjecture that education and practice in the Medical disciplines forms a predisposition to a viewpoint sympathetic to creationist variants" as the abb3w Extension to the Salem Hypothesis. Similar to Engineering, Medicine primarily requires acceptance of knowledge acquired by the Scientific method, but not acceptance of the method itself.

Evolution is only a theory, much like the theory of Christianity. The Children are not getting a fair representation of Creationism.

RandomExcess: Evolution is only a theory, much like the theory of Christianity.



Benchmark SC.3.N.3.1: Recognize that words in science can have different or more specific meanings than their use in everyday language; for example, energy, cell, heat/cold, and evidence.
Benchmark SC.6.N.3.1: Recognize and explain that a scientific theory is a well-supported and widely accepted explanation of nature and is not simply a claim posed by an individual. Thus, the use of the term theory in science is very different than how it is used in everyday life.
Benchmark SC.912.N.3.1: Explain that a scientific theory is the culmination of many scientific investigations drawing together all the current evidence concerning a substantial range of phenomena; thus, a scientific theory represents the most powerful explanation scientists have to offer.

RandomExcess: Evolution is only a theory, much like the theory of Christianity. The Children are not getting a fair representation of Creationism.

Evolution is a theory. Unlike the Word of God, which is, to the the faithful, the Word of God.

If Christians want to believe that God created the Earth kicked off the process of evolution that's fine by me. If they want to ram the believe that the earth is 3500 years old down the throats of everyone around them, that's just not cool.

abb3w: RandomExcess: Evolution is only a theory, much like the theory of Christianity.



Benchmark SC.3.N.3.1: Recognize that words in science can have different or more specific meanings than their use in everyday language; for example, energy, cell, heat/cold, and evidence.
Benchmark SC.6.N.3.1: Recognize and explain that a scientific theory is a well-supported and widely accepted explanation of nature and is not simply a claim posed by an individual. Thus, the use of the term theory in science is very different than how it is used in everyday life.
Benchmark SC.912.N.3.1: Explain that a scientific theory is the culmination of many scientific investigations drawing together all the current evidence concerning a substantial range of phenomena; thus, a scientific theory represents the most powerful explanation scientists have to offer.

Bravo! Brafreakingvo

"One of our aims in holding this conference is to go some way towards redressing the impression that some of the general public have that Christians are anti-science and anti-Darwin."

Step one

Within the community of Christian believers there are areas of dispute and disagreement, including the proper way to interpret Holy Scripture. While virtually all Christians take the Bible seriously and hold it to be authoritative in matters of faith and practice, the overwhelming majority do not read the Bible literally, as they would a science textbook. Many of the beloved stories found in the Bible - the Creation, Adam and Eve, Noah and the ark - convey timeless truths about God, human beings, and the proper relationship between Creator and creation expressed in the only form capable of transmitting these truths from generation to generation. Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth. Its purpose is not to convey scientific information but to transform hearts.

We the undersigned, Christian clergy from many different traditions, believe that the timeless truths of the Bible and the discoveries of modern science may comfortably coexist. We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. To reject this truth or to treat it as "one theory among others" is to deliberately embrace scientific ignorance and transmit such ignorance to our children. We believe that among God's good gifts are human minds capable of critical thought and that the failure to fully employ this gift is a rejection of the will of our Creator. To argue that God's loving plan of salvation for humanity precludes the full employment of the God-given faculty of reason is to attempt to limit God, an act of hubris. We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge. We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

(11,822 signatures as of 2/7/09)

abb3w: Similar to Engineering, Medicine primarily requires acceptance of knowledge acquired by the Scientific method, but not acceptance of the method itself.

I dunno how well that stands up. From your bio link:

Dr. Carson is a leading research scientist. A "voracious reader of the medical and scientific literature" from his graduate school days, he has long been very interested in scientific research and has been very active in this area for his entire career,5, 6 with over 120 major scientific publications in peer reviewed journals, 38 books and book chapters, and grant awards of almost a million dollars. His achievements have so far earned him 51 honorary doctorates, including from Yale and Columbia Universities.

Shadow Blasko: abb3w: RandomExcess: Evolution is only a theory, much like the theory of Christianity.



Benchmark SC.3.N.3.1: Recognize that words in science can have different or more specific meanings than their use in everyday language; for example, energy, cell, heat/cold, and evidence.
Benchmark SC.6.N.3.1: Recognize and explain that a scientific theory is a well-supported and widely accepted explanation of nature and is not simply a claim posed by an individual. Thus, the use of the term theory in science is very different than how it is used in everyday life.
Benchmark SC.912.N.3.1: Explain that a scientific theory is the culmination of many scientific investigations drawing together all the current evidence concerning a substantial range of phenomena; thus, a scientific theory represents the most powerful explanation scientists have to offer.

Bravo! Brafreakingvo

I'm confused, which person is supporting Christianity?


/burn him!

Finches

"Yup. Please consider "conjecture that education and practice in the Medical disciplines forms a predisposition to a viewpoint sympathetic to creationist variants" as the abb3w Extension to the Salem Hypothesis."

Veddy innnnteresting. I'd not heard of the Salem Hypothesis before. In developing your correlary, I'd suggest a third hypothesized reason why it should be so. Basically, it's the "Oh, come on!" reaction. I imagine that if I were a neurosurgeon (or vascular, or any of the surgeons dealing with impossibly complex systems we advanced animals have) I'd face some cognitive dissonance when faced with the knowledge that all that descended from a few protiens in a pond of goo. The reason is nothing more than a simplified version of Irreducible Complexity, of course, but in this case it's residing on brains who deal with the incredibly (if not really irreducibly) complex every day of their working lives.

abb3w: DamnYankees: Well I just heard an interview with that neurosurgeon - dude's a creationist.

Yup. Please consider "conjecture that education and practice in the Medical disciplines forms a predisposition to a viewpoint sympathetic to creationist variants" as the abb3w Extension to the Salem Hypothesis. Similar to Engineering, Medicine primarily requires acceptance of knowledge acquired by the Scientific method, but not acceptance of the method itself.


Just out of curiosity, what is it about the scientific method itself that would cause rejection of Creationism if "properly accepted" - whatever that might mean? What is it that engineers and doctors are doing wrong?

/Oh, and Dr. Ben Carson kicks butt.

Benevolent Misanthrope: "Damn - how many damn times to these guys have to move the goalposts before they give up?"

The findings that will really pit Christians (even moderates) against science once more are those coming out of the field of congitive neuroseciece.

'Creationists declare war over the brain'.

Once they've figured out some way to claim that it fit into their theology all along, we'll run into more trouble as they struggle to accomodate findings in astrophysics which establish natural causation of the big bang:

'Something from nothing a quantum possibility'

'It's confirmed: Matter is merely vacuum fluctuations'

Darwin was only the beginning. The universe science is in the process of revealing seems very much to have formed naturally of its own accord, inconsistent with any religious description. Many new discoveries flatly contradict scriptural claims that even the most liberal Christians are unwilling to part with in the name of being "consistent with science". The next fifty years will be very interesting indeed.

GilRuiz1: Just out of curiosity, what is it about the scientific method itself that would cause rejection of Creationism if "properly accepted" - whatever that might mean? What is it that engineers and doctors are doing wrong?

Lets take a peak under the hood:

"I just don't have enough faith to believe" that the living world happened by evolutionary processes. He added that 150 years after Darwin, there is still no evidence for evolution.

"It's just not there. But when you bring that up to the proponents of Darwinism, the best explanation they can come up with is "Well...uh...it's lost!"...I find it requires too much faith for me to believe that explanation given all the fossils we have found without any fossilized evidence of the direct, step-by-step evolutionary progression from simple to complex organisms or from one species to another species. Shrugging and saying, "Well, it was mysteriously lost, and we'll probably never find it," doesn't seem like a particularly satisfying, objective, or scientific response."

What errors in "observation -> hypothesis -> test -> reformulate/confirm -> observe" do you find in there? I can name several..hundred.

I approve of this headline.

+1 monkey

GilRuiz1: Just out of curiosity, what is it about the scientific method itself that would cause rejection of Creationism if "properly accepted" - whatever that might mean? What is it that engineers and doctors are doing wrong?

/Oh, and Dr. Ben Carson kicks butt.

From his Bio: "He added that 150 years after Darwin, there is still no evidence for evolution."

Like most engineers - Carson looks at the world in black and white. He can't comprehend grey. Its either on or its off. He looks at incomplete fossil record not something that supports evolution but proves evolution can't be true because you can't 100% fill in the fossil record.

/Dr. Ben Carson is an ass.
//but still has given more to the world than I ever will

ninjakirby: Lets take a peak under the hood:

...

What errors in "observation -> hypothesis -> test -> reformulate/confirm -> observe" do you find in there? I can name several..hundred.


Well, as you pointed out, Dr. Ben Carson is not an idiot. He's a world-famous brain research scientist so it's not like he doesn't understand observation/hypothesis and so on. It can't be that; it has to be something else.

A nice pair of scopes?

DamnYankees: Had to share something I found out. Has anyone here seen those commercials for the new made-for-TV movie starring Cuba Gooding Jr., where he plays an incredible neurosurgeon who rose to he top of his field? Well I just heard an interview with that neurosurgeon - dude's a creationist.

What the FRACK!?

Got news for 'ya, brudda. I know a few scientists, and they are almost ALL christian. As far as I can tell, it's very common outside the universities where religious diversity (chrisianity) is prohibited.

YupThazMe: "Got news for 'ya, brudda. I know a few scientists, and they are almost ALL christian. As far as I can tell, it's very common outside the universities where religious diversity (chrisianity) is prohibited."

Cool troll bro. A little over the top at the end up a solid 7, easy.

GilRuiz1: It can't be that; it has to be something else.

Correct. I can propose a number of hypotheses given the data available to me so far. First and foremost, one possible explanation for the Salem Hypothesis is that Engineering is by necessity a Top-Down design process, so people from that field could be either trained to think Top-Down, and thus find Creationism more superficially plausible -OR- people who find Creationism plausible are more naturally drawn towards Top-Down design enterprises.

The great conceptual shift Natural Selection brought about was a rational method for Bottom-Up design, which before then, was unheard of. I will note that as a game designer, your field consists of both realities, as modern games are built up from previous generations successes, while being compiled top down by coders, artists etc.

Speaking of this Dr. Carson alone, I am willing to wager that he's a Born Again Christian, and converted during a period of emotional strife, either the transition from adolescence to adult, during college, or during medical school when confronted with death, disease and the stress of being a med student. I'm also willing to wager that during his educational years, he was never required to take, and showed no interest in courses on human evolution and the underlying biology that explains how modern human functionality came to exist.

ninjakirby: I dunno how well that stands up.

Either do I. I've math, but not enough data for a sane confidence interval, and the CogSci part of the math is the worst, since Psychology isn't far out of the trepanning stage. So, I may be wrong on causation.

Nonetheless, incant SCITEST2(1),DEGREE(4) for selection to get graduates degree holders who know that antibiotics kill bacteria and not viruses (the closest I've come to picking out "doctors" from the dataset), and use Row=SCITEST4 and Column=BIBLE to compare belief on the bible to belief in evolution, and guess what?

abb3w: RandomExcess: Equivocation Evolution is only a theory, much like the theory of Christianity.

abb3w: Nonetheless, incant SCITEST2(1),DEGREE(4) for selection to get graduates degree holders who know that antibiotics kill bacteria and not viruses (the closest I've come to picking out "doctors" from the dataset), and use Row=SCITEST4 and Column=BIBLE to compare belief on the bible to belief in evolution, and guess what?


I really cannot figure out how to read that. It appears that "[People] who know that antibiotics kill bacteria and not viruses" predominantly believe the Bible is divinely inspired, with a leading minority believing it's fables. Only two people appear to believe it's 100% Word of God (which would presumably be the Creationists).

2/78, or 1.5% doesn't seem that bad.

holiday_inn_in_cambodia: I approve of this headline.

+1 monkey

Thank you. My first.

/hot...like the burn from Occam's Razor

ninjakirby: First and foremost, one possible explanation for the Salem Hypothesis is that Engineering is by necessity a Top-Down design process

Ok, pretend like I don't know what you mean by "top-down," how it contrasts with "bottom-up," or how it applies to Creationism. Could you please explain a little more?


ninjakirby: Speaking of this Dr. Carson alone, I am willing to wager that he's a Born Again Christian, and converted during a period of emotional strife, either the transition from adolescence to adult, during college, or during medical school when confronted with death, disease and the stress of being a med student. I'm also willing to wager that during his educational years, he was never required to take, and showed no interest in courses on human evolution and the underlying biology that explains how modern human functionality came to exist.

Nope. I read his biography and he was brought up a Christian and has been a believer since he was a little kid. No life-crisis conversions. And I doubt they didn't ever teach evolution in Yale or the University of Michigan Medical School in the 1970's.

GilRuiz1: abb3w: DamnYankees: Well I just heard an interview with that neurosurgeon - dude's a creationist.

Yup. Please consider "conjecture that education and practice in the Medical disciplines forms a predisposition to a viewpoint sympathetic to creationist variants" as the abb3w Extension to the Salem Hypothesis. Similar to Engineering, Medicine primarily requires acceptance of knowledge acquired by the Scientific method, but not acceptance of the method itself.


Just out of curiosity, what is it about the scientific method itself that would cause rejection of Creationism if "properly accepted" - whatever that might mean? What is it that engineers and doctors are doing wrong?

/Oh, and Dr. Ben Carson kicks butt.

It's faith that's the issue. Faith is literally taking a concept, or doctrine and saying "This is beyond question. This is true because I assume it is true." It's a blunt refusal to use the rationality the scientific method requires in your personal life, where, were one to look at the available evidence, there really is none in favor of any specific God, there has never been a reliably recorded miracle (and that their claimed frequency drops in proportion to the development of recoding methods), and that specifically the Christian God is inherently contradictory. It's logically contradictory to look at the available evidence, and conclude that the Bible is literal truth.

Unless you assume reality is unreal. But then how the hell can you make an unreal bridge?

ninjakirby: Speaking of this Dr. Carson alone, I am willing to wager that he's a Born Again Christian, and converted during a period of emotional strife, either the transition from adolescence to adult, during college, or during medical school when confronted with death, disease and the stress of being a med student.

Strike one:

"Second, I had my first religious experience when I was 8 years old. We were Seventh-day Adventists, and one Saturday morning Pastor Ford, at the Detroit Burns Avenue church, illustrated his sermon with a story. A natural storyteller, Pastor Ford told of a missionary doctor husband and wife who were being chased by robbers in a far-off country. They dodged around trees and rocks, always managing to keep just ahead of the bandits. At least, gasping with exhaustion, the couple stopped short at a precipice. They were trapped. Suddenly, right at the edge of the cliff, they saw a small break in the rock - a split just big enough for them to crawl into and hide. Seconds later, when the men reached the edge of the escarpment, they couldn't find the doctor and his wife. TO their unbelieving eyes, the couple had just vanished. After screaming and cursing them, the bandits left. As I listened, the picture became so vivid that I felt as if I were being chased. The pastor wasn't overly dramatic, but I got caught up in an emotional experience, living their plight as if the wicked men were trying to capture me. I visualized myself being pursued. My breath became shallow with the panic and fear and desperation of that couple At last when the bandits left, I sighed with relief at being safe." - pg 25, Gifted Hands by Ben Carson, Cecil B. Murphey

Now I must reform my hypothesis and it's actually even simpler. He was raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, a denomination that specifically adhered to the infallibility of scripture.

Raise a kid from the age of 8, to believe that the Bible is infallible, and let natural cognitive dissonance do the rest.

Also note that his 'religious experience' is a perfectly natural and incredibly common phenomena all children experience when you tell them highly idealized black and white stories about good and evil. (Also within 7th Day Adventism, it's expected of adults to a degree as well, thanks to Ellen G. White and her 'visions'; ie Epilepsy)

The story told by that pastor is part and parcel for the average fairy tale, and arguably, is the purpose of fairy tales - to help children come to terms with and internalize aspects of adulthood where they can mentally place themselves in a given situation and feel the experience for themselves, to help come to terms with things like Jealousy (Cinderella), or Autonomy (Hansel & Gretal). Video games operate in part by tweaking this natural human response to story telling.

Appropriately enough, TNT is airing a biography movie of Dr. Carson right now. Watching...

This is the slowest main page thread about evolution of all time.

SurahAhriman: "It's faith that's the issue. Faith is literally taking a concept, or doctrine and saying "This is beyond question. This is true because I assume it is true." It's a blunt refusal to use the rationality the scientific method requires in your personal life, where, were one to look at the available evidence, there really is none in favor of any specific God, there has never been a reliably recorded miracle (and that their claimed frequency drops in proportion to the development of recoding methods), and that specifically the Christian God is inherently contradictory. It's logically contradictory to look at the available evidence, and conclude that the Bible is literal truth.

Unless you assume reality is unreal. But then how the hell can you make an unreal bridge?"

Well said.

GilRuiz1: And I doubt they didn't ever teach evolution in Yale or the University of Michigan Medical School in the 1970's.

I don't think you need to learn about evolution in any depth after high school. I don't think it has much direct relevance to a pre-med study corpus.

GilRuiz1: Just out of curiosity, what is it about the scientific method itself that would cause rejection of Creationism if "properly accepted" - whatever that might mean? What is it that engineers and doctors are doing wrong?

"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other."

I wouldn't say "properly accepted", so much as "fully accepted". Whether that's "proper" is a different matter.

Also, it's not ALL doctors and engineers; it's merely most noticeable from them. Those who consider the Bible a book of fables BIBLE(3) or even inspired BIBLE(2) increasingly accept evolution (SCITEST4) with increasing verbal ability (WORDSUM); which suggests the smart who use science dominantly or exclusively, infer evolution.

However, it is possible to be a doctor or engineer, and retain the Religious mode of thinking about the world as a major cognitive approach, especially if the scope gets limited slightly. At which point, the smarter you are, the more conflict you'll have, and the more likely you'll object to evolution. And it takes a fair bit of smarts (or at least rote memory) to become a doctor or engineer.

GilRuiz1: Well, as you pointed out, Dr. Ben Carson is not an idiot. He's a world-famous brain research scientist so it's not like he doesn't understand observation/hypothesis and so on. It can't be that; it has to be something else.

If I treat my wild conjecture as proven model... it's not that he doesn't have the neurological structures corresponding to use of the scientific method; it's that those for religion fire more strongly when he is looking at the question of Origins.

To measure this, you would ideally want to locate a bunch of "fables" scientists and "inerrant" preachers; strap them into an NMRI; get the preachers to pray, read the bible, and maybe consider some theology questions, and the scientists to try and reason out some (fairly new) bit of science slightly out of their field. This might help identify whether there are two separate structures. Then get a pack of doctors and engineers, classify them on the scale of inerrancy-to-antique-fables, strap them into the NMRI, and try having them do both (mixed in with a few other tasks so as to limit the cognitive structure strengthening; say, contemplate porn set to classical music), to see if you can identify both structures. Then ask them a bunch of questions about evolution, and see which structure activates.

I suspect if I kidnapped enough of each to get a decent sample, you'd find the Scriptural Inerrants use religion to think about the questions, and the Scientists Errant use science.


YupThazMe: Got news for 'ya, brudda. I know a few scientists, and they are almost ALL christian. As far as I can tell, it's very common outside the universities where religious diversity (chrisianity) is prohibited.

Creationist ≠ Christian
Christian ≠ Creationist

I suspect most people have both cognitive structures; however, I'd also suspect asymmetric development levels of each.

But is YupThazMe a troll, or a loon?

Zamboro: Cool troll bro. A little over the top at the end up a solid 7, easy.

I guess I'll go with "troll" then....

ninjakirby: First and foremost, one possible explanation for the Salem Hypothesis is that Engineering is by necessity a Top-Down design process, so people from that field could be either trained to think Top-Down, and thus find Creationism more superficially plausible

That makes some sense... except that Engineering isn't that way by necessity, merely by Western social convention. I think. That would be a question I'd want to ask SEVERAL experts about.

DamnYankees: GilRuiz1: And I doubt they didn't ever teach evolution in Yale or the University of Michigan Medical School in the 1970's.

I don't think you need to learn about evolution in any depth after high school. I don't think it has much direct relevance to a pre-med study corpus.

What? Don't we hear here on Fark that you can't even take an aspirin without evolution? Have you not seen all the Bloom County and Doonsbury cartoons?

GilRuiz1: What? Don't we hear here on Fark that you can't even take an aspirin without evolution? Have you not seen all the Bloom County and Doonsbury cartoons?

There's a difference between medical research and practicing medicine. To be a doctor is to essentially be a very complicated mechanic. If you actually want to change medicine and do research in it, you need to know evolution though.

abb3w

Benchmark SC.6.N.3.1: Recognize and explain that a scientific theory is a well-supported and widely accepted explanation of nature and is not simply a claim posed by an individual. Thus, the use of the term theory in science is very different than how it is used in everyday life.

Benchmark SC.912.N.3.1: Explain that a scientific theory is the culmination of many scientific investigations drawing together all the current evidence concerning a substantial range of phenomena; thus, a scientific theory represents the most powerful explanation scientists have to offer.

I don't agree fully with either one of these. A theory is indeed explanation of nature, is does have to be based on good scientific principles, and is not simply a claim posed by an individual (which is more like a hypothesis). However, it does not have to be widely accepted.

For example, String Theory is a theory. I don't think it's widely accepted at this point. (Although I'm not following things closely; maybe it's popularity has gone up.) It is widely accepted to be a scientifically plausible explanation--not necessarily the right one, but a plausible one--it's just that we haven't had much chance to test it yet.

I am a little disappointed that whoever put these educational standards together overzealously replaced the untruth they didn't like with another untruth.

A better would be somehing like: "A theory is an explanation of nature. Not all theories are widely accepted, but they are based on scientific principles of deduction and not merely on the claim of one individual. Just because something is a theory doesn't mean it doesn't have wide support among scientists."

Oh, this was about Darwin?
I was thinking


But it's only their 140th anniversary.