A reader sent me two links to video clips. The contrast is fascinating.
Here’s the first. It’s a nice illustration of the evidence behind our understanding of the evolution of whales, all in 7 minutes.
Now watch a creationist explain whale evolution.
Ouch. He complains that those wicked scientists are trying to turn the bible into a great big joke…but I think this clown does an even better job of that. Try counting the misconceptions — he goes on and on with this story about an animal crawling out of the primordial ooze onto the land and not liking it, and then wishing it could go back into the ocean, where it sucks in its hindlimbs and turns into a whale…and then he calls that story stupid and ridiculous. Guess what: it is! Of course, this ignorant nitwit is the person who made up the story, and it has nothing at all to do with what the evidence actually says.
This is what we have to deal with: morons who think their caricatures are evidence, and this bozo is probably voting for school board members based on how closely they approximate his level of idiocy.
Oh my. The best part is when he quotes a headline:
“Whales May Have Evolved from Raccoon-sized creature,”
. . and then pauses to indicate how obviously absurd that is. Yet he’s had no trouble achieving the mass of a small hippo after spending his first few months in utero as a brine shrimp.
Oh boy, and the guy looks to Vox Day as an intellectual leader. Talk about the ‘tard leading the ‘tard.
You found Geoff Simmons teacher, it would seem.
Seriously, what is it about whales that reveals this yahoo, Simmons, and Berlinski as the gibbering ignoramuses (at least on evolution) that they are? Whales seem simply to draw out the stupid in these people.
Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/2kxyc7
OUCH! My brain hurts from the stupidity of this bufoon. What’s worse, I’m sure he pushed some useful bit of knowledge out of my brain to make way for this. I am absolutely pisssed ov t thsiu more on……..*drools on self in idiocy*
I wonder what the correlation is between being a lunatic creationist and having a Southern accent.
“Oh boy, and the guy looks to
Vox DayTheodore Beale as an intellectual leader. ”Fixed it for ya. Sorry, I couldn’t resist. Vox Day is such a silly nom de plume, and I think we should take every opportunity to call him by his real name, which sounds so i’m-on-the-internets-in-mom’s-basement. He probably knows it, too, which makes it even more satisfying.
Man, can we ignore isolated, babbling idiots like this guy, and instead focus on the bigger, more influential voices?
I wonder what the correlation is between being a lunatic creationist and having a Southern accent.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/316/5827/996
no need to wonder.
Damn. Does [strike] and [/strike] (with the correct brackets) not work for .html here? And I tried so hard. . .
strikeoutno, but [s] and [/s] do.
Thanks ichthyic. You have decreased my stupid!
I can’t wrap my head around which is worse: the painfully moronic idiocy creationists spew out, or the galling fact that these same braindead twits think that they know better than people.
Much, much sexier narrator for Clip #1–Liam Neeson, I believe.
Thanks ichthyic. You have decreased my stupid!
If I could hear that every day (in addition to being able to decrease my own level of stupid), I would be a happy man.
@ 6:38: “I would imagine that the chickens were created on day number 5, before the T-rex’s. At least that’s what the bible says.”
Well fuck me I never read anything about T-rex in my bible! Must have been faulty.
… and in late-breaking news, here’s the most recent bit of pernicious hatemongering idiocy I’ve seen in the news.
Yahoo news link
PZ,
I wrote the music for that show for the Evolution series! I thought the segment on whales was terrific. Thanks for highlighting it!
t
Yes, don’t listen to scientists, its all lies trying to debunk the Bible. But it’s not the scientists fault, it is the Devil. Don’t listen to scientists!
I have a strong urge to make a bunch of stickers á la Dover to put in each and every Gideon Bible that I can get my hands on, saying something like this.
“This bible is made up of stories, not facts. Serious disagreement among biblical scholars has existed for thousands of years about these stories. The stories in this bible should not be taken as literal truth or as facts. There are hundreds of other religious stories throughout the world that contradict and call into question the stories in this bible. This bible should therefore be approached with a spirit of critical consideration.”
(Blatantly stolen from David Ryan, http://www.lawrence.com/blogs/yellowdog/2005/feb/10/mythnotfact/)
Alternatively just stickers like those on cigarettes saying:
ATHEIST GENERAL’S WARNING: Religion Causes Sexism, Hatred And May Result in Genocidal Stupidity.
Yes, don’t listen to scientists, its all lies trying to debunk the Bible. But it’s not the scientists fault, it is the Devil. Don’t listen to scientists!
I have a strong urge to make a bunch of stickers á la Dover to put in each and every Gideon Bible that I can get my hands on, saying something like this.
“This bible is made up of stories, not facts. Serious disagreement among biblical scholars has existed for thousands of years about these stories. The stories in this bible should not be taken as literal truth or as facts. There are hundreds of other religious stories throughout the world that contradict and call into question the stories in this bible. This bible should therefore be approached with a spirit of critical consideration.”
(Blatantly stolen from David Ryan, http://www.lawrence.com/blogs/yellowdog/2005/feb/10/mythnotfact/)
Alternatively just stickers like those on cigarettes saying:
ATHEIST GENERAL’S WARNING: Religion Causes Sexism, Hatred And May Result in Genocidal Stupidity.
Dear Brain,
I’m sorry for exposing you to more stupid than you have ever witnessed before. Your reaction has pained me to the point of dizziness, and I understand completely why you feel that way. Skin and Appendix have also been complaining, so you are not alone in your peril.
I promise, with all of your brother, Heart, that I will no longer subject you to the idiocy that you have just endured.
With Love,
The Body.
I wish the rapture would hurry up and happen so that these pig-ignorant people would just go away!
With this level of intellect, he could even be on a school board.
too precious.
Xians offer me a choice between science’s beauty, logic, and usefulness and their own pinheaded, bigoted bullshit interpretation of a patchwork of mythology, transcribed oral history, and traditional poetry, served up by people like this (or worse).
I have no difficulty in making science my choice, and only the utterly uncurious, stupid, and/or dishonest – all Xians, and nearly all fundamentalists – would even hesistate in making the same decision.
I am NOT working under the power of Satan! I’m working under the power of the committee of voices in my head, and know who Satan is, and they really only care about ice cream.
Off to get some ice cream. The voices just told me to get off this website.
As if there were such a thing.
His ignorance is not evidence.
OT:
Hey all you, go out and look at the moon!
What a stupid moronic shit! Just looking at him leaves me
think that if i saw him sunning on the sand I would
mistake him for a beached whale. Could be he is Jonah?
I wonder what the correlation is between being a lunatic creationist and having a Southern accent.
I must de-lurk long enough to point out that, yes, an alarming number of people with Southern accents do believe the nonsense being spouted by that guy, but I don’t. My accent is unmistakably Southern. Please don’t blame all of us.
What was the ear of a whale doing on the skull of a wolf?
That was an awesome presentation, and they nailed it with the shot of the otter. I mean, first of all, how cute is an otter doing underwater laps with little foot markers? Secondly, it’s painfully obvious that whales and dolphins swim differently than fish. Even an biological ignoramus like myself can’t help but notice it. The shot of the running doberman was a coup de grace.
That first video made me happy. The second one, not so much. I stopped watching it at, “‘Gee, I’d really like to go climb that tree…’ so it magically sprouted legs …”
What’s kinda funny about the pure-creationist critiques of evolution is it’s somehow not equally ridiculous that a super-powered being picked up a lump of clay and magically breathed life into it, then gave the clay a percocet so he could remove a rib in order to make a girl lump of clay. Srsly wtf?
The godbot said two things I kind of liked.
One is that humans might evolve into something else some day. Of course he’s mocking evolution, but hey, I think if we could grow feathers and fly it’d be hella cool.
The other is that science keeps evolving itself — well, um, yeah? If I recall correctly, finding new information and making sense of it is sort of what scientific *discovery* is all about!
This guy reminds me of what Colbert said about W. He believes the same thing on Thursday as he did on Tuesday, regardless of what happened Wednesday. I’d rather go with science – it takes Wednesday into account.
“evolutionary thought process”? jesus christ.
Uh, no buddy. In my part of the world we have a type of Christian called Episcopalians. Most of ’em believe in the findings of science, evolution and all that – not all but most. Sorry you’re surrounded by ignorant gits, that sucks. But lumping “all Xians” in with that crowd isn’t the answer.
Two minutes and 13 seconds. That’s as much as I could take.
Frank Fish: LOL!
“theyre always figurin out something new with evolution”.
said in a condescending tone as though it were a bad thing. it amazes me. why doesnt that apply elsewhere?
cars are stupid. every year they figure out how to get better mileage… this xbox 360 is awful, it has WAY more features than the original xbox. man, desktop computers? f**k that, they used to be made out of vacuum tubes.
Good grief! Watching and listening to that crapulous
deranged moronic shit makes me wonder how anyone cannot
deem this retard totally insane. He looks like he crawled
out of the primordial ooze just last week! Man, religion
is down and out scary and dangerous and has to be checked
before the whole planet rots to insanity!
Most of ’em believe in the findings of science, evolution and all that – not all but most.
so, for the ones that you personally know that don’t, have you spent any time at all trying to convince them otherwise?
spent any time checking out your local school board to make sure they aren’t trying to fuck with good science standards?
spent any time talking to your pastor about how your particular sect has worked out the differences between biblical literalism and reality?
if you have, great. if not… what difference does it make what you believe?
Here’s the link to the article about the raccoon-sized whale ancestor Indohyus. It’s even got a picture of the little guy underwater.
“Two minutes and 13 seconds. That’s as much as I could take.”
Same here. It’s amazing that he can work a fork, let alone a webcam and internet connection.
Loved the first video, that was pretty amazing to watch. Props to this blog on the whole, I think just about every time I come here I learn something new. (Though a depressing amount of time it’s something about the extent of some people’s willful ignorance)
/Physics student, but likes learning about Evo biology
//not fark, but slashies anyway
@Ichthyic #8 : Yeah…which makes one think about Dawkin’s religion-as-child-abuse concept.
@KiwiInOz #20: ROTFL – YES! “The Rapture”: I can has no fur and bee Ceiling Cat mouz killer.
Thanks PZ for posting the first video – it includes the part of the program I have missed several times! The poor deluded creature in the second video could so much use his skill to create a site for learning, as opposed to his current effort: http://www.rapturealert.com/index2.html
“An Israeli parliamentarian says that several earthquakes felt in Israel recently were a consequence of gays and the parliament’s acceptance of them.
Shlomo Benizri of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the way to stop the tremors was for parliament to reverse its trend of liberalising laws concerning homosexuals ”
But clearly Dawkins needs to read more theology (rest of Courtier’s Reply, etc..). Although I do suspect that this particular idiot is an outlier in terms of the world’s Jewish communities.
zy:
Here’s what the Episcopalian Bishops have to say about evolution:
How can I possibly take these people seriously? It’s like saying, Ibuprofen is effective in treating menstrual pain, but that in no way diminishes or contradicts the theory that there are little gnomes wearing spiked shoes and pointy hats doing jumping jacks inside your uterus. What, you want a prize for being able to hold one rational thought and one irrational thought simultaneously? Well, golly, here’s a cookie for you, then.
Well he did use the word ginormous which, as everyone knows, is current scientific jargon. :-)
This isn’t a completely fair comparison; you’ve taken a very well-done, high-budget documentary verse an idiot’s videoblog. AIG’s videos for example are much better done (although the arguments really aren’t that much better). However, we shouldn’t kid ourselves about who the real anti-evolution people are. They have large budgets and are very good at rhetoric. Don’t worry about this idiot; be concerned about the polished ones who can get people to listen to them.
Now that I’ve gotten the serious remark out of the way: Dear God, this guy is an ignoramus. He doesn’t understand how science works at all. I’m always amazed at the doublethink that people like this fellow can assert that scientists are claiming to be infallible and yet at the same time attack scientsts because their ideas are changing. The level of ignorance and doublethink illustrated by that combination is just amazing. And this fellow manages to make both attacks in about 30 seconds.
His knowledge of Genesis is almost as poor as his understanding of science. He seems to be a KJV-onlyist also or he’s just picking that translation out of his own ignorance. Either way, this is so bad as to be almost painful.
You don’t even need a fossil to know that “whales evolved from a raccoon-sized creature”, since everything that’s bigger than a raccoon should have had a raccoon-sized ancestor once.
which makes one think about Dawkin’s religion-as-child-abuse concept.
indeed it does. long before Dawkins put that out there, many of us were already discussing the parallels between religious indoctrination and more standard definitions of cultism.
If you look at what’s been happening in Florida for the last couple of months in response to the new education standards, it becomes obvious that it is a real problem.
otherwise, there would have been no objection to the new standards.
My favorite part was the bit about whales being “the very first named animal in Genesis! The very first!” Well, hey, that makes it all ever so much more convincing.
I have to stand up against this unfair comparison between homo scientificus and homo moronus !
Yeah evolution is so stupid. Rapture alert! Loving god rapture ahead! Looooook ooooouuutttt!!
Here’s my question: Why isn’t this post titled “A Whale of a Tale”?
Gregory @46
yeah. That’s where I had to stop listening. I mean… wow.
The key words for me:
” . . . the evolutionary thought process . . . ”
Hmm — I think that just about sums up all of his ignorance in three words. No random variation, no differential survival or productivity over generations. Just a thought process. Wow. I guess he didn’t put any thought into that video.
Hasn’t he ever heard of the concise one sentence summary of evolution? “The non-random survival of randomly varying replicators.” I’m sorry, but I’m need to leave now and apply evolutionary algorithms to a problem in computer science.
The funny thing is that the word “whales” only appears in two translations. Of course it seems that people have a sick fixation on KJV, but my bet is that the original writers had something more like Nessie in mind. I mean…they lived in the desert.
Crap, my IQ just took a hit… how much more intelligence do I have to lose to become a creationist?
So I’m still kind of very slowly learning about evolution and I was wondering if I could take this opportunity to lay it out as I understand it now and if anyone’s willing to put up with my ignorance, they could tell me where I’m going wrong?
Ok, here’s how I understand it so far, and I apologize if I’m way off: Basically over thousands and thousands of years sometimes offspring of a given species will sometimes have mutations. If the mutations are good and helpful, they breed more and pass on those mutations. If they AREN’T helpful, they don’t breed and die out.
So basically that’s how it works? I feel like I’m getting it wrong and I don’t want to talk about it to other people and completely misrepresent it.
I know this is a dumb thing to ask and most of you understand it WAY better than me, but I’m only just starting to learn about this, so I hope you’ll forgive me.
Crap, my IQ just took a hit… how much more intelligence do I have to lose to become a creationist?
I believe the class characteristics state that a Creationist have an IQ no higher than 9, their alignment can be lawful stupid, neutral stupid, or chaotic stupid. They use blunt weapons at a -1 HP penalty-per-round because they keep hitting themselves on the head (-2 HP for edged weapons). Any race other than elves can become a Creationist, but trolls predominate. Consult your manual for more details.
Ok, here’s how I understand it so far, and I apologize if I’m way off: Basically over thousands and thousands of years sometimes offspring of a given species will sometimes have mutations. If the mutations are good and helpful, they breed more and pass on those mutations. If they AREN’T helpful, they don’t breed and die out.
Almost. What happens — and this is still a simplistic description, because real life is complicated in the details — is that organisms with mutations that are useful tend to leave more offspring; both may or may not have them, but overall, the bad lineages with more harmful mutations tend to not leave as many descendants. Over time this means they get swamped by the luckier lineages with better, more effective mutations. Some harmful mutations are not greatly harmful, or have a mixed harmful/beneficial effect, so that complicates the simple view. (And there’s a bit of luck, where, for instance, a small population that can’t move about very far can be wiped out by local bad conditions even though the population is just bursting with all the right stuff.)
There’s other factors at play, such as genetic drift, but the basic, simple, view is there. As I mentioned, these descriptions are simple in an overall way, but complicated when you get to the details (kinda like how a game can be simple to describe but difficult when you get to playing — golf is just knocking a ball into hole, for instance).
Consult your manual for more details.
on a tangent, DnD geeks like myself often appreciate the Order of the Stick:
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html
Ah, thanks, QrazyQat! I had completely forgotten to take into account things like luck, which was a huge thing to forget. It does make sense, though, like you said, that a really great, fantastic species could be wiped out just through sheer bad luck.
Also kind of scary to think about…
Watching that creationist video is almost like falling down a flight of stairs. The pauses in his speech are almost like watching the next stair leap up at you before it hits you in the face.
Here’s my one-sentence summary: In a contest of exponential growth, the guy with the bigger exponent wins.
October Mermaid (#54)
Your summary is close. In addition to random mutations that occur, there is also selection process imposed by the environment. In other words, evolution occurs when random mutations are selected for or against by environmental pressures.
The classic example used for years in biology textbooks is that of the Peppered Moth. The original moth had light colored wings. Because of heavy industrialization in northern England, many trees were coated in a thin layer of soot. During this period, light-colored moths nearly disappeared, and instead were replaced by a dark-colored version. The theory is that the dark-colored moths were better able to blend in with the now dark colored plants and better avoid predation by birds. When northern England was eventually cleaned up via environmental laws, etc. the light-colored moths made a return and dark-colored moths are now rare.
Now there is some controversy about the methodology used in the original study, but scientists basically agree (afaik) that this is what happened: a mutation occurred that gave some moths slightly darker coloration, and was selected upon to give them an advantage over the light-colored moths.
Note that in this case the dark-colored moths would probably never had become prevalent in the population without the selection pressure of environmental change.
This is one example of how evolution works. Also note that selection pressure can come from a whole range of different environmental or reproductive factors.
It is a terrible thing to say and I apologise to any Southerners, but I am getting to the point whereby the caveman in me (Mongo) wants to kill whenever he hears that accent. MMmmmmmm Mongo hungry.
It would set a far better example that, upon hearing falsehoods concerning evolution made in a Southern drawl, that you immediately point out the falsehood in a civilized fashion, rather than indulge your baser (but good-intentioned) instincts.
Engage in violence only when the person is violently recalcitrant in his or her ignorance, please.
That is so not fair. People like him make satire almost impossible. How much lower can you go without it dembskifying into mere fart noises?
The rapture video guy almost made me yell at my monitor when he mentioned humans evolving into aquatic creatures for “a few millenia” before evolving again.
I don’t know if he is so stupid as to take the “mil” in millennia to mean million, or to simply have no understanding at all of the timescales involved. I also can’t figure out which would be worse.
Oh, I also have been told that I have a southern accent, but only by a guy I worked with in San Francisco. Trust me, back here in the real South, it’s no exaggeration to point to Boomhauer(spelling?) from King of the Hill as an example of what I hear every day.
Engage in violence only when the person is violently recalcitrant in his or her ignorance, please.
dogpile on the Steven?
yes?
Fuck.
The first video was great, but after listening to most of the second video with my head held in my hands, I looked up to discover that the stupid had oozed out of my monitor and was dripping from all sides of my desk. It’ll take me forever to clean that shit up.
Absolutely not.
I don’t want to get his stupidness germs on me, and, besides, my morningstar is in the shop.
Dang ol’ whales man…blowholes ‘n hip bones n’ swim swim swimmin’ like a lil’ ol’ otter, tell you what, evolution, man, just like that.
If that creature was made in god’s image, I’m gathering god didn’t get too many dates in college.
In the past I’ve made it my personal policy (my singular moral action in life, if you will) to not comment on videos when I haven’t watched the full clip. I felt it would be ignorant of me to comment without being totally informed or instructed. However, this idiot just blew my policy out the window. I just couldn’t, could NOT, watch the whole thing. I’m doing quite well destroying my brain cells by myself through copious amounts of wine, I refuse to lose them by listening to that tripe.
Homos transitioning back to the water due to environmental adaptiveness? Perhaps, in the future after the polar ice caps have melted and most of Earth is underwater, humans will have mutated into semi-water dwelling mariners. WATERWORLD!
Inkadu @28,
I found that I too couldn’t make it past that statement about wanting to climb trees. Once that level of stupid has been broached, I have no need to waste my time on anything following it.
I did love the first video though. It’s just phenomenal how much we have been able to learn, despite the vast quantity of what we may never know. It makes me a little more hopeful somehow.
Oh dear, I found the amount of rum that it takes for the first 4 minutes of that man’s argument to sorta make sense. Yes, from a lay or drunk perspective, the idea of animals going in and out of the water sounds odd. But I not drunk enough to ignore the idea of adaptation to ideal conditions over many generations.
In order to go any further, I would risk acute alcohol poisoning.
Thanks for posting that first film (the science one)!! My kids loved it — they watched it twice and were so excited that they went and explained to their dad what they’d just learned about whales!! (I didn’t show them the second film — I’m not trying to shield them from this sort of thing, but since they’re only 6 and 4 they’re a little young for Bible stories.)
This is a little off-topic, but I posted an amusing comparison between the science/biology diagrams my son likes to draw with the religious drawings my brother and I were doing at the same age.
@Josh #1 Thanks for starting my day with a good laugh.
I didn’t even have to start the 2nd video to know its contents. Just that stupid dumbed-down look was enough. The Rupture(sic) Alert should have warned me about the sheer depth of the stupidity, though. Next time I’ll be warned. I now have a new stupidity test – if someone says ‘Voila! and pronounces it ‘Wallah!’ I shall ignore everything else they say…
Great first video. Did not bother with the second one.
God-created Leviathans should only swim around where they belong- in Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick or, The Whale.
Cute otter.
The first video was great,very informative and well done. The second I was not able to watch it all as the stupidity was making my head hurt. That fucktard has taken stupid to a new level which will be hard for anyone else to reach. In his case I think his mother if he had one should have kept the afterbirth and thown out the baby, or maybe she did
Quite frankly some people are too stupid to understand the theory of evolution, with or without fundamentalist religion.
The best we can hope for is that they are made to realize that mouthing off in public about their absurd beliefs will only result in ridicule. Or as Monty Python might put it…
Bubba the babbling cracker. He probably votes for school board members. That’s why we have to pay attention to him.
Perhaps, in the future after the polar ice caps have melted and most of Earth is underwater, humans will have mutated into semi-water dwelling mariners. WATERWORLD!
’bout time, I say.
Dagon is waiting to reclaim dominion.
…oh yeah, Cthulhu is waiting to eat the rejects; which most will actually consider a preferable fate.
(he always gets pissed off when I don’t mention that)
The hillbilly doesn’t mention that the bible changes its story. (I like the way he pronounces “bible” as “babble”).
In Genesis One, gawd makes the plants and the animals and then man and woman, at the same time.
In Genesis Two, gawd makes man and then the plants and animals, the latter of which the man named. After that, gawd finally makes woman. So which is it Buddy?
Furthermore, gawd seems to have created the morning an the evening twice: on the first day and the fourth day. Depending on interpretation, gawd may have also created them on the third day. How is that possible Buddy?
Then there is Genesis 2:24, “For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother, and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one flesh.”
Since neither Adam nor Eve had a father or mother, that doesn’t make any sense.
Bride of Shrek:
Each of us uniquely created? Someone should tell him about sex.
#61
I see what you mean, but I have one (very stupid) question about this: do these changes happen on purpose, sort of knowingly (I don’t mean by a creator, of course, I mean on a genetic level or something along those lines)?
Or are they just random mutations that happen to be exactly what is needed, and so it works out well? For example, would it be possible that this mutation never occurred at all and the moths just completely died out? Or do environmental pressures always result in a change that is needed?
I know that’s kind of a silly thing to ask, but I’m sort of fuzzy on this aspect.
@october mermaid.
The process is not conscious or deliberate in any sense. If you have a population of a million moths, half of which are black, and half of which are white, the white moths (assuming that environement) are more readily predated upon by birds. Thus over time the 50/50 split changes drifts. 55/45, 60/40, 90/10. Eventually white moths reach some kind of balance between predation and procreation, or possibly get wiped out altogether. Occasionaly, white moths will randomly pop up (where the genetic potential conttinues t exist), and if conditions have changed in their favour (reduced pollution, predators that no longer recognise white moths as food), the population will begin to swing back.
It is merely the environment, in conjunction with random mutation, that forces species into a given niche. There is nothing planned or deliberate about it.
Just wanted to coment about the “whales were the first animal to be mentioned in the Bible” bullshit –
In current Hebrew, the word in qestion actually means “aligators”…
Ofcourse, Hebrew was an almost-dead language for 2000 years, so nobody can say for sure what this word used to mean when it was written. Building half your theory on a word that nobody knows the meaning of is even (a bit) more stupid than building all you theory on a thouthands-years-old text.
October Mermaid,
“Or do environmental pressures always result in a change that is needed?”
No, and species dissappear. Example : the Yangtse Dolphin, a freshwater Dolphin that used to be found in China didn’t benefit from a mutation that could have made him better adapted to a more poluted environment, and now it is extinct.
The mutations may be purely random (coppying errors) or influenced by external agents (radiations, exposure to specific chemicals, etc…), but in any case, they create variations in the gene pool, and the less favorable (deleterious) mutations are reduced in frequency in the gene pool by natural selection, while the more favorable (beneficial or advantageous) mutations tend to accumulate. This results in evolutionary change.
@October Mermaid #84
As best anyone can tell mutations occur essentially at random. While the environment may help to cause mutations, there’s no reason to believe that an environment favors beneficial mutations for that environment.
I’ll add that saying “exactly what’s needed” is a bit off the mark because there doesn’t have to be any need involved.
Instead a beneficial mutation is one that happens to increase reproductive success (on average) in the members of the population that carry it. The population may have been doing just fine on the whole, but any mutations that make their carriers able to compete better will tend to become more common with time in the population.
#’s 85 and 87, Brian Coughlan and negenropyeater,
Ah, thanks! I think I understand it now. It’s really nice having this all fall into place. I had misunderstood evolution for a very long time, but learning about it now, it makes a whole lot more sense than I ever thought it would have, and it’s kind of exciting.
#88 Escuerd
Oops, I posted before I saw your reply, sorry about that! Thanks, as well. I feel like I’m finally getting a handle on the basics of this. It just amazes me that they never taught this to us at the school I went to, because it’s so simple and it fits so well.
No worries October Mermaid. I’m always posting things too late anyway. I hope it was helpful in some way nonetheless.
both videos no longer available =(
Ummmm…Urr….OK – after only 3 minutes of that video, I had to shut it off. I have to remember not to watch silly creationists before I go to school – it breaks my concentration!
I like it when he says that all of a sudden “like magic” one animal evolved into another. But then he goes on to describe the Genesis which, apparently, is not magic at all. It is reasonable…
And also: “…the bible presents a far more reasonable story… logically, rationally,…” Ha ha ha ha!
. . . . ahh, a lovely illustration of one of the plus points of the Southern accent! : )
Maybe it’s just me basing too much on initial impressions (and like many people here I didn’t make it much past the second minute) but I suspect that expecting a comprehensible literary analysis of any primary text from this guy is rather like expecting an intelligible thesis on quantum mechanics from a chihuahua on LSD.
For some reason whenever I see a web site or video etc with “Jesus is coming” I always want to follow it up with “Quick Look Busy”. But maybe thats just me
I liked ;
“It’s far more EASY, for ME, to believe, logically, and rationally, that a whale is a whale and has always been a whale, as we are told it to be the case, in Genesis chapter 1, than for ME to believe, (a story which is being told to us by them satanic scientists)”
Yep, and I’m sure you are right.
And he doesn’t even see where the irony is, in that statement.
#85 Brian Coughlan
more readily predated upon by birds
Sorry to sound like a pedant, but it annoys me when educated people use the verb ‘predate’ to mean ‘prey upon’. ‘Predate’ means to occur at an earlier time.
From 8:07 in the clip:
“Scientists are always figuring out something new about Evolution and it changes the whole thing.”
He says that like it’s a bad thing.
“In my part of the world we have a type of Christian called Episcopalians.”
Like the enlightened Episcopalian reverend in this video who regrettably officiated at my wedding.
http://www.godtube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=cea0bd4253d5721284bc
@ #98:
you’re right, but it has two meanings.
2 predate: prey on or hunt for; “These mammals predate certain eggs”
To the rest: This combination of videos has inspired me to request advice from the general public here, who I know will have some ideas for me.
My father is a rational, kind man, but he believes in intelligent design. He believes it in a “too much wonder, a God is responsible”, smiling, agnostic sort of way. He is very skeptical about natural selection no matter what I try to explain to him. He has a hard time believing in the idea of chance mutations, no matter how often I try to explain the long, long timeline that comes into play.
He’s one of those Christians who believes the entire Bible is one big metaphor — that God broke it down into simple terms that humans could understand. He also doesn’t believe in Hell. Basically, he’s chosen the “kind God”.
I love my father and he’s my best friend… but this is the first time in my life (I’m almost 26) where I desperately want to know that he’s at least trying to think critically for himself.
At this point in his life, is it better if I don’t try to make him think, or is there some open, foolproof approach that I can take to make him see why it’s a shame not to try to understand the wonders of the natural world?
It’s just making me sad on a daily basis. I want to talk to him about this kind of stuff, these scientific findings, but he’s a huge skeptic and I can’t help but think it’s because he just has gone this long without knowing where to investigate first.
Maybe this is a caricature? I certainly couldn’t have made anything more satirical than this already is. He is so stereotypical its almost unreal…
#90 October Mermaid:
You bet it’s exciting! Evolution is amazing when you start looking into it, and soon it starts making intuitive sense as well. Richard Dawkins wrote a book called “River Out of Eden” that’s a fairly basic, easy-to-read introduction to evolution, you should check it out. I read it when I was like 13 and have been hooked on biology ever since!
Creature A with two eyes, a spine, a brain, nostrils, etc can’t have turned into Creature B with two eyes, a spine, a brain, nostrils, etc because the two creatures are just too different. This is a GOOFY story.
A more realistic story is that a clump of dirt turned instantly into a fully formed and living man. Because… huh… God did it?
I think this guy makes a good point, a point that everyone seems to be missing. These people want certainty. Scientific discovery frightens them because it isn’t certain in the sense they want. The bible is (to them)the final say on everything. Science doesn’t even pretend to have that kind of finality on everything.
Does that make sense?
#105: It does make sense. Sadly, it’s the reason thousands of people have gone their whole lives without thinking critically for themselves on really important matters — but you know that.
Remember all the slow kids from school? The ones who “stopped” around the ninth grade? Here we have an example.
Oh, Holydust. I know how you feel. Not so much because of parents. They are a very different problem, but interaction with them has taught me that it’s never “too late”. I know the situation, though, because of a friend who is exactly like that. I believe a lot depends on the personality and discussion style of the other person, but most of all, on their willingness to “risk” it. The “kind God” is a very comforting idea, and letting go of it is scary; the uncertainty that seems to result initially appears threatening compared to the safety of belief. It’s much easier to rip into the nastier kind of theist than to convince someone you love without hurting them.
I’ve only just gotten my friend to start thinking about science, slowly, with many assurances of “I’m not trying to forcibly “convert” you, but this is important to me, and I’d just like you to understand how and why I see things the way I do. It would make me really happy if you understood me, because that would bring us closer together”. I don’t know what “small example” to recommend to you; in my case, it was good to pick something I was excited about because it made my friend want to listen. For example, from the (non-lunatic-produced) video above, I would pick something as simple as the swimming style of mammals and whales. I’m not a biologist myself (boy, do I feel inadequate…), but, or maybe because of that, I thought this comparatively tiny little snippet was not only beautiful but powerful. I’d known about the different movement styles before, but never made the connection.
Tell him about many such little things like this; ones that *you* are excited about. It’s not the foolproof method you asked for. But with a bit of luck, if you are excited and have talked about it, he might want to understand what made you so enthusiastic about the topic. One of the best moments in this slow, slow process, at least for me, was the shift from “yeah, that’s what you believe” to “hmm… I’ll have to think about that”. And I’m willing to give my friend all the time he needs. After all, he’s giving me the space to talk to him about something that he has more or less rejected already — not the usual creationist tactics. With a bit of luck, the willingness to take a closer look might emerge. Small steps.
If not, you tried. What seems to be the key for my “gently delusioned” friend is that he is starting to think for himself because he is genuinely wondering about what I believe; I haven’t told him “this is wrong” or “this is stupid” or “this is what you should believe”. Anything he might arrive at will be largely down to his own thought, and he does acccept that as a valid opinion ;).
Good Luck!
Of course, my friend might be on a religious blog right now, advising people how to gently convert atheists. :D
And…sorry for turning this into “War and Piece: The extended version”.
The most telling part was when he kept saying “we’re supposed to believe this?” No, you idiot, that’s the difference. It isn’t faith. If you want to object to it you have to do the work. And it’s a lot of work. No one can do it all in every field, which is why we rely on the people who have done the work.
@ Berto #53 :”Crap, my IQ just took a hit… how much more intelligence do I have to lose to become a creationist?”
Ummmm – – – all of it???
I live in Atlanta, and from what I’ve seen, people like this doofus (Plural – ‘doofi’??) are NOT in the minority, and this guy actually speakes for a goodly portion of them.
I liked the first one better. That creationist guy has it all wrong.
The second video was quite informative. I never knew that a creature could just decide they wanted to evolve into something else.
If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go evolve regeneration and x-ray vision.
“Just wanted to coment about the “whales were the first animal to be mentioned in the Bible” bullshit –
In current Hebrew, the word in qestion actually means “aligators”…”
@ Tamar, #86
Yeah, and did you notice he even mentions fowl before whales after he says whales are mentioned first? If he can’t even get his bible straight, how can anyone expect him to get science straight?
I couldn’t make it 3 minutes on “rapture alert”, but what I did enjoy from it was when he said “magically…wallah”. Oh, I laughed. Where’s your magic man NOW, goober?
It’s funny how he picked to talk about ‘whales’ as “described in Genesis” because in the original Hebrew it says “alligators”!
But surly, it’s impossible that he’s reading a _badly translated_ book right? It’s the “holy” bible!
Does he think that saying that “Evolution is evolving” is somehow a put down. I guess the really unfortunate thing is that religion isn’t.
I never knew that a creature could just decide they wanted to evolve into something else.
It’s also a (certain) fringe science speciality that evolution allows you to pick your desired trait from any animal on earth and evolve that! It’s unbelievably handy, apparently, but somehow has escaped notice by science at large, because they are part of a close-minded ivory tower cabal.
The word for today is: Ginormous!
Brian Coughlan and Holydust:
You’re right. I give up. “Predated” is an acceptable adjective. The online OED has its first usage in that august publication the American Journal of Sociology in 1941.
I am living in the past, it seems. But it still grates as a word. It’s not like there were no predators pre-1941…
The good video is no longer available at that link.
It’s good to have the rational counterbalance.
catta:
no, the advice was excellent. I really do appreciate it. you’re right — the point in this for me is not to convert him, but to share my wonder in the whole topic with him just like I’ve shared the wonder I’ve had in everything else in my life. I think “gently delusioned” is one of the better terms.
It makes me feel bad, because he really did get the handbook when it came to parenting. he encouraged me to think for myself and not to just take things at face value, and he taught me the importance of being a good, intelligent person. he didn’t use the Bible to do it, either… and so it hurts me that for the first time in my life, I truly feel (as an adult) that I see something true that he doesn’t. and no one wants to feel that way about a parent they’re close to… so I suppose that’s why I’m so anxious to express myself in this regard. It’s like my psyche is saying “this is icky — fix it, get back on the same page”.
And I know that’s unheard of for most people and their parents, age gaps causing rifts in understanding generally, but when you’ve been as close as we have for this many years, you understand why suddenly being on different wavelengths can just feel wrong and cruddy and depressing.
Well, you understand — you’re going through it the same way with your friend. But I really do appreciate the advice and think that your “share the wonder, don’t provoke challenge” approach may be best, considering that that’s the entire purpose of my wishing to talk about it with him.
Thank you sincerely. :D I’ll see what he thinks about that whale video. (The one without all the stupid and crazy.)
Jit: no worries — to be honest, I feel your pain. Words that are “acceptable” but just sound wrong, I tend not to use.
“Nauseous” is accepted to mean “nauseated” now. I used to yell at people for that in high school.
“Ya Know”, hehe, I am so sick of people quoting biblical crap to promote their claims against evolution. The bible is not science! Oh wait he said that science is the work of satan. Oh this changes everything!
People like this take no responsibility for their false claims, they tell their sheep this nonsense and their sheep believe it no questions asked! If nothing else this explains the bible belt.
The first video was a thing of beauty.
The second one was completely craptastic. I think that creationist wields both blunt and edged weapons, mostly on himself.
Props to inkadu, I LOL’d!!
the astute creationist has cleared up every question I could possibly have had… except for one –
why are creationists always so redneck?
It’s always these blue-collar south hicks who didn’t
go to college that are trying to teach everyone the
“true” sciences.
Hope he doesn’t mind when, instead of a doctor, he gets
a fellow southern hick “healer” next time he needs a
major operation.
haha!
Someone tell Billy Bob that the Barn’s on Fire…anything to get him off his computer…
the painfully moronic idiocy creationists spew out, or the galling fact that these same braindead twits think that they know better than people.
Gyaaaaah. I wandered around the pinhead’s site to find his excuse for claiming that the Rapture is about to happen, and found this: http://www.rapturealert.com/signsofhiscoming.html
And guess what? One of the “signs” they’ve constructed is that people will hate and scoff at Xianity! Yes, not only do they want to be seen as the underdogs — they cast all non-Xians as haters because they think it will hasten their chance to destroy the world!
So, one more reason why even agnostics and passive atheists get ignored or else cast as being among the militant (until even the pacifists get fed up with being persecuted and finally do join the angry mob here)… Bloody psychotic, these cultists are.
Dang it, PZ! My IQ dropped 50 points just listening to the first three minutes of RaptureAlert’s spew, I mean spiel. Don’t do that to us again! Oh, the stupid – burning, burning……
jbs
Forget Indohyus–I believe we’ve found Idiohyus! One eye droops lower than the other; jowels suggest it eats mostly steak and potatoes. Skull structure suggests modern intelligence, but archeological evidence suggests something much more primitive.
Damn, that guy looks frighteningly like my old boss. The company forced out one of the best bosses I’d ever had, and replaced him with the worst one I’d ever had, and though he said/did a lot of stupid stuff, none of it was quite as dumb as what this numbskull said in this video.
Seriously. “Remember, a few months ago, we were told that the T-Rex was still around” …did I miss something???
His big bone of contention (ok, one of them) is that science keeps changing. Well…yeaahhh…that’s the idea, pal. Science is a process, not a fixed idea. I can give you pat answers to anything if I’m just making sh** up, but if you want real, meaningful answers, you have to be ready to accept that those answers might change as we learn more.
As for that Chapter 1 of Genesis he’s so fond of quoting: let’s not forget that it states clearly that man and woman were created together, before the animals. Chapter 2 (the one most often cited by creationists) says that man was created, then animals, then woman. Whose story is changing now, brainiac?
The most astounding thing i heard in that video was applying the adverb “magically” to (his version of) evolutionary processes as a derogatory term! What, poofing things into existence isn’t magic???
I enjoyed the first clip so much, I decided to track it down and place the entire 8 hour series on my website here: http://tinyurl.com/2ldq54
Thx Lucas !
And congratulations for your presentation on Atheism.
Continuing my earlier tangent (#74), Nico (6 yrs) asked me if he could watch the whale evolution clip a few more times today. Then he drew a basilosaurus (note the tiny hind legs).
See also my (armchair) science posts including more of Nico’s biology diagrams, plus scroll down for some amusing discussion of whale mating habits.
Nice ad hominem, but no cigar. In truth, my “sect” does not suport biblical literalism. Their public statements are readily available.
Holy Shit! The chicken came before the T-Rex!?!? Why has this information been suppressed? That destroys my whole world view!
I saw the guy has a response vid to comments here (or more correctly, to the other vid on whale evolution here, sent by readers…)
I *really* want to watch (er….) maybe just to “know” he tried to explain rather – “watching” is best done by those stronger than me – the primate evolution report in PNAS on a “One Ounce Mississippian” that the NY Times has mentioned.
Really – someone send the guy the articles conserned. I await his next vid.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/04/science/04prim.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
(See today’s NY Times Science section)
Just hear me out before any Critz, some say the whale evo from a raccoon like animal some say coyo but don’t forget that this all took 45 milliom years for it to finally be done. And some animals today are begining to evo also like lion developed a skill to swim. BTW i haven’t seen the vid lol. because im on a school PC. i’ll look all of this through when i get home. also the raccon/coyo spend all it’s time round water. so it’s obv that it’s going to adapted to water(sorry for my spelling) plz reply and let me know if i am lost or if u agree