Yeah, but he’s wrong about evolution and this ad attacking illegal immigrants is the most distasteful thing his campaign has made yet. Mark my words, this stuff is going to hurt Paul’s crossover support.
Goddamn, two strikes in the last two days. The bloom is falling off this rose.
Yeah, I’ll second the immigration thing (although, I still think that the welfare state is much more his target than immigration—after all, he did call Mexicans the scapegoat for our increasingly ill economic condition).
But, I fail to see what his views on macro-evolution have to do with his Presidency. That is, unless he intends to give us a daily lesson on scientific theory, which I doubt. The guy will likely have his hands full peeling back the empire and restoring the Bill of Rights. No?
Amber,
It’s not that I think his views on evolution will affect the way he governs. It won’t. I’d just like more clarity from him on the issue because I think it says something about they way he thinks. I’m sure there’s more to Paul’s views that what is shown in the little video. If he’s a skeptic of the sort that Fred Reed and others are, then I’m fine with that. But if he’s a skeptic for religious reasons then it’s more troublesome to me.
steve:
Fred acknowledges that the evidence for evolution–that is, descent with modification–is very strong. For example, even though the fossil record has gaps (how could it not?) and our knowledge is therefore incomplete, what we do see is nevertheless consistent with evolution: bird-like dinosaurs show up earlier in time than do full-blown birds; lizards appear before snakes, and so on and on. And then there is evolution in contemporary populations, with evolved pathogen resistance to antibiotics being one of the strongest examples. Identifying ongoing evolution in human populations is harder to do and there is disagreement about the nature of ongoing evolutionary change, if any, in contemporary humans. But, the fossil record is clear: ape-like hominids appear before our own glorious species.
The challenge for rational thinkers is to offer testable explanations for evolutionary pattern. This is an inherently difficult task because evolutionary science seeks to identify the reasons for why something happened in the past (except for the pathogen example where we can observe the changes). Disagreement arises among scientists regarding the cause of the patterns, but no sane scientist questions the evolutionary pattern per se.
Now, Fred is correct to complain that evolutionist appear to resort all too often to rhetorical arm waving to come up with hypotheses. I see this tendency is some, but not all, of my evolutionary biologist colleagues and it makes me crazy too. I sense that an intellectual laziness has arisen in some areas of evolutionary study. But again, lazy thinking regarding the cause of patterns should not be construed as skepticism regarding the validity of the pattern itself. These are really separate realms of study.
Fred also suggests that evolutionary thinking has become a religious preoccupation. To the extent that scientists willy nilly propose untestable explanations for patterns, then I think that he might be correct about this. But to reject the entire field of evolutionary science because of a few lazy thinkers, some of whom receive an inordinate amount of media attention, would be like rejecting study of human history because of, say, Holocaust denial. A life without evolutionary study would be unimaginably impoverished.
My feeling about the state of evolutionary science is that we don’t know nearly as much about the cause of evolution as we think we do. I think that a lot of scientists, especially evolutionary geneticists, would agree with that sentiment. There are inklings of major paradigm shifts in thinking about evolutionary causation, but it’s too early to say yet. I wish that more scientists would read works by thoughtful lay people like Fred, but most are too busy chasing the next pot of grant money, getting tenure, and other similarly anti-science obsessions, but so it goes.
just seen more cheerleading for the “US to act” in pakistan on fox news, some idiot suggesting Barak Obama had it right when he said the US should go into pakistan if the Musharaff regime fails to catch “high value targets”, the anchor replied “looks like we’ll have to go in and sort things out as usual”.
You’re right, Oscar. Hox timing is important. But we’re still left with the problem of explaining why natural selection favors one pattern of gene expression over other patterns. That’s the hard part to figure out.
Yeah, but he’s wrong about evolution and this ad attacking illegal immigrants is the most distasteful thing his campaign has made yet. Mark my words, this stuff is going to hurt Paul’s crossover support.
Goddamn, two strikes in the last two days. The bloom is falling off this rose.
Yeah, I’ll second the immigration thing (although, I still think that the welfare state is much more his target than immigration—after all, he did call Mexicans the scapegoat for our increasingly ill economic condition).
But, I fail to see what his views on macro-evolution have to do with his Presidency. That is, unless he intends to give us a daily lesson on scientific theory, which I doubt. The guy will likely have his hands full peeling back the empire and restoring the Bill of Rights. No?
Amber,
It’s not that I think his views on evolution will affect the way he governs. It won’t. I’d just like more clarity from him on the issue because I think it says something about they way he thinks. I’m sure there’s more to Paul’s views that what is shown in the little video. If he’s a skeptic of the sort that Fred Reed and others are, then I’m fine with that. But if he’s a skeptic for religious reasons then it’s more troublesome to me.
Fair enough:)
MikeL:
How would you respond to those issues broken down by Fred Reed?
Dude, where’s the show?
steve:
Fred acknowledges that the evidence for evolution–that is, descent with modification–is very strong. For example, even though the fossil record has gaps (how could it not?) and our knowledge is therefore incomplete, what we do see is nevertheless consistent with evolution: bird-like dinosaurs show up earlier in time than do full-blown birds; lizards appear before snakes, and so on and on. And then there is evolution in contemporary populations, with evolved pathogen resistance to antibiotics being one of the strongest examples. Identifying ongoing evolution in human populations is harder to do and there is disagreement about the nature of ongoing evolutionary change, if any, in contemporary humans. But, the fossil record is clear: ape-like hominids appear before our own glorious species.
The challenge for rational thinkers is to offer testable explanations for evolutionary pattern. This is an inherently difficult task because evolutionary science seeks to identify the reasons for why something happened in the past (except for the pathogen example where we can observe the changes). Disagreement arises among scientists regarding the cause of the patterns, but no sane scientist questions the evolutionary pattern per se.
Now, Fred is correct to complain that evolutionist appear to resort all too often to rhetorical arm waving to come up with hypotheses. I see this tendency is some, but not all, of my evolutionary biologist colleagues and it makes me crazy too. I sense that an intellectual laziness has arisen in some areas of evolutionary study. But again, lazy thinking regarding the cause of patterns should not be construed as skepticism regarding the validity of the pattern itself. These are really separate realms of study.
Fred also suggests that evolutionary thinking has become a religious preoccupation. To the extent that scientists willy nilly propose untestable explanations for patterns, then I think that he might be correct about this. But to reject the entire field of evolutionary science because of a few lazy thinkers, some of whom receive an inordinate amount of media attention, would be like rejecting study of human history because of, say, Holocaust denial. A life without evolutionary study would be unimaginably impoverished.
My feeling about the state of evolutionary science is that we don’t know nearly as much about the cause of evolution as we think we do. I think that a lot of scientists, especially evolutionary geneticists, would agree with that sentiment. There are inklings of major paradigm shifts in thinking about evolutionary causation, but it’s too early to say yet. I wish that more scientists would read works by thoughtful lay people like Fred, but most are too busy chasing the next pot of grant money, getting tenure, and other similarly anti-science obsessions, but so it goes.
ml
just seen more cheerleading for the “US to act” in pakistan on fox news, some idiot suggesting Barak Obama had it right when he said the US should go into pakistan if the Musharaff regime fails to catch “high value targets”, the anchor replied “looks like we’ll have to go in and sort things out as usual”.
Hox genes, and the timing of their expression, explain a lot of the diversity of species.
Divergence in chromosome numbers explains a lot too.
You’re right, Oscar. Hox timing is important. But we’re still left with the problem of explaining why natural selection favors one pattern of gene expression over other patterns. That’s the hard part to figure out.
Happy new year.