Gallup poll: "7 in 10 Republicans Don't Believe in Evolution"

[gseeker]

What would be more impressive from your point of view would be to list some palaeontologists who had abandoned the theory of evolution for scientific rather than religious reasons. What you are currently showing us is a bunch of people who let their prior religious convictions dictate what science they can and cannot accept. Now show us someone who is neutral on the matter of religion, but still rejects the evidence for evolution.
My, you are excitable, aren't you?
The original meaning of layman was a person who is not a cleric; this was later extended to mean any non-member of a specified profession or discipline. I don't believe it was ever in general use as a signifier of general stupidity or ignorance. For all the bluster, gseeker, your lay status in the context of evolutionary biology is unchanged.
What do you think makes a species a species? What's your thinking on ring species?

Wow, I see someone has been neglecting their history studies. Lets see, in olden times you had royalty, the clergy, and the peasants primarily. Now out of that who had no religious studies that's rift the peasants. Both royalty and the clergy had religious studies oh and hey they were also the only literature people of their time. By the way several creationists became so after or during their time in college.

 

[gseeker]

I just think it is interesting that 71% consider themselves to be independent more that what views they have on evolution.

 

[s2a]

I just think it is interesting that 71% consider themselves to be independent more that what views they have on evolution.

I’ll offer no comment on the incomprehensible sentence structure above, and only offer this lil’ reminder instead:

“conservative”
as adjective:
"favouring the preservation of established customs, values, etc, and opposing innovation"
as noun:
"a person who is reluctant to change or consider new ideas; conformist"

“liberal”
as adjective:
“favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.”
“relating to or having policies or views advocating individual freedom”
“giving and generous in temperament or behaviour”
“tolerant of other people”
“of or relating to an education that aims to develop general cultural interests and intellectual ability”

as noun:
"a person who has liberal ideas or opinions (see above)"

“independent”

as adjective:
"not influenced or controlled by others in matters of opinion, conduct, etc.; thinking or acting for oneself"
"not influenced by the thought or action of others"
"not dependent; not depending or contingent upon something else for existence, operation, etc."

as noun:
"Politics. a person who votes for candidates, measures, etc., in accordance with his or her own judgment and without regard to the endorsement of, or the positions taken by, any party."

Perhaps most people like to think of themselves as “independent” in most matters of decision making day to day of most personal or mundane…but when religious/political ideology is, or becomes, a part of that process…that’s when the distillation of espousing either a “conservative” or “liberal” perspective comes into focus and definition.

Source for definitions cited

I offer the definitions above in allowance of any defining self-identifications of the individual.

How do you see yourself in thinking for yourself?
conservative?
liberal?
independent?

[footnote: this is not a measure of religious piety, nor test of “purity” of any ideological view…just an opportunity to compare and contrast for oneself]

 

[Jared Jammer]

Isn't it about time pollsters found a better question, or a third option?

Good point. These pollsters not only need to expand the options, they also need to be more descriptive. I didn't even know which option to vote for. I'm not anti-evolution, however, I'm fervently anti-Darwinian evolution. I reject it as 19th-century ignorance.

 

[johnhanks]

Wow, I see someone has been neglecting their history studies. Lets see, in olden times you had royalty, the clergy, and the peasants primarily. Now out of that who had no religious studies that's rift the peasants. Both royalty and the clergy had religious studies oh and hey they were also the only literature people of their time. By the way several creationists became so after or during their time in college.

What the hell has any of this to do with the post it purports to answer? By "literature people", do you by any chance mean literate people? (Massive irony opportunity looming here.) Oh, and how exactly does one rift a peasant?

Now show us [a palaeontologist] who is neutral on the matter of religion, but still rejects the evidence for evolution... What do you think makes a species a species? What's your thinking on ring species?

Do you have anything substantive to say on any of these points?

 

[painted wolf]

Good point. These pollsters not only need to expand the options, they also need to be more descriptive. I didn't even know which option to vote for. I'm not anti-evolution, however, I'm fervently anti-Darwinian evolution. I reject it as 19th-century ignorance.

It's a good thing evolution hasn't been "Darwinian" since the 1930's...

wa:do

 

[Jared Jammer]

It's a good thing evolution hasn't been "Darwinian" since the 1930's...

wa:do

I'll let you in on a little secret: Neo-Darwinian evolution is nothing more than Darwinian evolution with some tacked on ad hoc hypotheses designed to save it from falsification. Random mutation and natural selection -- the pillars of Darwinian evolution -- remain the pillars of Neo-Darwinian evolution.

Scientists are often skeptical of theories that rely on frequent, unsupported adjustments to sustain them. This is because, if a theorist so chooses, there is no limit to the number of ad hoc hypotheses that they could add. Thus the theory becomes more and more complex, but is never falsified. This is often at a cost to the theory's predictive power, however. Ad hoc hypotheses are often characteristic of pseudoscientific subjects.

Gee golly, doesn't that sound familiar, Darwinists? It perfectly describes the history of your pet theory.

 

[painted wolf]

I'll let you in on a little secret: Neo-Darwinian evolution is nothing more than Darwinian evolution with some tacked on ad hoc hypotheses designed to save it from falsification. Random mutation and natural selection -- the pillars of Darwinian evolution -- remain the pillars of Neo-Darwinian evolution.

Gee golly, doesn't that sound familiar, Darwinists? It perfectly describes the history of your pet theory.

Um... random mutation is perfectly observable and testable as is natural selection. In fact Intelligent Design accepts both of these to a large degree unchanged.

I take it though you have never studied Darwin's original theory... or genetics.

I can also only assume that you disagree with Behe on Intelligent Design and the validity of common decent. He is 100% behind common decent and the ability of natural selection and random mutation to produce new species. He limits ID to a few key steps in the process.

wa:do

 

[gseeker]

What the hell has any of this to do with the post it purports to answer? By "literature people", do you by any chance mean literate people? (Massive irony opportunity looming here.) Oh, and how exactly does one rift a peasant?
Do you have anything substantive to say on any of these points?

Funny, so sorry I'm having to respond on a cell phone and when you hit the wrong key it volunteers the wrong word without acknowledging the context of the sentence. Of course most people could read the sentence and infer what the problem was based on the evidence available. Of course your an evolutionist so you are used to trying to make the evidence fit your theory instead of the other way around and once proven wrong you would rather change the subject and be as insulting as possible while doing this. Hmm that's so typical that I'm starting to wonder if you're just a clone of every other evolutionist I've met. Lol

 

[johnhanks]

Funny, so sorry I'm having to respond on a cell phone and when you hit the wrong key it volunteers the wrong word without acknowledging the context of the sentence. Of course most people could read the sentence and infer what the problem was based on the evidence available. Of course your an evolutionist so you are used to trying to make the evidence fit your theory instead of the other way around and once proven wrong you would rather change the subject and be as insulting as possible while doing this. Hmm that's so typical that I'm starting to wonder if you're just a clone of every other evolutionist I've met. Lol

I'm changing the subject? What about

Now show us [a palaeontologist] who is neutral on the matter of religion, but still rejects the evidence for evolution... What do you think makes a species a species? What's your thinking on ring species?

Incidentally, it is possible to correct auto-predict errors on cell phones. Check your manual.

 

[gseeker]

Ring species, lets talk about that. First how do you define a species and how exact is that definition? LOL PW knows where I'm going with this I'm sure. As for a geologist who is neural on religion? Are you serious? Neutrality doesn't exist when it comes to religion.

 

[Thermos aquaticus]

I am a democrat, and I accept evolution as both a fact and a theory.

"[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, Ms sans serif]Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered."--Stephen Jay Gould
[/FONT]

 

[johnhanks]

Ring species, lets talk about that.

OK, go ahead; lord knows we've been waiting long enough.

First how do you define a species and how exact is that definition?

Oh I see, you're not going to address the question at all, just reflect it back at me. Should have guessed.

OK, the word species reflects an attempt by humans to impose a synthetic order on a messy reality. What exist out there in the real world are not neatly packaged and sharply defined taxa, but populations of animals and plants showing varying degrees of genetic relatedness. Some have genomes so similar that they can interbreed and produce fertile offspring; we are happy to call these the same species; others are so genetically different that there is no possibility of their interbreeding, and we are happy to call them different species. The water is muddied by the many instances of populations occupying the ground between these two extremes (such as fruit flies from opposite sides of the Andes which when mated in the lab produce fertile daughters but sterile sons). This untidy reality is exactly what we would expect to see if the theory of evolution is true - populations of organisms in the process of diverging from each other genetically eventually to reach full reproductive isolation and speciation.

As for a geologist who is neural on religion? Are you serious? Neutrality doesn't exist when it comes to religion.

Cop-out. If the theory of evolution is as weakly supported by evidence as you claim, it should be easy for you to find a palaeontologist who professes no particular religion but who rejects the theory on purely scientific grounds.

 

[painted wolf]

The closer you get to actively evolving populations the harder it's going to be to develop a way to separate them.

The original definition of species was developed by the creationist Carl von Linnaeus. He assumed that species were fixed and perfectly distinct from one another. We have since figured out that both of those ideas are mistaken.

Species evolve and there aren't always distinct lines separating them from one another.

wa:do

 

[Jared Jammer]

Um... random mutation is perfectly observable and testable as is natural selection. In fact Intelligent Design accepts both of these to a large degree unchanged.

I never said they weren't. However, there's zero evidence to suggest that either, separate or in combination with one another, is capable of producing the brilliant engineering found throughout the biological world.

I take it though you have never studied Darwin's original theory... or genetics.

Darwin's original theory was published in 1859. While I'm familiar with it, I'm also fully aware that it came from a time of great ignorance.

Perhaps you should be less concerned with Victorian era biology literature and catch up with those of us in the 21st century.

I can also only assume that you disagree with Behe on Intelligent Design and the validity of common decent. He is 100% behind common decent and the ability of natural selection and random mutation to produce new species. He limits ID to a few key steps in the process.

wa:do

Behe's demonstrated that random mutation and natural selection are very limited, hence the title of his book, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. Furthermore, speciation is defined in such a way that it fits well within the boundaries of these limitations, which is why it's irrelevant to the debate.

For those unaware, speciation is microevolution. That is, it's superficial, typically cosmetic, change, rather than macroevolution, which is fundamental change.

The different breeds of dog is probably the most well-known example of speciation, and, as you can see, they present nothing more than superficial change. Their anatomy is fundamentally identical (read: zero macroevolution), however, there is much size/color variation.

The problem is, microevolution cannot be extrapolated to explain macroevolution. You can continue breeding dogs from now until the end of eternity. Accumulating changes to fur coloration and variation in trait size will never produce anything other than dogs with differing fur color and differing sized traits. Lots of speciation; nothing more.

If anyone disagree with this, then I'd like for them to demonstrate how I am wrong.

 

[johnhanks]

The different breeds of dog is probably the most well-known example of speciation...

It's a well-known example of human-directed genetic divergence, certainly, but as far as we know all dogs are in principle interfertile; incipient speciation is much better illustrated by studies of natural populations, like the fruit flies Drosophila willistoni and D. paulistorum, where varying degrees of genetic and reproductive isolation can be analysed. This site deals well with observed instances of speciation.

The problem is, microevolution cannot be extrapolated to explain macroevolution...

Ah, the old refrain. Where exactly, Jared, does one stop and the other begin? Evolution is a divergence of genomes - of A,T,C,G base sequences. What is it that puts a limit on how far that divergence can go? What, in the distant past, would have prevented an A,T,C,G sequence that directed the development of a fertilised egg into an amphibian body from changing over a very long time into a sequence that directed the development of a fertilised egg into a reptilian one?

When you claim that "microevolution cannot be extrapolated", you are positing the existence of a barrier beyond which base sequences cannot change. Please explain to us the nature of this barrier.

 

[Scuba Pete]

I still haven't found any scriptures that contradict micro or macro evolution. I am not sure why this remains such a burning concern among any Christians. You're simply chasing your tail.

 

[mycorrhiza]

The problem is, microevolution cannot be extrapolated to explain macroevolution. You can continue breeding dogs from now until the end of eternity. Accumulating changes to fur coloration and variation in trait size will never produce anything other than dogs with differing fur color and differing sized traits. Lots of speciation; nothing more.

First of all, there has been no real speciation with dogs (as dog is only a subspecies). Second of all, speciation is macroevolution and it has been directly observed several times. If you want to use scientific terms, then use them correctly.

The reason we don't see changes in "kinds" (something that has no scientific basis) is that it takes long time. We see plenty of those changes in the fossil records, though.

It would be great if you could provide evidence for the genetic barrier that allows for change, but only to a certain level!

 

[painted wolf]

I never said they weren't. However, there's zero evidence to suggest that either, separate or in combination with one another, is capable of producing the brilliant engineering found throughout the biological world.

Zero huh.... and how much genetics have you studied?
Do you understand how HOX genes work for example?

Darwin's original theory was published in 1859. While I'm familiar with it, I'm also fully aware that it came from a time of great ignorance.

which is only a problem if you expect him to have gotten everything right. Newton was wrong about a lot of physics, but you don't mock him.

Perhaps you should be less concerned with Victorian era biology literature and catch up with those of us in the 21st century.

I have a degree in Biology... I think I'm pretty caught up.

Behe's demonstrated that random mutation and natural selection are very limited, hence the title of his book, The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. Furthermore, speciation is defined in such a way that it fits well within the boundaries of these limitations, which is why it's irrelevant to the debate.

No he didn't.... writing a bunch of opinions in a pop-sci book isn't demonstrating anything.
Perhaps you missed out on how science works in the 21st. century.

For those unaware, speciation is microevolution. That is, it's superficial, typically cosmetic, change, rather than macroevolution, which is fundamental change.

No... micro is generational change within a population. Macro is change between populations. Intro to genetic and population dynamics stuff here. You can even check the wiki.

The different breeds of dog is probably the most well-known example of speciation, and, as you can see, they present nothing more than superficial change. Their anatomy is fundamentally identical (read: zero macroevolution), however, there is much size/color variation.

Welcome to macroevolution.... Wolves and foxes are examples of macro evolution... as are foxes living in America vs. foxes living in England.

The problem is, microevolution cannot be extrapolated to explain macroevolution. You can continue breeding dogs from now until the end of eternity. Accumulating changes to fur coloration and variation in trait size will never produce anything other than dogs with differing fur color and differing sized traits. Lots of speciation; nothing more.

And your evidence for this is what? A few hundred years of selective breeding.... Show me where macroevolution stops.

If anyone disagree with this, then I'd like for them to demonstrate how I am wrong.

JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
http://blogimages.bloggen.be/tsjokfoto/attach/16147.pdf
Adaptation Reviewed: A Phylogenetic Methodology for Studying Character Macroevolution
Genetica, Volume 112-113, Number 1 - SpringerLink

wa:do

 

[Scuba Pete]

I might have missed it but did Jarred declare his political allegiance? I wonder if he's Republican?