17 ms·

I think there's an argument that not knowing anything about, say, dinosaurs, is probably fine. But "knowing" very wrong things about the age of the earth or evo

by patmcc 3y ago

I think there's an argument that not knowing anything about, say, dinosaurs, is probably fine. But "knowing" very wrong things about the age of the earth or evolution being real can lead to people making decisions that are terrible for everyone. Think antibiotic resistant bacteria as a simple example. And there's a real cost to society if there's some fraction of society that don't believe climate change could possible be real.

aleph_minus_one 3y ago
> Think antibiotic resistant bacteria as a simple example. That is why I explicitly wrote "macroevolution" and not "evolution". The emergence antibiotic-resilient bacteria is a phenomenon of microevolution, whose existence is, as far as I am aware, much less controversial in evangelical Christian circles. To my understanding, the offending topic in these evangelical Christian circles rather seems to be whether macroevolution and the formation of species can be suitably explained via undirected small microevolution over an insanely long time.
- kiba 3y ago
  The distinction between macroevolution and microevolution sounds like nonsense. There's too much evidence for me to believe that evolution doesn't happen, at any scale. Evolution is clearly observable and foundational to biology. Whereas Christian creation stories always felt like mythology, sounds human centric and made up. I read stuff like the Epic of Gilgamesh and realized that some stories in the bibles are based on older iterations written by ancient people.
  - 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
    > The distinction between macroevolution and microevolution sounds like nonsense. It is nonsense through the lens of biology, but it's nonsense that's very ideologically convenient to certain demographics, which (perhaps paradoxically) means that terms to talk about the distinction become useful in some sociopolitical or anthropological contexts. For what it's worth, the very particular term for the religiously-motivated typology that accepts microevolution while rejecting macroevolution is baraminology.
    - xigency 3y ago
      Now I am reminded of the YouTube clickbait I loved, something like, “evolutionists will hate this video.” I thought I would, but in fact I saw a lot of great biology and science and was glad that they were teaching how life can change over time…
  - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
    > The distinction between macroevolution and microevolution sounds like nonsense. Even from a biological perspective this distinction is not nonsense: couldn't there exist an additional mechanism that is not arbitrary mutation and survival/selection of the fittest, which could be an additionally important for the formation of species and macroevolution? Candidates for such possible additional mechanisms have been proposed from biologists, such as Lamarckism or epigenetics (though the mainstream view in biology is these either could not be observed (Lamarckism) or are not considered to be important for macroevolution (epigenetics)).
    - SamBam 3y ago
      This "couldn't there exist..." is doing a lot of work that I don't understand. "Couldn't there exist different laws of gravity for big things like planets and small things like rocks, which explains why I've never seen rocks attracted to each other?" Yes, there could in some alternative universe, but not in this one that we know of, and it's not necessary to explain why you don't notice rocks being attracted to each other. There could exist some difference between "microevolution" and "macroevolution," but not in this universe that we know of, and it's not necessary to explain species. The entire concept was made up by creationists to try to add a patina of science to their deeply-unscientific beliefs. And the problem with an unscientific world view is that science will never change your mind about things, you'll just decide what science to accept and which to not accept.
      - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
        > "Couldn't there exist different laws of gravity for big things like planets and small things like rocks, which explains why I've never seen rocks attracted to each other?" Something very related is a topic that is seriously discussed among physicists: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics The problem with the existing theories of gravitation which seem to work quite well on the scale of solar systems is that there does seem to exist evidence that some observed data on the scale of galaxies might not be well-explainable by these theories. See > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics#Observational_evidence_for_MOND https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics#Ob... Very recently new evidence for MOND came up: > https://phys.org/news/2023-08-smoking-gun-evidence-gravity-gaia-wide.html https://phys.org/news/2023-08-smoking-gun-evidence-gravity-g... > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37051241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37051241 See also: > https://tritonstation.com/2023/08/02/is-ngc-1277-a-problem-for-mond/ https://tritonstation.com/2023/08/02/is-ngc-1277-a-problem-f... > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37009037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37009037
Spooky23 3y ago
You should know and have a framework of understanding what is real, what is faith and what we don’t know. That’s why education aspires to be more well rounded in most places. All of this paternalism and hostility towards civil authority isn’t an expression of faith or aspirations towards the divine; it’s a means to exert control on earth to men.

by patmcc 3y ago

aleph_minus_one 3y ago

> Think antibiotic resistant bacteria as a simple example. That is why I explicitly wrote "macroevolution" and not "evolution". The emergence antibiotic-resilient bacteria is a phenomenon of microevolution, whose existence is, as far as I am aware, much less controversial in evangelical Christian circles. To my understanding, the offending topic in these evangelical Christian circles rather seems to be whether macroevolution and the formation of species can be suitably explained via undirected small microevolution over an insanely long time.

kiba 3y ago
The distinction between macroevolution and microevolution sounds like nonsense. There's too much evidence for me to believe that evolution doesn't happen, at any scale. Evolution is clearly observable and foundational to biology. Whereas Christian creation stories always felt like mythology, sounds human centric and made up. I read stuff like the Epic of Gilgamesh and realized that some stories in the bibles are based on older iterations written by ancient people.
- 0xcde4c3db 3y ago
  > The distinction between macroevolution and microevolution sounds like nonsense. It is nonsense through the lens of biology, but it's nonsense that's very ideologically convenient to certain demographics, which (perhaps paradoxically) means that terms to talk about the distinction become useful in some sociopolitical or anthropological contexts. For what it's worth, the very particular term for the religiously-motivated typology that accepts microevolution while rejecting macroevolution is baraminology.
  - xigency 3y ago
    Now I am reminded of the YouTube clickbait I loved, something like, “evolutionists will hate this video.” I thought I would, but in fact I saw a lot of great biology and science and was glad that they were teaching how life can change over time…
- aleph_minus_one 3y ago
  > The distinction between macroevolution and microevolution sounds like nonsense. Even from a biological perspective this distinction is not nonsense: couldn't there exist an additional mechanism that is not arbitrary mutation and survival/selection of the fittest, which could be an additionally important for the formation of species and macroevolution? Candidates for such possible additional mechanisms have been proposed from biologists, such as Lamarckism or epigenetics (though the mainstream view in biology is these either could not be observed (Lamarckism) or are not considered to be important for macroevolution (epigenetics)).
  - SamBam 3y ago
    This "couldn't there exist..." is doing a lot of work that I don't understand. "Couldn't there exist different laws of gravity for big things like planets and small things like rocks, which explains why I've never seen rocks attracted to each other?" Yes, there could in some alternative universe, but not in this one that we know of, and it's not necessary to explain why you don't notice rocks being attracted to each other. There could exist some difference between "microevolution" and "macroevolution," but not in this universe that we know of, and it's not necessary to explain species. The entire concept was made up by creationists to try to add a patina of science to their deeply-unscientific beliefs. And the problem with an unscientific world view is that science will never change your mind about things, you'll just decide what science to accept and which to not accept.
    - aleph_minus_one 3y ago
      > "Couldn't there exist different laws of gravity for big things like planets and small things like rocks, which explains why I've never seen rocks attracted to each other?" Something very related is a topic that is seriously discussed among physicists: > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics The problem with the existing theories of gravitation which seem to work quite well on the scale of solar systems is that there does seem to exist evidence that some observed data on the scale of galaxies might not be well-explainable by these theories. See > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics#Observational_evidence_for_MOND https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modified_Newtonian_dynamics#Ob... Very recently new evidence for MOND came up: > https://phys.org/news/2023-08-smoking-gun-evidence-gravity-gaia-wide.html https://phys.org/news/2023-08-smoking-gun-evidence-gravity-g... > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37051241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37051241 See also: > https://tritonstation.com/2023/08/02/is-ngc-1277-a-problem-for-mond/ https://tritonstation.com/2023/08/02/is-ngc-1277-a-problem-f... > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37009037 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37009037

Spooky23 3y ago

You should know and have a framework of understanding what is real, what is faith and what we don’t know. That’s why education aspires to be more well rounded in most places. All of this paternalism and hostility towards civil authority isn’t an expression of faith or aspirations towards the divine; it’s a means to exert control on earth to men.