Evolution?

I found this today on the New Scientist site:

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2565/25653701.jpg


LOL

Look who's second from the bottom... just above a prodominantly muslim country.

I definatly need to leave the US... If that chart is true, then i definatly don't fit in here. Iceland here i come? O.o sounds too cold though.

I am curious as to where Canada stands on that list.

Maybe they lumped u in with the USA roflmao

I love Canada btw

Peace

They better not have lumped us in with the U.S. when it comes to beliefs like this. I have a feeling the disbelief in evolution is higher than I would like to see, but I never understand the results. Almost everyone (95%+) I know/meet believes in evolution, but then again I usually meet younger, more open-minded and intelligent people. There's hope for us yet.

And resmods - please move this to sandbox with all the other &^%@ evolution threads.

Why are you posting this in General?

-Ghoti

It certainly puts me off living in the USA, that's for sure. I just can't help thinking of the scene from the movie "The Hitchiker's Guide To The Galaxy", where they describe the planet of people who believe the universe was sneezed out of a great mysterious nose. At first it sounds absolutely absurd, but then you realise that saying "oh some god _____ created it" is just as mysterious and unhelpful as saying it was sneezed out of a giant nose. Both are somewhat absurd (assuming the universe has a creator is a BIG assumption, and assuming that the universe has a creator is enough like us that we could identify it even if it tried to communicate with us is an even crazier assumption). Further, both the nose and the god explanations generate a lot more questions about the nature of the nosegod then they answer about the universe. You're going from one question "why is the universe here?" to a huge list of questions about the nosegod. Saying that some mysterious nosegod created the universe is just like saying it was created by a cosmic wallaby.... it creates many, many times more questions then it answers, questions which are even harder to answer than the original question, and some of which may actually be impossible for us to answer. In short, it takes a sensible question into the realms of absurd answers which are unhelpful and which both reduce the topic to a joke and also stop us actually searching for the truth, due to being confronted with absurd and impossible-to-answer questions about cosmic noses, wallbies or gods.

I'm not saying humanity should stop looking for the reason the universe exists. I'm simply saying that the vast majority of answers are more interesting for their comic value than anything else.
My take on the origin of the universe is pretty simple. In order for an explanation to be considered, it must :
1) it must acknowledge the fact that we are insignificant on the grand scale of things. Thus, any attempt at explanation which involves human-like agents, such as creatures which are intelligent, have morals or otherwise have easily recognisable human-like qualities is very, very likely to be made up by us and have no connection to the truth.
2) it must be general. There must be one ruleset for the whole universe. If life exists on Earth, then there must be some explanation of why it does not exist elsewhere, or, one must accept the fact that we are not special, we are just one of a series of civlisations out there.
3) it must be physical. "supernatural" explanations that involve things we cannot test are irrelavant because they have no evidence for them. We can say that the universe is an eternal energy sum, which explains its origin and its future, as well as using cyclical big bang theory to explain the big bang, and that is all fine. What we cannot do is say it was created by a higher force (because then we're faced with explaining the higher force, which is impossible as by definition it doesn't exist in our physical reality).

One popular theory I'm tempted to go for is that conceptually, the explanation for the universe is simply beyond our understanding. Similarly, certain deep explainations for things such as why life seems intelligent or how life originated on Earth.... could just be conceptually beyond us. There is a truth of the matter, but our minds are too primitive to understand it. We're curious so we make up elaborate theories to explain it, but this is just a made-up "answer" we create for ourselves as a convenience... it is not based on the truth at all.
If the truth is really beyond us completely, as I suspect it might well be... then we should just concentrate on things we can actually do "distilled achieveables, anyone?" and try to make progress with things we can actually make progress with. Maybe in future we'll figure it out. I don't know. For the moment, we can nevertheless find amusement in the people who truly, honestly believe that out of all the intelligent beings which by probability must exist in the universe, THEY know that the universe has a cause, and they know what it is! There is a staggering arrogance in thinking that they are certain to be right about the cause of the universe, when the fact is that none of us, including them, truly understands what the universe is or how it works. That isn't to say that we can't think about it or even propose ideas about it. It's just to say that anyone who really thinks they KNOW beyond doubt the origin of the universe probably arrogant and ignorant in equal measure.

I'm happy to admit I don't know. I'm also happy to admit that I probably won't ever find out, and neither will anyone else on Earth in my lifetime, or into the forseeable future.
I'm also happy to admit that whatever the answer is, it would probably be incomprehensible to me and humankind anyway, even if by some co-incidence we did stumble upon it. That's ok... we just have to accept our place in the universe. We're like the ants in the forest. We don't even know what the forest is or how it works really, and we're certainly never going to find out why it is there in a more general sense. The best we can hope for is to one day evolve into human beings and understand the physical reasons why there is a forest in that place. The ultimate reason for why there exists, say, anything ta all rather than nothing will probably always be beyond us.


Agreed.


Yeah... I usually keep my nose out of topics like this as I realise that they never change any minds and usually devolve into a Kevin-vs-everyone slapping fest.

For the love of amoebes, can we stop going on about evolution already? I doubt it does any good.

wow Irelands near the bloody bottom too.. shame.

Polls are sooo bias, anyone who knows anything about them knows that you can come up with almost any result depending upon how it is worded.

The question should have been more clear I think. Do you people believe that evolution is the origin of human life would get one result. Do you believe that evolution exists and that species evolve would get a vast different one. I am a Christian and everyone I know believes in evolution, that animals and plants evolve over time but I believe that the existence of humans here on earth was the act of God, not that we evolved from some single celled organism long long ago. Obviously humans evolved since creation, we are now much taller, less hairy and smarter for example.

Anyway, I would take the results from polls with a grain of salt.

On the one hand, most people eventually realise that polls can be easily manipulated to give whatever result you want depending on how you word the question.
On the other hand, most people tend to forget this when dealing with polls that strongly support their existing beliefs. The human mind sees what it wants to see... it looks for evidence that confirms its existing beliefs, and ignores contradictory evidence. This is why I have great respect for scientists despite not being one myself. Their minds are tasked with weighing up evidence objectively, despite the fact that their minds, like the minds of all humans, are wired such that this is impossible or at the very least extrodinarily difficult.

Scientists, and other seekers of real, objective truth, often fail and bias the results they present in favour of their own beliefs or interests. I don't blame them for doing this - it is in their nature as it is in all human nature. I nevertheless admire them when they try to find the objective truth

Moving to Sandbox.

so.. god put apes on earth too? I mean at what point do you draw the line between us and them? or like.. did god put his seed in an ape and make us.. or just use like majic to Rez us here? im confused o.O

dear god not another evolution thread!!! ()

I ::heart:: you.

"I'm often reminded of the fools I'm among." ~Lyrics from the song A Man by Alanis Morissette

It's sad to know my country is like this. The country who originally was founded on freedom. I just wan't you all to know not EVERYONE in the US is like this. I never really liked it here, but i have to stick with it... If you have objections to my comments, most likely your from Turkey. O.o

What really amuses me is that America, the country that prides itself on being pro-freedom, actually got its biggest monument to freedom, The Statue Of Liberty from France. Yes, that means that the USA owes a substantial part of its culture of freedom to the French.

When France does not support the USA in its illegal wars, and the US responds by shunning the French, renaming "French Fries" to "Freedom Fries", can they not see the irony because a very great part of their culture of freedom is French and British in origin?

I'm having images of Bush saying :
"Freedom! Axis of Evil! Evil French Fries! Um... Weapons Of Mass Distraction! err, deception! err.... destruction! Yes, that's the one, Destruction! You're either with us, or against us! I mean America, not the people who have all the weapons of mass Destruction! Erm... yes this speech makes sense dammit, I'm the leader of the free world! Argh, stop trying to offer me pretzels, they won't silence me this time! I'll take on the axis of evil and the french and find all those damn pretzels.... erm.... I mean, WMDs! Or if I don't, at least I'll work to deny basic rights to more Americans at home via wiretapping and bans on gay marriage! That'll show that I'm in tune with the basic family values in America! After all, I'm not just your President, I'm on a mission from God to purge the evildoers! Pretzels are first on my list!"
(while speaking, an aide approaches the President, and says : "Mr. President, America is under satire". Bush nods approvingly, and continues with his speech. When he returns to the plane, his aide asks him why he did not counter the satire with "you're either with us, or with the pretzels". He replies that satire is about as American as apple pie, and stands for good old Christian values. His aide asks how he knows this. He replies "I hear them words 'Christian', and 'satire' together on TV all the time!".
Finally, the President waves, flies off into the sunset in his jet fighter (on loan from the military, though actually listed as on loan to his chief of staff as the computer would not let them loan an aircraft to a combatant MIA for so many years). Just before flying away in his fighter, he salutes, shouts "Mission Accomplished. God Bless America!", and then takes off, garnering much praise from the crowd of spectators. His later landing doesn't garner as much attention, his crash being attributed to the President being given a "faultly" autopilot for his "freedom fighter", (which he was only using for a *small* amount of his term in the sky, to be sure).

It looks like Kevn would love living in Turkey, according to that poll.

Nah, the problem with "true believers" is that they focus entirely on differences and not on commonalities. Kevn would probably go nuts in a Muslim country. That's why fundamentalist religious groups end up splitting into smaller and smaller factions. Remember that Christianity's first real division came about because of three letters, -que. The Roman Catholics said that the Holy Spirit emanates from the Father "and the Son" which in Latin is "filioque". The Orthodox Church rejected the -que and said that the Holy Spirit emanates only from the Father. So Christianity split in two. Despite all the things both Churches agreed on, they focused on a matter of doctrine most Christians don't even bother to worry about.

I agree with that comment completely. Except I don't think scientists are immune from bias caused by prior beliefs.

Just as we expect a person indoctrinated into a religion to believe that religion completely, without doubt, so too we expect scientists indoctrinated in the doctrines provided them by the schooling system to believe what they were taught. Both the religiously indoctrinated and the Ivy League indoctrinated will be biased towards the teachings they received. This is proven time and again, with few exceptions.

(Health related) deaths from McDonald's fries have killed more people than those WMDs they warned us about. Weopons of Macs Destruction (har de har) is more like it.

This stuff gets me all worked up. How many Christians even understand the concept you have done such a wonderful job describing....

With honest respect for all believers -- Organized religion is for sheep.

=B-)

Yes, this is a viewpoint I've never heard anybody but me express before. We find it very difficult to understand that there is a limit to our intelligence. In the same way that a cat can understand its environment up to a point, but its intellectual boundaries forbid it to understand how the cat food got into the can, so we are limited in the same way.

Only if we choose to be, surely.