“Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology.”
There is no biology being done which requires evolution as a premise in its hypothesis, and without which premise the science could not proceed. To claim that it is fundamental and imply that it is necessary to biological science is a Genetic Fallacy. As Nye progresses we can see why he wants us to believe this fundamental “truth”, even though it is false: Nye wants us to think that we are anti-science and therefore irrational if we don’t accept evolution; that is certainly what he believes.
“Equivalent of trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates.”Tectonic plates exist in the current time frame and have been proven empirically to actually exist. Evolution is extrapolatory from entities which do not exist in the current time frame, and is not comparable to tectonic plates in its inability to be empirically verified experimentally. False Analogy.
“You're just not gonna get the right answer; your whole world will be a mystery instead of an exciting place.”Absolutely false. The Example of the booming field of Stem Cell biology falsifies this statement. The right answer is provided by observation, hypothesis and experimentation, not by attachment to evolution.
“As my old professor, Carl Sagan said, when you’re in love you want to tell the world.”
Yes, evolution is a highly emotional attachment. It is believed despite the flaws that are required in order to fill out the entire worldview, including the inability to answer the question of what life actually is, what the source of first life was, why life perpetuates itself despite being subject to entropy, what is the source of mind, rationality, agency and self-awareness, as well as many other questions. It is patently obvious that evolution is not fundamental at all, when it can’t answer the fundamental issues.
“Your world becomes fantastically complicated when you don’t believe in evolution. Here are these ancient dinosaur bones, these fossils; here is radio activity; here are distant stars which are just like our star but are at a distant point in their life cycle. The idea of Deep Time, of billions of years, explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that, your worldview just becomes crazy, it’s just untenable, it’s self-inconsistent.”Here Nye demonstrates that he doesn’t even understand the competition, which is not necessarily “young earth”. There are a great many old earth creationists who can demonstrate that it is evolution which is untenable and non-coherent when taken as an entire worldview. That demonstration involves logic, which is not beholden to science in any fashion. So not only is evolution not fundamental to science, science is not fundamental to rational thought and discourse. Science reveals factoids about material "things" in our universe, not fundamental Truths.
“And I say to the grownups, if you wanna deny evolution and live in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it, because we need them, we need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can… we need engineers! We need people that can build stuff and solve problems.”Nye is a Scientismist; his heroes, if not his gods, are involved in a process which he apparently is non-critical of, himself. Taking the non-critical philosophizing of an “in love” science worshipper as anything other than devout religious cant is itself hazardous to mental processing. Science is built on doubt, discovery, rediscovery, hypothesis, experiment, and re-experiment, not on evolution as religion. Modern Atheism is built on evolution as religion, and Nye’s teacher was the Atheist true believer, Carl Sagan, who also substituted science love-worship for common sense and dispassionate logic.
Further, his implied claim that evolution must be accepted in order to be an engineer or solve problems is simply ludicrous, outrageously so.
“It, it’s really just a hard thing, hard thing. You know, in another couple of centuries that world view will be… it just won’t exist. There’s no evidence for it.”Because Nye doesn’t even understand what creationism actually is, he is not qualified to declare that it will not exist. Nye doesn’t even hint at the limitations of science which actually do exist, and his concept of evolution as Truth runs afoul of anything that an experienced scientist would claim. Science commonly experiences overthrows of accepted positions. There is no scientific knowledge which is not vulnerable to overthrow, and there is no such thing as scientific Truth. There are only contingent scientific factoids, and to imply or claim otherwise is either irresponsible, ignorant, or stupidly attached to a reverenced ideology which requires an inviolable Truth and needs science as its moral authority. And what Nye is claiming is a moral concept: it is Wrong to teach your children that evolution is not necessarily the only answer. He is preaching the Atheist morality of Scientism as Truth. And the rather hysterical claim is that if you don’t accept evolution, then you have rejected all of science and are morally Wrong.
I reject Nye as the bearer of Truth. It was an error for him to step out of science and into ideology. He doesn’t know enough factually or logically about his own ideology or that of the Other.
Hat tip to Steven Satak
13 comments:
Thanks, Stan. I knew something about that sudden announcement by Nye smelled a bit odd.
When he's doing what he does for a living, no problem. He's a pro. When he gets into philosophy, it shows him for what he is there - an amateur.
Thing that bothers me is that he is so *sincere* and yet so obviously misunderstands the whole thing about evolution and what some - not all - ID people are saying.
I cannot decide if he is simply repeating the party line, honestly believes it, or is up to something. Whichever it is, he seems remarkably oblivious to the simple contradictions his statements imply.
To paraphrase Lewis, Atheism is a *fuddled* religion.
There is no biology being done which requires evolution as a premise in its hypothesis
Evolution is the unifying theory of all biological sciences. It is the equivalent of the sought-after Theory of Everything in physics.
That is NOT to say, of course, that evolution solves all problems and explains everything about, say, human psychology. Just in the biological sciences.
Evolution is extrapolatory from entities which do not exist in the current time frame, and is not comparable to tectonic plates in its inability to be empirically verified experimentally.
It sure is empirically verifiable, just in a different way. Again to use the earlier analogy of the baseball diamond discovered by a future archeological expedition: the archeologists who think that the diamond was a game make predictions of what else they will find when they continue to dig, and the ones who think it is a fertility site will do the same. Further digging will EMPIRICALLY reveal (incrementally) who is more likely to be correct.
The empirical predictions are about what we will find when we look at X.
including the inability to answer the question of what life actually is, what the source of first life was, why life perpetuates itself despite being subject to entropy, what is the source of mind, rationality, agency and self-awareness, as well as many other questions.
These are questions for philosophy, metaphysics, etc. Evolution simply says: you are not exactly like your parents, and environmental pressures will force your children that are better adapted to the environment to stay alive and vice versa.
It isn't the tool for answering questions of the nature of the mind, or the genesis of life from non-life, and so on. It simply says: genetic variation occurs.
Nye is a Scientismist; his heroes, if not his gods, are involved in a process which he apparently is non-critical of, himself.
Probably true. But just because he is so, and just because he probably overuses evolution to the point of it being a worldview, does not reflect on evolution itself.
Further, his implied claim that evolution must be accepted in order to be an engineer or solve problems is simply ludicrous, outrageously so.
Technically true, but I can see the point that evolution should be accepted as the strongest and best unifying theory of biology today, which is what it is.
http://endtimes201.blogspot.com/
I agree with Martin, up to the extent of the concept of Micro-evolution.
Macro-evolution is still an incomplete theory. There are some experiments with epigenetics that lean against natural selection.
It is a mess, but I'm not as certain about that than what I know in physics, even though is not too much either.
In physics we have serious trouble with the completeness of the math that explains electromagnetism. The so-called "Maxwell Equations" are incomplete, something that it is not easily seen to the naked eye. Those are the Heaviside/Gibbs equations. This problem persists in the teachings of physics in universities worldwide, to this very day.
This is why is problematic the definition of charge, and why it is largely ignored by the media, among other things. Also, you won't find any "big" scientific magazine or journal to mention this. It is actually not convenient.
Kind Regards.
Yonose,
There is no dilineation between macro and micro. That line is drawn purely in your mind. Macro is just micro over a long period of time. The reason this cannot be observed directly is because macro evolution takes millions of years to build up to the point of even BEING macro. It isn't possible to duplicate macro in a lab environment or anywhere else. The evidence for macro is inferential, but strong enough that it is "true" in the sense that it is one of the most powerful inductive explanatory theories in science, even if not "true" in the sense that Stan uses the word (don't forget your Wittgenstein: language games, remember?).
Martin, I always know how to draw you out after a long quiet spell…
Martin said,
”Evolution is the unifying theory of all biological sciences. It is the equivalent of the sought-after Theory of Everything in physics.
That is NOT to say, of course, that evolution solves all problems and explains everything about, say, human psychology. Just in the biological sciences. “
If evolutionistas refuse to even talk about First Life, how can evolution be a theory of eeverything? A theory of everything is a theory from which all other concepts and factoids can be derived, including existing theories which are more focused on subsets. Evolution provides no insight into any living process; it is just said that, “well, it evolved”.
”Evolution is extrapolatory from entities which do not exist in the current time frame, and is not comparable to tectonic plates in its inability to be empirically verified experimentally.
It sure is empirically verifiable, just in a different way. Again to use the earlier analogy of the baseball diamond discovered by a future archeological expedition: the archeologists who think that the diamond was a game make predictions of what else they will find when they continue to dig, and the ones who think it is a fertility site will do the same. Further digging will EMPIRICALLY reveal (incrementally) who is more likely to be correct.
The empirical predictions are about what we will find when we look at X.”
As always, forensic science has much less credibility than empirical, experimental science. Events cannot be replicated and so they are circumstantial. If there is a causal theory of everything, then it can be verified only by actually observing the causation which it is claimed to have. Evolution of complexity is not verified by independent observation and its applicability to creating life from minerals is absent.
(continued)
”including the inability to answer the question of what life actually is, what the source of first life was, why life perpetuates itself despite being subject to entropy, what is the source of mind, rationality, agency and self-awareness, as well as many other questions.
These are questions for philosophy, metaphysics, etc. Evolution simply says: you are not exactly like your parents, and environmental pressures will force your children that are better adapted to the environment to stay alive and vice versa.
It isn't the tool for answering questions of the nature of the mind, or the genesis of life from non-life, and so on. It simply says: genetic variation occurs.”
Genetic variation is obvious: no child is a clone of its parents. Calling that evolution is out of bounds, because that is not what is understood to be meant by the term. What they want us to believe is in the concept of Common Descent without the concept of abiogenesis. These are physical concepts which are amenable to physical science.
”Nye is a Scientismist; his heroes, if not his gods, are involved in a process which he apparently is non-critical of, himself.
Probably true. But just because he is so, and just because he probably overuses evolution to the point of it being a worldview, does not reflect on evolution itself.”
Nye is a culture figure; what he says matters and what he said is false.. Radically false and influential
”Further, his implied claim that evolution must be accepted in order to be an engineer or solve problems is simply ludicrous, outrageously so.
Technically true, but I can see the point that evolution should be accepted as the strongest and best unifying theory of biology today, which is what it is.
And that is where we have always disagreed. Evolution/Common Descent is not observable and is purely hypothetical with only circumstantial and extrapolated evidence. It is used to disparage culturally those who point to its defects as anti-science, which is the lie that Nye is pushing. Actually having respect for real objective and replicable science rather than ideological maunderings requires passionate dispassion as opposed to impassioned ideological proclamations with false empirical foundational claims. I reject any claim that evolution has any bearing on respect for science, problem solving, or engineering capabilities. And again, I reject Nye as a scientistic ideologist.
Martin,
I know, and that's the problem with the experiment I wanted to point out. That still makes evolution a theory which needs something more to make it complete, because there's something more to infere/induce and deduce.
From a scientifical perspective, the "macro" part of evolution is still not falsifiable. People should be very careful with the possible metaphysical implication evolution theory may have, too.
Evolution gets lost when there are proselytizers that convert it into the religion du jour, and that's another problem that Stan just pointed out in this blog post.
From a logical perspective it still may be correct, but again, lacks medium for experimentation.
Analogously, but admittedly a bad analogy, in physics we have more than two problems:
Classical ElectroMagnetics is incomplete because of commercial interests and dogma;
Which leads to a bigger problem, which is not Quantifying the energy within electromagnetics fields, but only Discretizing its values. This made spintronics successful, but incomplete as well because of the above.
Regarding SuSy, it is still an unnecessarily, very complicated way to try to unify classical physics with quantum mechanics and general relativity. I still doubt about the success of that theory. The Higgs Boson, although experientally correct, lacks of a correct axiomatic process which is needed to understand its place in physics, and Nobel Prices are given like if such were coming from vending machines (no offense to those hard working people at CERN, anyway).
Most of these problems above are because of lot a misunderstandings with Classical ElectroMagnetics, which are assumed to be complete where they are not.
With the physics known to this very day, it has been not possible to abstract theoretically the differentials that happen with the eliptical shapes that the moon makes when orbits around this planet.
What I barely conclude about this, is that scientific theories like evolution and unifying theories in physics are still incomplete by a huge number of reasons.
Depending on the discipline, it is still an inductive/deductive problem, to be able to determine up to which lenght those scientific theories are going to be "axiomatically true", and that's the problem I wanted to point out at this time.
It is still not possible to be absolutely certain, of knowing from a scientific Point Of View, which would be the "honest-next-paradigm-twisting".
The Logical Principles may also give a bunch of suggestions, but that just exposes better than I will ever do, the limitations of the scopes that happen within scientific theories.
That how I humbly expose my position (This means, along all of this verbal diarrhea, that I agree with you, but not in everything, because In My Humble Opinion, you should be a bit more careful about these problematic considerations). It is not of importance whether which theories I believe of not at this time.
Take care, Martin.
Kind Regards.
There actually is a specific differential boundary between micro and macro evolution: mutation. Differences within a population are limited to the available genetic permutations, and that is why there is no one with purple hair... naturally that is. New features require new genetics, which requires change from some source or cause: mutation. That is macro evolution.
New features require new genetics, which requires change from some source or cause: mutation. That is macro evolution.
What is the "that" in the last sentence referring to?
Mutation? Am I missing something? No-one, whether scientist or creationist, denies mutation occurs, is observable, and measurable.
If evolutionistas refuse to even talk about First Life, how can evolution be a theory of eeverything?
It's not that they refuse, it's that it's two different sciences. Someone can be a biologist and an economist, even though they are not the same thing.
Here is the definition of evolution from Wikipedia: "the change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations."
That's it. As long as you have genetic variation and environmental pressure, then you will end up with the same effect we get with selective breeding like with dogs: change over time.
Abiogenesis is about how life would come from non-life, and since it's hard to define even what exactly life is, there won't be any quick resolutions of abiogenisis. Not to mention, the mechanistic theory embedded in naturalism may make it impossible to come up with a mechanistic (and hence naturalistic) theory of abiogenis.
But whether by direction creation, or some sort of abiogenesis, once life exists, then as long as genetic variation exists and there are environmental pressures, evolution will occur.
Evolution provides no insight into any living process; it is just said that, “well, it evolved”.
For an example, evolution tells paleontologists where to look to find certain extinct animals. That website I always link to provides more.
BTW, I should add that one of the main contributors to that site is a theist. Albert Moritz wrote the article on abiogenesis but is also a theist. Might be worth looking at his webpage on theism.
As always, forensic science has much less credibility than empirical, experimental science. Events cannot be replicated and so they are circumstantial
True but the same goes for history. Since the fossils show increasing complexity in higher layers, and in conjunction with the evidence linked above, the forensic evidence still gets pretty damn good. It isn't just wild guessing.
"Forensic" means "relating to or dealing with the application of scientific knowledge to legal problems".
I have no idea what you think it means.
you guys seem infinitely more educated than I am, but I have a genuine curiosity for how an atheist can explain how the big bang was the only event without a cause?
@anonymous: Thank you for your generous contribution of unfounded outbursts to this discussion.
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