Natural selection is such a clear, simple idea that biologists around the world were wacking themselves in the forehead when they read [Darwin's] book, saying, “Of course! Why didn’t I think of that!” He laid out the facts as everybody already knew them, with simple and irrefutible logic leading to an undeniable conclusion. The members of a species exhibit heritable variability; they don’t all look alike. Not all individuals are equally successful at reproducing or surviving, and it is those variants that are best able to live under existing conditions that will leave the most offspring, meaning that the average composition of the next generation will change. Because the forms least able to thrive will not thrive, the population as a whole will slowly drift in the direction of optimality.

The emphasis is mine. Natural selection really is a brilliant and somewhat obvious theory.

I found this quote interesting from Is Evolution Atheistic? by Dr Denis Alexander:

Evolution itself is not atheistic. A robust Christian theism readily encompasses evolution as an expression of God’s creative actions. But, sadly, there are prominent scientists, like the Harvard sociobiologist E.O.Wilson, who left their earlier Christian experience to become atheists because they faced hostility to evolution. Arguably, attacks by well-meaning Christians on evolution promote rather than counteract atheism.

It makes two great points: 1) Evolution does not at all deny the existence of God; and 2) Ignorant attacks on evolution by well-meaning Christians actually undermines their aims.

It’s all pretty funny but the last line really cracks me up: “No matter where the evidence leads.“. They are implying that Dawkins, Scott and Myers, have made up their minds regardless of where the evidence might lead as if to imply that their viewpoint is unscientific.

I have a theory for you — the moon is made out of cotton candy. Now you are going to claim that we’ve been to the moon and we brought samples of the moon home with us. Or you are going to say that we can measure the density of the moon through various methods. You’ll bring up all sorts of “science” reasons why my theory is wrong. But face it — your mind is made up. You are not willing to consider that the moon is made out of cotton candy? What is wrong with you? You are some freakish zealot.

Intelligent Design (ID) has about the same amount of evidence supporting it as does my theory that the moon is made out of cotton candy. You will be expelled from science school if you believe that the moon is made out of cotton candy. There are no credible papers in scientific journals discussing the theory that the moon is made out of cotton candy.

Thus, this whole Evolution vs. Intelligent Design debate would be on entirely different footing if there actually was a theory of Intelligent Design. There isn’t one. There never has been one. The religious people hope they’ll find one someday and that’s great. No one has any problem with people pursuing their own scientific research. It’s not the fault of Dawkins, Scott or Myers that ID has no support in evidence. Poking “holes” in the theory of natural selection is not a theory.

Fer fuck’s sake, they named their institute “The Institute for Creation Science” and then they have the gall to accuse scientists of ignoring evidence? These guys predetermined the outcome of their research when the chose their name. They are complete frauds.

1. 13.73 billion years ago, the universe was created.
2. Somewhere around 4 billion years ago the Earth was created.
3. Around 3 billion years ago, life formed.
4. Life evolved and grew more and more complex and diverse.
5. Today there are millions of species.

The Intelligent Design (ID) movement, exemplified by the movie Expelled, has a problem with #4. They think God mucked around in #4. Science doesn’t have a theory (yet) for how the universe was created (#1). We know exactly what happened milliseconds after the Big Bang, but we don’t know how the Big Bang banged. We don’t have much of a theory about how life was created (although we are making significant progress) (#3). We have really, really good theories of #2 and #4. They are based on hardcore science and have been argued about and tested very thoroughly.

So if you are fervently religious and want to believe that God did #1 and #3, fine, great, have at it. We’ll probably prove you wrong on #3 someday but for #1, God snapping his fingers is as good of theory as any.

But why would you argue with #4? Evolution is obvious. Natural selection is obvious and if you think God is smart then he might think of a way to do things that was clever! He didn’t zap fully formed humans into existence He created a beautiful machine that opened up like a flower over billions of years from which stepped a mind capable of wondering and worshipping. Evolution is a testament to the patience and the brilliance of God. Science is never and could never be at odds with the will of the Creator.

So ID isn’t just bad science, it’s bad theology, it’s bad philosophy, it’s bad everything. It’s especially destructive because it falsely presents itself as being on the side of believers. That is nonsense. True believers are in awe of God’s creation, including the Big Bang, the old earth and natural selection. Science studies God’s creation, it doesn’t oppose it.

i just wonder why, if mr. pz is so smart, he’s doesn’t realize he was used as part of a pretty clever publicity stunt. expelling him from expelled! and then he rushes to the nearest computer to breathlessly report how he was kicked out. priceless.

pretty funny if you ask me (and i believe in evolution). i just think pz is an insufferable intellectual snob and it’s great to see him get punk’d.

I suppose I should stop being surprised at the things you think…

PZ attempted to see a movie that he was in. The makers of the movie knew he was coming and waited until the last moment to kick him out. (They could have just emailed him and told him he wasn’t welcome.) The “clever publicity stunt” made those tools look like extra special tools when they kicked out PZ and let Dawkins in! Oops, sorry, didn’t recognize the most recognizable atheist in the world (who is also in the film!). PZ’s reporting of the incident was hilarious and the press associated with the incident was 100% critical and negative towards the movie. Oh, yes, very clever.

I’ve met PZ and he is a very humble and very nice person. He is not a “snob” in the slightest. What he is is extremely knowledgeable about this issue — evolution — and he is constantly defending generally accepted science against people who don’t know a single fucking thing about it. Yes, I suppose one can seem like a snob when you are an expert on a subject and you are debating self-righteous idiots without a clue WTF they are talking about.

The core issue here is very interesting — how the Right pretends to be anti-intellectual. Anti-intellectualism is an agenda of elevating mediocrity and small-minded thinking while denigrating education and intelligence. It’s completely nuts and it gets us incompetent leadership like George W. Bush — a “regular guy” completely devoid of the skills necessary to do his job.

We need a hell of a lot more “intellectual snobs” and a lot less influence by ignorant people too lazy to be intellectually engaged with the world.

You should read the whole thing but here is a humorous little quote:

Even if physicist discovered that the Big Bang was a result of a cataclysmic battle between Odin and a gang of frost giants, it would not perturb our understanding of life’s history here. It would make the cosmologists freak out, which would be fun, and it would shape our philosophical understanding of our presence here, but evolution is built on evidence on this planet, evidence that will not go away whatever the physicists discover about events 14 billion years ago.

It is amazing that none of the IDiots take on the very specific points that PZ makes in this post. Their arguments are really weak and easily refuted and yet the believers just ignore ideas that undermine their weird little superstitions.

Generally people who are arguing against scientific consensus point to past failed hypotheses to indicate that science can be wrong, has been wrong in the past and should not be treated as infallible. They are right about this, of course, but they miss a very, very, very important point: it was science itself that corrected these mistakes. It was not op-ed pieces or vague conjectures by untrained people, it was “big science” that found the correct answer.

So people who defend scientific consensus are not defending a particular conclusion, they are defending the processes that make such conclusions possible at all. Without science we can’t debate global climate change or evolution.

The people who argue against scientific consensus often say, “We’re not anti-science, we are against the squashing of debate perpetrated by ‘big science’. They get a theory and everyone jumps on the bandwagon at the expense of other valid scientific explanations.”

They are wrong about this. Global climate change and evolution, to stick with my two examples, are under constant attack by scientists. There are a million mundane (and perhaps a couple profound) controversies that are debated within the scientific community constantly. Literally, it never ends. That is what science is.

If we assume that we have 10 competent, honest scientists in a room and 8 of them agree with hypothesis A and 2 of them agree with hypothesis B, we call hypothesis A the scientific consensus. It does not mean that A is true and B is false, it means that the arguments of A convince more scientists than the arguments of B.

I’m personally not an expert at climate science or evolution. I can’t really make up my own mind based on the scientific data — I don’t have the training. Chances are, neither do you. My problem with the “anti-science crowd” is that their disagreement with scientific consensus is not based on the science but instead based on other factors such as their political leanings or their religion. Those are piss-poor reasons to take a view radically different from scientific consensus.

The bottom line is, either you trust the scientific process or you don’t. The only people capable of creating more successful theories are scientists. Unless you are personally an expert on the scientific matters at hand, your only rational alternative is to defer to scientific consensus.

So don’t confuse our passion for science, reason and rationality with any actual concern about the ID “movement”. It will have literally no impact on our scientific progress.

The reason we give so much attention to these kooks is because it is amusing. It is amusing what otherwise smart people will do while under the influence of religion. They pick and choose their science to accommodate their pre-determined conclusions. They believe so strongly in their mythology that they feel it trumps the time-proven work of thousands of scientists. They think that pointing out “holes” in the theory of natural selection gives weight to their mythology. Apparently they are desperate for proof of the creator they are so sure listens to their prayers every night. They just don’t want to live in a world that can be explained without such a deity.

That’s fine. I don’t need to change their minds. I don’t care what foolishness they teach their children. I don’t care what movies they go to or what movies they make. I don’t care if they think evolution is some big conspiracy of “big science” and I don’t care at all that religious kooks get fired for being incompetent scientists. I just think it is funny.

So keep it up, Ben Stein. Your career is soon to be pigeon-holed into speaking to churches about the evils of “big science”. While you are speaking in these mega-churches the A/C will be running, thanks to the ideal gas law, the PA system will work because of electromagnetism and quantum mechanics and you won’t be lifted bodily into heaven thanks to the universal law of gravitation.

Science delivers every day for the godless and the deluded alike.

Natural selection is basically a tautology, which is why denying it as a mechanism is “not even wrong”.

The argument (although many on both sides seem to miss this) is whether the mechanism of natural selection is sufficient to describe the variety of living organisms on earth. Anyone who thinks that it isn’t hasn’t spent any time suffering, I mean studying, invertebrate palaeontology (apologies to all fossil bivalve lovers out there).

Proper appreciation of the massive chains of development, the enormous time scales and the huge variety of life both past and present is hard and boring, which is why a lot of people don’t really do it and which so many see ID etc. as a viable alternative – because they can’t imagine how you get from bacteria to horse. Seeing in detail even one section of the journey is enough for you to say “Yes, OK, I give up, the evidence is overwhelming, please don’t ask me to identify another brachiopod”. But without the detail to make it real you are just left with the limits of your imagination, which is actually a pretty restrictive limit.

People forget how god damn long 3 billion years is. The Earth has been here for 4 billion years. They estimate life got started about 1 billion years later, or about 3 billion years ago. Just for reference, if you consider a human generation starts every 25 years or so, that is 120 million generations. By contrast, Jesus lived only 80 generations ago and Adam only 240 generations ago. Anatomically modern humans first showed up about 4000 generations ago. That only gets us back 100,000 years or 0.003% of the way back to 3 billion years ago.

The point being, you and I can’t conceptualize how long that is and our intuition fails us when we try to contemplate what is and what is not possible in that time frame.