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#evolution vs. creation
jarredlharris · 6 months
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A journey out of creationism.
This post is a copy of the answer I wrote to a Quora question.
Have you ever believed in creationism?
I did. I grew up believing in specifically Young Earth Creationism. I as convinced it was true and that all those “evolutionists” were either liars or just easily fooled idiots.
If so, what convinced you that evolution was a more logical explanation?
The short answer is “I learned about science.” Read on for the longer answer.
When I went to college, I got accepted into my university’s Honors Program. This was a program that involved taking a number of specialized courses that tended to focus on critical thinking and important subjects of the day. One of the classes I was required to take as a part of the program was called “Thought and Science,” and I took the second semester of my freshman year.
The name of this course could have just as easily been called “Philosophy of Science.” In fact, that was the title of the textbook the professor chose as our primary textbook for the course. In this course, we learned about the philosophy of science and how scientific inquiry worked. We also learned about pitfalls scientists can fall into like confirmation bias.
The final topic covered at the end of the semester was the subject of pseudoscience. The professor — who was a botanist, a professing Christian, and a dancer, spent a lot of time specifically talking about creationism and why it was a pseudoscience. During his final lecture of the semester, he said something that has stuck with me ever since:
“You can claim that God blinked the universe into existence last Tuesday as a matter of faith. But you cannot make that claim on any scientific basis.”
I realized he had a point. The alleged “scientific” arguments I had learned to support my creationist views were simply rhetoric that my mentors had disguised as being science. I could not deny this because I had just spent the past few months learning what science was and who science worked, and my creationist arguments looked nothing like that.
I didn’t stop believing in creationism right away, but I found myself being more honest — including with myself — about the fact that I accepted it as a matter of faith rather than something that could be scientifically demonstrated to be true.
I don’t really know when I quit believing in creationism. I didn’t really think a lot about the evolution vs. creation debate after that course. But no matter when I finally let go of my creationist beliefs, I know that the class I took from the dancing botanist was the genesis of its demise.
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Evolution vs Creation? 👇
Just to make you think about it🤔
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the-ghost-17 · 1 month
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ok Ima say something a little controversial
why do people look at evolution as If it is steadfast knowledge? I mean evolution does have ground, yes, but to say evolution is 100% proven to be true would be false.
I could make the same argument for creationism btw, "Oh but look at all this evidence toward a creator" yes yes evidence exists for both cases but that's not my point
My point is that people blindly put faith in a system of science that is a THEORY, evolution is a theoretical possibility for how the world came to be just as creationism is a theoretical possibility.
As I just pointed out yes there us evidence but evidence is nothing without the big picture. We have no clue how the world actually came to be and we shouldn't be fighting eachother over it.
A true scientist would go out of their way learn everything they can about the known universe and pick up all the little clues before deciding whether or not to support evolution theory or creation theory, it's basic math. (The dyscalcular person says)
All I'm saying is that I believe we let our views of the world get mixed too much into science, of course a Christian is more likely to study creationism and of course an atheist is more likely to study evolution. I'm not saying people don't do otherwise I'm just saying that's the most likely to be true.
Also as people who are not of science, we need to stop blindly trusting the world when it says the earth was made this way or that.
For hundreds of years people believed the sun circled the earth, they even has false evidence to prove themselves correct.
Im not saying that the sun circles the earth, I'm just saying that I believe everything and anything has the chance to be wrong, any if our world views could be shattered at any point in time.
Any thanks for listening to my Ted talk, I'm not a scientist, I'm a 15 year old sitting in my room ranting about shut I don't know.
Dont come after me.
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“Either a story conceived almost 2000 years ago is made up, or every credible scientist in the last 150 years is incompetent.“
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cosmiccarabao · 2 months
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Danae Cartoons by Wiley Miller
Scientific Controls #1
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Scientific Controls #5
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metalcatholic · 2 years
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I’m just saying if the creationists were correct God would have made our veins, arteries, and nerves exactly like anatomical diagrams in color and size only a cold and uncaring process like evolution would make them look identical
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liskantope · 2 years
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There's an issue when talking about people who are near the center of the political spectrum, and I think it lies in a nuance between the terms moderate and centrist.
A moderate refers to someone who holds political stances that happen to be near the average of the prevailing clusters of opinions on each side of the issue (within the contextual time and region). My impression is that "centrist" has a different connotation, and a worse one in the way that many -ist terms tend to have negative connotations at least among intellectuals who promote freethought: for instance, Darwinist and evolutionist are mainly used by those who oppose the theory of evolution because the -ist suffix suggests ideological adherence rather than something more scientific-minded (I've always tried to avoid calling myself an evolutionist for this reason).
Similarly, calling someone a centrist seems to suggest that they're adhering to a meta-ideological agenda, one which some people no doubt do pursue: that of choosing, as a rule, stances which reflect the average of the opposing sides. (I've certainly seen people accused of being "radical centrists" if they're perceived to take this philosophy too rigidly.) There are possible defenses for this: one could take something akin to majoritarianism as a guiding light, for instance, where they figure that humans as an overall population tend to be correct about things on average -- sure, we differ widely on certain issues, but the number of people too far on one side is always going to be balanced out by the number of people too far on the opposite side. I personally find this an extremely doubtful assumption. I also tend to think that some people use it as a cover for laziness: there's no need to research issues on your own in an open-minded manner if you can just take the average of the opinions you see around you as the formula for the correct stance.
So according to my interpretation of centrism, it's something I (and I think many others) view unfavorably. But it would be an unfair to conflate this with someone who arrives at their opinions in a freethinking way without reference to the major political parties' stances or how they perceive the camps that most other people belong to, and finds that their views happen to lie near the center on most issues -- in other words, centrists should not be confused with moderates. And I suspect that a lot of hostility towards moderates comes from such a conflation.
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never-was-has-been · 2 years
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candiedloveapple · 2 years
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First we took the rainbow from God. Now I'm taking God from you.
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eponastory · 5 months
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Yall... I can't even...
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So I'm not here to make fun of someone's beliefs or call anyone stupid, but there is something I have to address about this movement where Christians believe the Earth is only 6000 years old. I was raised Christian and read the Bible religiously when I was younger. Nowhere does it mention the age of the Earth.
I have my issues with religion. I'm not going to get into it here...
But when someone tells me that my tribe was wiped out 4000 years ago by a global flood...
I'm going to look at you funny.
First off, my tribe has been in the same spot for over 6000 years. If there had been a global flood 4000 years ago, the Chitimatcha would not be here today. Why? Because the land the tribe sits on is swamp. It's all swamp.
Second, if there was a global flood, then how do any of the other indigenous tribes still exist? We have genealogical records and tribal records dating back to when the tribes split. Both Choctaw and Chitimatcha were in the same region before the Choctaw were forced to move. They were likely part of one tribe before they split. Kinda like how the Houmas split from the Chitimatcha. It just doesn't add up to what this movement is preaching.
I will be clear, this is mostly happening in the United States and its a relatively small movement based on someone adding up the ages listed in the Bible without using the Jewish Calender.
I'm not calling anyone stupid, but gullible at most. Because they don't know how to do their own research and trust that theory is fact and not hypothesis.
It's very concerning for the state of the country right now.
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Is Evolution A Fact? Is God / Jesus Real? Does Archaeology Prove The Bible Is Historically Accurate?
The Bible is 100% Historically Accurate which is Proof God / Jesus is Real. The Bible is the most Accurate History Book ever written. It is the History of mankind. And of God’s relationship with mankind. The most Significant event in Human History is the Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. The History of this event permeates the text of Scripture. The creation account shows us God…
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battleforgodstruth · 2 years
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Noah's Last Days - Pastor Patrick Hines Sermon
Noah’s Last Days – Pastor Patrick Hines Sermon
18 Now the sons of Noah who came out of the ark were Shem, Ham, and Japheth; and Ham was the father of Canaan. 19 These three [were] the sons of Noah, and from these the whole earth was *populated. 20 Then Noah began *farming and planted a vineyard. 21 He drank some of the wine and became drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent. 22 Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father,…
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Is this Evolution? 🤔
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void-tiger · 2 years
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This morning’s existential crisis musings:
Did I ever “have faith” to begin with? Or was is a helluva lotta fawning, making something into a hyper fixation in an attempt to “like it” begrudgingly, and a brief handful of overactive imagination verging on mild delusions
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By: Stephen Jay Gould
Published: May 1981
Kirtley Mather, who died last year at age ninety, was a pillar of both science and Christian religion in America and one of my dearest friends. The difference of a half-century in our ages evaporated before our common interests. The most curious thing we shared was a battle we each fought at the same age. For Kirtley had gone to Tennessee with Clarence Darrow to testify for evolution at the Scopes trial of 1925. When I think that we are enmeshed again in the same struggle for one of the best documented, most compelling and exciting concepts in all of science, I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
According to idealized principles of scientific discourse, the arousal of dormant issues should reflect fresh data that give renewed life to abandoned notions. Those outside the current debate may therefore be excused for suspecting that creationists have come up with something new, or that evolutionists have generated some serious internal trouble. But nothing has changed; the creationists have presented not a single new fact or argument. Darrow and Bryan were at least more entertaining than we lesser antagonists today. The rise of creationism is politics, pure and simple; it represents one issue (and by no means the major concern) of the resurgent evangelical right. Arguments that seemed kooky just a decade ago have reentered the mainstream.
The basic attack of modern creationists falls apart on two general counts before we even reach the supposed factual details of their assault against evolution. First, they play upon a vernacular misunderstanding of the word "theory" to convey the false impression that we evolutionists are covering up the rotten core of our edifice. Second, they misuse a popular philosophy of science to argue that they are behaving scientifically in attacking evolution. Yet the same philosophy demonstrates that their own belief is not science, and that "scientific creationism" is a meaningless and self-contradictory phrase, an example of what Orwell called "newspeak."
In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"—part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is "only" a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is less than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science—that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."
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.
Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certainty." The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Evolutionists have been clear about this distinction between fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory—natural selection—to explain the mechanism of evolution. He wrote in The Descent of Man: "I had two distinct objects in view; firstly, to show that species had not been separately created, and secondly, that natural selection had been the chief agent of change. . . . Hence if I have erred in . . . having exaggerated its [natural selection's] power . . . I have at least, as I hope, done good service in aiding to overthrow the dogma of separate creations."
Thus Darwin acknowledged the provisional nature of natural selection while affirming the fact of evolution. The fruitful theoretical debate that Darwin initiated has never ceased. From the 1940s through the 1960s, Darwin's own theory of natural selection did achieve a temporary hegemony that it never enjoyed in his lifetime. But renewed debate characterizes our decade, and, while no biologists questions the importance of natural selection, many doubt its ubiquity. In particular, many evolutionists argue that substantial amounts of genetic change may not be subject to natural selection and may spread through the populations at random. Others are challenging Darwin's linking of natural selection with gradual, imperceptible change through all intermediary degrees; they are arguing that most evolutionary events may occur far more rapidly than Darwin envisioned.
Scientists regard debates on fundamental issues of theory as a sign of intellectual health and a source of excitement. Science is—and how else can I say it?—most fun when it plays with interesting ideas, examines their implications, and recognizes that old information might be explained in surprisingly new ways. Evolutionary theory is now enjoying this uncommon vigor. Yet amidst all this turmoil no biologist has been lead to doubt the fact that evolution occurred; we are debating how it happened. We are all trying to explain the same thing: the tree of evolutionary descent linking all organisms by ties of genealogy. Creationists pervert and caricature this debate by conveniently neglecting the common conviction that underlies it, and by falsely suggesting that evolutionists now doubt the very phenomenon we are struggling to understand.
Secondly, creationists claim that "the dogma of separate creations," as Darwin characterized it a century ago, is a scientific theory meriting equal time with evolution in high school biology curricula. But a popular viewpoint among philosophers of science belies this creationist argument. Philosopher Karl Popper has argued for decades that the primary criterion of science is the falsifiability of its theories. We can never prove absolutely, but we can falsify. A set of ideas that cannot, in principle, be falsified is not science.
The entire creationist program includes little more than a rhetorical attempt to falsify evolution by presenting supposed contradictions among its supporters. Their brand of creationism, they claim, is "scientific" because it follows the Popperian model in trying to demolish evolution. Yet Popper's argument must apply in both directions. One does not become a scientist by the simple act of trying to falsify a rival and truly scientific system; one has to present an alternative system that also meets Popper's criterion — it too must be falsifiable in principle.
"Scientific creationism" is a self-contradictory, nonsense phrase precisely because it cannot be falsified. I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know, but I cannot imagine what potential data could lead creationists to abandon their beliefs. Unbeatable systems are dogma, not science. Lest I seem harsh or rhetorical, I quote creationism's leading intellectual, Duane Gish, Ph.D. from his recent (1978) book, Evolution? The Fossils Say No! "By creation we mean the bringing into being by a supernatural Creator of the basic kinds of plants and animals by the process of sudden, or fiat, creation. We do not know how the Creator created, what process He used, for He used processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe [Gish's italics]. This is why we refer to creation as special creation. We cannot discover by scientific investigations anything about the creative processes used by the Creator." Pray tell, Dr. Gish, in the light of your last sentence, what then is scientific creationism?
Our confidence that evolution occurred centers upon three general arguments. First, we have abundant, direct, observational evidence of evolution in action, from both the field and laboratory. This evidence ranges from countless experiments on change in nearly everything about fruit flies subjected to artificial selection in the laboratory to the famous populations of British moths that became black when industrial soot darkened the trees upon which the moths rest. (Moths gain protection from sharp-sighted bird predators by blending into the background.) Creationists do not deny these observations; how could they? Creationists have tightened their act. They now argue that God only created "basic kinds," and allowed for limited evolutionary meandering within them. Thus toy poodles and Great Danes come from the dog kind and moths can change color, but nature cannot convert a dog to a cat or a monkey to a man.
The second and third arguments for evolution—the case for major changes—do not involve direct observation of evolution in action. They rest upon inference, but are no less secure for that reason. Major evolutionary change requires too much time for direct observation on the scale of recorded human history. All historical sciences rest upon inference, and evolution is no different from geology, cosmology, or human history in this respect. In principle, we cannot observe processes that operated in the past. We must infer them from results that still surround us: living and fossil organisms for evolution, documents and artifacts for human history, strata and topography for geology.
The second argument—that the imperfection of nature reveals evolution—strikes many people as ironic, for they feel that evolution should be most elegantly displayed in the nearly perfect adaptation expressed by some organisms—the camber of a gull's wing, or butterflies that cannot be seen in ground litter because they mimic leaves so precisely. But perfection could be imposed by a wise creator or evolved by natural selection. Perfection covers the tracks of past history. And past history—the evidence of descent—is the mark of evolution.
Evolution lies exposed in the imperfections that record a history of descent. Why should a rat run, a bat fly, a porpoise swim, and I type this essay with structures built of the same bones unless we all inherited them from a common ancestor? An engineer, starting from scratch, could design better limbs in each case. Why should all the large native mammals of Australia be marsupials, unless they descended from a common ancestor isolated on this island continent? Marsupials are not "better," or ideally suited for Australia; many have been wiped out by placental mammals imported by man from other continents. This principle of imperfection extends to all historical sciences. When we recognize the etymology of September, October, November, and December (seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth), we know that the year once started in March, or that two additional months must have been added to an original calendar of ten months.
The third argument is more direct: transitions are often found in the fossil record. Preserved transitions are not common—and should not be, according to our understanding of evolution (see next section) but they are not entirely wanting, as creationists often claim. The lower jaw of reptiles contains several bones, that of mammals only one. The non-mammalian jawbones are reduced, step by step, in mammalian ancestors until they become tiny nubbins located at the back of the jaw. The "hammer" and "anvil" bones of the mammalian ear are descendants of these nubbins. How could such a transition be accomplished? the creationists ask. Surely a bone is either entirely in the jaw or in the ear. Yet paleontologists have discovered two transitional lineages of therapsids (the so-called mammal-like reptiles) with a double jaw joint—one composed of the old quadrate and articular bones (soon to become the hammer and anvil), the other of the squamosal and dentary bones (as in modern mammals). For that matter, what better transitional form could we expect to find than the oldest human, Australopithecus afarensis, with its apelike palate, its human upright stance, and a cranial capacity larger than any ape�s of the same body size but a full 1,000 cubic centimeters below ours? If God made each of the half-dozen human species discovered in ancient rocks, why did he create in an unbroken temporal sequence of progressively more modern features—increasing cranial capacity, reduced face and teeth, larder body size? Did he create to mimic evolution and test our faith thereby?
Faced with these facts of evolution and the philosophical bankruptcy of their own position, creationists rely upon distortion and innuendo to buttress their rhetorical claim. If I sound sharp or bitter, indeed I am—for I have become a major target of these practices.
I count myself among the evolutionists who argue for a jerky, or episodic, rather than a smoothly gradual, pace of change. In 1972 my colleague Niles Eldredge and I developed the theory of punctuated equilibrium. We argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record—geologically "sudden" origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis)—reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record. In most theories, small isolated populations are the source of new species, and the process of speciation takes thousands or tens of thousands of years. This amount of time, so long when measured against our lives, is a geological microsecond. It represents much less than 1 per cent of the average life-span for a fossil invertebrate species—more than ten million years. Large, widespread, and well established species, on the other hand, are not expected to change very much. We believe that the inertia of large populations explains the stasis of most fossil species over millions of years.
We proposed the theory of punctuated equilibrium largely to provide a different explanation for pervasive trends in the fossil record. Trends, we argued, cannot be attributed to gradual transformation within lineages, but must arise from the different success of certain kinds of species. A trend, we argued, is more like climbing a flight of stairs (punctuated and stasis) than rolling up an inclined plane.
Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists—whether through design or stupidity, I do not know—as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups. Yet a pamphlet entitled "Harvard Scientists Agree Evolution Is a Hoax" states: "The facts of punctuated equilibrium which Gould and Eldredge…are forcing Darwinists to swallow fit the picture that Bryan insisted on, and which God has revealed to us in the Bible."
Continuing the distortion, several creationists have equated the theory of punctuated equilibrium with a caricature of the beliefs of Richard Goldschmidt, a great early geneticist. Goldschmidt argued, in a famous book published in 1940, that new groups can arise all at once through major mutations. He referred to these suddenly transformed creatures as "hopeful monsters." (I am attracted to some aspects of the non-caricatured version, but Goldschmidt's theory still has nothing to do with punctuated equilibrium—see essays in section 3 and my explicit essay on Goldschmidt in The Pandas Thumb.) Creationist Luther Sunderland talks of the "punctuated equilibrium hopeful monster theory" and tells his hopeful readers that "it amounts to tacit admission that anti-evolutionists are correct in asserting there is no fossil evidence supporting the theory that all life is connected to a common ancestor." Duane Gish writes, "According to Goldschmidt, and now apparently according to Gould, a reptile laid an egg from which the first bird, feathers and all, was produced." Any evolutionists who believed such nonsense would rightly be laughed off the intellectual stage; yet the only theory that could ever envision such a scenario for the origin of birds is creationism—with God acting in the egg.
I am both angry at and amused by the creationists; but mostly I am deeply sad. Sad for many reasons. Sad because so many people who respond to creationist appeals are troubled for the right reason, but venting their anger at the wrong target. It is true that scientists have often been dogmatic and elitist. It is true that we have often allowed the white-coated, advertising image to represent us—"Scientists say that Brand X cures bunions ten times faster than…" We have not fought it adequately because we derive benefits from appearing as a new priesthood. It is also true that faceless and bureaucratic state power intrudes more and more into our lives and removes choices that should belong to individuals and communities. I can understand that school curricula, imposed from above and without local input, might be seen as one more insult on all these grounds. But the culprit is not, and cannot be, evolution or any other fact of the natural world. Identify and fight our legitimate enemies by all means, but we are not among them.
I am sad because the practical result of this brouhaha will not be expanded coverage to include creationism (that would also make me sad), but the reduction or excision of evolution from high school curricula. Evolution is one of the half dozen "great ideas" developed by science. It speaks to the profound issues of genealogy that fascinate all of us—the "roots" phenomenon writ large. Where did we come from? Where did life arise? How did it develop? How are organisms related? It forces us to think, ponder, and wonder. Shall we deprive millions of this knowledge and once again teach biology as a set of dull and unconnected facts, without the thread that weaves diverse material into a supple unity?
But most of all I am saddened by a trend I am just beginning to discern among my colleagues. I sense that some now wish to mute the healthy debate about theory that has brought new life to evolutionary biology. It provides grist for creationist mills, they say, even if only by distortion. Perhaps we should lie low and rally around the flag of strict Darwinism, at least for the moment—a kind of old-time religion on our part.
But we should borrow another metaphor and recognize that we too have to tread a straight and narrow path, surrounded by roads to perdition. For if we ever begin to suppress our search to understand nature, to quench our own intellectual excitement in a misguided effort to present a united front where it does not and should not exist, then we are truly lost.
[ Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory," May 1981; from Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994, pp. 253-262. ]
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Over forty years later and we're still dealing with this same nonsense. Now, not only from the religious right but the sex-denialism left.
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Importance Of Blog Creation And Its Uses In Our Life
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A blogger is a writer who posts on a personal website. A blog is an online publication that posts information on a particular topic or several topics (usually related to some common theme). Blogs can be regarded as a form of social networking.
To achieve the maximum benefits for your business and marketing, it’s critically important that you have a solid content strategy. While creating your blog, you should keep in mind the following points:
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