Comments on: I’m not buying it Gary

By: Curing cynical skepticism 2 – The non-active atheists | Terahertz

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[…] States, but we shouldn’t forget that our Minister of State for Science is a former chiropractor who is unsure how old the Earth is. But the argument of whether we should care about secular issues is a topic for another time (I […]

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By: Patrick Ross

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:43:15 +0000

I don’t think that’s a sound deduction at all.

Goodyear affirms his belief in evolution, goes on to say that evolution is a continuous process, then explains evolutionary process through adaptation. He may have done so clumsily, but that’s what he was doing — at least that’s how it seems to me.

A person has to separate Goodyear’s adaptation comments from their context in order to make the argument that he’s ignorant about evolution. Anyone who does so willingly is making a bad faith argument.

I’m sure some people didn’t recognize the context. It wouldn’t surprise me. That being said, I’m certain that others did, and I’m personally making sure they’re in for one fuck of a fight over it.

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By: Ben Keller

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:38:49 +0000

I don’t necessarily think Goodyear is a Creationist, just a politician who is quite ignorant of the facts in the job he is paid by the taxpayers to do.

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By: Patrick Ross

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:43:03 +0000

Hmmmm. Sounds an awful lot like “the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, in this case applied to Goodyear’s alleged creationist beliefs.

The biggest problem being, of course, that it’s considered awfully unscientific to use that in order to make the assumption that Goodyear is a “creationist”.

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By: Ben Keller

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:53:32 +0000

Patrick:

While you are correct, that still dodges the issue that creationists have no problem with adaptation: even the idiots at Answers in Genesis, who happen to be some of the most bone-headed YEC out there have a page explaining their acceptance of it: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v14/i2/adaptation.asp . If a holocaust denier tries to claim he isn’t by saying he accepts WWII happened, that isn’t very convincing, is it?

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By: Ian

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:34:58 +0000

Brian and Kelly are like the bulldogs of atheism. Their arguments are crude and rude and often not as logically sound as they’d like to believe. They likely know a little more about evolution that Ray Comfort/Kirk Cameron, but I wouldn’t bet that much. I don’t aspire to any of them. So no, it’s not okay for them to be wrong.

I think you’re also getting overly bogged down in semantics. I’m not suggesting that Mr. Goodyear ought to be an evolutionary biologist to be science minister, just that he recognize the importance of evolution to science, and not make stupid comments like the ones he made. Our Heritage Minister doesn’t make statements like “there were no people in North America before the Europeans came in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries” because it’s flat out wrong.

Now, don’t you have a rock to crawl back under now that neo-conservativism is dying?

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By: Patrick Ross

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 05:19:14 +0000

Wrong.

Adaptation occurs in segments of the population — masses of individuals — and spreads through the rest of the population vis a vis breeding advantage.

In other words, organisms with the advantage survive to procreate in greater numbers, organisms without the advantage survive to procreate in smaller numbers. In time those not blessed with the advantageous adaptations die off.

Furthermore, I’d point out that atheist darlings Brian Sapient and Kelly O’Connor echoed Goodyear’s ongoing-evolution sentiments very closely when they insisted we’re “just this year’s version of humanity”.

But I guess it’s somehow OK when they make that argument.

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By: Ben Keller

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:43:42 +0000

Adaptation occurs in populations, not individuals. What the Minister described is more akin to bastardized Lamarckism than the modern synthesis understanding of evolution. Besides, adaptation is not the part of the evolutionary theory that is rejected by creationists, it’s the fact of common descent and the unguided nature of complex life’s origin.

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By: Patrick Ross

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:58:26 +0000

I think a more interesting question is whether or not you understand what the theory of evolution says.

Familiar with natural selection?

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By: Posts about technology as of March 18, 2009 | Sensonize.com - Make Money Online, Blogging Tips and Reviews

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:58:47 +0000

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