Sad News

My grandmother died a little more than a week ago. She had a disease that made her slowly lose control of her body over a period of months. I wasn't very close to her, and only saw her about two or three times a year, but it was still quite sad, both seeing the disease progress and her death itself.

Lies My Teacher Told Me

Yesterday I read a book called Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. By the fact that I finished it in a single day, you can probably gather that I enjoyed it a lot. It has a lot of interesting information, including about how Helen Keller was a radical activist with communist leanings and what Christopher Columbus actually did in the new world (leader of a band of murdering, pillaging, rapists). It goes over not just interesting pieces of history, but the main sources of bias in history books and problems with the structure of history books as well. I would really recommend reading this book.

Evolution: Some Common Misconceptions

This is the first post of two on the topic of evolution. The purpose of this post is to clear up some common misconceptions on evolution that I have seen many of my friends express, as well as some other common misconceptions.

Evolution is often referred to as only a theory. In scientific circles, theory does not refer to a tentative hypothesis, or some sort of guess, nor does it imply any amount of uncertainty. It is a framework that is used to explain a collection of facts. The theory of gravity is not an unheard of phrase in physics circles, yet no scientist doubts the existence of gravity. The fact that evolution is called a theory is not grounds for doubt in the theory.

Evolution is not an atheistic agenda or an attempt to rule God out of the universe. It is accepted by the great majority of religious biologists as well as atheists. It isn't an attempt to rule God out of the universe because it can't be used that way.

Evolution is not faith-based. Even if evolution is not true, as long as people have examined the evidence and are honestly mistaken they are not taking something on faith. One could imply that those who are not educated on the matter but trust the consensus of scientists to be right most of the time are taking it on faith, but that is only a portion of those who believe in evolution. Anyway, the better word here would be trust, because it doesn’t have the connotations of irrational belief.

Nor is Evolution a theory that we came about by a random accident. While there is a random aspect, one can give a fairly good prediction of how a species will evolve based on the selection pressure in the environment.

Evolution is not called Darwinism in scientific circles. Darwinism is generally a term used be creationists to imply some sort of personality cult, or by people who have heard other people call it that. It is also used to distinguish the mainstream theory of evolution from the concept of guided evolution, however naturalistic evolution is a far better phrase here than Darwinism. Genetics, for example, is a major part of any current version of evolutionary theory; however Darwin knew nothing of genetics so Darwinism is quite a misnomer. The theory of evolution has undergone much change and improvement since Darwin's day as more and more evidence has poured in.

There is no controversy over evolution in the scientific community. While scientists can be quote-mined for sayings that make it look like they are expressing serious doubt in evolution, they are almost invariably debating about competing versions of the theory. Over 99% of scientists with doctorates in the field accept evolution.

Evolution is not a theory on the origin of life. Given that the first replicator, (Does not have to be, and almost definitely was not a cell or what we would understand as an organism) it explains the development of all the species on the planet to day.

Evolution is not untestable. Evolution could be proven false by all sorts of evidence were it to show up. If fossils for rabbits, horses, dogs, and other present day animals were discovered in the fossil record instead of the changes over time that we do see, that would be evidence against evolution instead of for it. If we find (which we do) that we share endogenous retroviruses ("Scars" on our DNA from certain types of viruses that infected our ancestor's DNA) with close descendants on the evolutionary tree, that is evidence for evolution. If such non-beneficial and random elements were not shared by our genetic cousins, that would be evidence against evolution.

Nor does evolution fail the scientific criteria of reproducibility. All that is demanded is that the research and experiments can be reproduced, not that the actual historical event be reproduced. And evolution can be reproduced in the lab to a significant degree. Bacteria reproduce so fast one can cover thousands of generations in a few years.

Nor is the theory of evolution responsible for leading to the holocaust, or any other eugenics attempt. Darwin's idea was not that the fittest should survive, but that the process of natural selection is what created the variety of species we see. The idea that you can get the traits you want in your livestock by controlling which animals breed is artificial selection and has been around since ancient history. The holocaust is based on those ideas, Hitler's appeal to evolution makes no more sense than his appeal to Christianity in his campaign to eliminate what he considered to be inferior races.

Similarly, the theory of evolution is a theory on how species originated, it has no moral implications on how humans should act. It no more leads to the belief that every man should fend for himself than the theory of gravity leads to the belief that you should push people off cliffs.

This list of misconceptions might be expanded later.

I've joined the Blogosphere

Yeah, I've made a blog. The layout will probably change as soon as I become more competent at editing it. Updates will be whenever, like when I have an opinion to share, or a question to ask all my friends, or some update to my life that I want everyone to know. Mostly I've made this because I find it a hassle to talk to everyone separately for some of the things I have to say, especially when I don't know who will care about any given topic. So I hope you'll check this regularly, like at least once a week, if you're a friend of mine. Also, if you have a blog, post a comment with the link so I can start reading it and add a link to the side of my blog here. Or if you can link me to the blog of someone I know, post that too.