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Misconceptions about evolution

evolution.berkeley.edu

11–20 of 172 posts

Re: Misconceptions about evolution

#11
My favorite one is: Evolution and Creationism should be given equal time in education.

Not even the Catholic Church thinks Creationism should be taught (I'm Catholic if it matters) in school as science.

From Wikipedia: Here is viewpoint of the Vatican's chief astronomer, Fr. George Coyne, issued a statement on 18 November 2005 saying that "Intelligent design isn't science even though it pretends to be. If you want to teach it in schools, intelligent design should be taught when religion or cultural history is taught, not science." Cardinal Paul Poupard added that "the faithful have the obligation to listen to that which secular modern science has to offer, just as we ask that knowledge of the faith be taken in consideration as an expert voice in humanity." He also warned of the permanent lesson we have learned from the Galileo affair, and that "we also know the dangers of a religion that severs its links with reason and becomes prey to fundamentalism." Fiorenzo Facchini, professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Bologna, called intelligent design unscientific, and wrote in the January 16–17, 2006 edition L'Osservatore Romano: "But it is not correct from a methodological point of view to stray from the field of science while pretending to do science.... It only creates confusion between the scientific plane and those that are philosophical or religious." Kenneth R. Miller is another prominent Catholic scientist widely known for vehemently opposing Young Earth Creationism and Intelligent Design.

Re: Misconceptions about evolution

#14
post #5

I would point anyone who subscribes to any of the several current fad diets to this one: http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq....

What fad diets are you referring to?

Any diet that is based on an unsubstantiated claim that "humans have not evolved to digest X" where X is something that humans have been eating for thousands of years. Paleo comes to mind, but there are others. The claim made by these diets isn't structurally invalid, but often the claims are made without any investigation and are substantiated by anecdotal evidence that people feel better when eliminating X from their diet. That's fine, but that's not the same thing as being incompatible from an evolutionary standpoint.

Re: Misconceptions about evolution

#16
Quite interesting. It corrects well the statement "Natural selection is about survival of the very fittest individuals in a population." to: Though "survival of the fittest" is the catchphrase of natural selection, "survival of the fit enough" is more accurate. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_faq....

I think that's a very important clarification, because we may look around and see very diverse population with very diverse handicaps - from mental to physical, and question how it could be that "survival of the fittest" let all this happen.

Information is also organized really well - short paragraphs, easy to consume, with links to more details in some sections. Target audience is probably someone who wants a few questions answered, but not a creationist or a biology scientist.

Re: Misconceptions about evolution

#17
For many of these people, science and religion simply deal with different realms. Science deals with natural causes for natural phenomena, while religion deals with beliefs that are beyond the natural world.

I think scientists are too quick to diffuse the religion vs science arguement. Maybe religious scientist can enlighten me on this. When one bases beliefs on essentially nothing ('gut feelings', apparitions, what someone wrote down 1000 yrs ago), how do you reconcile the use of evidence for establishing belief in one domain, and then not require this in another? We have absolutely zero credible evidence of a creator, an afterlife, or Santa Claus. Pick your religion, what method do you use to evalute it's 'factualness' vs some other religion? Usually the answer is that it's what you were first exposed to. This world would be much better off without the concept of an afterlife. Focus on the here and now, it's all we get.

Re: Misconceptions about evolution

#18

No matter how it's explained, I still can't wrap my brain around how evolution produces complex systems. How do systems with interdependent processes and parts get produced by a process that seems to proceed stepwise?

You're a programmer, right? A lot of people on here are.

You know how when starting something completely from scratch, there is so much foundational work to do, making frameworks, helper libraries, classes, etc. You have to do all that stuff before your program can do much (assuming no third party libraries).

Well, once your code base (or just your knowledge of existing libraries) is advanced enough, you can more easily combine pieces of it with relatively small changes to the code. You can mix and match parts and the result will be something very complex that may be based on person-years worth of work while only taking a few minutes to assemble.

Pieces of code can be removed from the final product with a one line change. While the code still exists in the final product, it isn't referenced anywhere.

These are a couple of analogies that help me think about it. They don't explain everything, but it should be enough to make clear that just because evolution works by "stepwise" changes that doesn't mean one step can't create huge differences.

Re: Misconceptions about evolution

#19
post #15

Yeah, but if humans came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys ? I bet you can't answer me that. (cough)

Humans didn't evolve from monkeys, humans and monkeys share a common now extinct ancestor. Or it was aliens.

I know, I did write this :-) http://rationalblogs.org/rationalwiki/2013/02/13/if-humans-c...

Re: Misconceptions about evolution

#20
post #2

Publishing a long list of misconceptions is a really bad way to destroy them. Readers will skim and just remember the headlines, all of which are false statements. Spread facts, not "myths"

You need the myths for SEO.
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