(no subject)

[pat]

I used to have respect for the San Jose Mercury News. Not anymore.

Op-Ed piece in today's paper: The Controversy over Darwinism. I would dissect the piece for the trash that it is, but I am too disheartened by the fact that the Merc chose to print it that I don't have the heart.

I can't remember where I heard it, but I like the saying "Saying evolution is a theory is about like saying gravity is a theory."

I despair over my country: can we really have become so stupid in such a short period of time?

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Well, in fairness, gravitation *is* a theory. The current best version being General Relativity, though Newton's version works perfectly well for us here on Earth.

But yeah, I take your point.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

But wouldn't it be fair to say that the existence of gravity is not in question, simply the details of how it works are?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure. Though the idea of gravity as a force which causes acceleration was a radical new idea when Newton proposed it. In classical Aristotlian physics, gravity was a property of the Earth which caused things to be attracted toward the center of the Earth, while levity was a property of the air which caused things to be attracted upward.

At this point I think it's pretty fair to say that just about everyone recognizes gravity as a universal, fundamental force.

[worldmage.livejournal.com]

Actually, that's not quite right either. Gravitation is a phenomenon. Relativity and Newtonian Physics are theories explaining and describing the phenomenon we call gravity.

In the same vein, evolution is a phenomenon. You can't really argue the fact that species change and exchange new traits for old ones over time. You can actually watch it happening in simple organisms such as bacteria and virii. Natural selection is a theory explaining the phenomenon of evolution. You can say that evolution is a framework on which the current theories explaining the origin of life as it exists today are based, but you can't accurately say that evolution itself is a theory.

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

You can actually watch it in much more complex, such as finches. (http://www.2think.org/tbotf.shtml)

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

No, we've always been this stupid. Remember the Scopes trial in 1925. Remember that Scopes lost.

And, ignoring evolution, the religion vs. science debate has been going on for centuries. Think of Galileo in 1633.