I did not post this article to incite another evolution over creationism debate. But rather, because it highlighted the journey of a young man who is trying to change the world for the better.
A young man who is not trying to enact change through destruction, hyperbole or negativism. Nor is he simply trying to build "awareness". He is trying to actually change things in his state by using rational discourse, reasonable publicity and rallying both popular and distinguished support.
Depends on who you have on your friends list. I have a few from my days of living in Mississippi, its always quite interesting what they believe, and maybe quite shocking.
The article says Zack was 16 in 2008 and is 19 in 2013. Has Zack been impressing the importance of scientific literacy by promoting it from a relativistic spaceship? Or should he also start promoting numeracy to journalists?
Presumably someone asked him "when did this all start?", and he said "when I was, I think, 16? -- Louisiana passed this act and I...", and he didn't stop to calculate it carefully.
And it looked about right, and if he was off by one it's completely irrelevant, so quite rightly no one put any thought into making absolutely sure that the numbers were exactly right.
Knowing several people who disbelieve evolution or climate change, I think this is not really true and the wrong attitude to take. People that want to teach creation along with evolution in the classroom truly think that evolution is a weakly supported hypothesis that does not fit the scientific evidence. Not just because they believe it contradicts their religion, but because they believe it's physically, literally wrong and is scientifically falsifiable. There is a minority of disbelievers that want biblical literalism taught in the classroom, but I think most truly believe that evolution is probably untrue, and at best, unproven, and simply want what they feel is the evidence taught in the classroom, instead of one unsupported or weak theory taught with cherry-picked evidence. Yes, that's really what they think.
Obviously they are wrong, but I think if most of the evolution-deniers truly understood the modern theory of evolution, and understood that it is separate from abiogenesis, I think they wouldn't have a problem with it.
People that want to teach creation along with evolution in the classroom truly think that evolution is a weakly supported hypothesis that does not fit the scientific evidence
I think you're giving way too much credit to science deniers. There's no amount of physical evidence that can fairly compete with the argument of "well, the creator of the universe wrote this book and it has to be correct"
I'm not talking about the people that choose to deny evolution solely because of some literal interpretation of the Bible. I'm talking about the ones that were raised by people like that, and have been incorrectly told how weak the evidence for evolution is. There is a LOT of money behind teaching people this, and teaching that scientists lie to push some agenda or another.
A lot of the same people don't believe in climate change for the same reason, that is, they don't think it's supported well enough by evidence. I think that makes this subset of evolution-deniers skeptics at heart (At least for some things). Beginning from first principles, I think skepticism is a great attitude with which to teach science. I think a lot of these people could be taught, given willingness to learn, and an absence of mistrust of science in general, which a lot of them have been unfortunately taught.
I just don't think that's a worldview that anyone arrives at in an intellectually honest way.
I'm reminded of the great example of gaps in the fossil record. If you find a fossil that's in the middle of the two end points of the gap you make things worse, because now you have TWO gaps in the fossil record.
Ranting aside, I have no idea how to deal with this phenomenon in a constructive way.
>but I think if most of the evolution-deniers truly understood the modern theory of evolution, and understood that it is separate from abiogenesis, I think they wouldn't have a problem with it.
I am the son of a fundamentalist minister. For a time, I was also a Christian. I'm now an atheist.
Take it from me: you're wrong. I've been there. There is literally nothing you can say to them. Their belief system is invested in it not being true. It's like the quote attributed to Upton Sinclair: 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'
I once stood in my doorway and pitied Einstein et. al, smugly thinking that for all their "human wisdom", they weren't able to grasp these "universal truths of God as made manifest through creation." Me, who dropped high school physics. So you see, there's another element to the denial. It allows less intelligent people to think they have something over "these intellectuals."
I believe you. Maybe I am wrong for the majority, then. But I arrived at my viewpoint because I used to be someone who disbelieved in evolution. Or rather, I believed in "microevolution" in individual species, which I later discovered in college to simply be evolution over a few hundred thousand years instead of a few hundred million. I believed this because it's what my parents taught me, and it's what I read in books (that they gave me). I haven't given up on my parents yet... I don't like to talk with them about evolution, but I do like to talk about science, and I still think if they truly understood a scientifically accurate model of the universe as we currently understand it, they would accept evolution, and the ~13 billion year age of the universe.
I am still a Christian, but I now understand and accept the scientific method as the best way to understand the physical world. I simply choose to also believe that there are unprovable and unfalsifiable things that exist beyond the physical realm.
> People that want to teach creation along with evolution in the classroom truly think that evolution is a weakly supported hypothesis...
That's fine and all, but why are these people getting jobs as science teachers where they will have to teach this theory that they believe so wrong? Even if they have the book knowledge down pat (Which honestly I doubt. Not believing in evolution if you've been fed distortions and lies your whole life is one thing, but not believing it if you actually have an accurate mental model of it is an entirely different animal...), how could they possibly be good teachers? Unless they are also great actors, I don't see how they could possibly impart that same essential enthusiasm for science that good science teachers do.
What portion of these creationists are Young Earth creationists? Young Earth creationists would have a problem with the modern theory of evolution because it actually is impossible for modern biodiversity to have evolved in 6,000 to 10,000 years.
Believing something does not make it true... And hey, if the world was created 6000 years ago by some omnipotent being and made to look like it's several billion years old for some reason, I'm cool with that, but showing me a book written by humans as proof is just goddamn stupid.
I'd consider myself a creationist, but I never understood why so many creationists argue for a 10,000 year old earth. If you'll permit me quoting the Bible, here, to explain my point: there is every logical possibility of 60 billion years occurring between $WHEN_TIME_STARTED and $BIBLICAL_FIRST_DAY_WHICH_MUST_BE_NO_MORE_THAN_10_000_YEARS_AGO.
> In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
<hypothesis: stars are created here. some 60 odd billion years go here, giving plenty of time for starlight to reach the earth>
> 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.
[Also, not really interested in getting into discussions of which scenario is more likely or whether I'm a fracking idiot. I just wanted to point out that I find it an intellectual curiosity that many creationists get so hung up on the young earth thing, since I'm not convinced that a 60 billion year old earth & biblical literalism are mutually exclusive.]
I thought people were trolling when they claimed the Earth was 6000 years old and it was a good troll, then I found out they really believe in it.
Anyway, the problem with taking Genesis 1 as a historic record is the greatest misinterpretation of the Bible, and created so much trouble for creationists.
If you accept an old earth (and I assume a similarly accurate timescale for how long life has been around), how would you expect life not to evolve? Given that much time, it's really just inevitable. How could it possibly not happen?
If you're a catholic-style "theistic evolution" type, then I suppose that is another thing. I'm mostly just curious how you stretch a non-evolution creation/development of life out over more than a couple thousand years. Catholics do it by just calling evolution "divinely guided" or whatever. Of the origin thoughts that involve deities, "young earth/no evolution" and "old earth/theistic evolution" seem the most logical to me.
That touches on one of the biggest conceptual problems holding people back from understanding evolution. The timescale is big. Really big. Bigger than human brains are typically capable of handling. I sometimes think that teaching shared ancestry as a starting point is the wrong approach, and that we should focus instead of the science of how old the universe must be (based on things like astronomy and earth science) and how iterative adaptive systems reflect changes over billions of years.
From there, people can arrive at common ancestry all on their own.
Among Christians, the "first day of creation is 6000 years ago" theory didn't really gain prominence until the early 1900s, as a part of the Christian Fundamentalist movement (which pushed strong literalism), which itself was a reaction to the Liberal Christianity movement of the late 1800s (which pushed the idea that all of scripture was figurative). Wikipedia has fairly straightforward summaries of the history of both groups.
Consider this very modern-sounding quote:
>> "For who that has understanding will suppose that the first, and second, and third day, and the evening and the morning, existed without a sun, and moon, and stars? and that the first day was, as it were, also without a sky? And who is so foolish as to suppose that God, after the manner of a husbandman, planted a paradise in Eden, towards the east, and placed in it a tree of life, visible and palpable, so that one tasting of the fruit by the bodily teeth obtained life? and again, that one was a partaker of good and evil by masticating what was taken from the tree? And if God is said to walk in the paradise in the evening, and Adam to hide himself under a tree, I do not suppose that anyone doubts that these things figuratively indicate certain mysteries, the history having taken place in appearance, and not literally."
That was written by Origen of Alexandria, probably around 250 AD (part of http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf04.vi.v.v.ii.html ). I've found sentiments of that nature are common among very ancient Christians, as well as among Jews of the same era.
> People that want to teach creation along with evolution in the classroom truly think that evolution is a weakly supported hypothesis that does not fit the scientific evidence.
That would make sense if they didn't want to replace it with creation. This is a good opportunity for them to learn how science works. It doesn't even matter if evolution is wrong -- that doesn't make creationism right.
Having grown up going to anti-science schools, it's because they simply don't understand the basic idea of evolution. They literally think it's "one day a fish just started walking on land" or "an eye just randomly appeared", which _is_ nonsense.
Understanding evolution requires understanding some of the subtleties, a bit of game theory, speciation, and so on. They need to understand that while mutations are random, survival on average is not.
Without that understanding, it comes down to "so we just evolved from monkeys? My grandma isn't a monkey!", which is rightfully a stupid idea to believe in. So given their lack of knowledge of what evolution is, they have a perfectly logical stance.
In my experience they don't think it through that far. Creation's not really a theory. The theory is just "Something intelligent created it." How? "Not evolution." Most of the time and energy is spent trying to say how evolution couldn't happen.
We could do worse than teaching Creationism in schools. Especially why it's wrong.
I've learned more about the theory of evolution from the [Index of Creationist Claims](http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html) than from almost any other source (and I studied primatology).
You become convinced of nothing so strongly as when you study the flaws of its critics.
Why is this on HN with 41 upvotes (as of this writing)? Is he creating a company? Is he building a startup? Is he writing javascript, putting together something really interesting, or what? I see nothing here HN-worthy.
This is the kind of thing I expect to find elsewhere (and do, in fact, look for this sort of content there). HN is a niche site for hackers, entrepreneurs, and money folks. No need to bring excessive religious topics/debates here - keep that on reddit/etc.
Becoming the face of a major political issue at such an early age is an impressive accomplishment, regardless of the subject matter. What this young man is demonstrating can easily carry over to other forms of leadership, in business and in politics, and there are many things we can learn from his example.
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
People who force creationism on us are trying to create a future where you won't have any start-ups because you will die young, ill and poor. Therefore the topic is important in the long run.
I was ready to dismiss this as pure fear-mongering, but when you think about it, there's something to it. Would you want to trust your life to a doctor or medical researcher who, for non-scientific reasons, refuses to consider the main organizing principle of all life sciences?
That's a good sign that the hackers community is not only concentrated on professional matters, they are not a bunch of narrow-minded nerds, but are enlightened people concerned with all sorts of problems a modern intellectual would be concerned with, a sort of elite of the humankind.
I don't mind creationism being taught side by side with evolution. But replacing the latter with the former is plain idiotic/dumb/stupid.
Obviously, if you teach them side by side, anyone with half a brain will sooner or later realize that creationism is simply bullsheet, which is probably why these people want to silence the inconvenient (for them) truth...
I think this is a naive view. If they're taught side-by-side by a teacher who strongly supports creationism, the instruction will be influenced by that bias and the students may not receive the information they need to make an informed decision.
Even an atheist teacher teaching creationism alongside science is introducing a pro-creationism bias. Merely having them in the same classroom, let alone the same class is lending creationism far more credibility than it deserves. Mentioning it at all is a bias in favor of it; based on merit it deserves far less.
Exactly, save creationism for a world religions class and evolution for the science class. They cannot be compared in the context of science because creationism is outside of the scientific process.
True, but try to tell that to the millions of people who believe creationism IS science... To make it simple, just let the kids choose and decide for themselves...
> To make it simple, just let the kids choose and decide for themselves...
No, that's not how it works. By that logic we also would have to teach about ghosts, dwarfs, <stroke>astronomy</stroke>astrology, or just claims made by other religions or folklore. There's a reason we teach our children sciences. They are objective, observable, testable, falsifiable, etc. We want a rational society, not despotism.
The millions of people who believe creationism IS science are wrong. It's imperative for people to let them know (politely, of course) that they are wrong, especially in the science classroom
I don't find it acceptable to budle up issues of creationism/evolution and climate change. Writer is being devious when he's doing it so lightly as he did; especially when climate change wasn't mentioned in the title.
Hardly. The Lousiana law also made allowance for "supplemental material" on climate change, and Kopplin himself mentioned that "We don't just deny evolution... We are denying climate change and vaccines and other mainstream science...". Evolution denial is in the title but climate change denial is not because evolution is the main issue Kopplin has focused his activism on.
The fastest way to repeal this garbage law is for the non-christian teachers to start bringing Islam-related supplemental materials and start teaching it to all the Christian kids, and failing them on tests if they answer "incorrectly".
A young man who is not trying to enact change through destruction, hyperbole or negativism. Nor is he simply trying to build "awareness". He is trying to actually change things in his state by using rational discourse, reasonable publicity and rallying both popular and distinguished support.