h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

.. well, an impressive title doesn't necessarily also mean that the person is really intelluhgent. The ideas that Mr. Skell blurted out didn't impress me and in fact appeared to have very little effect on anyone in this thread.

as far as I'm concerned any professor may or may not be a wackaloon. I prefer to judge by his statements, not by his business card.

based on what I've seen and on several opinions in this thread I would say "yes, Philip Skell, no matter what titles he has, is a wackaloon".

The title is 'Scientific Dissent from Darwinism'. That should give you a clue.

I have to say wackaloon is quite a groovy word.

I was going by your wonderful snippet above.

Frankly, while I will follow these threads to some extent, it's not so important to me to follow other people's theories once I get home from w*rk. I find the long technical descriptions of ideas and theories dull in the main and when I entirely disagree with one of the points of view, and am happy to wait for the outcomes when they are good and ready, with the other ones, it's a waste of my time.

What difference does it *really* make?

This from happypotamus:
<>

So you'd say all 300-odd university professors belong in the wackaloon category, I suppose?

exactly, I like the word and I still think the whole list of expensive titles are wackaloons.

one expensive title or 300 expensive titles.. doesn't impress me

mind you, the local funny farm has several professors sitting side by side with Napoleon abd Julius Ceasar, all are weaving baskets

I like the Hapipotamus

Yes. Happipotamus is cool.

But don't you think you're being a bit dogmatic and intransigent?
I mean, when 300 people at the top of their chosen fields have a view, surely it's worth giving more credence to than dismissing them as wackaloons.

"As for evolution, it's not so much that I have anything against evolution, but it's the idea of excluding God's role, and of treating anyone who questions the theory as a heretic that I object to."

There are people who think that evolution and a belief in God are incompatible, but the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury disagree. It's true that evolution is incompatible with a literal interpretation of the Bible, but I've never met or even heard of anyone who is a true literalist - everyone picks and chooses, sometimes using a coherent, logical methodology, and sometimes not.

Religious types who oppose evolution do so not on scientific grounds stemming from genuine scientific doubt. Rather, they do so because it doesn't fit with their version of quasi-Biblical literalism. In other words, they look to twist the facts about the world to fit their ideology - the very opposite of science.

No-one is being treated as a heretic - secularists don't burn people at the stake for having different ideas and expressing them. What the defenders of evolution are doing is defending science against the slander of ignorance and superstition. If anyone has any serious arguments against evolution, bring them forward. But do not, as the creationists do, just keep clinging on to them in the face of the facts.

exactly .. << If anyone has any serious arguments against evolution, bring them forward.>>

the website made by the people I still refer to as wackaloons has no serious arguments against, of for, anything at all

As for the list of distinguished academics, if you look carefully at the list, you'll see that most or all of them are either:

1. Experts in irrelevant fields.
2. Don't have their field of expertise listed.
3. Have a field listed, but only in very vague, general terms.
4. Are very junior and would have no serious academic standard.

And, I suspect...

5. Are all some form of Biblical literalist.

If there was anything, anything at all, in the creationist critique of evolution, we would expect to find at least some academics expressing this view who were

1. Experts in their field
2. Not Christian

Are there any?

I can assure you there are rather a lot of Muslim literal creationists as well. Christians don't have a monopoly on wackaloons.

I'm not surprised at all by the list of scientists on the Discovery institute website. Of course they are questioning evolution - none of them are called Steve.

http://ncseweb.org/taking-action/project-steve

to be fair I think most religions with some sort of creationist myth will have their share of literalists and irrationalists clinging to their written word. There's healthy enough (enough to support various books on the issue) Hindu opposition to evolution which, whilst it is not 6000 yr old creationism does still go with the ideas of humans and dinosaurs together. In fact as I understand it everything there is now (species wise) has always been for billions of years - so in this case it happened longer ago than the geological record allows for.

I've still as yet not seen/heard a valad arguement against natrual selection/evolutionary principles. In the absence of evidence supporting a downright failure in the recieved accepted theory, ind in the absence of any other theory with greater or stronger supporting evidence, the theorry still stands.
I've not yet seen sufficient evidence to suport the view that electricity arrives in my house via a small army of pixis which travel along the wires in small trucks to deliver electricity; if the evidence supporting this should be forthcoming then I'll believe it.

Hi WG,

The flaws in the DI's list have been well documented. There's a brief overview at: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA111_1.html Basically, very few of these people are biologists, the statement they've been asked to sign is pretty vague, and the whole thing is an appeal to authority that pales in comparison to Project Steve.

>Is Philip Skell, Member of the National Academy of Sciences and Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, a wackaloon?

If he thinks he is an authority on biochemistry, he is, since he's a chemist, despite what the DI claims:
http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2005/05/the-unexpected.html

>As for evolution, it's not so much that I have anything against evolution, but it's the idea of excluding God's role, and of treating anyone who questions the theory as a heretic that I object to.

Or, as Keith Doyle put it: Evolution does not require the nonexistence of God, it merely allows for it. That alone is enough to evoke condemnation from those who fear the nonexistence of God more than they fear God Himself.

Gif

Hi Otto,

>As for the list of distinguished academics, if you look carefully at the list, you'll see that most or all of them are either:

5. Added without their knowledge
6. Equally prepared to make the same statement about gravity or any other scientific principle.

Gif

>>Is Philip Skell, Member of the National Academy of Sciences and Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, a wackaloon?<<

Wackaloonism is a prerequisite for membership in the Discovery Institute.*
Phillip Skell** is a member of the Discovery Institute.
Therefore, yes, he is by definition a wackaloon.
QED

>>He makes this, I'm sure you'd agree, rather valid point:
"Scientific journals now document many scientific problems and criticisms of evolutionary theory and students need to know about these as well. … Many of the scientific criticisms of which I speak are well known by scientists in various disciplines, including the disciplines of chemistry and biochemistry, in which I have done my work."<<

So what?

Even wackaloons can occasionally make perfectly valid statements. Of course the theory of evolution by natural selection has itself evolved since it first was framed by Darwin. I understand adjustments and refinements to theories are not uncommon in the sciences. Ask any evolutionary biologist about the current problems and criticisms of the theory, and they'll happily bore you to tears about the ongoing research and discussion, done by real scientists, who work to resolve those problems, rather than wackaloons like Skell who say things like, 'Oh, there's something I don't understand, or the research doesn't yet appear to adequately explain, therefore Godditit'

*Of course, not all wackaloons are members of the DI. But all members of the DI are wackaloons.

**Skell has no expertise whatsoever in evolutionary biology. He is a chemist -- http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/creationist_e_mail_phil_skell/

>>There are people who think that evolution and a belief in God are incompatible<< Otto

Where I live I'm pretty sure these people are the minority. I grew up Anglican and I don't remember ever being taught anything creationist. Obviously I learnt the story of genesis, and adam and eve etc, but it was never said this is THE truth and evolutionary theory is crap.

As for god and evolution, if there is an intelligence that is in all things then there is nothing inconsistent with that and evolutionary theory. What happens in convos like this is there is an assumption about what god is (by both atheists and religious people). Christian fundamentalists seem to think that god is an individual being that has control over everything. And atheists argue against god but basically believe the same thing that god is an individual being with absolute power but he doesn't exist

This is why I usually avoid religious discussions here. It gobsmacks me that people critiquing religion accept fundamentalist versions of what religion, and reality, are and argue against them rather than critiquing the underlying concepts.


>>I agree that the design is really bad .. any engineer would install backup devices for really critical organs. why bother about duplicated kidneys, lungs and not have a backup heart? indeed, combining one tubing system for air, liquid and food intake is bad practice, but don't get me started about the waste disposal.
<< Hati

I disagree I think it's a great design. Combining functions eg tubing is very efficient. And we don't need a second heart because in evolutionary terms the heart lasted long enough and was well protected by the ribcage. Heart disease (where the heart needs to be replaced) is a very modern thing.

I disagree again. Combining functions is open to exploitation and liable to malfunction. Heart disease is the largest cause of death in modern times, it may have been less of a factor when people tended not to live as long, but it must surely always have been significant.

Pumping blood around the body by squeezing it at one end is a stressful job. Compare it to a human design: an Archimedes screw can achieve am equivalent flow at a much lower pressure. Heart assisting devices (replacing a failed chamber) based on one often take so much load off the rest of the heart that it regenerates significantly.

If life were designed, then the designer was a dodgy hacker. He wrote in assembly language, so we can't easily port His work to a new system, and His idea of code re-use was to copy and paste. The result is a sort of genius of expediency, but the design would have worked better if it were simpler and more modularised.