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"Same Facts, Different Conclusions"

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Jack_Burton
11/04/09

In reply to Obama Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
I would think "DJ Slinky Wizard" would be a worse influence, based on name alone, but what do I know about kids these days? #sashaobama
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Lottie
11/04/09

In reply to Obama Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Is anyone seriously troubled by this? When I was their age Madonna was my idol. And I'm talking about "Sex" era Madonna. By all measures, Miley Cyrus is pretty tame. #sashaobama
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Sunshineyness
11/04/09

@Lotti220: That's what I was thinking too. The late 80's/early 90's were ten times more scandalous than the late 00's have been...

Cyrus may not be out there being super positive saving the whales or whatever but she's just singing old fashioned bubble gum pop without the hint of innuendo. Her audience caps out at about 14 anyway. If anyone older likes it it's usually done so ironically. #sashaobama
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KatieBLV
11/04/09

In reply to Obama Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Wait. They met the Jonas Brothers? I KNEW there were perks to being a celebrity! Augh!

Part of me thinks that Sasha and Malia are handling their newfound fame very well, at least so far, but once they hit those angsty teenage years, things are going to be tough. I feel a little sorry for them, but I can't imagine any other age that's a good one to enter the white house with. They're still at the age where it's totally awesome that they met the Jonas Brothers and they seem to have had enough of a real life, with great parents, not to turn into spoiled-brat teenagers.

I mean, at least I hope. #sashaobama
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formergr
11/04/09

@KatieBLV: If I remember correctly, the Jonas Brothers surprised them at their first night moving into the White House. #sashaobama
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KatieBLV
11/04/09

@formergr: The question remains: why weren't they in my apartment when I moved in? GOSH BOYS, GET ON IT. #sashaobama
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ronniedobbs
11/04/09

In reply to Obama Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
Well I for one am really worried about those girls showing up in sheets on the cover of VF after taking pictures making "slanty-eyes" with their idiot friends. #sashaobama
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Plate2.18
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
I kind of wish people wouldn't act like all creationists are stupid. Plenty of people just don't know the evidence for evolution. If you already believe evolution is true and you're satisfied with the evidence, and you belive creationism is false, most people aren't going to go pick up a book that gives evidence for creationism, and the reverse is true.

It frustrates me, since I'm the type of person to try to learn about everything, but I don't think creationists are (necessarily) stupid.

Also, religion is really powerful. Not everyone can get past the way they were brought up. And I don't think just because some people can makes them better people than those who can't.

I think the creationism museum is absolutely ridiculous, and so are a lot of the people who frequent it, but they're not all stupid, really.
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gangey
06/30/09

@Plate2.18: Excellent point. I was raised thinking that the earth was 6000 years old. I chose to study biology, and thus learned that my previous beliefs were not valid (and eventually went down a path leading to a PhD in evolutionary ecology), but many of my (equally intelligent) friends chose to study other subjects. They still believe in Genesis, line for line. I don't think they are dumber than me because of that. The creationism lobby is powerful and actually much more PR savvy than evolutionary biologists. To someone who hasn't studied biology, creationism arguments seem very plausible.
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Flackette Goes Retro
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
I live reasonably close to this museum, and would go check it out just for funsies if the admission weren't so steep (like $20 the last time I checked). Also, as a Christian and Kentuckian, I resent having these ninnies speak for us.
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tonightineed is actually Mrs. Ziegler-Spock
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
This makes me so sad. A couple of years ago (I'm a youngish Jez) I had to ask my (scientist) boyfriend to explain to me how the world was formed and what the theory of evolution states. I had to have him break it down and explain it to me because I was never taught it. Even doing physics in high school, it was all "and look how this all relates back to our amazing creator!" and "Darwin was an overeager schoolboy who has forever maimed science". I simply didn't know. Until then it, sadly, hadn't occurred to me that the bible didn't address really any of the science of creation/development/evolution/whatever.

Needless to say that's around the same time I left the church.
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merv
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
I'd love go. But I can't be sure they won't use my money to plant a pipe bomb in an abortion clinic.
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deeemer
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
I don't disagree with any of you, but I warn you that evolution isn't that well proven either. I'm not talking about moderate evolution, I'm talking about the theory that we all descend from one celled organisms.

Obviously, there's no way to prove such a thing. Scientists have tried to, but there's no real way to recreate earth's conditions in the extreme. So, therefore, one could argue that this theory of evolution is in itself a belief. And one that we should respect, but also realize that it's not a hard "fact".

As for the dating of these fossils, I read a fascinating book recently that carbon dating has a myriad of problems and flaws in accuracy. Google it! So the fact that we cling to this belief that fossils ARE what scientists SAY they must be, based on faulty measurements - well, I find it just as strange as the creationism museum.
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just kate
06/30/09

@deeemer: While it's true that we cannot recreate the conditions from which life evolved out of the primordial ooze, it is possible to show that evolution occurs.

We know that mutations happen, and in humans every time our DNA replicates (to make new cells) or DNA damage occurs (UV radiation, other mutagens), the changes can and have been shown by sequencing. It is actually rather easy to observe evolution in bacteria, because they adapt in response to changing conditions very quickly.
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Pizza!Pizza!Pizza!
06/30/09

@deeemer: Warn me about what? The scientific and medical discoveries that the theory of evolution has helped bring about?
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Limecrete
06/30/09

@deeemer: Putting aside the exceptions that are bound to pop up in any field, scientists in general have not "tried to prove" anything. That's the beauty of science; it's self-correcting. Someone has an idea. The idea is tested rigorously. Either the resulting evidence supports the initial idea, or it doesn't, and a new (or expanded) idea is formulated. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Something I read once really stuck with me, and that is that scientists would be over-the-moon happy to discover evidence that evolution isn't "real", not only because it would further human knowledge, but because they'd be the famous person to make the discovery. There's no Bible that scientists have to stick to; they're free to test any idea they want.

Personally, I don't see why evolution and religion is that incompatible to anyone but the kookiest fundamentalist. Why not just suppose that evolution is a tool that God works through? That's the problem with Creationism and other faulty religious suppositions, from Earth being the center of the universe to Flat Earth: It's the prevailing theory, so the religion just denies and decries until the evidence is so overwhelming that they decide that it turns out God's OK with it, after all.
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gangey
06/30/09

@deeemer: I don't know what you mean by "moderate evolution," but as an evolutionary ecologist, I have to say that you are wrong about evolution as the process producing the diversity of life not being a "hard fact." The fossil record is actually remarkably intact, given that throughout the vast majority of time most animals and plants were soft-bodied. As @kabaam: said, we have shown evolution to take place in short time spans in bacteria (and invasive plant species, and guppies in streams, and the list goes on). You may choose to believe that God created that first single-celled organism, fine, but beyond that we (scientists) are pretty sure about how it all went down.
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gangey
06/30/09

@Limecrete: Yes, yes, yes.
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deeemer
06/30/09

@kabaam: Yes, yes. I wasn't referring to small mutations. What we haven't seen is large scale mutations that change one species into another. (If someone has a link to where scientists have shown this to happen, please let me know!) In fact, any significant mutations in the genome as we know it usually results in death, which you've described quite well with UV radiation.

And yes, bacteria does evolve with changing conditions. But have we ever seen bacteria mutate into something OTHER than bacteria? I remember seeing some evidence that one celled organisms can combine into multi-cellular ones. But I forgot the result of that. I need to take out my textbooks.
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LittleBlackFly
06/30/09

@deeemer: Speciation HAS been observed - at the macro level.

[www.talkorigins.org]

The first example is very cool - there is a new species of mosquito that lives exclusively in the London Underground and cannot reproduce with its closest relative from which it is descended (Culex pipiens). The like above has a reference to the papers that described it.

Also, as someone working in the hard sciences on their PhD - if you knew of someone falsifying data, I hope you reported it. That's a (justifiable) career ender. I know if I reported something KNOWINGLY false in a refereed journal and got caught, the rest of the community would be on me like a pack of rabid dogs. I work in a pretty contentious field, and my colleagues are generally assholes who'd have no problems calling out their best friend if they thought they were lying about data.
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deeemer
06/30/09

@LittleBlackFly: "Also, as someone working in the hard sciences on their PhD - if you knew of someone falsifying data, I hope you reported it"

Sigh. That's a whole other discussion. we can PM about it if you like, but it's not for this public arena.
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gangey
06/30/09

@deeemer: You too, huh? I had my own little experience with someone (possibly, allegedly) falsifying data as well. What the hell is WRONG with people?

I wish I hadn't had to leave the house for a few hours and miss the rest of this discussion.
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MB14
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
I'm going to chalk this up to the "bizarre American idiosyncrasies an European will never be able to understand" vault. Where it will lay next to the "poor people cannot afford to get sick in the richest nation in the world" paradox.
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doodley is not amused
06/30/09

@MB14: The founder is an Australian:

[www.answersingenesis.org]

This information says he founded Answers in Genesis after moving to the US, but I have read other sources that say he started it in Australia.
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doodley is not amused
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
While the Creation Museum is hilarious in concept*, keep in mind that it is real, it is huge and it is growing. It is one of the top attractions in the Greater Cincinnati area, both in terms of revenue and attendance. They have all sorts of expansion planned:

[nky.cincinnati.com]

These people believe this shit and they are trying desperately to spread their ignorance.

*The most hilarious Creation Museum moment yet, however, is when the Cincinnati Zoo joined with it for a cross-promotion involving discounted admission to both. It didn't go over well. Apparently, no one in the Zoo's marketing department had the sense to realize that maybe -- just maybe -- an organization devoted to science and the Creation Museum were not a natural fit.
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clevernamehere
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
I just read something really interesting about creationism.

A few years ago, one of the major polling organizations included a question about whether or not creationism should be taught in schools. The majority said yes.

Then another polling organization decided to ask people if they knew what creationism is (these kind of questions are not part of standard opinion polls). 7 in 10 did not know what creationism is.

That means that many people were in all likelihood, saying that creationism should be taught because they thought it was another theory, not because they were fundamentalist Christians.
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Lou
06/30/09

I never understood that school debate because is evolution even a theory anymore? Or is that what creationists call it to give their own theory some validity? I feel like there's enough proof that evolution is pretty much fact. Maybe I'm wrong though...
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EkaterinaBallerina
06/30/09

@clevernamehere: Creationism is one of those things that the more you read about it and learn about it, the more dubious it sounds and the more you wonder how people can honestly believe it. In a way, like Scientology. I mean, come on, dinosaurs roamed the earth with humans yet somehow managed not to eat all of us nor garner one measly mention in the Bible? And how come we have no carbon-dated evidence of human bones as old as the dinosaur fossils?
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SarahMC
06/30/09

@Lou: A "scientific theory" is wholly different from a regular "theory." They are correct to use the word theory but their IMPLICATION is that it's status as a (scientific) theory devalues it, when it does no such thing.
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clevernamehere
06/30/09

@Lou: Evolution is a theory like gravity is a theory. Theory in this context doesn't mean unproven. But when people are asked who are 20 years out of high school, it can sound like creationist is a legit competing theory.
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Jo Aage
06/30/09

@Lou: Stephen Jay Gould has a good take on this one. He says that evolution is both a theory, in that it's a framework on which a lot of carefully-proven explanations can be hung, and a fact, in that we can watch it happening.

"Theory" to a scientist means something different from "theory" to a lay person. To a scientist, a theory is something that's all-but-proven, like gravity or the way atoms interact to form molecules. Lay people tend to think of theories as though they're hypotheses--which are actually a starting point from which to work.
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Laulau
06/30/09

@Jo Aage: I'm not sure how I feel about Gould's idea of non-overlapping magisteria, (I'm a rationalist, and an atheist, but I haven't given the question a ton of thought), but he was such an amazing man for intelligent, thoughtful, popular science. I cried the day he died.
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Laulau
06/30/09

@Laulau: er, to be clear, I haven't given the idea of non-overlapping magisteri a ton of thought. The atheism I've thought through quite a bit.
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A Small Turnip
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
"I'm very curious and fascinated," Stefan Bengtson, a professor of paleozoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, said before the visit, "because we have little of that kind of thing in Sweden."

Oh, Sweden. God gave you a pass on the disgusting fermented herring thing, but this is too much. Prepare to be smited. Your only hope is that God doesn't read the New York Times and hasn't heard about your educational lapse yet.
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kristinak83
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
My boyfriend and I caught Jurassic Park on tv the other day and I said, "Isn't is crazy that they once walked where we live?" and he said, "I just don't believe that they ever existed." I stared at the side of his face and knew right then that this was going nowhere.
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SunburnedCounsel
06/30/09

@kristinak83: better to know now...
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the dodo, the cuckoo, and the nene
06/30/09

@kristinak83: Yikes...dodged a bullet on that one!
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TheFormerJuneBronson
06/30/09

@kristinak83: Most people don't even get that kind of watershed moment! Count yourself lucky!
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marionette
06/30/09

Holy... so the fossils you see in museums, does he think they were made by bored art students then? Wowza.
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A Small Turnip
06/30/09

@kristinak83: I'm so sorry to laugh. But that is awesomely hilarious. And disturbing. And hilarious.

It's that HOSHIT YOU REALLY ARE BONKERS moment. My sympathies!
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gangey
06/30/09

@marionette: No, I'm pretty sure Satan planted them to ruin our faiths.
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ellaesther
06/30/09

In reply to "Same Facts, Different Conclusions"
Ahem. I am about to quote Bono, so, you know: Haters, to the side.

"Stop helping God across the road like a little old lady!"

Why oh why oh why must so many people of faith take the Almighty into their two, little, grubby hands, and attempt to make Him (Her! Whatever!) into the teeny-est, tiny-est of things? God is not as small as you think He is, people!

If you do not believe in God, I am cool with that. (Indeed, you may be my husband!) But if you believe in God and yet cannot get your mind around the notion that the knowledge given us by science acts to reveal Him, well then. I have no time for you.

I said: Good day!!
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TheFormerJuneBronson
06/30/09

@ellaesther: Love.

See, this is what I could have said if the whole thing didn't throw me into such a swivet.
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ellaesther
06/30/09

@TheFormerJuneBronson: I'm just jealous that you can be thrown into a swivet! I'm usually thrown into a tizz. But a swivet sounds like it could at least give you a head rush!
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gangey
06/30/09

@ellaesther: This is exactly what I think about this all. Christians who feel the need to back up the Bible with science must have so little faith.

Not that I have faith myself, but when I realized it didn't add up for me, I stopped being a Christian.
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