One in four Americans don't know...

write-stuff said:
With some few notable exceptions, evolution is only questionable to people who know little or nothing about it.
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With zero exceptions, evolution is only questionable to people who know little or nothing about it OR are personnally too invested in dogma to see it fail.
 
FastEddieB said:
Not really.

The earth is about 93 million miles from the sun.

The diameter of the earth is about 8,000 miles.

Negligible effect re: closer to the sun.

As JeffDG pointed out, the slight ellipticality of the orbit would far overshadow it anyway, and even that has a negligible effect on the seasons.
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It is my understanding that the eccentricity of the orbit helps mitigate the temperature swings on seasons for the northern hemisphere.

It is my understanding that the primary driver for the seasons is the amount of daylight (caused by the tilt of the axis)
 
ScottM said:
Science is not at all closed minded about this. All that has to happen is for one of these creationists to bring some real evidence. That has never happened. Even saying that there must be some sort of designer guiding the process is nothing but religious nonsense. If they want to make a claim such as you have laid out then they must present evidence of god whose has a hand on the process. So, prove god exists.

I tell you if you want to disprove evolution, which by then would not immediately means that creation is the default correct answer. All that has to happen is for one piece of evidence to come forward. One crocoduck skeleton, one fossil in the wrong strata, etc. But each piece of evidence actually adds to evolutions understanding, never subtracting from it.
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A God that can be understood is no God.

W. Somerset Maugham. The Razor's Edge


I'm one of those who does not take the bible's story of creation literally. I think that it was told in a fashion that the people of the time were able to understand. I am a believer however, and I think that the hand of a higher power is at work in evolution. I also believe that the scientists of today are but a little closer to understanding it than those for whom the biblical story of creation was written. We understand what we are capable of understanding, and for people to assume that they can understand creation is the peak of conceit. I propose that the proof is right in front your face, but you do not have the intellect to recognize it. No one does.
 
ScottM said:
I am hoping he chimes in as this is really more up his alley.
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Every biology experiment and observation since the publication of The Origin of Species has been a challenge to the "theory" of Evolution. From humanoid fossil hunts to deciphering the genomes of pathogenic organisms. Anyone who could generate solid data abrogating evolution by natural selection could generate instant fame and fortune, its never been done. No one has been "silenced", data simply is, and its our job to listen to it. I myself have overturned a decade's worth of observations on one of the most important tumor suppressor genes, I wasn't silenced, indeed the observations were published in one of the most outstanding scientific periodicals.

I could spend all day giving examples, they become especially prevalent when one starts looking at DNA and genomes. Not only are we related to the other organisms, but our genes can function in other organisms and the genes from other organism can function in our cells. There is nothing at all magic about human biology. Nothing.

Antagonism toward Evolution and modern cosmology has taken roughly the same tack as antagonism toward anthropogenic climate change. Deniers use largely fabricated but scientific pseudoscience, or try and parley the opinion of so-called "experts" to indicate controversy within the scientific community. The funniest is that both directly suggest there are things that just can't be known. The arguments are nearly identical in form. Sadly, the deniers are winning to the detriment of us all.
 
Maxmosbey said:
We understand what we are capable of understanding, and for people to assume that they can understand creation is the peak of conceit.
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This indicates a common misconception. "Creation", better known to scientists as abiogenesis, is different and separate from evolution. Evolution is quite well understood. Abiogenesis remains in the hypothetical realm. Experimental evidence lends credence to a few models, but any biologist would tell you that these theories are still debatable. As for the the "peak of conceit" part, that sounds odd to me. What's conceited about it. It is a subject that likely will be known at some point in the not too distant future.
 
EdFred said:
I haven't dug into it to read both sides, but John Yurkin(?) wrote a book in the 70s about the toxicity of sugar and it's correlation to heart disease, obesity, etc and was completely rebuffed by the apparent consensus at the time of "low fat" scientists.
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Yudkin wrote a book about his opinions that was largely ignored at the time. He didn't publish data in scientific journals to back his findings, which is what scientists do. Adkins did similarly, though his work couldn't even be elevated to scientific discovery, it was a diet plan (a rather stupid one, since one cannot stay on it indefinitely) . The problem is when one publishes one's findings through a mainstream publisher one bypasses peer review. No one vetted this information, looked it over critically. All we have is the author's word for it and that just isn't enough. I no more believe them than I believe Dean Hamer's group four a gene for spirituality, and for the same reasons. Had these people subjected their thoughts and data to stringent peer review they would have been far more believable to a scientific audience. This isn't silencing by peer pressure, this is just sloppy work.

Moreover, anyone who says that sucrose is a toxin is simply factually in error. Indeed Yudkin didn't reveal anything new, people have known for a very long time that too much sucrose is indeed bad for you.
 
I think the biggest hurdle in believing evolution is people don't actually understand what it is. They think that evolution is a jellyfish giving birth to a crocodile. They also don't have a real concept of the scale of time it takes for very small changes to add up. I came across an experiment done recently involving single celled organism, and every 100 or so generations they would put a group in stasis and then compare with future generations. They expected changes every 10,000 generations or so, but it turns out it happened much more frequently.

That's all evolution is, but that's the problem people have in understanding it.
 
Bob Noel said:
It is my understanding that the eccentricity of the orbit helps mitigate the temperature swings on seasons for the northern hemisphere.
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This is correct, though it is a small effect.

It is my understanding that the primary driver for the seasons is the amount of daylight (caused by the tilt of the axis)
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Not primarily the amount of daylight (as in the length of the day, which is also caused by the tilt of the axis), but the sun angle during the day, as Dale B. said. The length of day is a secondary effect, though significant.
 
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EdFred said:
I think the biggest hurdle in believing evolution is people don't actually understand what it is. They think that evolution is a jellyfish giving birth to a crocodile. They also don't have a real concept of the scale of time it takes for very small changes to add up.
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Yep, well said.
 
steingar said:
Yudkin wrote a book about his opinions that was largely ignored at the time. He didn't publish data in scientific journals to back his findings, which is what scientists do. Adkins did similarly, though his work couldn't even be elevated to scientific discovery, it was a diet plan (a rather stupid one, since one cannot stay on it indefinitely) . The problem is when one publishes one's findings through a mainstream publisher one bypasses peer review. No one vetted this information, looked it over critically. All we have is the author's word for it and that just isn't enough. I no more believe them than I believe Dean Hamer's group four a gene for spirituality, and for the same reasons. Had these people subjected their thoughts and data to stringent peer review they would have been far more believable to a scientific audience. This isn't silencing by peer pressure, this is just sloppy work.

Moreover, anyone who says that sucrose is a toxin is simply factually in error. Indeed Yudkin didn't reveal anything new, people have known for a very long time that too much sucrose is indeed bad for you.
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And if they aren't even given that opportunity?
 
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EdFred said:
And if they aren't even given that opportunity?
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One has always had that opportunity, indeed in the 70s one didn't even have the page charges that are common today. Now, it is possible that the peer-reviewers of his day found his data lacking, given that most of his arguments are out of context or extrapolations of negative data.

This is a simple thing. You cannot point out a mechanistic basis of sucrose toxicity. Can't be done because sucrose isn't toxic. It is bad for you when consumed in excess, but so is anything including distilled water. And we knew that a long, long time before Yudkin published his book.
 
steingar said:
One has always had that opportunity, indeed in the 70s one didn't even have the page charges that are common today. Now, it is possible that the peer-reviewers of his day found his data lacking, given that most of his arguments are out of context or extrapolations of negative data.

This is a simple thing. You cannot point out a mechanistic basis of sucrose toxicity. Can't be done because sucrose isn't toxic. It is bad for you when consumed in excess, but so is anything including distilled water. And we knew that a long, long time before Yudkin published his book.
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Oh, I'm not saying whether he is right or wrong, but from what little I read on it, he was stonewalled prior to the book. Why should stonewalling exist in a place where truth is supposed to be the only endeavor?
 
write-stuff said:
You seem to misunderstand the word "theory", but that doesn't surprise me. In your use it is conjecture or supposition. It means something completely different in science.
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"Facts" don't depend on science to exist, only to be determined.

G was 6.67 * 10^-11 m^3/kg s^2 long before Isaac Newton was born...c was 3.0 * 10^8 m/s long before Maxwell measured it.
 
In further news, yesterday in 1930 Pluto was discovered at the 9th planet. Due to they fact they change the rules as they go, Pluto is no longer a planet. At one point, they were convinced that Pluto caused Uranus to "wobble". I will not go there.
 
JeffDG said:
"Facts" don't depend on science to exist, only to be determined.

G was 6.67 * 10^-11 m^3/kg s^2 long before Isaac Newton was born...c was 3.0 * 10^8 m/s long before Maxwell measured it.
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There is speculation that the speed of light has changed with the age of the universe. So, c may not have always been, uh, c.
 
EdFred said:
Oh, I'm not saying whether he is right or wrong, but from what little I read on it, he was stonewalled prior to the book. Why should stonewalling exist in a place where truth is supposed to be the only endeavor?
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I don't know the inns and outs of the story, but Yudkin was a giant of his day. He established the scientific study of nutrition in England, inspired Jaques Monod in his scientific endeavors (Monod, with his association Francois Jacob won the Nobel Prize for their investigations of lactose metabolism in E coli., and published on a wide range of issues. My best guess is at the time people didn't realize the difference in metabolism between sugar and starches, not allowing his ideas to gain as much traction as they perhaps deserved. Had he been able to mechanistically address this deficiency he might have made more progress, but that wasn't his bag.

Pure, White and Deadly wasn't a scientific treatise but a book written for laypeople. Honestly, if you want to talk about ignored scientists you should probably think about Barbara McClintock.
 
EdFred said:
There is speculation that the speed of light has changed with the age of the universe. So, c may not have always been, uh, c.
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There is, indeed, speculation with respect to that.

However, the if that is the case, the fact we didn't know about it doesn't change the fact.
 
Most of us sane, reasonable people believe that the literal creationists are, well, kind of nutbars. OK, maybe that's a little harsh. To some people, belief is simply more important than understanding. I don't pretend to understand how that type of brain works, but there you have it. We share the planet with a whole lot of them, so we may as well accept the fact and move on. But I'm always amazed by the number of otherwise very smart people who seem unable to grasp the concept of the (insert name of your favorite religious text here) as a body of work intended to teach us how to live with each other, not a science textbook. Some people, certainly including the faithful and the clergy, can read every word and completely miss the point.

Me? Sure, I think the world was created in six days. But who are we to say how long a "day" was for whatever force or entity did the creating? Or how it was done? That would be pretty presumptuous. I don't know what constitutes a "day" to God, whatever he/she/it/they may be -- being, force or something else -- but I'm pretty sure it doesn't line up with what we know as a "day" on this tiny, insignificant speck of rock. Was God some old white guy wearing a robe, floating in space, who waved his hands and made it all appear? Ummm... metaphorically, maybe, but you have to remember that the creation stories have been around since the beginning of human thought to explain the unexplainable. We're working on a new one now, and I suspect in a couple thousand years people will think that our most advanced theories today were amusingly naive and backward.
 
DaleB said:
Most of us sane, reasonable people believe that the literal creationists are, well, kind of nutbars. OK, maybe that's a little harsh. To some people, belief is simply more important than understanding. I don't pretend to understand how that type of brain works, but there you have it. We share the planet with a whole lot of them, so we may as well accept the fact and move on. But I'm always amazed by the number of otherwise very smart people who seem unable to grasp the concept of the (insert name of your favorite religious text here) as a body of work intended to teach us how to live with each other, not a science textbook. Some people, certainly including the faithful and the clergy, can read every word and completely miss the point.

Me? Sure, I think the world was created in six days. But who are we to say how long a "day" was for whatever force or entity did the creating? Or how it was done? That would be pretty presumptuous. I don't know what constitutes a "day" to God, whatever he/she/it/they may be -- being, force or something else -- but I'm pretty sure it doesn't line up with what we know as a "day" on this tiny, insignificant speck of rock. Was God some old white guy wearing a robe, floating in space, who waved his hands and made it all appear? Ummm... metaphorically, maybe, but you have to remember that the creation stories have been around since the beginning of human thought to explain the unexplainable. We're working on a new one now, and I suspect in a couple thousand years people will think that our most advanced theories today were amusingly naive and backward.
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No. "He" was a computer.

http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
 
Naw Eddie. They started looking for Pluto when human biology lost it's magic.
 
We spend more money on educating our masses than any other nation on earth, therefore Americans are better educated than all others. Everything that says otherwise is little more than foreign propaganda and should be ignored.

We hire the best school and university administrators money can buy, we pay our college presidents more than the leaders of most nations are paid, including our own.

Over 40% of all property taxes in California go to education. Half of all lottery earnings go to education.

Anyone who says our population is uneducated must be anti American. Besides, everyone knows the earth revolves around Washington DC.

-John
 
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The Wikipedia entry on Pluto's discovery:

In the 1840s, using Newtonian mechanics, Urbain Le Verrier predicted the position of the then-undiscovered planet Neptune after analysing perturbations in the orbit of Uranus.[23] Subsequent observations of Neptune in the late 19th century caused astronomers to speculate that Uranus' orbit was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune.
 
EdFred said:
There is speculation that the speed of light has changed with the age of the universe. So, c may not have always been, uh, c.
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What would be really cool would be to consider the ramifications of c varying (albeit very very slowly) with time and space.
 
FastEddieB said:
The Wikipedia entry on Pluto's discovery:

In the 1840s, using Newtonian mechanics, Urbain Le Verrier predicted the position of the then-undiscovered planet Neptune after analysing perturbations in the orbit of Uranus.[23] Subsequent observations of Neptune in the late 19th century caused astronomers to speculate that Uranus' orbit was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune.
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Yeah, turns out that Pluto ends up closer to Uranus than it does Neptune, hence the wobbling of Uranus even after taking Neptune's influence into account.
 
Bob Noel said:
What would be really cool would be to consider the ramifications of c varying (albeit very very slowly) with time and space.
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I read a very interesting paper on this topic a number of years ago. It was by a Russian mathematician who had surveyed numerous experiments to measure the speed of light. What he found was a very clear curve descending to an horizontal asymptote until experimenters switched to atomic clocks. The switch was due to the accuracy of atomic clocks, however atomic decay rates (used to regulate the clocks) depend on the speed of light in their decay rates. From this point on all measurements of the speed of light were flat within experimental error.

His theory? The speed of light is in fact decreasing at a decreasing rate but we can't measure it using atomic clocks. It's like measuring ground speed by using only your airspeed indicator - doesn't account for the medium (air) moving. (Obligatory aviation content! :D )

The paper was published in the mid 1970's if I recall correctly. I'd like to find it again but haven't dedicated much Google time to it.

John
 
Bob Noel said:
What would be really cool would be to consider the ramifications of c varying (albeit very very slowly) with time and space.
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Especially if it varied in the early universe. Which could explain a lot of red-shifting and completely change how old we think the universe is.
 
EdFred said:
Especially if it varied in the early universe. Which could explain a lot of red-shifting and completely change how old we think the universe is.
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It could also eliminate the need for an "Inflation" period in the very early Universe. If c were greater in the early Universe, temperatures could have stabilized across the early universe, showing the uniformity that is shown in COBE and WMAP data
 
JeffDG said:
It could also eliminate the need for an "Inflation" period in the very early Universe. If c were greater in the early Universe, temperatures could have stabilized across the early universe, showing the uniformity that is shown in COBE and WMAP data
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I look at is as c may have been slower earlier on which causes the redshift, Which would argue against accelerating expansion. Of course I also speculate that gravity is not an 'attractive' force.
 
FastEddieB said:
The Wikipedia entry on Pluto's discovery:

In the 1840s, using Newtonian mechanics, Urbain Le Verrier predicted the position of the then-undiscovered planet Neptune after analysing perturbations in the orbit of Uranus.[23] Subsequent observations of Neptune in the late 19th century caused astronomers to speculate that Uranus' orbit was being disturbed by another planet besides Neptune.
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Quoting on however:
In 1992, Myles Standish used data from Voyager 2's 1989 flyby of Neptune, which had revised the planet's total mass downward by 0.5%, to recalculate its gravitational effect on Uranus. With the new figures added in, the discrepancies, and with them the need for a Planet X, vanished.[50] Today, the majority of scientists agree that Planet X, as Lowell defined it, does not exist.[51] Lowell had made a prediction of Planet X's position in 1915 that was fairly close to Pluto's position at that time; Ernest W. Brown concluded almost immediately that this was a coincidence,[52] a view still held today.
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In other words, with Neptune's revised mass, the funny motions in Uranus's orbit were explained, and Pluto's discovery was shown to be a case of serendipity.
 
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