Sunday, January 2, 2011

An evolution denier on another blog invoked some "scientists" who deny evolution (the strongest fact of science). This was my reply:

I wrote "The percentage of biologists who accept and love evolution is about 100%"

Please notice the word "about". That's 100% rounded to the nearest percent. Another way to say it is the percentage of biologists who accept the foundation of biology and the strongest basic fact of science is extremely close to 100% and not very close at all to 99%.

If you include only the real biologists (scientists who don't invoke magic to solve scientific problems), the number of biologists who accept evolution is exactly 100%.

But science isn't a democracy. Scientists don't vote on what's a fact. Evolution is called an established truth because of the evidence. I've been studying that evidence for several years. There's so much of it I could never study all of it in one lifetime.

You talked about "truth claims". Biologists don't have to claim evolution is true. The evidence speaks for itself.

I recently wrote in my blog "If all creationists could somehow be forced to read Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne there would be no more creationists."

The problem is evolution deniers make no effort to understand what it is they're denying. They know nothing about the molecular evidence. They know nothing about the fossils of whale ancestors recently discovered in Pakistan. They have a very poor understanding of how evolution works.

A quote from Richard Dawkins who also wrote a book you should read (The Greatest Show on Earth):

"It would be so nice if those who oppose evolution would take a tiny bit of trouble to learn the merest rudiments of what it is they are opposing."

Evolution deniers deny evolution for religious reasons. That's not a good reason. If the Bible said the earth is flat, that wouldn't be a good reason to throw out all the evidence that shows the earth is not flat. There's even more evidence for evolution representing more than a century of discoveries thanks to thousands of biologists. You're insulting their hard work and their integrity when you deny those discoveries.

Christians say they are interested in the truth. I have seen no evidence they care about the truth at all. They just want to go heaven (as do Muslim suicide bombers), and if some branch of science threatens their wishful thinking, they throw it out without bothering to know anything about it.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.