Richard Dawkins: Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact

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Yeah, Dawkins doesn't pull punches. He is the secular British bulldog.


Attention Governor Perry: Evolution is a fact

Q. Texas governor and GOP candidate Rick Perry, at a campaign event this week, told a boy that evolution is ”just a theory” with “gaps” and that in Texas they teach “both creationism and evolution.” Perry later added “God is how we got here.” According to a 2009 Gallup study , only 38 percent of Americans say they believe in evolution. If a majority of Americans are skeptical or unsure about evolution, should schools teach it as a mere “theory”? Why is evolution so threatening to religion?

A. There is nothing unusual about Governor Rick Perry. Uneducated fools can be found in every country and every period of history, and they are not unknown in high office. What is unusual about today’s Republican party (I disavow the ridiculous ‘GOP’ nickname, because the party of Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt has lately forfeited all claim to be considered ‘grand’) is this: In any other party and in any other country, an individual may occasionally rise to the top in spite of being an uneducated ignoramus. In today’s Republican Party ‘in spite of’ is not the phrase we need. Ignorance and lack of education are positive qualifications, bordering on obligatory. Intellect, knowledge and linguistic mastery are mistrusted by Republican voters, who, when choosing a president, would apparently prefer someone like themselves over someone actually qualified for the job.

Any other organization -- a big corporation, say, or a university, or a learned society - -when seeking a new leader, will go to immense trouble over the choice. The CVs of candidates and their portfolios of relevant experience are meticulously scrutinized, their publications are read by a learned committee, references are taken up and scrupulously discussed, the candidates are subjected to rigorous interviews and vetting procedures. Mistakes are still made, but not through lack of serious effort.

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.

A politician’s attitude to evolution is perhaps not directly important in itself. It can have unfortunate consequences on education and science policy but, compared to Perry’s and the Tea Party’s pronouncements on other topics such as economics, taxation, history and sexual politics, their ignorance of evolutionary science might be overlooked. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science, and he who denies it betrays woeful ignorance and lack of education, which likely extends to other fields as well. Evolution is not some recondite backwater of science, ignorance of which would be pardonable. It is the stunningly simple but elegant explanation of our very existence and the existence of every living creature on the planet. Thanks to Darwin, we now understand why we are here and why we are the way we are. You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

Darwin’s idea is arguably the most powerful ever to occur to a human mind. The power of a scientific theory may be measured as a ratio: the number of facts that it explains divided by the number of assumptions it needs to postulate in order to do the explaining. A theory that assumes most of what it is trying to explain is a bad theory. That is why the creationist or ‘intelligent design’ theory is such a rotten theory.

What any theory of life needs to explain is functional complexity. Complexity can be measured as statistical improbability, and living things are statistically improbable in a very particular direction: the direction of functional efficiency. The body of a bird is not just a prodigiously complicated machine, with its trillions of cells - each one in itself a marvel of miniaturized complexity - all conspiring together to make muscle or bone, kidney or brain. Its interlocking parts also conspire to make it good for something - in the case of most birds, good for flying. An aero-engineer is struck dumb with admiration for the bird as flying machine: its feathered flight-surfaces and ailerons sensitively adjusted in real time by the on-board computer which is the brain; the breast muscles, which are the engines, the ligaments, tendons and lightweight bony struts all exactly suited to the task. And the whole machine is immensely improbable in the sense that, if you randomly shook up the parts over and over again, never in a million years would they fall into the right shape to fly like a swallow, soar like a vulture, or ride the oceanic up-draughts like a wandering albatross. Any theory of life has to explain how the laws of physics can give rise to a complex flying machine like a bird or a bat or a pterosaur, a complex swimming machine like a tarpon or a dolphin, a complex burrowing machine like a mole, a complex climbing machine like a monkey, or a complex thinking machine like a person.

Darwin explained all of this with one brilliantly simple idea - natural selection, driving gradual evolution over immensities of geological time. His is a good theory because of the huge ratio of what it explains (all the complexity of life) divided by what it needs to assume (simply the nonrandom survival of hereditary information through many generations). The rival theory to explain the functional complexity of life - creationism - is about as bad a theory as has ever been proposed. What it postulates (an intelligent designer) is even more complex, even more statistically improbable than what it explains. In fact it is such a bad theory it doesn’t deserve to be called a theory at all, and it certainly doesn’t deserve to be taught alongside evolution in science classes.

The simplicity of Darwin’s idea, then, is a virtue for three reasons. First, and most important, it is the signature of its immense power as a theory, when compared with the mass of disparate facts that it explains - everything about life including our own existence. Second, it makes it easy for children to understand (in addition to the obvious virtue of being true!), which means that it could be taught in the early years of school. And finally, it makes it extremely beautiful, one of the most beautiful ideas anyone ever had as well as arguably the most powerful. To die in ignorance of its elegance, and power to explain our own existence, is a tragic loss, comparable to dying without ever having experienced great music, great literature, or a beautiful sunset.

There are many reasons to vote against Rick Perry. His fatuous stance on the teaching of evolution in schools is perhaps not the first reason that springs to mind. But maybe it is the most telling litmus test of the other reasons, and it seems to apply not just to him but, lamentably, to all the likely contenders for the Republican nomination. The ‘evolution question’ deserves a prominent place in the list of questions put to candidates in interviews and public debates during the course of the coming election.

Richard Dawkins wrote this response to Governor Perry for On Faith, the Washington Post’s forum for news and opinion on religion and politics.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...ion-is-a-fact/2011/08/23/gIQAuIFUYJ_blog.html
 
Meadows said:
I find both Dawkins and Perry equally abhorrent.

I will admit that Dawkins tends to have a flair for the arrogant and grandiose in his speech that comes across more as intolerable smugness than genuine intelligence, but at least he's on the right side of the damn debate.
 
Meadows said:
I find both Dawkins and Perry equally abhorrent.
?

Dawkins is a scientist telling a basic truth like the earth revolving around the sun.

Perry is... I don't know....
 
This is ridiculous, not only is Dawkins arrogant, but he's also wrong too.

The population of the United States is more than 300 million and it includes some of the best and brightest that the human species has to offer, probably more so than any other country in the world. There is surely something wrong with a system for choosing a leader when, given a pool of such talent and a process that occupies more than a year and consumes billions of dollars, what rises to the top of the heap is George W Bush. Or when the likes of Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann or Sarah Palin can be mentioned as even remote possibilities.

Yes, it's called Democracy. Other people may have a different favourite candidate to you, shock horror.

Evolution is a fact, as securely established as any in science

Wrong, evolution is a theory. It is an inference used to explain a set of observations, which makes it a theory. It's the best theory we currently have for explaining the origin of species, but that doesn't rule out a future discovery which may contradict the foundations of this theory, and we thus must create a new theory that is consistent with all observations ever made. This happens all the time in science.

You cannot be ignorant of evolution and be a cultivated and adequate citizen of today.

...unless you work in the majority of occupations where evolution is irrelevant.

Darwin’s idea is arguably the most powerful ever to occur to a human mind. The power of a scientific theory may be measured as a ratio: the number of facts that it explains divided by the number of assumptions it needs to postulate in order to do the explaining. A theory that assumes most of what it is trying to explain is a bad theory. That is why the creationist or ‘intelligent design’ theory is such a rotten theory.

I agree with this, if he just shut his mouth after this he wouldn't seem so arrogant.

Honestly, I am so sick of science being treated as a religion, and being used to wage war against Christianity. The people who do this are the ones responsible for the rise of anti-science sentiment in certain communities.
 
Ventron said:
This is ridiculous, not only is Dawkins arrogant, but he's also wrong too.



Yes, it's called Democracy. Other people may have a different favourite candidate to you, shock horror.



Wrong, evolution is a theory. It is an inference used to explain a set of observations, which makes it a theory. It's the best theory we currently have for explaining the origin of species, but that doesn't rule out a future discovery which may contradict the foundations of this theory, and we thus must create a new theory that is consistent with all observations ever made. This happens all the time in science.



...unless you work in the majority of occupations where evolution is irrelevant.



I agree with this, if he just shut his mouth after this he wouldn't seem so arrogant.

Honestly, I am so sick of science being treated as a religion, and being used to wage war against Christianity. The people who do this are the ones responsible for the rise of anti-science sentiment in certain communities.

Thanks I was just going to post everything you said.

The only thing I would add is I would take Rick Perry over Obama any day of the week and I almost always vote Democrat. Obama has been completely ineffectual as a President (imo).
 
Ventron said:
Wrong, evolution is a theory. It is an inference used to explain a set of observations, which makes it a theory. It's the best theory we currently have for explaining the origin of species, but that doesn't rule out a future discovery which may contradict the foundations of this theory, and we thus must create a new theory that is consistent with all observations ever made. This happens all the time in science..
Holy shit, what? Do you have an idea the amount of things you would have to disprove for another theory to take the place of evolution? Jesus.
 
Ventron said:
Wrong, evolution is a theory. It is an inference used to explain a set of observations, which makes it a theory. It's the best theory we currently have for explaining the origin of species, but that doesn't rule out a future discovery which may contradict the foundations of this theory, and we thus must create a new theory that is consistent with all observations ever made. This happens all the time in science.
It is both theory (in the scientific sense of the term not the colloquial sense) and fact.

Ventron said:
Honestly, I am so sick of science being treated as a religion, and being used to wage war against Christianity. The people who do this are the ones responsible for the rise of anti-science sentiment in certain communities.
LOL

WTF does that even mean?
 
It would be funny if Perry cuts an angry promo for his reply

WM7zL.gif

NO IT'S NOT! NO IT'S NOT!!!
 
dIEHARD said:
Can Richard Dawkins shut the fuck up already?

No, of course he can't.

nobody is forcing you to read it
going by your reaction there is something you disagree with?
 
gatti-man said:
Thanks I was just going to post everything you said.

The only thing I would add is I would take Rick Perry over Obama any day of the week and I almost always vote Democrat. Obama has been completely ineffectual as a President (imo).

If the democrats were as stridently scorched earth in their politicking, any republican would find it difficult to achieve anything irrespective of who they were and what they planned to do.

It's a sad but typical conflation of the broken system of politics and the quality and character of one of its more promising (at least in theory) presidents.
 
gatti-man said:
Thanks I was just going to post everything you said.

The only thing I would add is I would take Rick Perry over Obama any day of the week and I almost always vote Democrat. Obama has been completely ineffectual as a President (imo).

Even knowing how he feels about Civil rights?

and Dawkins is the shit. Gaf needs more threads about him.
 
Vincent Alexander said:
An intelligent man making an idiot look like an idiot. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along.
Rick Perry isn't an idiot, he is just pandering to his base. But you gotta love Dawkins response, lol
 
Ventron said:
This is ridiculous, not only is Dawkins arrogant, but he's also wrong too.



Yes, it's called Democracy. Other people may have a different favourite candidate to you, shock horror.



Wrong, evolution is a theory. It is an inference used to explain a set of observations, which makes it a theory. It's the best theory we currently have for explaining the origin of species, but that doesn't rule out a future discovery which may contradict the foundations of this theory, and we thus must create a new theory that is consistent with all observations ever made. This happens all the time in science.



...unless you work in the majority of occupations where evolution is irrelevant.



I agree with this, if he just shut his mouth after this he wouldn't seem so arrogant.

Honestly, I am so sick of science being treated as a religion, and being used to wage war against Christianity. The people who do this are the ones responsible for the rise of anti-science sentiment in certain communities.
1. "Fact" and "theory" are not mutually exclusive. The FACT is that species evolve. We know how it happens, and we've watched it happen in some pretty dramatic ways. The THEORY of evolution is the body of work explaining the details of the evolutionary process, which, of course, is tentative and subject to revision.

2. The utility of knowing the theory of evolution isn't the point. The point is that it's a basic piece of scientific knowledge and not having a basic understanding of it is scarcely better than not knowing the Earth is not flat and revolves around the sun, or not knowing which hemisphere you live in.

3. Science is a powerful force in many non-religious worldviews and it shouldn't surprise you that it's brought up in religious debates where real-world claims are made. I can see a small-minded person having a problem with this, but anti-science sentiment is really a case of shooting the messenger. When I mouth off to someone who says that medicine is a crock and that healing comes from the spirit, I am telling it like it is, not just defending my own point of view.
 
Ventron said:
Wrong, evolution is a theory. It is an inference used to explain a set of observations, which makes it a theory. It's the best theory we currently have for explaining the origin of species, but that doesn't rule out a future discovery which may contradict the foundations of this theory, and we thus must create a new theory that is consistent with all observations ever made. This happens all the time in science.
Really? Evolution is observable today. It's not like we have to wait billions of years for it to be obvious.

http://www.livescience.com/7745-swine-flu-evolution-action.html
 
Ventron said:
Wrong, evolution is a theory. It is an inference used to explain a set of observations, which makes it a theory. It's the best theory we currently have for explaining the origin of species, but that doesn't rule out a future discovery which may contradict the foundations of this theory, and we thus must create a new theory that is consistent with all observations ever made. This happens all the time in science.


Honestly, I am so sick of science being treated as a religion, and being used to wage war against Christianity. The people who do this are the ones responsible for the rise of anti-science sentiment in certain communities.

From what I understand, evolution itself is considered a fact. It's the mechanics behind evolution, natural selection, that's the theory.

I'm sure someone else, i.e. smarter, can explain it better than me.

Also, when has science been used to wage war against christianity?

There may be certain scientists out there who have spoken out against christianity, that doesn't mean they're all like or that every scientist feels the same way.

Edit: Never mind Orayn beat me to the punch.
 
Ventron said:
Honestly, I am so sick of science being treated as a religion, and being used to wage war against Christianity. The people who do this are the ones responsible for the rise of anti-science sentiment in certain communities.

Are you part of one of those "Certain communities"?
 
I always hate how people make Dawkins sound in the press.

Everytime I read something about him, it's always stated as an extremist.

Then I watch a segment with him or listen to him talk and he's rarely abhorent or negative, he's just opnionated.
 
I don't understand the point of this. Does Dawkins believe Perry will have an epiphany thanks to his insightful arguments and reconsider the theory of evolution?

Dick Dawkins is being just as idiotic as his target. What irks me are atheists who are on his dick regardless of what he says.
 
I love these threads. Silly people jump up to demonstrate just how silly they are, and that can only be a good thing. Anti-science people are fun!
 
les papillons sexuels said:
I always hate how people make Dawkins sound in the press.

Everytime I read something about him, it's always stated as an extremist.

Then I watch a segment with him or listen to him talk and he's rarely abhorent or negative, he's just opnionated.
He's opinionated about people's religions. Them's fightin' words!
 
Ventron said:
This is ridiculous, not only is Dawkins arrogant, but he's also wrong too.



Yes, it's called Democracy. Other people may have a different favourite candidate to you, shock horror.



Wrong, evolution is a theory. It is an inference used to explain a set of observations, which makes it a theory. It's the best theory we currently have for explaining the origin of species, but that doesn't rule out a future discovery which may contradict the foundations of this theory, and we thus must create a new theory that is consistent with all observations ever made. This happens all the time in science.



...unless you work in the majority of occupations where evolution is irrelevant.



I agree with this, if he just shut his mouth after this he wouldn't seem so arrogant.

Honestly, I am so sick of science being treated as a religion, and being used to wage war against Christianity. The people who do this are the ones responsible for the rise of anti-science sentiment in certain communities.
This is ridiculous, not only is Ventron arrogant, but he's also wrong too.
 
Zibrahim said:
I don't understand the point of this. Does Dawkins believe Perry will have an epiphany thanks to his insightful arguments and reconsider the theory of evolution?

Dick Dawkins is being just as idiotic as his target. What irks me are atheists who are on his dick regardless of what he says.

Perry is a politician. Their battlefield is the public eye. Dawkins is using the most effect way politicians fight : public discrediting.

If Perry looks foolish, he's less likely to be re-elected, and thus less likely to use his power to spread lies and misinformation in the education under his watch.
 
Zibrahim said:
I don't understand the point of this. Does Dawkins believe Perry will have an epiphany thanks to his insightful arguments and reconsider the theory of evolution?

Dick Dawkins is being just as idiotic as his target. What irks me are atheists who are on his dick regardless of what he says.
It needs to be said. Better to shout the truth at people like Perry and have it all on deaf ears than to just let them go about their merry, idiotic way.

And no, he is not being "as idiotic" as Perry, because Dawkins is right. Perry's ignorance is not Dawkins' fault.
 
jaxword said:
Perry is a politician. Their battlefield is the public eye. Dawkins is using the most effect way politicians fight : public discrediting.

If Perry looks foolish, he's less likely to be re-elected, and thus less likely to use his power to spread lies and misinformation in the education under his watch.
Problem is most people idiotic enough to vote for Perry aren't going to read this.
 
Neuromancer said:
Problem is most people idiotic enough to vote for Perry aren't going to read this.

Yeah, probably. Dawkins is likely gambling on the American media slowly taking a negative vibe when talking about him.
 
Neuromancer said:
Problem is most people idiotic enough to vote for Perry aren't going to read this.
Again, it's better to fight this kind of losing battle than just give up. Sure, Perry and the die-hard creationists are probably a lost cause, but this kind of message does reach fence sitters, and some of them may indeed change their minds.
 
Zibrahim said:
I don't understand the point of this. Does Dawkins believe Perry will have an epiphany thanks to his insightful arguments and reconsider the theory of evolution?
Nah I think he just wanted to point out that Perry and people that think like him are a bunch of ignorants that shouldn't be allowed to wield power.
 
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