11 September 2008
Scientists Evolved to be Ignorant
Dave S.
I can’t make stuff like this up.
New Scientist reports:
Superstitions evolved to help us survive
Darwin never warned against crossing black cats, walking under ladders or stepping on cracks in the pavement, but his theory of natural selection explains why people believe in such nonsense.
Typical chance worshipper bore-me-to-tears opening. But this gets really good at the end:
However, Wolfgang Forstmeier, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, argues that by linking cause and effect – often falsely – science is a simply dogmatic form of superstition.
“You have to find the trade off between being superstitious and being ignorant,” he says. By ignoring building evidence that contradicts their long-held ideas, “quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite often,” he says.
I repeat, I can’t make up stuff this good.
1
geoffrobinson
09/11/2008
7:44 am
This ties into the traditional Argument from Reason, the recent John Cleese video, and I believe philosopher Alvin Plantinga’s arguments concerning Darwinism.
If Darwinism is true, you can’t trust the thoughts in your head. They are there due to survival not truth. “Oh, but the truth helps us survive.” How do you know that?
It gets back to the first principle of the matter. The thoughts in your head are about survival of the fittest. You can’t be sure they correspond to truth or not.
2
JoeMamma77
09/11/2008
7:44 am
It is very true that those who claim that belief in some sort of dogma are “supersitious”. However, like DaveScot said, those who believe in science also submit to some sort of belief system. Such as the eventual innerrancy of sciece, how micro-evolution is the evidence for macro-evolution, etc.
3
GilDodgen
09/11/2008
8:05 am
Darwin’s theory of natural selection explains everything, don’t you know. After all, it’s the best idea anyone ever had.
4
Borne
09/11/2008
8:37 am
Darwin wrote in a letter (1881),
Compare this to Dawkins’ saying that it appears almost as if
Hmmm… Somethin’ fishy goin’ on there.
5
mike1962
09/11/2008
9:03 am
“Darwin never warned against crossing black cats, walking under ladders or stepping on cracks in the pavement, but his theory of natural selection explains why people believe in such nonsense.”
Darwin’s theory makes no specific and distinguishing predictions with regards to this. Thus, this is merely non-scientific ideology talking.
6
Borne
09/11/2008
3:12 pm
off topic:
The most interesting thing I saw on that page is the new scientist cover image (in the side column) with the huge title :
“Who will end the war on science”
see cover shot here
These guys never give up the hyperbole. The only war on science I can see is from Darwinism.
7
Upright BiPed
09/11/2008
4:23 pm
DS:
Yes…its like a book entiled “Origin of Species” that has nothing to say about how life had its origin.
Some might consider that a cop-out.
8
GCUGreyArea
09/11/2008
6:18 pm
Upright BiPed:
Ha! you want to talk about cop-outs, I was reading a book on the theories behind aerodynamics the other week, did they explain where air comes from, hell no. And then there is the theory of continental drift that completely skips the whole origin of the planet - how can continents drift if you can’t explain how they first came into existence. And who can forget the Newtons laws of motion - like he ever explained what gives matter its mass!
Science is full of theories that fail to explain things that the theory never set out to explain, as if evolution would be any different.
9
bornagain77
09/11/2008
9:00 pm
Higgs Boson - Does It exist?
GOD PARTICLE
http://www.godtube.com/view_vi.....8f40a2b024
10
bornagain77
09/14/2008
1:47 pm
Off topic videos:
ATP Synthase:
http://www.godtube.com/view_vi.....abe177c185
Cell Signals; Blood Clotting Cascade:
Part 1
http://www.godtube.com/view_vi.....5eb76fb5e6
part 2
http://www.godtube.com/view_vi.....9cf5804529