Prof Denied Funds Over Evolution Evidence 953
radarsat1 writes "The Montreal Gazette today reported that a professor at Montreal's McGill University was refused a $40,000 grant, allegedly because 'he'd failed to provide the panel with ample evidence that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is correct.' Ironically, the grant was for a study into the detrimental effects of intelligent design on Canadian academics and leaders." From the article: "Jennifer Robinson, McGill's associate vice-principal for communications, said the university has asked the SSHRC to review its decision to reject Alters's request for money to study how the rising popularity in the United States of 'intelligent design' - a controversial creationist theory of life - is eroding acceptance of evolutionary science in Canada."
Correction (Score:4, Interesting)
Full Text of Rejection Needed (Score:5, Interesting)
Churchill said it already (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Full Text of Rejection Needed (Score:3, Interesting)
In this case, I would think that it is at least possible that the grant app didn't seem worth $40k to the review board (more due to the former rather than the latter judging by the PIs standing in the community). After he enjoys the free press, he will resubmit or move on to something else. Not every grant proposal can be funded.
Dave
ID vs. Darwin vs. Creation (Score:4, Interesting)
Hold on for a moment while I calm the spasms of laughter...
Ok, first, the study for which he applied for the grant was flawed. ID does not in any way claim that evolution did not happen, only that it may be the method through which an intelligent entity created us. To study the effects of a belief in a socialogical sense one must first understand the real belief, not the view of the uneducated on the topic. ID offers evolution as one of the possible methods of Intelligent Design. I will grant here that much of ID is conjecture and more hypothesis than theory. Creationists of late have been twisting ID to fit their view that nothing evolved but was created. The grant therefore should have studied Creationism and its negative effects on the study of evolution. True ID still allows for the study of evolution and Darwin's theories. It merely attempts to give an explanation of the catalyst for it. Anything that calls itself ID but eliminates evolution is Creationism.
Now before the Creationists and followers of Darwin on this site try to have me drawn and quartered, I personally withhold my opinion. I merely wish to state that parties on all sides of this debate are fond of not taking the time to understand each other's arguments.
Let the flaming by those who don't take the time to read my entire post begin...
Re:I don't get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Quote from a play nobody else has ever seen (Score:2, Interesting)
Community standards are more important (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not fond of any public funding, grants, guaranteed loans or any form of research, but I am also not the kind of person to push my opinions on people I don't know. I am frustrated that my future kids would have to learn subject matters that are outside of my belief system. I believe that if a family wants to teach their children creationism, they'd choose a school that teaches it. If they want to teach evolution, the same would be true. That is more important than shoving every kid of every family into a common thinking (indoctrination).
Why the debate, anyway? What do you care what people you don't know, will never meet, and have no direct contact with teach their children? How does the standard I set affect you, even if you're 2 communities over?
Learning is about basic math, basic reading and writing, and basic discipline. It isn't about higher science or sex ed or history or foreign languages -- that is for the individual to decide if they want it as an elective that will affect their futures.
The more we shove people into the same mold, the less we'll be able to compete in the world. Variety is the spice of life, including in education, faith and science.
Exactly (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Quote from a play nobody else has ever seen (Score:3, Interesting)
Exactly- and I say those capabilities do NOT include comprehending the evidence for evolution at this point in time. Maybe someday- but not now.
Re:Yay! (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you have any idea how much of your daily life is impacted by government and bureaucratic policy decisions? I didn't think so.
Policy makers who are acting in good faith (OK, maybe that's rare, just to be cynical) rely on studies like this. It is anything but useless, it's crucial.
Before anyone sputters about it not really being about science, well, it isn't supposed to be. It's about social power. ID isn't about science either: its express goals are to displace science with political, cultural, and moral authority derived from the Bible. In other words, ID is about social power.
Cargo Cult Science (Score:3, Interesting)
For years Johannes Kepler [wikipedia.org] tried to make his observations fit his theory that the planetory orbits corresponded to the five perfect solids. He took the courageous step to reject his pet theory because it was wrong and came up with his three laws of planetary motion. They fit his observations better and made actual predictions. It was, it is testable.
The fundamentalists are trying to make their observations fit their 'theory'. Except they have no observations and a theory that is mere window dressing. The problem is most Christians forgot God was a metaphor and are trying to interpret their flavors of the Bible as absolute fact and history. You can still be a devout Christian and understand evolution and accept it happened (I'm not a Christian). By rejecting Creationism they don't have to reject their entire faith. That is to say they don't have to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Here here. (Score:2, Interesting)
That was exactly my first thought on this matter. Perhaps the researcher thinks that any proposal on this topic should be funded, regardless of quality?
Grants are never awarded "perfectly," expecially in the eyes of the applicants. But this simplistic reaction is absurd.
While the researcher claims that this rejection "proves him right," I, OTOH, find that his (and/or the media's) reaction proves the committee right for having rejected him in the first place.
Re:Sounds like he's being a suck. (Score:3, Interesting)
"Nor did the committee consider that there was adequate justification for the assumption in the proposal that the theory of Evolution, and not Intelligent Design theory, was correct."
I would have taken this correction just a little more seriously.
But that sentence is what the rejection letter said, and no amount of "we didn't mean that" is going to fix their mess. If they didn't want to come across as a anti-evolutionary idiots, they shouldn't have written crap like that.
If they *meant* that assumption from a social sciences perspective (where in America, supposedly 50% of the population doesn't accept evolution through natural selection as the means by which the current (and many past) species exist on this planet), then perhaps they are right by simply pointing out (politely, perhaps) that 50% of the population are a bunch of idiots and you can't assume that they accept as true what you assert to be scientificly factual.
In other words, from a social sciences point of view, you can't look at "evolution is an accepted fact" as a constant, as a control, for basing a scientific experiment around ID.
In this, they are perhaps correct. If that is what they meant.
Although I had thought the Canadian population as a whole was better than that...
Re:Quote from a play nobody else has ever seen (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, the problem - since the beginning - with Evolution is that fanatics have tried to use it as evidence that there is no God. ID is a social manifestation of Newton's Third Law, where the fanatics on the other side are trying to prove there is.
I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever that ID vs. Evolution is anything but a religious debate. Evolution may be sound scientific principle, and ID may not be - but it doesn't matter a whit, because this debate isn't about science. It's about whether or not there is a God.
This seems a horrendous misapplication of intelligence and faith to me. There should be no debate - Evolution is not inconsistent with the existence of God. If everyone treated it that way, there would be no need for ID.
Re:Quote from a play nobody else has ever seen (Score:4, Interesting)
I can honestly say that I've never discussed religion with anyone who claimed evolution was evidence that there is no God. I'm an atheist myself, and I don't see evolution that way.
HOWEVER, an understanding of evolution for many lessens their belief in god, because it is yet another explanation that lessens the need for the ultimate "catch all" explanation for "unsolved" mysteries, and as such it's an important fight for many of those that strongly believe.
Beyond Darwin's Theory (Score:2, Interesting)
After Darwin's day, we learned how DNA carries the genetic code, and how the encoded blueprint for an organism code can change from one generation to the next, producing variations within a species and the occasional emergence of viable new species.
We have a pretty good story to tell about how DNA codes for proteins, how proteins build tissues, how tissues make organs, how collections of organs comprise an organism, and how organisms mate, exchange DNA, and reproduce.
What we don't yet have is good story to tell about how DNA-based life arose in the first place.
For that, we might eventually learn from research in Molecular Biology how DNA-based self-replicating structures arose from simpler nonliving precursors.
Or we might learn from space scientists that DNA-based micro-organisms (or their more primitive precursors) arrived on Earth via cosmic dust from extraterrestrial origins beyond the Solar System.
As wonderful as Darwin's Theory is, and as wonderful as present day Molecular Biology is, we still have a gap in the story when it comes to explaining how it all got started in the first place.
Rather than argue about Evolution vs ID, we ought to be looking for evidence to answer the question about how DNA-based life got started in the first place, and whether it got started here on Earth or arrived here via some precursor carried in the cosmic winds.
If and when space scientists demonstrate compelling evidence for Panspermia, we can then have a good time speculating on whether DNA-based self-replicates arose through elementary natural processes explainable with Freshman Chemistry rather than by sophisticated molecular engineering by some long-lost intelligent race of technogeeks who lived inside of some ancient computer-based technocivilization long before the creation of our own Latter Day Solar System.
Communication problem, explained (Score:3, Interesting)
If you really want to fight their belief then come back with an equally compelling belief of your own. For example, argue with IDers that our universe is a mere simulation contained in another, greater one. "God" is a computer. This should be particularly infuriating because it actually makes more sense than "big bang" -or- christianity because it gives you an appeal to authority that is completely consistent with science. When they say "well science can't even explain gravity, what causes that? or explain quantum physics then?" you just say "it's part of the simulation duh". It just is, and covers for science's "problem" of not knowing everything. Plus you get to look as insane to them as they look to you, and by being finally on the same level of discourse some progress can be made.
Incidentally I think a Finite State Monster would be far more terrifying...
Fairy Tales (Score:2, Interesting)
Every culture has its myths, including secular beliefs that eventually prove to be misconceptions.
The history of science is full of paradigm shifts, including many that are still underway.
If we want to attack myths, how about attacking myths about regulatory structures that claim to yield order, predictability, and stability (rather than chaos and instability).
I daresay that most people blithely adopt the widely-held secular belief that rule-driven systems are inherently stable, orderly, and predictable. School children are not only taught this, they are obliged to adopt this belief as our prevailing secular religion.
The mathematical truth may be a bit jarring, but the problem is that most people don't have enough math to understand why rule-driven systems are likely to be chaotic and unpredictable.
What's even worse, most people don't have enough math to understand how to design a functional regulatory structure that yields the stability lacking in rule-based architectures.
Poincare and Lorentz notwithstanding, this isn't a new idea. One can find this same idea in the Story of Adam and Eve.
Re:Fairy Tales (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a big different between telling fairy tales to children, and teaching them as facts, to children and adults.
Is it really that grown-up Creationists actually don't believe in Adam and Eve themselves, but they just want their kids to believe in it just like they believe in Santa Clause and the Easter Bunny? Isn't it cute the things that kids will believe when adults systematically lie to them?
Moulton believes that intelligent design should be taught in schools:
Moulton is being intellectually dishonest and taking a page from the Discovery Institute's play book, by trying to divert the conversation away from the real topic, and pretending to misunderstand the meaning of the words, and constructing a straw-man argument instead.
Moulton, can you answer a straightforward question without pretending to misunderstand and weaseling out of addressing the topic? Do you believe in Creationism or not? Yes, you know what I mean, and no I'm not talking about "creativity", and yes you've already made that "joke" of misunderstanding me twice. If you still can't answer it directly, I'll have good reason to assume that you do believe in Creationism, because of your evasiveness on the subject.
-Don
Re:I don't get it (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Quote from a play nobody else has ever seen (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Have you heard the gospel? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:More precisely (Score:5, Interesting)
However, humans are the only beings capable of meta-examining one's impulses, and choosing among (or denying them). This is the fundamental basis for ethics, and the very real line that separates us from animals. I'm quite sure that someone like a Jane Goodall could have some example of primitive meta-cognitive thinking in apes or dolphins, but nonetheless, I feel my statement holds true.
>>In other words, it's about the nature of humanity, which they see as
>>distinguished from other animals by a spark of divinity.
Some people might call this division between man and animal "a spark of divinity". I don't. You can call it what you will, but the division is actually more real and profound than people who always quote the "we're 99% the same as chimps DNA-wise" would let on. Comparing percentages of DNA being similar is a misleading statistic, by the by. We're very genetically similar to most animals on the planet. The devil is in the details, after all.
I'm a Christian, but I'm also not a fundamentalist. I believe in the primacy of reason, and feel that fundamentalists in general are irrational, and give Christians a bad name. I also find it aggravating that places like Slashdot tend to lump all Christians together under one label.
>>It's not just the existence of God that people are arguing for. Christian
>>fundamentalists would be horrified to be told that God exists but doesn't
>>intervene in human affairs, for example.
Sure, and I disagree with fundamentalists on this point. If they are spared from some natural disaster, they claim it was God that intervened to save them, but if they died, it would be part of his great plan. I think it is contradictory to claim that God would establish a natural order and then routinely violate it. I personally don't believe in fate, though I do thank God for any beneficial things that happen in my life -- why not? If God intervenes, I'd suspect it would be on much more a limited basis than what fundamentalists claim, who say things like "God provided me with my wife". Well... what if she didn't want to be your wife? Does that make God some kind of pimp? No. The notion is completely contrary to free will, self-accountability, and right and wrong.
>>You could try pointing out that humans were decorating graves and writing
>>theCode of Hammurabi long before the Bible was written and won't suddenly
>>revert to animalism if they abandon the 20th-centruy movement to take the
>>entire Bible literally.
20th century movement? Some people consider it simply reactionary on the part of Christians to now treat Genesis as allegory, now that evolution is on the scene. But as far back as the church goes, there are different camps treating the creation story as allegory or fact -- long before the evolution argument ever arrived. St. Augustine considered the creation story as allegory, for example, and he lived around 400 AD. He pointed out that there are two creation stories in the bible, that contradict each other in the exact order of the "days" (they basically go backward).
However, there is a lot to be said for the existence of a Christian church regardless of other factors. Examining the differences in states which are Christian and those that are militantly secular shows a much greater respect for the individual in the Christian states. While most atheists are also humanists, it is only the Christian humanists that seem to really believe in what they are saying. The USSR was established on humanist principles, and, well, produced the biggest mass-murderer of all time, Stalin.
Re:Please tell me (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
But I don't think it's necessarily true that the physical creation of man and the spiritual creation of man are one and the same. Did every early hominid have a soul? Who knows. It's certainly possible that event took place 6,000 years ago, with Adam and Eve, where the chronicles begin.
I'm a little rusty on this, but in Genesis, doesn't Cain run off and join "the others"? Seems to suggest that there were hominids already running around by the time A&E left the Garden.