ADMIN NOTICE Raising the Standard Here on the page we’ve always operated under two key rules: 1. no hatred toward individuals; 2. no bigotry. However, recent events have raised the possibility of our needing to take a firmer line; what many will perceive as a less tolerant one. The simple fact is that the two rules above allow a lot of room for people to deny truth and even downright lie. I’m not just talking here about a political ‘truth’ or a point for discussion – for example whether Israel or Palestine should accept a two-state solution – but a scientific truth. A truth beyond debate. A fact. Yet when it comes to facts some people seem to be of the opinion that their opinion about them is sacred (it isn’t) and that they have a divine right to voice theirs (they don’t). But enough of the vagueness, it’s time to be more specific. Laws and Theories To begin with we need to nail down some terms and ‘law’ and ‘theory’ are two that have been bandied about over the past couple of days, so they would seem to be a good place to start. LAWS In the physical sciences, ‘law’ applies to an observed phenomenon. In terms of gravity, it’s to do with the fact that objects that possess mass are attracted to each other. You can’t argue with laws, they are what they are. The ‘law’ of evolution, if there were one, would be that organisms possessing traits best suited to their environment are those most likely to survive to pass on those traits. It’s what ‘survival of the fittest’ actually alludes to. You can’t really argue with it either as it’s self-evidently true. Insects that look a tiny bit more like a leaf than their neighbours are less likely to fall victim to predation, and ditto such examples throughout the animal kingdom. THEORIES A theory attempts to explain the ‘how’ of a law; simply put, ‘this always happens, why?’ The theory behind gravitation is what has taken scientists to search for the Higgs boson, the particle which gives objects their mass. The theory behind evolution is the scientific search for the mechanism underpinning evolution. On a simple level then, successful traits are passed on to descendants via the medium of genes – but there are still many unanswered questions. Evolution is a fact, though like most of science our knowledge about it is incomplete. There are millions of data-points that confirm the truth of evolution and not one that calls it into question. As Richard Dawkins himself has pointed out, even if there were not a single fossil bequeathed to us from antiquity there would *still* be enough evidence to put it beyond doubt. So what’s the problem? Well, the problem seems to be that a lot of people *don’t want* evolution to be true. They want something else to be true – and that’s absolutely fine. The disparity between desire and fact is what makes our world so interesting and our lives often so challenging. The fact that we can’t simply stamp our feet and scream and get our own way first dawns on most of us at around the age of two, and the acknowledgment of the disconnect between desire and satisfaction is what gives rise to what, in child-rearing terms, is referred to as the ‘terrible twos’. But we get over that stage in our development and we stop having tantrums as we learn that the world will continue on with or without our consent. We come to watch and learn and modify our desires. So again, what’s the problem? In a nutshell, I believe it’s this: when a group of people come together to debate and discuss, they do so with the intention of progressing their knowledge to a higher state. The alternative is that people enter into discussion in order to become *less* informed, and I can’t accept that anyone would want that for themselves, though I’m aware that many people profit from trying to achieve it in others. So here’s the point of this post, and the reason for the title - denying facts will no longer be tolerated on this page. However, you are absolutely welcome to ask about them. You are welcome to enquire about the mechanisms of evolution or ask for book/paper recommendations to make you better informed. If you are a geocentrist you can ask about the evidence in support of Copernican heliocentrism and its successors – but you may not assert geocentricism simply because the alternatives offend you or seem to contradict a particular holy book (as our ancestors did). So let’s pull together and raise the standard of debate, rather than behaving as truth-denying, witch-burning peasants. You are welcome to hate evolution and you are welcome to love your holy book, but you must keep those emotions inside you as evolution is a scientifically-proven fact and anything else, well, isn’t. I hope you can accept this new guideline in the spirit it is intended. This page was always imagined to be a place of debate and realisation, not a place for the wilfully ignorant to graffiti their half-baked idiocy onto everyone’s eyeballs.
Posted on: Mon, 24 Nov 2014 07:16:19 +0000
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