The misinterpretation of evolution

[Vykrel]

you always hear ignorant morons say "If we evolved from monkeys, then how come we still got monkeys?!"

we did not evolve from monkeys, nor did we evolve from chimpanzees. this has to be made clear. as crazy as it sounds, this one bit of confusion is likely responsible for MANY people's disbelief in evolution. it is the go-to argument for creationists that dont know what theyre talking about.

 

[Lim3]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYtYQ0a7btQ&feature=watch_response

This video showed me the error of my ways.

Then this video set me right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHex9GDQ2S0&feature=related

Also the OP inferred that the media may be pro-creation. Then how come shows like family guy and south park totally RIP on the theory.

 

[Agow95]

Creationism and intelligent design aren't the same, creationism is the belief that the world was made as it says in the Bible/Torah/Koran etc whereas Intelligent design is a combination of evolution and creation, where we evolved but every-so-often a greater power (God) intervened and briged large gaps in evolution, it is a very lazy way to do science, isn't it? "Hmm, I can't explain this, GOD DID IT!!!" and every example of where evolution can't explain a gap in species, intelligent design leaps on it, we fill the gap, they shut up. Evoulution must be taught as, and for some reason no religious man I have ever met seems to know this, evoulution IS science fact, it is no longer just a theory, it is the "Official" explanation on the origin of species. p.s. To anyone who insists that Darwin did not nessicarily believe his theory to be fact in his lifetime, which people I've met have insisted, let me say this, his book was originally call "On the origins of species by process of natural selection and etc etc" which meant "this book is about the origin of species" in a later revision he removed the "On the", meaning "This IS the origin of species."

 

[ShadowsofHope]

I'm a Crevolutionist. I believe that God likes dominoes and set up the entire universe to play through this. So, you can't really put Creationism at odds with Evolution. I think the problem is that people do put it as Evolution vs. Creationism.

That is Theistic Evolution, which has only the similarity of invoking a deity in the beginning of the Universe when compared side-to-side with Creationism/ID. Creationism can only be found logical if at first the individual in question believes in the book and stories from which the Creationism story originates. Intelligent Design is pretty much the same thing, except for the fact that it's entire basis is making controversy out of the concept of "Irreducible Complexity" - which infers that any living organism must have all of it's parts in order to function correctly, or else it cannot do so. Which, of course, has been refuted as a bunk concept time and time again (look up sperm and Irreducible Complexity, and you should find the reasons why Irreducible Complexity is nothing more than an Argument from Personal Incredulity).

In other words, people can deny Evolutionary theory all they desire. Though, even the simple effort of using modern medicine, and benefiting from it, makes them utter ignoramuses in the end. Where did Modern Medicine come from? The development and experimentation with Germ Theory. Where does Germ Theory at it's most base scientific principles come from?

Guess.

 

[stutheninja]

it is fair that if one idea is taught in the classroom, then another idea must be taught as well. People need to see all of the choices, and then decide for themselves what they want to believe is true. There is no reasone why Creationism nor evolution can be taught simulataneously.

so you are saying that they should teach religion in schools? thats what i would call "bass-ackwards"

 

[RandV80]

I will start off by saying I am no scientist. However, I have noticed that almost everywhere (including here on the Escapist) many people do not understand evolution. This not just simple missteps like accidentally involving use and disuse into your arguments, but major misinterpretations. But this is not the problem, simple misunderstanding and misinterpretations are not somehow horrible offenses. However this has lead to a problem.
These misinterpretations have now lead to a whole culture of people who not only refuse to believe in evolution, but also use their misinterpretations to fuel their arguments. An example of this run amok by ignorants is "Social Darwinism" (which is an extremely annoying name as Darwin had nothing to do with "social darwinism"), which was really just and excuse to "prove" racism. A modern example is half the population of the United States (or less since I have not checked recent polls). That's right, around 50% of the population of the United States does not believe in evolution, and that is sad. Especially since the scientific theory has undergone so much criticism and a constant wave of evidence, that it has become almost completely infallible. And yet people still live ignorant of it as they have been misinformed about evolution.
This all comes down to a single point.Why and how is this happening? Is it because our media seems to commonly ignore facts? Is it because people jump onto bandwagons just to get away from the "norm" of evolution? Is it because our public schools have failed to teach adequate science in the classroom? Is it because of the rise of Creationism and Intelligent design (which are the same exact thing) has been corrupting our science classes and media? I would just like to hear other people's opinions on this.

Edit: Someone has kindly pointed out to me that it is instead "social darwinism" instead of just "darwinism". Also, to add a tad more context. Darwin specifically stated that evolution should not be applied to humans in that sense.

First let me apologize for skipping over 8 pages worth of comments (been there done that) and directly quoting the OP.

Why is it happening? It wasn't always this way, and I don't know when or how exactly it started, but I believe at the root of the problem is the misunderstanding that one must make a choice between their religion or evolution, that the two cannot co-exist. From the science side, it doesn't help that many scientists are coincidentally atheists and a good portion of those would like nothing better than to see religion stamped out for good. On the religion side, there is a problem devout religious types not understanding what Darwin meant by going against the literal interpretation of the bible, and coming to a conclusion that science negating the literal interpretation of the first few chapters of the book of Genesis also somehow negates the teachings of Jesus.

It's a vicious circle really, with your rural small town US folk seeing 'science' as a corrupting influence trying to steal their children away from God and lobbying for some whacky legislation, and the scientific community seeing the religious intrusion as a corrupting influence on science and fighting against it. As far as Western society goes this really only happens in the US, and it's probably not going to get better without a better level of co-existence. You need less Richard Dawkins' and more Carl Sagan's. Or take the Big Bang Theory for example. It's a point of contention as it is portrayed as an alternative manner for the universe coming into existence without the help of God. Yet the theory itself was founded by a Catholic priest who using science (astronomy) found the universe to be expanding outwards yet for the unknown viewing God as the cause or source of the 'Big Bang'.

 

[Astoria]

I'm surprised at that. Even some of my most religious friends accept the theory of evolution. There's always going to be a science v religion battle, especially as scientists discover more and more. I don't see how Intelligent Design can really be taught in anything but a philosophy or religion class. It has no scientific facts to back it up.

 

[Sight Unseen]

With the amount of people who are mislead / willfully ignorant about current events and the state of the world they live in, educating them on things that might have happened hundreds of millions of years ago shouldn't be a priority. IMO, all it provides is intellectual masturbation for no real gain.

Agreed. I've personally found historical science to be of minimal importance.

Biological science that studies things that are currently alive has given us things such as modern medicine and sanitation. Electrical science has given us modern technology and revolutionized the way we communicate and share information.

Learning how to express ourselves in written and spoken word allows us to share our ideas in all fields and further contribute the greater pool of all human knowledge.

Understanding the history of human civilizations and being aware of current events can help us make our world better and make sure that we don't repeat the social mistakes of our ancestors.

Comprehending mathematics is a useful and marketable skill that shows up in all areas of life.

These are just a few examples. But, honestly, what does studying where we came from, scientifically speaking, do for us? Nothing but satisfy some people's curiosity and lend credence to their belief that there is no God. And really, compared to the things I listed, is that all that important?

Understanding evolution is important in a lot of ways:

1. Breeding the "best" animals/creating the "best" crops. Have you ever seen what banana's used to be like? Did you know that carrots used to be purple? Would you like to have a wolf as a pet? I didn't think so. These are all examples of using the principles of evolution to change plants or animals to be more useful to us. It's called artificial selection, and it uses the principles of evolution in a designed fashion to select for the desired traits and amplify them.

2. To understand pesticide use: Many insects are now becoming immune to pesticides because they have evolved to become resistant to the pesticide in question. It doesn't take long at all for insects to adapt to the pesticide, because they breed very quickly. Say you have 1,000 insects, and only 4 of them are immune to the pesticide. Those 4 insects will survive, mate, and pass on their resistance gene to their offspring. not all of them will get the gene in question, but some will. Maybe the next generation has 20% that are resistant. The others all die, they mate, and the frequency of the resistance gene gets higher every generation until the pesticide is nearly useless. This is a VERY important application for agriculture because many farmers rely on chemical pesticides to protect their crops and if they no longer work then new pesticides must be researched, or pesticides must be combined.

3. To understand and eliminate disease: similar application to above, bacteria and viruses can evolve very quickly to become resistant to antibiotics. Penicillin used to be the antibiotic of choice for many bacterial infections, it was administered excessively, and over time the bacterial populations became immune to it. Nowadays people hardly use penicillin anymore because bacteria are largely immune to it now. Its happening to a lot of the known medications now and there are already reports of some strains of virulent bacteria (gonorrhea I think) that are immune to all known antibiotics. New antibiotics and solutions must constantly be researched and developed to keep up in this arms race against disease, and this has been a multi-million dollar industry. Sadly, now less and less new antibiotics are being discovered, and R&D prices are getting too high for corporations to justify the expense, and research is being cut. We're actually losing this race, and evolution is the cause of this.

4. To gain a better understanding of our world. This is a fairly straightforward one. Scientists want to learn how the world works, how our bodies work, how ecosystems work, etc. And a lot of this research ends up supporting evolution theory even if at first it was not intended for that purpose. That's the nature of research, you never know initially where your research might go, and often it ends up adding more evidence to the colossal pile already made in support of evolution.

 

[Rainforce]

Further, ID fails to follow the scientific method. The proponents look at a handful of traits, without looking at the data found for those traits (seriously, Darwin disproved the irreducible complexity of the eye and it's still occasionally trotted out as ID's big win), and say in essence "Look at how complex this is! It has to have been designed!" This isn't science, it's sensationalism.

But eyes are a piece of sh*t concept wise, we only see in a range of 3 colors, even BIRDS with their tiny brains have more, and we don't see that much with them anyways, as the most part of what we see is fixed up from memory. that's not very "INTELLIGENT DESIGN" but barely working at all. if that's all god can do, well.... ^^

But primitive choice of words in my ranting aside, it's mostly an US problem, while the rest of the world is actually quite well-educated on that matter.

EDIT: I accept a god when they tell me it's "sloppy design" : D

 

[Yopaz]

First of all, your run on sentences make an extremely incoherent argument. Second of all, you seem to have some of your facts bass-ackwards. You seem to believe that evolution was the lead idea the whole time, and that these filthy newcomers of Intelligetn Design are invading. It is actually quite the opposite. Evolution is an idea that is barely even a hundred years old, while Creationism has had free reign for thousands of years.

I think that it is fair to say that you seem to need to brush up on some things first before you go crying wolf on other people. Also, it is fair that if one idea is taught in the classroom, then another idea must be taught as well. People need to see all of the choices, and then decide for themselves what they want to believe is true. There is no reasone why Creationism nor evolution can be taught simulataneously.

Actually both things should not be taught in the same classroom. One of the ideas is science, the other is religion. Should we also be taught that the earth is the centre of the universe? There's one idea based on more than 150 years of research. Where we have proof of relationship between every mammal in the world. Where we can see animals having traces of things they don't have (whales have traces of legs). It's simply science. Does it mean there is no god? No. Does it mean that evolution most likely happened? Yes. I as a future science teacher will refuse to teach intelligent design for the same reason I will refuse to teach kids about Hamlet. I'm a biologist not a theologian.

The reason for a lot if the confusion is that the word "theory" is commonly used where a scientist would use the word hypothesis. A theory is the strongest tool in science. Which is always the first thing anti-evolutionist pounces on.

 

[KoalaKid]

HA, you can't scientifically prove or disprove evolution!

To be perfectly blunt: Try researching the subject before shooting your mouth off like that. Evolution is a falsifiable model by virtue of the predictions it makes. One way to potentially disprove the theory would be if we found a static fossil record (Read: If we found that most fossils appeared in most if not all of the strata in no particular order). Finding true chimeras such as found in mythology (mermaids, griffons, hyppocampus, chimera (mythological creature rather than vague synonym for amalgamation)) would do much the same. And if a mechanism was found in organisms that outright stopped mutations from accumulating (read: Literally acting as a wall saying 'here you shall go and no further') that would similarly cast doubt on evolutionary theory. There are plenty of scenarios that could potentially falsify evolution.

That said, at this point we can say with a great deal of certainty that the fossil record is not static, we have no evidence for any true chimeras, and all indications point to there not being any magical genetic barrier preventing a population from changing past a certain point. These remain falsifiable points though we can say with ever greater certainty such things will not be found in much the same way that we can say with ever greater confidence that one day gravity won't turn off and we'll all fall into the sky.

I'm pretty sure that I can shoot my mouth off about any subject I like researched or not so your first sentiment is null and void. Now if you actually knew anything about science you would see how funny your first statement I commented on was because you would know that science cannot prove or disprove anything.

 

[Abengoshis]

Well the bible says that on a particular day He created man and than woman out of man.

There's really nothing to interpret out of that.

So... creationism.

Alrighty then.

---

Outside of that... when you can find the missing mitochondria eve then we will chat about EVOLUTION, but until then I'm not giving it a thought.

I really don't mean to get into a huge discussion about this (unless you want to take this to a PM), but how is the bible proof? It's basically the same as saying your friend told you: anecdotal evidence that holds no water.

I know you believe it, and that's fine for you and anyone else who does, but can you at least see how others would not?

Also, I am unfamiliar with the whole thing with the missing mitochondria. What is that?

The LINK so to speak is the thing evolution misses the chain that links any animal to the plausible Human DNA chain.

Similarities exist, as they do in every species but there is no link to us and scientists are throwing everything trying to find it (hence why they want to map the entire DNA sequence which would take massive massive datapower) but without it they are just a THEORY.

If I say the dog came from wolf hybridization but I cannot find any static link that shows that it did indeed come from it then I cannot be right.

If I find a chain and say that it links to a ball but the ball has no loose chain that broke then I am wrong.

YOU NEED THE MISSING LINK and without it you are wrong.

Every single "stage" if you want to call it that, (it's really not a stage, just a point in time) is a "missing link" There is no "this turns into this", it's a constant change due to selection pressure.

Incorrect, every scientist has admitted that the missing link is the focus and that one definitely exists... we can track back our DNA and genome through analysis (which we haven't perfected based on processing power) but we can not find how we came from primeapes or anything else on this planet... because the missing link is not there...

But no scientist will agree a missing link doesn't exist... DNA IS THE CHAIN and every chain binds to another that causes a link.

Ok, grand authority on everything, how the hell are you going to back up the claim that EVERY SINGLE SCIENTIST has admitted that there is a missing link. Think about what you write when you write it. ¬____¬

Also, I'd like to see what you think evolution actually is.

 

[KoalaKid]

HA, you can't scientifically prove or disprove evolution!

To be perfectly blunt: Try researching the subject before shooting your mouth off like that. Evolution is a falsifiable model by virtue of the predictions it makes. One way to potentially disprove the theory would be if we found a static fossil record (Read: If we found that most fossils appeared in most if not all of the strata in no particular order). Finding true chimeras such as found in mythology (mermaids, griffons, hyppocampus, chimera (mythological creature rather than vague synonym for amalgamation)) would do much the same. And if a mechanism was found in organisms that outright stopped mutations from accumulating (read: Literally acting as a wall saying 'here you shall go and no further') that would similarly cast doubt on evolutionary theory. There are plenty of scenarios that could potentially falsify evolution.

That said, at this point we can say with a great deal of certainty that the fossil record is not static, we have no evidence for any true chimeras, and all indications point to there not being any magical genetic barrier preventing a population from changing past a certain point. These remain falsifiable points though we can say with ever greater certainty such things will not be found in much the same way that we can say with ever greater confidence that one day gravity won't turn off and we'll all fall into the sky.

I'm pretty sure that I can shoot my mouth off about any subject I like researched or not so your first sentiment is null and void. Now if you actually knew anything about science you would see how funny your first statement I commented on was because you would know that science cannot prove or disprove anything.

oh, by the way even our ideas about gravity are still up for debate.

 

[Kolby Jack]

The thing people don't seem to factor into this is how stubborn people can be. Yelling quotes and evidence into their faces just makes them dig further into their own beliefs until the whole thing becomes a shouting match of petty insults. I'm sure everyone has some belief that most other people find quite stupid, and being told their beliefs are stupid more often than not just forces them into a state of denial which doesn't help anyone. What everyone needs is understanding and patience; it's not the end of the world just because some people prefer to think different than you. It doesn't make them stupid, or childish, or whatever.

Life is not about "I'm right, you're wrong" but rather about compromise.

And yes, I did specifically avoid mentioning which belief I'm for, because this statement applies to everyone.

 

[Abengoshis]

HA, you can't scientifically prove or disprove evolution!

To be perfectly blunt: Try researching the subject before shooting your mouth off like that. Evolution is a falsifiable model by virtue of the predictions it makes. One way to potentially disprove the theory would be if we found a static fossil record (Read: If we found that most fossils appeared in most if not all of the strata in no particular order). Finding true chimeras such as found in mythology (mermaids, griffons, hyppocampus, chimera (mythological creature rather than vague synonym for amalgamation)) would do much the same. And if a mechanism was found in organisms that outright stopped mutations from accumulating (read: Literally acting as a wall saying 'here you shall go and no further') that would similarly cast doubt on evolutionary theory. There are plenty of scenarios that could potentially falsify evolution.

That said, at this point we can say with a great deal of certainty that the fossil record is not static, we have no evidence for any true chimeras, and all indications point to there not being any magical genetic barrier preventing a population from changing past a certain point. These remain falsifiable points though we can say with ever greater certainty such things will not be found in much the same way that we can say with ever greater confidence that one day gravity won't turn off and we'll all fall into the sky.

I'm pretty sure that I can shoot my mouth off about any subject I like researched or not so your first sentiment is null and void. Now if you actually knew anything about science you would see how funny your first statement I commented on was because you would know that science cannot prove or disprove anything.

oh by the way gravity doesn't exist.

And the entire solar system orbits a small mouldy grape, don't forget that.

 

[Bobbity]

The thing that really irks me is that people think that evolution is caused by our environment. It's not. Evolution is caused by random mutations of our genetic code, and the environment only determines which changes will survive - because those with useless or negative changes die, and cannot reproduce to pass on their genes. I really hate having to explain that.