Progress is Steady, But Not Linear
LWJ and I were at Dos Coyotes last night. I brought up the Republican debate, wherein three of the candidates said they didn't believe in evolution.
LWJ, the perfect foil for this post, was aghast. Why, I replied, would you be aghast when half the American public doesn't believe in evolution.
There I am, in a restaurant, having to provide chapter and verse (irony intended) on the ignorance of the American public.
Frankly, I don't care if they believe in evolution any more than I care if they believe in gravity. It is what it is.
And ignorance doesn't have to be permanent. Progress is steady, but not linear.
A hundred years ago, children worked the mills of this country. Women couldn't vote, nationally, until 1920. And today, some folks are still trying to disenfranchise voters. And of those three Republican candidates opposing evolution, none were among the top tier. Even if a Republican wins in 2008, we will make progress.
LWJ, the perfect foil for this post, was aghast. Why, I replied, would you be aghast when half the American public doesn't believe in evolution.
There I am, in a restaurant, having to provide chapter and verse (irony intended) on the ignorance of the American public.
Frankly, I don't care if they believe in evolution any more than I care if they believe in gravity. It is what it is.
And ignorance doesn't have to be permanent. Progress is steady, but not linear.
A hundred years ago, children worked the mills of this country. Women couldn't vote, nationally, until 1920. And today, some folks are still trying to disenfranchise voters. And of those three Republican candidates opposing evolution, none were among the top tier. Even if a Republican wins in 2008, we will make progress.
posted by Lee at 1:16 PM
2 Comments:
I think that the majority of the general population want Creation and Evolution to coexist and don't want to be asked to explain how they should be woven together.
I have become very interested in the people that do not believe in Evolution and have learned that they fall into many camps.
Those that are just not interested in Science and not interested in the Discussion are the least interesting. The majority of the Creationists.
There are the Young Earth People that declare the world to be 2300 years old period. Including Dinosaurs. Check out the website Drdino.com
You also have those that say that God created Dino bones but never created living dinosaurs.
The intelligent design people are split between those that use the World created in Seven days concept and those that want a puppet master orchestrating the appearance and disappearance of the different species.
Isn't global warming and the resulting specie adaptations simply the next step in evolution?
From Wonkette, the 7 responses during the republican debate to the question of “Would the day that Roe v Wade is repealed be a good day for America?” were:
“Absolutely.”
“It’d be a glorious day of human liberty and freedom.”
“Yes, it was wrongly decided.”
“Most certainly.”
“Absolutely, yes.”
“Yes, a repeal.”
“It’d — it’d be ok.”
The feeling of progress... it overwhelms me.
In response to Doug's comment, I've heard the idea before that global warming is a step in global biological evolution. It's true that there have been massive climate changes in Earth's history, but those changes have by and large been stretched over long periods of geological time, wherein a century, for example, is pocket change.
The current human-created tempurature/weather crisis is coming on with incredible swiftness. The only comparable moment I can think of is the catastrophe that wiped out the dinosaurs, but that event and the one we're currently experiencing aren't comparable enough to say whether this one is going to leave behind enough species to regenerate a stable web of life of the planet, should the crisis get that far.
Not least of all because, when the asteroid hit 65.5 million years ago , and during all the other long slow climate changes earth went through, species depleting made room for others to flourish as they evolved to adjust. Most that I've read of global warming has biologists saying that no such balance appears to be forming, and that our current practices are making the planet unfriendly to life, period.
Of course, they could be wrong, but I can't imagine why the risk is worth testing that theory, not only because I don't want all the beautiful and strange non-human species, discovered and un-discovered, to be wiped out, but because the changes we're forcing into the world's ecosystems appear to be a form of species-wide suicide, should the recent hurricane, tsunami, and heat waves be any indication. (And I'm leaving out of this a class and race analysis of who actually ended up dying in those tragedies. Believe me, it was a near thing, but I decided that a four paragraph response to Doug's one sentence was enough as it is.) Alright, I hope that wasn't too long and involved. Hi Dad!
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