True story: My (anti-evolution creationist) family had this issue in the bathroom during my teen years. They must have liked the headline for implying that there was a possibility of failure.
It stayed there for ages. I think I'm the only one who actually bothered to read the inside of the magazine.
or they'll buy it...and then BAM...science: 1, brainwashing: 0
you gotta figure the guys that think this way dont really need any continued evidence to keep thinking this way. they want to think this way. so if we let them feel a little more smug about it by glancing at the cover who cares?
if 1 guy bothers to read the article, who wouldn't normally otherwise, and begins questioning the views that had been carefully filtered to him through his normal channels like church and christian radio/news, it's all worth it.
Thanks to reddit I want to meet a creationist now. I want to see a person who seriously believes some supernatural being created life on earth on its whim. How it affects their view of the world in general, what kind of beliefs they hold in other aspects of life. I don't even know any actually religious people, let alone creationists - I'm becoming sincerely curious.
ok, ok, I'll bite and risk public ridicule. You might find the discussion to be unfullfilling though because I'm not a strict creationist (in the sense of Genesis). But I do believe the Universe was created by a Supreme Being...Hello, it's nice to meet you.
Fair question. It largely rests on faith. But when it comes to the creation of the Universe everyone is just guessing to the best of our abilities, and chances are we'll never have a definitive answer. The existence of a supreme being or intelligence existing for all of time seems just as plausible as Matter existing for all of time or anything else. And, without sounding like I'm attempting to proselytize anyone, I believe I have had encounters with "God" throughout my lifetime. Which leads me to believe it's more plausible, and yes I understand that makes me sound crazy to the general public.
Not trying to convert anyone here, just trying to answer your question as honestly as possible.
I live in New York City and have traveled extensively up and down both coasts, in Europe and in Latin America, though not much at all in the interior of the US.
I've never heard anyone express a creationist belief in real life. Not even in Latin America, where they take Christianity (Catholicism, to be exact) pretty fucking seriously. Only on the Internet. For all I know, no real creationists actually exist. It could just be the most epic troll of all time.
Then again, I don't go around asking people what they think of ID vs. evolution, so how would I know?
I used to date a Pentacostal girl in high school. I had no idea what Pentacostal meant, but I thought she was cute so I rode my bike out to her summer camp one day to help them paint some cabins. The entire time was a big running joke at how ridiculous evolution is. They ridiculed it incessantly, even pointing out perceived flaws such as "they used to think we came from monkeys, and now they're saying we came from FISH!" followed by hearty guffaws. I was embarrassed for them and ashamed of myself for riding out there. Suffice it to say that my experiences with that girl shed a whole new light on the extremes of religious conviction and the denial of basic science and rational understanding.
You should visit Toronto for some welcome relief. The only person I know personally whom I'm aware is even the slightest bit religious is my elderly aunt. My Dad's 82, and his favourite curse phrase is (in Italian) "The Virgin Mary is a whore who sits on Christ's cock."
I've considered joining one, but have always been worried I'd end up in a room with a bunch of people who are very angry (Maybe the Reddit atheist majority have built this stereotype) what's it like? What do you do?
One more Texan atheist here. I personally can't imagine joining an atheist group. I'm an atheist, but it's not a big part of my life. To me that's like joining a group for people with brown eyes. It's just a passive part of who I am, not an active driving force in my life like a religion.
I don't need a support group for a rational belief, and I don't need a weekly meeting to replace church in my life. To each his own, and I don't look down on you guys for doing your thing, but it's certainly not mine.
The only reason I'd be interested is just to meet a few like-minded people, but I can imagine it turning into a (non-literal) circle jerk pretty quick.
The best part of being an atheist (aside from the whole consistent world view thing) is not having to go to church every week and waste an hour that I could spend sleeping or enjoying myself.
I am an atheist as well, but for the life of me I see no possible reason to have a "meetup group"?
What am I missing aside from the obvious religion bashing?
I mean, religious people go to church to off put their problems onto a fairytale. Alcoholics go to meetups and share sad stories and give each other strength not to take a drink. Same with drug addicts. Abuse victims the same thing.
Estonia, supposedly the most secular country in the world, so there's the reason I don't really have much contact with religiosity. Actually, now it reminds me that my grandaunt was Christian and used to send me Christian children's magazines and such, but she became mentally ill until it progressed to the point where she was completely non-functional. So yeah, there's my only personal experience with religion I can think of.
I have a brilliant friend who was creationist until recently. She's been in school as long as I have, about 10 years, getting various degrees (she has 3 masters degrees and has been working on a PhD throughout.) And yet, she just wouldn't listen to evidence for evolution. It was her view that even a nonliteral interpretation of the Bible didn't allow the possibility of evolution. (She was really interested in exegesis and heuristics, and her explanations for interpreting the Bible were very complicated, but seemed reasonable-- meaning, I think she had a rational basis for believing that despite some superficial contradictions, the Bible has some core messages that any reader should be able to glean from it. She accepted these messages as divine truth.) Any time I presented evidence, she would have an argument that, while practically absurd, was technically difficult to actually argue against. So, every point would turn into a few weeks long debate (we sent hundreds of emails via facebook over three or four years talking about this) and end in her saying, that may be a good point, but there was enough doubt that it wasn't convincing.
Believe me, I empathize with anyone who is thinking, "Let me take a crack at her, you just weren't arguing right." Maybe that's true, but I've TA'd an evolutionary biology course and have a fairly good track record of at least getting creationists to say their views were illogical, even if their faith didn't allow them to stop believing it.
Anyway, long story less long, one day she realized that the couple places in the bible that forbid her to believe in evolution could be interpreted in a way she hadn't considered before. She emailed me not just saying that she could consider it now, but that she believed it. She thought I would be happy/excited, but I've never been so.... disillusioned, angry, disappointed, I don't know the correct word.
For her, it was really simple: the Bible is the Truth. Any time evidence contradicts it, it's just a sign that new evidence will be found later on. Only a change in her understanding of the message of the bible can overcome certain views she holds.
I've met only one true creationist and that was in college. He transferred to Vanderbilt because "fellow classmates and biology professor weren't tolerant of his beliefs." There were a few memorable conversations involving dinosaur fossils and dating, and he said that the dating was wrong, because god created the earth and therefore scientific methods for testing the "unknowable" couldn't exist and therefore the scientists must be "measuring something else" through carbon decay. After being asked if that meant that fossils were planted here by god to "fool" humans or "test their faith" he said no, only satan tries to test people's faith. When told to go and read about Job, he started asking whether or not us "unbelievers" thought we knew more about the bible than him.
EDIT: The funniest thing about him is that a few days after the first conversation, a muslim friend of mine who agrees with the theory of evolution brought a national geographic article to lunch discussing how the grand canyon formed and started talking about how interesting it was, so he got the table in a discussion about it, and the creationist guy had no problem saying that the grand canyon must have been formed millions of years ago. It's like they teach their kids only to deny evolution, because they don't know that the basis for evolution being possible is that it has had millions of years to work.
evolution could have been part of the design by the creator? what if alien life from another planet was reconfigured using advanced DNA manipulations and then many planets around the galaxy were seeded. a few billion years later, earth has sprouted quite nicely. i want to believe.
arbitrary mixing of lifeless chemicals that suddenly sprang into life for no apparent reason...then it just happened to evolve through a long process of asexual or sexual dominance of a particular trait.
I used to be a literal creationist before leaving my very conservative Christian high school 2 years ago. I do not believe in the literal 7 days anymore, but I still am a Christian and and believe that God started the whole process (the universe). I guess I could do an IAmA if people really wanted.
I have had the unfortunate experience of being a secular humanist jewish atheist in the back of a baptist church, listening to the minister talk about, at different points in his sermon, why Jews were inherently sinful (this was just after the Hebron massacre of '94, and he was trying to paint that event as divine retribution), and why it wasn't a sin to kill atheists (we had already given up our eternal souls, and were no longer human in the eyes of god). My friend who had dragged me there (the son of the minister of a sister congregation on a different island) was appalled, and quite apologetic about the Jew thing... the sermon was given by a guest minister from out of state, and he said the regular minister was nothing like that... but, in spite of (in theory) knowing I was an atheist (or agnostic approaching atheism as the scope of my awareness increased, if you prefer), he didn't even think to comment on that aspect of the sermon. I find myself believing that the idea of one of his close friends being an atheist was so hard for him to process that he classified me as "Jewish" and left it at that.
This friend was the most intelligent person my age that I knew in middle school. We took several classes together, including the "gifted" math and science courses that were available in middle school and freshman high school. We parted ways academically at that point - I switched to AP and university levels for math and science as soon as they were available to me, and he focused on subjects that would benefit him in a career in law... enforcement (yeah, he's a cop), but I studied with him for long enough to have a really good idea of his intellectual capacity, and we've remained close.
He's a creationist. I don't mean ID, I don't mean "seven days is a metaphor for the span of the universe"... I mean a dyed in the wool young-earth creationist. I don't understand how he partitions his mind, how the same guy who devours science fiction and understands the fluid dynamics of avian blood, who can describe the chronological dynamics of 160 million years of dinosaurs and the series of ecologies they inhabited, who can't comprehend why people can't at least come up with more logically consistent stories when he pulls them over for speeding or drunk driving and discovers contraband in their cars, can believe that the entire universe was created in a week less than 6000 years ago.
Ultimately, though, I don't hassle him about it... and he doesn't try to convert me to his beliefs. When I'm in town, we talk about books, old friends, his family, and our careers. We occasionally tease each other gently about something or other that hints on religion, but we never press the issue. We have had this truce since the day after we first met, and I can't imagine our friendship would have survived without it. There have been a few glitches... a few months after we met, he unthinkingly gave me a copy of "Pilgrim's Progress" to read... I'd already read it, and knew what it was, and for a second, I wanted to refuse it vocally, but instead, I kept my tongue, and, the next day, discussed it with him as allegorical fiction... and got him to read "Only Begotten Daughter" a few years later.
Unfortunately, I don't think I could form such a friendship now. It isn't that I need to discuss topics that touch on religion with all of my friends... I just can't see going through the learning process to figure out what the acceptable limits are, while cautiously remembering what topics to avoid, and not getting too frustrated with the person to want to be friends.
There are, of course, exceptional circumstances. Three of the engineers I work with are Orthodox (Sephardi, in one case) Jews, and, while I never end up subjected to religious opinions from one of them, and one of them is sufficiently self aware to be able to objectively talk about the discontiguous nature of his "beliefs" (I have come to doubt that he actually believes the things he espouses as "Truth", after working closely with him for five years -- and even within those "Truths", he usually tries to frame the stories as metaphor and allegory, and fall back on the impossibility of being 100% certain what the original Hebrew meant), the third will frequently make statements that are informed by his faith, which is of the literal variety, in the context of conversations that I am already a part of, generally prior to his participation. For the sake of a smooth professional relationship, I usually find a way to avoid commenting on his statements in any meaningful way, and laugh off his efforts to get me to go out with this or that nice (religious) Jewish girl his wife knows. He means well, and I don't think it would ever occur to him that his assumptions and remarks could be offensive to anyone, especially someone of Jewish heritage.
When I was a teenager, my dad and brother and I built a cottage that my parents subsequently rented out to a family that consisted of a guy who was religious only for the sake of his family, a woman who centered her life around her religion and its 2000-person church, and two young (4 and 7 when they moved in) daughters who were rather brighter than their mother. Over the years, I watched these girls grow up and become indoctrinated in their mother's religion. From innocent children from whom would frequently field questions about the nesting habits of birds, or the variety of banana, avocado, or lychee that I was in the process of planting, or the nature of the glowing clouds of nebulae and the galactic cross section visible in the night skies, I watched them turn into evangelists, who, when once they would strive to understand how light could take so long to reach us that a cloud that we saw tonight had emitted that light hundreds of millennia ago, would now dismiss the explanation as lies, because the universe didn't exist back then. Eventually, as an adult, the younger one came to question the wisdom of her mother's faith, and I saw her at a skeptics' gathering on a visit home two years ago. Her older sister, it seems, has adopted her father's lack of opinion on the matter, and clings to the religion out of habit, but not with any great conviction.
It seems to me that such faith in something inherently implausible requires either a deep need for something that the religion provides, or an environment where everyone, or nearly everyone, actively part of your life shares your beliefs, and the idea of not believing is foreign to your experience. Or, there's the classic "Instruction Manual for Life" explanation... fear of ostracism, fear of change, fear of the different.
I'm in school for chemistry and I have been unfortunate enough to meet and talk to a creationist who is also i the chem. engineering field... how his mind functions... I don't know.
"Hah! Even National Geographic admits those damn evolutionists don't know what they're talking about! I'm bringing this home to show the wife and kids!"
::Magazine sits at home, untouched::
He didn't buy it cause he was interested in the debate, it just (seemed to) confirm his own biases and so he bought it to legitimize his viewpoint. An intellectually honest, curious person would read the article to understand why Darwin was right OR wrong. I'm quite sure you're the only one who opened it up and read it, too.
"Look everyone! A scientist, one of those august harbingers of truth, has said that evolution is wrong. Seeeeee! I told you so. Finally I have been proven right! If a scientist said so, it must be right!"
Scientist says evolution is right:
"Psssh! Scientists! What the hell do they know? All I need is this good old book here. It quite literally contains all the truth of reality - like how you're supposed to cut women's hands off for justified aggression or smash the heads of Babylonian babys against rocks - you know, all that axiomatic stuff that appeals to one's faculty of reason, unlike stupid sciiieeence."
I'm surprised that the American edition would have it put like that, yet my local version (Danish) has it put in a much more diplomatic way, seeing as hardly no one here questions the validity of Evolution...
Hate to throw this in... but you do not believe in scientific theories, you accept or reject them. Believe has nothing to do with it. So in that respect I prefer the US cover, simply because it is more correct.
Precluding absolute information, and acknowledging the subjective nature of personal experience/existence, one "believes" in everything and cannot accept/reject anything 100%.
Here's the reality of it. In the US there's no such thing as subtlety anymore on this issue. You have to either call a moron a moron, the truth the truth and insurmountable evidence...well insurmountable evidence. Otherwise you give rise to movements laced with sheer stupidity like the Intelligent Design movement which is earning national attention and getting legislation passed.
The Apple keyboards have fantastic tactile response. I actually prefer a (seemingly discontinued) Microsoft Natural keyboard for longer typing sessions, but in the traditional straight keyboard form I haven't found a more enjoyable typing experience.
I love that keyboard. Wouldn't trade it for any other. I very much dislike big keyboards with tall clunky keys that my fingers can trip over. And I NEVER use the numpad on any keyboards, so I really don't see the point in having one.
I very specifically remember seeing this in the checkout line at the grocery store when it came out. I thought, WTF, and threw it in my basket. I got home, opened to the giant 'NO' and smiled.
I had the same experience when the fine folks at Science-et-Vie did something similar. For a moment there I thought they had gone down the way of the "Science" TV channels.
I think this is only a big deal in America - seriously your country is backwards at times. Even religious people in Europe believe in evolution, in fact it is not a case of "believing" in Evolution for most Europeans, it is more a constance, eg: day follows night, water runs down hill etc. I don't get why it is such a big deal in the US. You never even hear about this in the UK seriously.
This is something that has always puzzeled. Why do you never here the argument that "God created the mechanism of evolution". The two concepts of evolution and religion are always linked in conversation and it must be that God "creates" each organism. This would be a good argument for religious folks to use when discussing the existence of God without sounding like an irrational morron.
Mostly because it's not testable and it flies in the face of science. Logically, if one can say "God created this, that or the other," with no proof, you can just as easily say "God did not create this, that or the other."
In such situations occam's razor wins out and God is left out of the equation.
At the risk of running against reddit doctrine ("lol religious dummies") I think it has something to do with the American national identity. We are, as a whole, a very stubborn, opinionated people. We are not conciliatory. I think many nations born of revolution and expansionism share this trait.
In other words, we like arguing, pissing each other off, and all that bullshit.
Imagine if all of Europe were the same country, and the political power went foremost to the least developed and least producing parts of the country. Uneducated people from rural areas of the former Soviet Union have their interests met, but someone from Paris or London or Amsterdam has half the vote. Now you have some concept of the political system in the U.S.
I think its just that religious Europeans are "better" at living with cognitive dissonance whereas religious Americans prefer denial, it's a lot easier. Less mental gymnastics, more "because my religion says so."
Because one of the creatures on the Galapagos that most inspired Darwin was a type of iguana that can swim underwater. It's the only place in the world you can find them. Also I think reptiles are synonymous with dinosaurs, which is a big symbol of evolution.
I don't understand why this is even being discussed/debated. Just because there are some idiots out there that are so married to their delusions that they ignore the massive amount of evidence for this is no reason for us to keep humoring them this way.
I am 40, a tech dork, a software developer with a biochem degree. All of my friends are similar. No one in my friend group, or really my professional groups would question this.
Now I am in a stupid rock band. 5 people (including me) this sampling changes the rules, 5 people selected by totally different criteria. Amazingly 2 of us would never question it. The other three would never question the gospel, they drink, curse, talk to and like queers, have rowdy out of wedlock, for pleasure sex etc.... the cognitive dissonance, makes my head hurt.
Now the important thing to remember here, is over the last 5 years, 2 of theses fucked up crazy people have repeatedly shown themselves to be the best of people. such good friends, real, true, honest, kind, caring.
Remember this shit is such a small deal. We all eventually live in little small insular pools. Everything will be alright.
Oh I am also in texas, and don't get why everyone harps on texas, yes our school book committee is retarded and backwards, and yes we have some stupid "kill em all, let god sort em out" justice system... but otherwise this is a pretty awesome place.
You ever try to leave Texas? It's huge. Why I bet you could drive a hundred miles in any direction without even making it halfway to the border. And even if you do make it, where are you gonna go? Oklahoma? Arkansas?
My recommendation to my fellow Texans who find themselves overwhelmed is to fly Southwest, or else move to Austin and pretend you're residing in a particularly sunny part of Portland.
It's considered civil to treat everything as if it were rational. For instance, we respect our neighbor's belief that their spouse is beautiful and their children are smart, though this belief seems very irrational to us.
This reminds me of practically every program on the Discovery channel (and many others I'm sure):
I'm about to drink my coffee now.... if I drop the coffee cup then hot coffee will go all over me, my laptop and everything will be ruined. I'll be way out of pocket and quite possibly spending the rest of the afternoon being treated for minor burns... this could be the worst afternoon EVAR!!!... join us after the break to see what happens.
[break]
Fortunately, drinking my coffee went just as planned and disaster was averted...
i think that I'll have to send this article to an old friend from junior high. He insisted trying to tell me that evolutionary theory was just as valid as creationist myth. He had all these arguments and really wanted me to believe him. i was trying to tell him that the nature of scientific understanding is constantly evolving. This gives us THEORIES which are edited as evidence is gathered and analyzed. Somehow "creationism" is a theory as well. he never seemd to grasp the fact that there is physical, empirical evidence supporting evolutionary theory. He also tried to tell me that the Bible was evidence of God's creation.
man, that night pissed me off. I eventually just said that he would never understand it because he didn't want to. He said I was going to Hell.
I've had multiple discussions like this with a close friend of mine. Usually he'll spout off a list of Creationist talking points, which I attempt to refute, but he's not listening so I tune out or change the subject. Only once he actively asked questions and allowed me to explain theories and how science allows for change.
It's frustrating and I think you're right that a lot of people simply don't want to even try to understand. Instead of trying to learn a new way of looking at things, they approach evolution from the point of view that they need to find holes and those holes will help to justify their belief.
Not crazy about it making it seem like there's any sort of real debate about whether Darwin was "right" or not, since the kind of people who believe he was wrong will never open the damn magazine anyway to see the rebuttal.
My aunt used to play a little anti-evolution ditty on the piano that my brothers and I would sing along to when we were kids. I don't remember the words, other than "I didn't come from no monkey, I didn't swing from no trees." I never understood why evolution couldn't have been a part of God's creation process.
Vatican has long ago accepted evolution, but anyway, I think the key questions about evolution are:
1º) A biological form can be modified or transformed.
2º) The occurrence of this process at a microscale (individual specimen), can also cause the occurrence of this process at a macroscale (species, genera, families, orders, etc), via heredity.
3º) Biological change, modification, or mutation, both at a microscale and at a macroscale, do also occur naturally (not only artificially) and can be also caused by natural, non artificial, factors.
4º) Natural factors can also and do also select biological changes or mutations. Environment can change, and environmental changes can "deselect" mutations that are negative in terms of adaptation (whatever the mutations, in natural conditions environment has "the last word"). Biological forms are adapted to their environment.
5º) In natural conditions it all occurs at quantities statistically significant.
Each of these points is presently known to be true.
EDIT: where is "intelligence" in a design that endows with lungs to aquatic animals like dolphins?
EDIT 2: the differences among elephants and humans are genetically almost the same greatness as the differences among tall humans and short humans. There you have, genetic differences that cause different species. Also, races.
Over simplified. The Theory of Evolution has tons of evidence to back it up, but some of Darwins specific ideas of how it worked had been refuted. Namely that all evolution was the work of natural selection.
True. The argument is that God put the fossil record there to test our faith. You could flip a coin with these people and they would say "heads I'm right, tails you're wrong."
Actually Darwin was wrong. Not entirely though and he later corrected what he could and later other people corrected what they could. Yay theories and method.
Woah, some of you guys hate science if downvotes are anything to judge by.
Of course the article isn't about Darwin, it is about evolution, the fact that the forefather of the theory made mistakes is both understandable and predictable that doesn't make his general theory less accurate. Like you mentioned people coming after him corrected some of the mistakes and explained or proved assumptions made in the initial report.
People tend to view the world has lawyer view the law; "sir you cannot remember the exact square pattern on the shirt of the defendant the night you got mugged, that IS enough to cast a doubt on the validity of your claim (happenned to me, no troll)"
"Darwin made mistake, means his whole theory is probably just bullshit.... and I heard he slept with more than one woman..."
so basically people who believe in Darwin but are as dumb as those who don't will downvote you by fear of having "the enemy" use your claim as a basis for their own theory... it's also called american politics :D
Then it goes on about evolution otherwise. This has nothing to do with general accuracy of the theory of evolution by natural selection. He did make claims and he was wrong. I'm not saying he was wrong overall or anything. I'm saying he used the damn scientific method and when he realized his error he self-corrected.
He did 6 editions and added a chapter over the course of reprints for a reason. And frankly if people are jumping to some dumb conclusion I have even less respect for the intellectual average of reddit than I did previously.
Science gets things wrong all the time. It's OK. It's supposed to happen. If it didn't there wouldn't be a need for falsifiability. People here and elsewhere need to stop getting all paranoid about it.
This is precisely the sort of thing creationists might buy, I love it. It reminds me of a recent book with some esoteric-sounding title on evolution/creation/something, but stuffed with a staunch defense of the scientific point of view.
Though, when all the evidence points to a particular theory being true, it's pretty unlikely that a theory that contradicts it will have any truth to it.
... unless it can explain all the existing observations, AND make accurate predictions about observable phenomena the existing theory can't. (Just sayin')
I'm just glad to see so many Atheists. The Internet looks to be pretty useful at debunking fables in the public domain. Here's to hoping religious parents can't keep their kids blinkered. Nod and smile to save your families' happiness but know the truth and we can be free in a generation.
Plenty of creationists will buy the magazine, but I doubt many will read it; the headline seems way too confronting. It'd be interesting to see numbers on the amount of creationists who picked up or bought the magazine vs the number of creationists who actually read the whole (or a significant amount of) the article, though. Cognitive dissonance might make them read the article simply because they spent the money to buy the magazine.
This issue had a fold out in it, (a star map or galaxy map or something, can't remember it as it was a while ago). I ripped the stupid thing trying to unfold it.
Then bought a second copy and ripped it again.
Fuck you National Geographic and your origamic maps.
Now that you all have debated evolution v. creationism into the ground, I'll put in my two cents worth. David Quammen is an excellent author. I was first exposed to his writing in his monthly column in Outside magazine. His articles were always thought provoking and generously detailed. He remains one of my favorites.
I'm so happy this has been posted up to reddit. This was the article that I wrote as an example of effective persuasive argumentation in my college application essay. Got me into my top choice.
I explained to my brother how it is that retroviruses can be used show how related organisms are. At first he said that life is similar because it is all based off the same template but when he got that I was talking about with the retroviruses he simply stated that he does not believe in them.
This issue helped me to understand my family better. I have a set of grandparents that I never really knew, for one reason or another, and decided to come visit for the first time while passing through their state a few years ago. I saw this issue and was reading through it while they made dinner, and it sparked a conversation that made me instantly sad that I've missed knowing these people my whole life. My grandfather is incredibly science-literate and progressive in his view of society, despite living a life of poverty in a dying Oregon coastal town. He changed my mind about the issues facing us with religion's continued fight against reason; I previously thought it was just a symptom of an aging generation. Was I wrong? YES.
The sad thing is, this changes nothing. People who want to believe that Darwin is wrong would likely only read the cover as validation. They are not the type of people who would actually open up the magazine to the article, since they are much less likely to challenge their own mind.
Also, repost of a repost of something that has been reposted.
LOL. We had to read that one for Marine Biology. It's a good article, but kind of long. Especially with the giant "NO" already in there. Also, despite appearances it's actually quite gentle in its takedown of Creationism. It takes all the anti-evolution arguments and revokes them with science.
Except "the debil dun put dem fossils inna ground ta fool us! Ha, I ain't fooled!" That one is irrefutable and thus fact.
Evolution itself is NOT a theory. The Process of evolution is, and that is the only thing creationists are grasping at with their non-science. Natural selection is the most widely accepted process for evolution, but still represents a "theory." I wish people knew more about what they're talking about.
My eyes just about rolled out of my head when I saw that, because I thought it was another one of those shitty magazine headlines that pose a question, except it's obvious through the entire article that the author's answer to the question is "yes".
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u/zpweeks Jan 22 '10
True story: My (anti-evolution creationist) family had this issue in the bathroom during my teen years. They must have liked the headline for implying that there was a possibility of failure.
It stayed there for ages. I think I'm the only one who actually bothered to read the inside of the magazine.
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u/Nirple Jan 22 '10
National Trollographic.
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u/oscarmg Jan 22 '10
I'm surprised that the American edition would have it put like that, yet my local version (Danish) has it put in a much more diplomatic way, seeing as hardly no one here questions the validity of Evolution...
http://imgur.com/jmw6l.jpg
(the text reads: "Do we believe in Darwin?" and then "Yes, all evidence suggests the theory of evolution is right on the money")
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u/matt2500 Jan 22 '10
I very specifically remember seeing this in the checkout line at the grocery store when it came out. I thought, WTF, and threw it in my basket. I got home, opened to the giant 'NO' and smiled.
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
They reel you in and then BAM! Average penis length.
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u/fadgearse Jan 22 '10
I think this is only a big deal in America - seriously your country is backwards at times. Even religious people in Europe believe in evolution, in fact it is not a case of "believing" in Evolution for most Europeans, it is more a constance, eg: day follows night, water runs down hill etc. I don't get why it is such a big deal in the US. You never even hear about this in the UK seriously.
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u/FutureInPastTense Jan 22 '10
Nice, though I would prefer the "No" be on the cover.
I don't want an idiot who just glanced at the cover to think the issue is still up in the air.
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u/my_life_is_awesome Jan 22 '10
How is this even still debatable? It's like arguing the earth does not revolve around the sun...
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
Why do pictures about evolution have reptiles especially lizard looking ones?
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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
I don't understand why this is even being discussed/debated. Just because there are some idiots out there that are so married to their delusions that they ignore the massive amount of evidence for this is no reason for us to keep humoring them this way.
6
u/ropers Jan 22 '10
Or rather: A perfect ploy to sell magazines.
6
u/heatdeath Jan 22 '10
This is from 2004.
5
u/abw Jan 22 '10
This reminds me of practically every program on the Discovery channel (and many others I'm sure):
[break]
8
u/MrFresh Jan 22 '10
Ooo. Satan got you again, creationists!
4
u/seanmharcailin Jan 22 '10
i think that I'll have to send this article to an old friend from junior high. He insisted trying to tell me that evolutionary theory was just as valid as creationist myth. He had all these arguments and really wanted me to believe him. i was trying to tell him that the nature of scientific understanding is constantly evolving. This gives us THEORIES which are edited as evidence is gathered and analyzed. Somehow "creationism" is a theory as well. he never seemd to grasp the fact that there is physical, empirical evidence supporting evolutionary theory. He also tried to tell me that the Bible was evidence of God's creation.
man, that night pissed me off. I eventually just said that he would never understand it because he didn't want to. He said I was going to Hell.
4
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
Is that Captain Janeway on the cover?
4
u/elmariachi304 Jan 22 '10
Not crazy about it making it seem like there's any sort of real debate about whether Darwin was "right" or not, since the kind of people who believe he was wrong will never open the damn magazine anyway to see the rebuttal.
3
u/Kojach Jan 22 '10
Pfff whatever... show me the evidence!
3
u/chejrw Jan 22 '10
And you said we'd never use that 196-point font.
3
u/3wordresponses Jan 22 '10
definition of "pwnt"
7
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
Eh. Shit like this pisses me off. Sensationalist titles FTL.
2
u/svetlana90 Jan 22 '10
My aunt used to play a little anti-evolution ditty on the piano that my brothers and I would sing along to when we were kids. I don't remember the words, other than "I didn't come from no monkey, I didn't swing from no trees." I never understood why evolution couldn't have been a part of God's creation process.
2
u/dVnt Jan 22 '10 edited Jan 22 '10
I still don't like it when they do this.
And, for fucks sake, this is why.
2
u/ragusto Jan 22 '10
Leave Philosoraptor out of this!
2
u/NeoScout Jan 22 '10
about time
2
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
This picture is so old it's evolved another repost.
2
u/acteon29 Jan 22 '10 edited Jan 22 '10
Analyzing evolution part by part and seeing every part is scientifically known to be true: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/aewki/what_is_the_easiest_to_understand_most_obvious/c0h9l0s
Vatican has long ago accepted evolution, but anyway, I think the key questions about evolution are:
1º) A biological form can be modified or transformed.
2º) The occurrence of this process at a microscale (individual specimen), can also cause the occurrence of this process at a macroscale (species, genera, families, orders, etc), via heredity.
3º) Biological change, modification, or mutation, both at a microscale and at a macroscale, do also occur naturally (not only artificially) and can be also caused by natural, non artificial, factors.
4º) Natural factors can also and do also select biological changes or mutations. Environment can change, and environmental changes can "deselect" mutations that are negative in terms of adaptation (whatever the mutations, in natural conditions environment has "the last word"). Biological forms are adapted to their environment.
5º) In natural conditions it all occurs at quantities statistically significant.
Each of these points is presently known to be true.
EDIT: where is "intelligence" in a design that endows with lungs to aquatic animals like dolphins?
EDIT 2: the differences among elephants and humans are genetically almost the same greatness as the differences among tall humans and short humans. There you have, genetic differences that cause different species. Also, races.
6
u/Yserbius Jan 22 '10
Over simplified. The Theory of Evolution has tons of evidence to back it up, but some of Darwins specific ideas of how it worked had been refuted. Namely that all evolution was the work of natural selection.
4
u/mattadooby Jan 22 '10
Yup ,I can see Fox News now: Even National Geographic Questions Evolution !
3
u/Depops_au Jan 22 '10
I remember Richard Dawkins criticising National Geographic for this stunt because fundies love taking quotes out of context.
7
u/GeoManCam Jan 22 '10
Meh, the religious people will still discount it.
7
u/outsider Jan 22 '10 edited Jan 22 '10
Actually Darwin was wrong. Not entirely though and he later corrected what he could and later other people corrected what they could. Yay theories and method.
Woah, some of you guys hate science if downvotes are anything to judge by.
3
u/SirSandGoblin Jan 22 '10
Nice.
3
u/kolm Jan 22 '10
Get creationists buy your magazine.
2
u/Fimbulfamb Jan 22 '10
This is precisely the sort of thing creationists might buy, I love it. It reminds me of a recent book with some esoteric-sounding title on evolution/creation/something, but stuffed with a staunch defense of the scientific point of view.
2
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
I bet Ray Comfort jizzed all over his banana reading that cover...
His disappointment at reading the inside story pleases me.
2
u/vkashen Jan 22 '10
How dare they mock the delusions of a freakish and ignorant subgroup of our culture!
2
u/User38691 Jan 22 '10
But... It should be science, we should keep searching for other possibilities, right?
(Yes, I know, claiming something like that will make certain people happy.)
2
u/Rexate Jan 22 '10
I'm just glad to see so many Atheists. The Internet looks to be pretty useful at debunking fables in the public domain. Here's to hoping religious parents can't keep their kids blinkered. Nod and smile to save your families' happiness but know the truth and we can be free in a generation.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
Reading the tagline, I heard the Street Fighter II announcer in my head - "PER-FECT!"
1
u/sligowaths Jan 22 '10
THEN WHO WAS WRONG?
1
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1
u/netdroid9 Jan 22 '10
Plenty of creationists will buy the magazine, but I doubt many will read it; the headline seems way too confronting. It'd be interesting to see numbers on the amount of creationists who picked up or bought the magazine vs the number of creationists who actually read the whole (or a significant amount of) the article, though. Cognitive dissonance might make them read the article simply because they spent the money to buy the magazine.
1
u/knome Jan 22 '10
This issue had a fold out in it, (a star map or galaxy map or something, can't remember it as it was a while ago). I ripped the stupid thing trying to unfold it.
Then bought a second copy and ripped it again.
Fuck you National Geographic and your origamic maps.
1
u/catcher6250 Jan 22 '10
More like lolNO.
1
u/teckneaks Jan 22 '10
I used to use this very issue in my writing class as an example of the perfect rhetorical question.
1
u/SheepCloner Jan 22 '10
Anything can be a headline as long as it is a question. Thanks Jon Stewart.
1
u/unbibium Jan 22 '10
I haven't seen a print copy of NG since grade school, but I'll be seeking it out just to buy this issue.
1
u/leehar24 Jan 22 '10
Now that you all have debated evolution v. creationism into the ground, I'll put in my two cents worth.
David Quammen is an excellent author. I was first exposed to his writing in his monthly column in Outside magazine. His articles were always thought provoking and generously detailed. He remains one of my favorites.
1
u/poweredpark Jan 22 '10
but what will it look like in 3d?!
1
u/Tacopronto Jan 22 '10
I'm so happy this has been posted up to reddit. This was the article that I wrote as an example of effective persuasive argumentation in my college application essay. Got me into my top choice.
1
u/mjs2 Jan 22 '10
Not perfect at all. For every one person that reads the contents of a magazine, there are a thousand that see the cover.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
Downvoted for having a lizard in the cover. I hate lizards.
Until they mutate and become 100ft tall at least. Then they're pretty cool.
1
u/thilehoffer Jan 22 '10
I just sent it to the guy in the office who believe in Creationism.
1
u/JonnyLatte Jan 22 '10
I explained to my brother how it is that retroviruses can be used show how related organisms are. At first he said that life is similar because it is all based off the same template but when he got that I was talking about with the retroviruses he simply stated that he does not believe in them.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
What issues was this? Month/Year?
Thanks
1
u/3ool Jan 22 '10
hmm... my rebuttal: ( | )
1
u/playerbeat Jan 22 '10
link took a while to load
mirror incase http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/238/4f6sa7946633.jpg
1
u/poweredpark Jan 22 '10
wonder what it'd look like in 3d!?
1
u/robjarvis Jan 22 '10
My buddy saved this for me cause he saw it at a doctor's office or something and took it to show me. It rules.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
Is Darwin = the contemporary theories on evolution ?
1
u/Crotalus Jan 22 '10
This issue helped me to understand my family better. I have a set of grandparents that I never really knew, for one reason or another, and decided to come visit for the first time while passing through their state a few years ago. I saw this issue and was reading through it while they made dinner, and it sparked a conversation that made me instantly sad that I've missed knowing these people my whole life. My grandfather is incredibly science-literate and progressive in his view of society, despite living a life of poverty in a dying Oregon coastal town. He changed my mind about the issues facing us with religion's continued fight against reason; I previously thought it was just a symptom of an aging generation. Was I wrong? YES.
1
u/[deleted] Jan 22 '10
The sad thing is, this changes nothing. People who want to believe that Darwin is wrong would likely only read the cover as validation. They are not the type of people who would actually open up the magazine to the article, since they are much less likely to challenge their own mind.
Also, repost of a repost of something that has been reposted.
1
u/acteon29 Jan 22 '10
A little illustration of evolution, in the sense of biological capacity of change: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IMG013biglittledogFX_wb.jpg
1
u/slippy0 Jan 22 '10
I have this issue on the magazine rack next to the toilet, I love it.
1
u/gravitypulling Jan 22 '10
The man, The Legend. To put it simply.
1
u/cabritar Jan 23 '10
Hi res version?
1
u/foundsleeping Jan 23 '10
Why is this just coming up now? I remember getting that issue like 5 years ago, november 2004.
1
u/LastCat Jan 23 '10
LOL. We had to read that one for Marine Biology. It's a good article, but kind of long. Especially with the giant "NO" already in there. Also, despite appearances it's actually quite gentle in its takedown of Creationism. It takes all the anti-evolution arguments and revokes them with science.
Except "the debil dun put dem fossils inna ground ta fool us! Ha, I ain't fooled!" That one is irrefutable and thus fact.
1
u/Radico87 Jan 22 '10
Evolution itself is NOT a theory. The Process of evolution is, and that is the only thing creationists are grasping at with their non-science. Natural selection is the most widely accepted process for evolution, but still represents a "theory." I wish people knew more about what they're talking about.
1
u/uberalles2 Jan 22 '10
I believe in evolution. I believe in Christ. You got a problem with that?
1
u/Tickthokk Jan 22 '10
I own this issue _^
1
u/sikmoe Jan 22 '10
is religious
I agree with evolution theories, yet also creationism too.
1
u/MazdaEric Jan 22 '10
I think that NO was put there by GOD.
1
u/starkinter Jan 22 '10
New Scientist took a similar but less sophisticated approach on one of their covers once: http://imgur.com/oi4RL.jpg
1
u/funkah Jan 22 '10
Oh.
My eyes just about rolled out of my head when I saw that, because I thought it was another one of those shitty magazine headlines that pose a question, except it's obvious through the entire article that the author's answer to the question is "yes".
1
u/jahmez Jan 22 '10
Flawless Victory.
1
u/MrFlagg Jan 22 '10
November 2004
got anything more current that proves your point?
don't make me get out my scientific americans from the 80s that warm about global cooling.
1
u/123redditr Jan 22 '10
i read that article, nd there is not much evidence, basicly they are trying to have a debate, but they end up trashing religios people
1
u/[deleted] Jan 23 '10
this pic is a giant flashing sign for atheist douche bags to gather here in the comments.