Science: Do we believe or do we accept?

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by Linus

Well, rats!

How about a star whale?

No, eh?
I guess no blue police boxes either, eh?
Seriously, however..



I think this comes from a limited exposure to more than a Biblical background. I'd be curious how many of those women were home schooled and only shown one possible method of understanding and comprehending. And not just education but also in home culture.

My uncles went to Catholic parochial boarding school as kids and public high school. All of them are atheists but have a deep understanding of the Catholic church and the various Catholic rights. They have, however, a keen desire of curiousity to learn beyond the boundaries they started with in grade school. My aunts also fall into that category.

As a result, I grew up in an environment where curiousity and questioning everything was encouraged. I cannot personally imagine not being such an environment but it makes me wonder if the opposite of my environment is what those women experienced? If curiousity is discouraged and downplayed, then accepting things at face value would be the result, I would think.

It leads me to believe that this is truly the "Microsoft/Mac OS/GUI Age". That isn't to say that that MS or Apple rules but rather because of making things easier for people to make those tools work without ever really needing to understand has made us -- for lack of a better phrase -- mentally lazy and "curious-less". (keep in mind that I recognize that not everyone has a desire to learn what happens behind the screen but that desire that things just work and we accept things as they are seems commonplace for everything, not just computers).

Anyways, maybe that's why..

Something my wife observed with the women talking about evolution was that *every single* woman who did thought that evolution should not be taught or that 'the (nonexistent) controversy' should be taught were from a red state. Every. Single. One. The women who, at least, conceded that evolution should be taught were all from blue states. I think that is very telling.

Like you, I think that we have become a culture that expects things to be easy. We have become mentally lazy and, for some reason, we treat the brain as being different than any other organ. No one would ever suggest that you needn't give your heart, or lungs or legs or arms a workout just to keep them working well. Yet we, as a culture, do not promote the idea that the brain is a muscle and that it needs regular exercise as much as any other part of our bodies lest it atrophy.

Evolution is an elegant theory. By elegant I mean it in the way that mathematicians, engineers, scientists and hackers mean it--a solution that is subtle, powerful and no more complicated than it need be to do the job. On paper, it is a very simple theory. In practice it is fiendishly subtle. It also has very wide-ranging implications.

A few months ago, I read an article (that I wish I'd clipped to my electronic scrapbook) about farmers in, I believe, Alabama who were battling some pest or another. They were expressing surprise that this pest, which they thought some pesticide or another had all but eradicated, had come back with a vengeance and was now all but immune to the pesticide in question. This was, perhaps, the most poignant example of what not understanding evolution looks like. Evolution *predicts* that we should see exactly that kind of thing happen.

I'm going to terminate this post because I think that it might be interesting--and worthwhile--to post a general statement about evolution but that will take some time. Stay tuned.

Cheers
Aj