Elsewhere (152)

it’s hard to see how a grasp of evolution … has any decisive logical bearing on whether or not the universe has some benign first cause and ultimate source of meaning.
It’s not a scientific issue; it’s part of the culture war. It’s about which Sneeches’ bellies have stars and which have none upon thars.
to pretend that there are not other ramifications in regard to trust in education authorities, especially when changing schools, is also folly.
Although I was raised in Utah I was never taught creationism in school, so I’m actually not qualified to say what it’s like to be in such a class. I’ll defer to your experience.
When I was a freshman at BYU, my teachers showed us human DNA next to chimpanzee DNA and pointed out the tiny differences, then they loaded us into buses and drove us down to Zion NP, with a geologist pointing out the various rock strata and telling the ages. We stopped near the national park and gathered fossils from the roadside gravel. Turns out one of the best places to count the earth’s rings is southern Utah/northern Arizona, where the Grand Canyon’s top layers are Zion Canyon’s lowest, and Zion’s top layers are at the bottom of Bryce Canyon.
Some of my earliest memories are family vacations at Dinosaur National Monument with its impressive Wall o’ Bones.
That said, my mom and most other adults I know have never been comfortable with evolution, because they see it as contradicting scripture and being hostile to religion. (It actually contradicts a reading of the Genesis account that became prominent during the Protestant Reformation. Augustine and Aquinas thought the creation myth was symbolic. I’d bet my last dime the Hebrews saw it that way, too.)
Wanna hear something interesting?
In the Hebrew method of signification, specifying a number plus a unit of time does NOT indicate that a literal reading is required. Instead, the number a symbol of a spiritual concept (which is consistent with the Hebrew kabbalistic tradition of assigning numbers to letters, then playing with the sums that words create).
Forty years/days does not refer literally to 40 solar days and nights. A unit of time plus 40 indicates a timespan whose beginning and end is determined by God for a sacred purpose. The 40 days of rain for Noah, the 40 years in the wilderness after Egypt, the 40 days that Jesus fasted — the actual duration of those events is irrelevant: the writer indicates 40 [unit] to tell the reader that the timespan is spiritually significant; providing scientific measurements would be wholly outside the purpose of the text.
Likewise, the Hebrews were to be significantly different from their neighbors. The Law of Moses prescribes multiple six-on/one-off rituals, from Sabbath day observance to letting fields go fallow every seventh year. “Why do we labor six days and rest on the seventh?” they would ask. “Because when God created the world, he labored six days and rested on the seventh.” Imitating a divinely established rhythm, wherein the sacred and the profane are temporally demarcated (among other things), is the Hebrew definition of TRVTH. I warrant that if you asked a Hebrew of that era exactly how old the earth was, they’d wonder what in Sam Hill you were on about. As a non-scientific culture, they’d regard such measurements as providing no useful information — nothing as valuable as the relationship between this rite and that story.
We’re Greeks attempting to decode at text written by a non-scientific people. No wonder the distortions are so drastic sometimes.

[ Wipes bar with tea towel, listening attentively. Slides over next drink. ]

I’ve mentioned several times before that Finnish doesn’t have gendered pronouns, using hän for he/she and se for it. Hasn’t stopped the usual suspects from bitching about alleged inequality between the sexes.
And yes, I meant between.

Sorry about that, David.

Back to dogs:
If you see two mammals in the park, one of them poops (a bit American for me but…) and the other picks it up and carries it in a little plastic bag, who is the boss?

If you see two mammals in the park, one of them poops (a bit American for me but…) and the other picks it up and carries it in a little plastic bag, who is the boss?
Which makes “I’m taking the dog for a walk the most widely-used euphemism in human history.

“I’d bet my last dime the Hebrews saw it that way, too.”
I’d bet my last dime that God saw/sees it that way, because He is at least smart enough to foresee the difficulty of explaining the concept of millions of years to a bunch of farmers who didn’t understand 0, let alone how they would explain it to their neighbors….

Isn’t it odd where these threads can go?
I and associates have been informed that tomorrow we are to hear of the glories of a local organization that stages farmers’ markets or something of the sort. All week, ever since the first announcement, I’ve had that Youtube clip looping through my attention.

I’ve had that Youtube clip looping through my attention.
It is one of their better sketches.

heh…bored and reading through this again, I notice I totally botched my point above @ March 3 21:09, which should read:
Yes, on the whole I would rather be operated on by a doctor who may not be a believer in evolution rather than one who went to a school where grades were of the circle/square/triangle variety, but I’d still rather trust my life to someone who can think outside the box if necessary.
I really should stick to if/then/else writing.

Which is why, when a politician is asked “Do you believe in evolution” he should give as straight an answer as if he was asked “Do you believe the earth is round”. No need to hummina-hummina-hummina out of fear of the obstinacy of one’s (supposed) allies. Leadership. It’s what the job is all about.

The intention behind asking a politician, “Do you believe in evolution?” is the same as asking Carrie Prejean about same-sex marriage – it’s to expose people as not belonging to the tribe.
It’s rather sad (yet also interesting) to me to see science being used the same way politics and religion are used (“Are you now or were you ever a member of the Communist Party?”, “Do you renounce Satan and all his works?”).
Were I the subject of such witch-findery, I think I’d give the Cyril Joad response, “It all depends what you mean by…”

As for “it all depends on what you mean by…”, that’s simply a cop-out, weak, and a tell on one’s lack of leadership skills.
It can be, especially if it’s used for “simple definitive questions”. But, used properly, it can lead to better definition of terms, a more meaningful discussion and, in some cases, the exposure of the questioner as having a simplistic grasp of a complex subject.

The response would be what?
And that’s the problem with the question – there is only one acceptable response: “Of course I’m comfortable with evolution and believe in it wholeheartedly. What do you think I am, some kind of backwards, anti-science idiot?” Whether either person in the conversation understands evolution is irrelevant.
Even if the person being asked has niggling doubts, as long as they repeat the party line, they get a pass. Otherwise, mocking and eye-rolling commence, often from people who’ve spent no time thinking about the issue for themselves.
I’m not sure if your, “‘Evolution’ as in man evolved from monkeys?” was deliberate, though I’m sure there are plenty of people out there, journalists or otherwise, with that erroneous view of Darwin’s theory – which is what happens when people pretend to talk about science and don’t bother with the details.
So I find it hard to see this as “losing a science discussion with a journalist” – if you’re not permitted to discuss the science, it’s not a scientific discussion. It’s checking someone is part of the tribe, or is too scared to stand up to it.

I’ve been thinking for a while that unless you get a degree in hard science or engineering you are throwing your (or other people’s) money down a rat hole. Nowadays most people leave college more ignorant than when they entered.

These grievance studies majors are also a built-in constituency for the growth of government – since government is the only entity that will employ them (except for a small elite who can get academic jobs).
I once questioned the worth of a women’s studies degree on a different blog, and was angrily informed by a women’s studies degree that she had a very nice government job, thankyouverymuch.

@Bigland
What difference does it really make if the journalist himself understands his question if it’s a legitimate question? At one time I dismissed such questions as illegitmate as I was under what I now understand was the mistaken impression that a belief in young earth (or something very close to it) creationism was an anomaly on the right. While I don’t think it’s entirely mainstream there, I’ve come to understand that it is a fairly wide held position. This makes the question much more legitimate and thus quisiling answers such as Gov. Walker gave much more problematic and distracting. There was an opportunity there to put such a question to bed with a solid answer and move on to more important items, but he flinched. Or at least I presume he flinched. Or perhaps he does not think evolution is a significant component of the scientific understanding of life. Either way, his positions on much more important subjects are lost. Time is lost. The time one has to engage with potential voters is always limited, especially given the warped lens in which the mainstream media presents American conservatives. Opportunity lost and nothing gained.
Tribe thing, you’ve brought it up twice now. We are all part of many tribes. I could draw innumerable venn diagrams but I presume such is not necessary. One major thing that creeps me out about lefties is the pretension of being above it all, God-like. One tribe is the tribe of rational thought. Or at least the tribe of asperation to rational thought. It is a legitimate concern to ask if the potential leader of the tribe of the USA is the kind of person who believes what he thinks or who thinks what he was taught. If you read my comment at March 2, 14:42, the heat one encounters when merely discussing certain subjects in the domain of many dialog environments on the right is very much geared to casting the heritic from the right tribe.
ANd yes, my “man evolved from monkeys” was not meant to be scientifically literal. Yet such would still be much closer to science than what I was taught in school re 4004 BC, etc.

News critical of Obama canned as “divisive”.
In the interests of unanimity our views must be realigned with those of our betters.

@wtp
What difference does it really make if the journalist himself understands his question if it’s a legitimate question?
Journalists don’t have to understand the question they’re asking? How are they going to understand the answer? That makes it sound all the more like some kind of initiation rite or friend/foe check, where one person says one programmed remark and listens for the correct response. “Flash”…”Thunder”
If I’ve understood you correctly, you’re saying the question is legitimate because belief in “creationism…is a fairly wide held position [on the right].” Ergo, Walker being on the right should declare he has no such beliefs, or at least demonstrate he is prepared to lie about having such beliefs. You seem to be blaming him for failing the test: “his positions on much more important subjects are lost.” But, if there are other, more important subjects, why on earth is anyone discussing evolution? I’d rather blame the zealots who are so fixated on evolution that declaring your belief in it is a pre-requisite to discussing anything else. Your description of Walker’s response as “quisling” does little to convince me that this is anything but a “you’re either one of us or one of them” test.
Neither does Justin Webb’s response to Walker’s “punt”, when he responds with verbal eye-rolling: “No, really?! But any British politician, right- or left wing, would laugh and say, ‘yes of course evolution is true’.” How is Webb so confident all British politicians would respond in the manner he predicts? Is he suggesting British politicians are more intelligent than American (or, at least, Republican) politicians? Are they better educated? Or do they value their careers more than expressing what they truly think?
Jonathan Cohn at the Huffington Post has a stab at retroactively explaining why you can bring up evolution in a discussion about trade. Okay, it’s nothing to do with trade, and all about Walker running for president, as you suggested yourself. Specifically, Cohn says it’s trying to get a handle on how Walker might be swayed by “white evangelical voters” (nothing tribal about that…) on issues such as teaching alternatives to evolution in schools, same-sex marriage and abortion. Those issues could be discussed far more informatively if journalists weren’t busy asking questions they didn’t understand. What’s wrong with asking, “How do you feel about teaching evolution and its alternatives in school?”
(I note with interest that Cohn puts doubt about evolution on a par with doubt about man-made global warming. That’s not going to end well.)
It is a legitimate concern to ask if the potential leader of the tribe of the USA is the kind of person who believes what he thinks or who thinks what he was taught.
Agreed.
I’m confident that, in British schools, evolution is taught in Science lessons and “discussions of divine intervention” (as Cohn puts it) are left to Religious Education/Studies lessons (where evolution can also expect to make a cameo). (If ever British Science lessons get invaded by non-evolutionary theories, I don’t expect it to be due to “white evangelicals”.)
With that in mind, I would respect a potential leader for expressing what he believed (even if it was wrong), as long as he accepted the limitations of his knowledge. And I would respect him far more than the British politicians of which Webb speaks who, in many if not most cases, would be expressing what they have been taught rather than what they think.

@wtp
The journalist asking questions for others and not judging the answers is a given (even if the latter point is often ignored in the age of blurring between opinion and news), but you admit he needs to understand the answer (so surely also the question?!) if there is to be a follow-up. It might not be quite in the same vein as, “have you stopped beating your wife?” but it’s a yes-no question that carries a lot of assumption. And that assumption won’t get unpacked if there’s no follow-up because the journalist is too busy eye-rolling (in a non-judgemental way, of course).
[Walker] should simply answer the question.
Yes, he should. But should he have said, “Yes” if that was a lie? And if he had said, “No”, what would have been the reaction?
I wasn’t boasting about UK schools, but acknowledging the difference from US schools, and that therefore I understand why the question of evolution would be brought up. But there was nothing in Justin Webb’s question or response to suggest he was interested in discussing US science lessons. Or perhaps there was, and it just didn’t feature in the video snippet or articles discussing the interview that I read, in which case ignore everything I’ve written. But Webb’s response makes me think there was no such context, and it was just Webb wanting to do a Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.
I don’t care too much about American conservatives (nor about British Conservatives!), and know nothing about Walker. I’m only curious in the use of certain questions as gateways to public domains. I don’t think it’s a good thing if people feel they have to lie in order to be heard.