Here's the other side of the Wells moth story. It doesn't look, from the context of this statement, as if Majerus was inferring atheism from evolution.
It is not my place to tell people what to believe. But I know that we are making a horrendous mess of this planet, and I do not have faith in some supernatural intervention putting it right: No second coming; No helping hand from on high; No last minute redemption.
I caught my first butterfly when I was four, and started recording peppered moth forms when I was 10. I am getting old, and have spent my life in scientific enquiry and discovery. And it has been a great life!
Until now, for instead of the vision of a world made better by the appliance of science, I see a future of ever-increasing global problems. I probably won't see the worst of what's coming - but I fear for my children, who will face escalating problems of climate change, over-population, pollution, starvation, disease and conflict. And for their children and grandchildren, I have little optimism.
We need to address global problems now, and to do so with any chance of success, we have to base our decisions on scientific facts: and that includes the fact of Darwinian evolution.
Though, when I read this sort of thing, I have to wonder what is packed into the term "Darwinian evolution."
Deep and passionate commitment on an issue makes it hard to tell what is simply serious misunderstanding and what is out and out deceit.
If Majerus is looking for a "proof of evolution" in the peppered moth case, this is probably asking too much.
As for the "icons" strategy Wells uses, I am kind of skeptical, because education below the highest level requires a certain amount of "cartooning" if theories which are presented in better detail at a higher level.
3 comments:
Why he told in his speech (at the meeting of European Section on Applied Biocatalysis!!!) that he is atheist?
He said:
"I believe in the existence of god in the same way that Douglas Adams believed in the existence of god. Just as Terry Pratchett proved, through logical argument the existence of Father Christmas (well, actually it was the Hogfather), saying that if you can draw him, he must have existence, so Douglas Adams proved the existence of God. Moreover, he also proved that humans invented him or her."
If Majerus is looking for proof of evolution in the peppered moth, well, it's obvious. Evolution happens. It's not even controversial--as long as evolution is defined as change over time, within populations, by virtue of variation and selection.
But if he's looking for proof that new structures and functions, new species exhibiting new genetic information, can arise the same way--and that's the question that counts!--well, what he has is just proof of variations within a species, with no new information.
tom g -
out of interest (and separately from Majerus's work), do you accept that evolution can produce new information / new structures / new species or not?
snafu
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