Bora Zivkovik

[Sparhafoc]

That's because there aren't any professional evolutionary biologists.

Apart from all the tens of thousands of professional evolutionary biologists, you're completely right!

 

[Sparhafoc]

Bora Zivkovic was a blog editor for SciAm who resigned over a sexual harassment issue. I note that he has some papers in the physiology literature, and he's done various studies in the pineal gland in quail.

As for the quote, I don't think there's actually anything objectionable there in reality. It's a reflection of what Terry Pratchett called 'lies to children'. When we start children off teaching them physics, we teach them classical mechanics first, including Newtonian gravity. We know that Newtonian gravity is wrong, but it's easy to grasp, and forms a platform from which understanding general relativity is considerably easier than if we went straight at it without the grounding of a simpler model.

It's a fairly well-accepted function of pedagogy in education. I remember a story an physicist mate told me years ago about his route through education in which, at every stage of his education, his lecturers would tell him something along the lines of 'right, forget everything you think you know about physics, because we're going to tell you how it really is'.

In all honesty, I don't think this quote even remotely meets your criterion of lying in the promotion of evolution, it's merely a recognition of the fact that educators sometimes have barriers to learning that they have to find ways of overcoming. Some of these barriers will be in the form of having no foundational framework upon which to place the models in order to understand them, others in the form of biases that preclude acceptance unless some method of circumventing biases can be found.

He certainly didn't lie about evolution in there, he simply didn't disabuse them of their preconceptions, and used NOMA to do so. NOMA is indeed complete bollocks (and Gould himself acknowledged this) but, as he says, if thinking of science and religion as pertaining to different magisteria means that barriers to learning aren't put up, I see no problem with it.

Yes, this.

The depth of human knowledge is not something one can expect a young child to understand.

Instead, we'd present a simpler version that's correct enough and appropriate for their age and comprehension. It's not that it's wrong, it's just that it is predicated on what they already know, and consequently has to work within that limited framework build a solid platform from which to ratchet up towards better explanations predicated on better ideas.

For example, it'd be no good talking about evolution in terms of molecular biology if one's audience is not yet aware of what molecules are or how they work. Instead, we'd look at populations of organisms they're familiar with and approach evolution from a typological perspective.

As they grow older and have different standards of qualification, and therefore education, these ideas would be further unpacked and depth and breadth would be added, expanding on the simpler versions to now include a more comprehensive account.

Anyone who's been to university knows that one of the first jobs of studying at higher education is to recontextualise what you've been taught up to that point. It's not that 'everything you previously knew is wrong' but rather that it's nowhere near as close an approximation as you're going to need to understand in order to prosper at university level.

We don't expect 6 year olds or 12 year olds to be experts. We don't expect people who pass GCSE's to have sufficient knowledge to go out and forward a discipline - they know enough to pass muster for the exams, but nowhere near enough to do anything useful in terms of producing knowledge in that discipline.

It's not until higher education that we would expect people to start becoming experts. We wouldn't even assume that a dude with an undergraduate/bachelor's degree to be an expert - just vastly more knowledgeable about that topic than someone who'd only studied A-Levels, GCSE's, or who'd never studied it to any formal level of qualification.

It's not really until post-grad that we assume people are working to specialize their knowledge of a very finite scope and thereby become experts. It's a pyramid of knowledge where those at the peak need to know all the preceding layers, but we do not expect those at a foundational level to know or have any rigorous comprehension of the knowledge at the top.

So it all comes down to what is meant by 'lie' - to me, the notion there is borked. When my 4 year old son asks me where he came from - I tell him that his mummy and daddy made love and that makes a baby which in this case was him. That is, of course, a gross simplification and it tells him nothing at all about what he asked, but to give him a comprehensive understanding of the process would take many years of cognitive development and knowledge accrued during that time. It's not a lie in any normal sense of the word - it's just a convenient simplification to act as a building block for further knowledge.

And that is how modern education systems work. One wonders whether Bernhard's fabled country where babies are legally killed and where Bernhard's a teacher is really just a failed nation state past the brink of societal breakdown.

 

[Rumraket]

When you don't accept Jesus you simply are condemning all Christians.

For Jesus condemns every last man or women who denies Him.

It is written

Everything on this forum is written.

 

[Rumraket]

I don't fear muslims. ... I'm comparing muslims to atheists

You are positively scared shitless of muslims. Your posts reek of fear of people you don't know. So does your facebook page.

A typical, scared, racist little white man you are.

 

[Sparhafoc]

When you don't accept Jesus you simply are condemning all Christians.

For Jesus condemns every last man or women who denies Him.

It is written

Everything on this forum is written.

And Lo!

It was written.

 

[Visaki]

I'm using this post as an example of one of the things that Christians do that annoys me. I've seen the same in English and in my native Finnish. That thing is that they do not use the language like the rest of us when talking religious matters. As if they had their own dialect that they think everyone else also understands.

When you don't accept Jesus you simply are condemning all Christians.

See? In any other context that sentence would make no sense. "When you don't accept Bob you simply are condemning all Smiths." Does that make any sense? Of course not. What does "accept" mean? How can I just "accept" someone? How does that work? Is this just me being limited in the English language? Or is that sentence a few words short? Though, as I said, I have the same experience with Finnish theists also. They use language in a different way when talking about their delusions and ignorance.

For Jesus condemns every last man or women who denies Him.

As George Carlin noted: "But He loves you!" And again, what does "deny" mean here? I have a feeling that there are some words missing again.

It is written

So it is. Does anyone else than a religious person think that this is a proper way to write? Nope, only they could use this kind of language.

Is it because many of them still think that the Bible was actually written originally in 17th century English? I've seen that claim, that the King James Bible is the only right and original version, too many times to ignore it as totally idiotic. Or are they parroting some ye old timey (that wasn't actually a thing btw) text like KJB, or apologists using old texts, that uses language in a ye old timey way?

 

[Sparhafoc]

Bernhard's ideas can't be expected to compete on normal rational grounds, so words need to be rejigged to help dictate an arena more favourable to his argument.

It doesn't matter anyway - Bernhard et al have lost the debate already, and all round the world people can see that secularism and science offer greater liberty, security and prosperity than the dogmatic beliefs of their intellectually and financially impoverished ancestors.

That's what all Bernhard's toy de-pramming is about - same as a spoiled toddler who doesn't get their way.