Time and time again we hear the same chant - Creation and Evolution
I don't want to dwell on this too much, but I was recently surprised at the number of groups about Creationism on Facebook.
Religion has always been an interest of mine as are most things that impact our lives as humans: economics, politics, history, geology, language, philosophy, psychology, biology and popular media... The parts of the whole of the meaning of life which is also a great concern to the creationist( who also have picture galleries of GW Bush on their sites. Just that fact should be enough to prove that these people have at best a tenuous grasp on reality when they venerate the current president of the US as a hero, as opposed to being, not just the worst president of the country, but also a real menace to world cooperation...but I digress).
Though science is often challenged in the creationist theory, few doubt the importance of scientific thinking which was always challenged by superstitious pseudo sciences like astrology. Much of our scientific thinking as it pertains to Astronomy only came about in the late 1500s mostly due to a man named Kepler who rejected the belief-based science - the norm since Aristotle's theories of perfection - to a way of making sense of the world that relied on precise and rigorous analysis that produced data that was irrefutable: "He was the first Astrophysicist and the last Scientific Astrologer (when he proved that the world was an orb that spun around the sun along with the other planets, a theory that a man in Egypt in 300 BC had surmised from looking at the shadows that columns cast on the longest day of the year which was how he figured out the world was an orb and measured quite accurately how big it was!...but again, I digress)
This is not a treatise on the political right of the US or on the erosion of Secular Humanism out of the public sphere. This is about how simple scientific explanations are often missing from our collective repertoire which make many people "misinterpret a passages from the bible" and start a new group (oh is there a time when one can NOT quote The Simpsons?).
Recently I watched Carl Sagan's vintage series Cosmos. It's a 10 part series on life, the universe and everything. Though a bit dated in look, the content is still solid and up to date. They really put a lot of the big questions like the beginning of the universe and the evolutionary process into a tight and accessible package.
These two videos are the most concise and clear explanation of the universe and time that I've ever seen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxoQTt-UiJw
This one has very brief and beautiful 40 second montage of evolution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMHNnhAEDN4&mode=related&search=
Everyone should know about these facts - pass it on!
viken
Religion has always been an interest of mine as are most things that impact our lives as humans: economics, politics, history, geology, language, philosophy, psychology, biology and popular media... The parts of the whole of the meaning of life which is also a great concern to the creationist( who also have picture galleries of GW Bush on their sites. Just that fact should be enough to prove that these people have at best a tenuous grasp on reality when they venerate the current president of the US as a hero, as opposed to being, not just the worst president of the country, but also a real menace to world cooperation...but I digress).
Though science is often challenged in the creationist theory, few doubt the importance of scientific thinking which was always challenged by superstitious pseudo sciences like astrology. Much of our scientific thinking as it pertains to Astronomy only came about in the late 1500s mostly due to a man named Kepler who rejected the belief-based science - the norm since Aristotle's theories of perfection - to a way of making sense of the world that relied on precise and rigorous analysis that produced data that was irrefutable: "He was the first Astrophysicist and the last Scientific Astrologer (when he proved that the world was an orb that spun around the sun along with the other planets, a theory that a man in Egypt in 300 BC had surmised from looking at the shadows that columns cast on the longest day of the year which was how he figured out the world was an orb and measured quite accurately how big it was!...but again, I digress)
This is not a treatise on the political right of the US or on the erosion of Secular Humanism out of the public sphere. This is about how simple scientific explanations are often missing from our collective repertoire which make many people "misinterpret a passages from the bible" and start a new group (oh is there a time when one can NOT quote The Simpsons?).
Recently I watched Carl Sagan's vintage series Cosmos. It's a 10 part series on life, the universe and everything. Though a bit dated in look, the content is still solid and up to date. They really put a lot of the big questions like the beginning of the universe and the evolutionary process into a tight and accessible package.
These two videos are the most concise and clear explanation of the universe and time that I've ever seen:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxoQTt-UiJw
This one has very brief and beautiful 40 second montage of evolution:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMHNnhAEDN4&mode=related&search=
Everyone should know about these facts - pass it on!
viken
posted by Viken's word @ 11:40 p.m.
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