Sen. Claire McCaskill’s gift of Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) is a gift that simply keeps on giving. Previously Akin alienated the GOP leadership and most of the known world with comments that, in cases of legitimate rape, women often do not get pregnant because “the female body has ways to shut that whole thing down.” He also claimed that doctor routinely performed abortions on women who are not pregnant. Now, at a Tea Party meeting in Jefferson City, Missouri, Akin has said that that there is no science behind evolution. Akin sits on the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.
Akin’s remarks not only leave doubt about his knowledge — or ability to understand – science but also what he considers “the thing” that he is supposed to do in Washington:
I don’t see it as even a matter of science because I don’t know that you can prove one or the other. That’s one of those things. We can talk about theology and all of those other things but I’m basically concerned about, you’ve got a choice between Claire McCaskill and myself. My job is to make the thing there. If we want to do theoretical stuff, we can do that, but I think I better stay on topic.
Of course, such comments could be used by some to disprove any evidence that we have evolved intellectually. Frankly, whenever I hear Akin speak recently I too begin to doubt evolution in the human species.
Notably, Akin sits on the committee with Rep. Paul Broun, the chairman of the House Science Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. Broun made headlines this month with the following statement: at the 2012 Sportsman’s Banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell, Georgia on September 27th, he said this:
God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and the big bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of Hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who were taught that from understanding that they need a savior. You see, there are a lot of scientific data that I’ve found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I don’t believe that the earth’s but about 9,000 years old. I believe it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says.
As many of you know, I have shown equal disregard for both of the main parties that hold a monopoly on power in the United States. Indeed, the low quality politicians that we see in both parties is the very danger of all monopolies — once protected from competition, the quality of a product declines. The political monopoly in this country is the ultimate example of that phenomenon. What we need is a Sherman Act for politics, starting with the eradication of the electoral college and the establishment of a new rule on general elections.
As for Republicans, I have many friends from that party who are intellectual and honest. These characters are destroying the credibility of their party which often appears anti-intellectual and anti-science.
There is abiotic evolution, microbial evolution, biological evolution, and human social evolution.
Those don’t work in the same way at all.
So, the unique processes in each of those evolutionary realms throws a lot of Akinoid people off track.
Especially when they think “one size fits all”, i.e. that one and only one grandiose process is prevalent in each of those four types of evolution.
For example, those Akinoid kinds of mistakes gave us Social Darwinism and Eugenics.
I mentioned human social evolution in my previous comment above, so in this post I will mention abiotic evolution.
That is the realm that covers “time” or the sequence of events from before, during, and after the Big Bang up to the time “bio” first happened, i.e. when the very first biological life appeared (perhaps protoproteins).
Ultimate survival of the most advanced abiotic planets, stars, and galaxies as well as biological species does not appear to be an ultimate consideration in the processes of cosmology, contrasting to the utmost with the biological theories of evolutionary survival.
In terms of cosmology, survival of the human species, indeed all species on the Earth, is obviously very iffy:
(Tenet One Basics, quoting Wikipedia, Astronomy Today, and PBS, emphasis added). There are radically different processes at work, with seemingly contrasting directions, in the various types of evolution taking place.
Even when ultimate cosmic destruction is not being considered, even the superficial study of Cosmology and Astronomy show that survival of biological life forms is not a powerful, compelling consideration:
(Science Daily). At a random time cosmological evolution put an end to biological evolution to a high degree, thus the two are not in sync or harmony.
Had there been a most advanced human civilization at that time, it would have ceased to exist even though it had evolved to its apex.
Therefore the process of cosmological evolution is inapposite to biological survival of species unless one considers species migration throughout the cosmos, moving from star system to star system as the star looses stability.
Human social “evolution” needs to be considered separately from human biological evolution, because it seems to be a non sequitur, i.e. not is compliance with a direction of survival.
Impending self destruction is much more of an apparent direction than survival of the species is.
And that seems to violate Dollo’s Law, in which case it should be relegated back to theory or even lower, back to a hypothesis.
The thrust of Dollo’s “law” is that reversal, i.e. devolution back to a prior state is not allowed, only forward progress onward and upward toward survival is allowed once a mutation or adaption has taken place.
The human species destroys as many as 200 other species a day, or 73,000 species a year, in what scientists call The Sixth Mass Extinction, brought to us by “human civilization.”
And we are on the hair trigger edge from time to time for the nuclear winter of extinction of the human and who knows how many other species (The Most Dangerous Moment in Recorded History). It does not follow that we are the most evolved species on the planet in terms of survival.
Microbes are much more likely to survive, if anything does.
Gyges,
Thank you for the sage advice.
Gene,
Take a goodly amount of stems in a clear container and immerse them in vodka (Absolut by personal preference). Leave the container in the sunlight for two weeks and gently shake it every day or so. Remove the stems and chill the liquid in the freezer. Take three packets of lime flavored gelatin and 4 packets of unflavored gelatin and mix them in a 9 1/2″ x 14″ pan. Bring 4 1/2 cups of water to a hard boil and pour into the pan (the more spread out the gelatin the better and pour the boiling water directly on as much of it as possible). Wait 30 seconds to a minute and stir with a whisk until the gelatin is fully dissolved. Add 1 1/2 cups of the chilled vodka, whisk briefly and refrigerate for a couple of hours. Use your favorite Escher tiling of the plane to cut into individual pieces.
Enjoy.
pete9999,
I love “The Stainless Steel Rat” series. His “Bob, The Galactic Hero” books are worth a read as well…
OS
there is another sci-fi series written by harry harrison called the deathworld trilogy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathworld the premise is the planet is actively trying to get rid of the humans.
“the stainless steel rat” ain’t bad either.
Nick,
“There are cliques of groupthink.”
This is a metaset that leaves me confused as Irving Janis’ coining in 1972 of the word “groupthink” was defined as:
“[A] mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action.”
What a fool Janis was to not see the clique divisions of the, “cohesive in-group[s].”
OS,
That was Ray Bradbury.
Gene,
Right you are, but have you noticed that it takes challenges in order for any species, including ourselves, to evolve. Many years ago I read a science fiction story about a colony of space travelers settling on a planet that was almost too good to be true. The place was a veritable Garden of Eden. The settlers soon realized the planet itself was sentient and liked having the human dwellers living on it. The planet was rewarding them by providing all they could ever hope for to make a comfortable place to live. After some time, the skipper of the expedition realized the people in his charge were becoming soft and indolent from lack of challenge. One day he proclaimed, “Let there be tigers.” A moment later, the people heard the roar of a tiger coming from the woods. The title of the story was, IIRC, “Here there be tygers.” I think it was by Frank Herbert.
It is no accident that the time of greatest acceleration of invention has been in time of war. Both for good and bad.
So I take it I should tell Vegas you want in on the under, pete? 😉
Arthur Herbert Fonzarelli
OS,
In many ways an accurate statement, but we’ve also been evolving in other ways as well. The arc of ethical history, albeit acting like a wave, has tended to grow toward the humanist rather than away from the humanist. Consider that slavery was once a universally accepted practice and is now universally a crime. Consider that killing those that were different was once considered just (think burning witches) and now in many countries (especially in the West) it takes an evidenced adversarial argument of narrowly defined capital crimes before the death penalty is even considered. Consider the move away from the death penalty in recent years. Consider the evidence that we as a species are experiencing an aggregate growth in IQ.
We always seem to be moving two steps forward and one, sometimes three, steps back. Evolutionarily speaking, we are still infants entering into adolescence. Whether we survive adolescence to become the humanistic rational non-aggressive star faring species we have the potential to become? We’ll never be not inherently dangerous nor should we even try. Violence in the name of defense is simply a good option considering that there is a high probability that any advanced alien space faring species we encounter is also likely evolved from predators themselves. Will we survive to find out?
Well that’s the $64,000 question.
Our technical abilities are outstripping our social (and physical) evolution at such a rate they threaten to destroy us in the cradle that is Earth. We’re like teenagers. And I don’t have to tell you how dangerous puberty can be. As a father and a scientist (and former sufferer of the condition yourself), you know the risks all too well to need me to elaborate on the metaphor.
Ya gotta love those lions!
Gene, I do believe that it was even more generations since Cain whacked Abel with a blunt object. Our evolution has been in the direction of building bigger, better and faster ways to whack people we disagree with.
FairlyBalanced,
You might want to consider expanding your time frames for evolutionary processes. A hundred and fifty years is barely a little more than seven generations in the Western world. Unless we experience a period of punctured equilibrium as a species, that’s not nearly enough time for the kind of change (losing tribal aggression in favor of cooperation) that your statement implies.
If you bedlieve in God and are a Christian and believe some of the gander in the Bible then you can not believe in evolution. If you review how mankind has fought war after war for the past one hundred fifty years then you can not say they we have evolved upward or with any progress. We are a bunch of dumb schmucks who might kill ourselves off with nuclear bombs.
Darren,
nick,
Firstly, I treat you with all the respect you treat others including me, douche bag. I apply the Golden Rule, just not in the way you may like it. If you didn’t behave like a childish unintelligent troll, I wouldn’t treat you like one.
Secondly, I didn’t say you were a felon stalker. I said what you said could be construed as stalking behavior and cautioned you about proceeding down that path.
I’m sorry you can’t make your case any better than that and you keep insisting on trying to make exposing your troll tactics (i.e. persistent logical fallacies, lack of evidence and lack of logic in dealing with the statements of others) about me, nick. That kind of Rovian smear won’t work either. If you don’t like having your logical fallacies, lack of evidence and general irrationality in counterarguments pointed out? Then maybe you should learn to think and argue better. Because you suck. There is nothing more civil than honesty. Speaking of which . . .
Perhaps your time is best spent elsewhere like watching baseball or football.
It would certainly be a better use of other’s time.
Ciao, putz.
Gene, Gene, Gene, I need to watch some baseball and football. I have no thoughts we’ll ever “get along” and I have the same lack of desire as do you for that. I’m talking about simple civility. Calling me “monkey boy” and “stupid” and being a felonious stalker is not even in the same time zone as civility. Everything is very personal and nasty w/ you. Have your last word..that’s very important to you, and get a good nights sleep. Ciao, Gino.
Again, I didn’t mention Italians, nick.
You should learn to read or, better yet, learn to understand.
Also, don’t mistake to think you’re even capable of making me angry.
You simply aren’t that good.
As for you taking exception to my memory? It is long and always has been. I’ll not make myself forgetful to convenience your stupidity and bad actions past being swept away in the name of “getting along”. If that is a problem for you, I suggest it is entirely your problem. I don’t have to get along with you, agree with you or even like you. And I don’t have to forget when you act like a troll just because you don’t like your crap argumentation/trolling techniques exposed. If that offends or inconveniences you? I really don’t care.
Malisha, still laughing :o) I’m sure Aquinas disapproves.
Dredd, thank you for your investigative attempt, sorry you got kicked out.
PS, ….. I imagined you “somewhat less youthful” :o)