Science, Religion and debate
Feb. 16th, 2007 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redfiona99I was wandering round uni and saw posters advertising a talk by Prof. Richard Holmes, the 'walking through battlefields' man, about Tommies in the First World War. If I didn't think it would be the saddest and most depressing talk ever, I might well go. Even as it is, I might well go.
Leicester Uni actually gets some decent speakers in, because we've previously had Mozzam Begg and Steve Jones speaking.
Stephen Jones, for the non-biologists amongst you, is a geneticist who writes some cracking books on the subject such as this one - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Genes-Steve-Jones/dp/0385474288/sr=1-5/qid=1171658316/ref=sr_1_5/203-8917144-7049540?ie=UTF8&s=books
It's a bit out of date in parts, talking about awaiting the results of the human genome project and all that, but as a genetics starter, it's hard to beat.
Anyway, when he came last year he was talking about how the intelligent design types and the creationists seem to be having one of their resurgences and how we really don't need to recourse to a God because of how logical evolution is. He used some fantastic examples, particularly focusing on the AIDS epidemic, HIV virus, the fact that it evolves too, using it's changes to track changes, how monkeys are infected by a similar virus called simian immuno-deficiency virus but for them it's like a bad cold rather than being lethal as it is to us, and how they have gene duplications of something called cc1 (I think, it could be 36). Most African monkeys have more than 36 copies of this. Humans also have different numbers of this, and the more copies of it you have, the more resistant to HIV you are.
I really liked the talk, and I think he's fighting the creationists in the right way, he's demonstrating the logic and evidence of evolutionary theory, as opposed to merely banging on about how illogical theism is.
That makes him the opposite of Richard Dawkins, who's latest magnum opus, The God Delusion, is causing the usual waves. Basically he's a fundementalist atheist, therefore I dislike him for the same reason I dislike all religious fundementalists. Because atheism is a religion, just as much as worshipping any given God or Gods is.
I also dislike the way he seems to think that it's scientists's jobs to disprove faith. I do wish he'd stop because it confuses people. As a scientist I don't have an interest, I might or might not as a person, but as a scientist I don't.
Do you want to know why?
Because I'm a protein biochemist. That's where my interest and knowledge base is. Since, should any Gods exist, they probably aren't made out of proteins, I can't run any experiments on them, and to build science without evidence takes us into the realms of faith and belief that Dawkins so despises.
The other reason I prefered Jones's style was that he didn't take cheap shots, and Dawkins does. Cheap shots are exactly that, and they don't support arguments where you take the moral high ground.
So yes, if you want some material to convert the creationists, use Jones's stuff. It's also written far more clearly.
Leicester Uni actually gets some decent speakers in, because we've previously had Mozzam Begg and Steve Jones speaking.
Stephen Jones, for the non-biologists amongst you, is a geneticist who writes some cracking books on the subject such as this one - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Genes-Steve-Jones/dp/0385474288/sr=1-5/qid=1171658316/ref=sr_1_5/203-8917144-7049540?ie=UTF8&s=books
It's a bit out of date in parts, talking about awaiting the results of the human genome project and all that, but as a genetics starter, it's hard to beat.
Anyway, when he came last year he was talking about how the intelligent design types and the creationists seem to be having one of their resurgences and how we really don't need to recourse to a God because of how logical evolution is. He used some fantastic examples, particularly focusing on the AIDS epidemic, HIV virus, the fact that it evolves too, using it's changes to track changes, how monkeys are infected by a similar virus called simian immuno-deficiency virus but for them it's like a bad cold rather than being lethal as it is to us, and how they have gene duplications of something called cc1 (I think, it could be 36). Most African monkeys have more than 36 copies of this. Humans also have different numbers of this, and the more copies of it you have, the more resistant to HIV you are.
I really liked the talk, and I think he's fighting the creationists in the right way, he's demonstrating the logic and evidence of evolutionary theory, as opposed to merely banging on about how illogical theism is.
That makes him the opposite of Richard Dawkins, who's latest magnum opus, The God Delusion, is causing the usual waves. Basically he's a fundementalist atheist, therefore I dislike him for the same reason I dislike all religious fundementalists. Because atheism is a religion, just as much as worshipping any given God or Gods is.
I also dislike the way he seems to think that it's scientists's jobs to disprove faith. I do wish he'd stop because it confuses people. As a scientist I don't have an interest, I might or might not as a person, but as a scientist I don't.
Do you want to know why?
Because I'm a protein biochemist. That's where my interest and knowledge base is. Since, should any Gods exist, they probably aren't made out of proteins, I can't run any experiments on them, and to build science without evidence takes us into the realms of faith and belief that Dawkins so despises.
The other reason I prefered Jones's style was that he didn't take cheap shots, and Dawkins does. Cheap shots are exactly that, and they don't support arguments where you take the moral high ground.
So yes, if you want some material to convert the creationists, use Jones's stuff. It's also written far more clearly.
