Talk:Objections to evolution/Archive 1

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Archive This page is a chronological archive of past discussions from the current talk page for the period January 2007 – May 2007.

In order to preserve the record of past discussions, the contents of this page should be preserved in their current form. Please do NOT make new edits to this page. If you wish to make new comments or re-open an old discussion thread, please do so on the current talk page.

If necessary, copy the relevant discussion thread to the current talk page page and then add your comments there.

Contents

NPOV

Media file link Is an article called "Misunderstandings of X" consistent with Wikipedia:Neutral point of view? I see no problem with correcting misunderstandings, but explicitly and directly listing them as "Misunderstandings", as opposed to as "contested minority points of view" or the like, seems a bit over the line. (I've also already explained why I think most of this stuff should simply be incorporated into the normal article text rather than being given its own section or article, but we can discuss that later.) -Silence 16:17, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

An editor of the Evolution article moved this fork here. The title is maybe a little off, but this stuff has already been hashed out before, and I'm removing the NPOV tag. You probably search out new articles to see if stuff is garbage, but this whole article has been edited about 10,000 times, and probably represents consensus. Orangemarlin 16:20, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
"Misunderstanding" and "misconception" are common pedagogical terms. While it is possible for people to take issue with certain knowledge, when taking issue with that knowledge is based on verifiable misconceptions or misunderstandings it is not Wikipedia's place to mitigate this concern. Having an article on misunderstandings of evolution is simply to elucidate and report the verifiable facts regarding what are common misunderstandings. "Contested minority points of view" are relevant in subjects where there is no consensus right answer. Science, math, and academic endeavors with strict evidentiary and consensus standards have verifiable and neutral misunderstandings about them. --ScienceApologist 16:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Um? It's been "hashed out before", Orangemarlin, but the result has been inadequate. I've discussed the contents of this article many times before, and other editors have agreed with me that it isn't sufficiently NPOV, so the consensus certainly isn't that it's adequate; rather, it's just the best that anyone's bothered to come up with so far. Now that the POVed section has been changed into a POVed article, this is the perfect opportunity to centralize and focus discussion about whether this topic is NPOV, and if it isn't, how best to relate the information in an NPOV fashion; pretending that everyone agrees that this is NPOV when many people don't is counterproductive. I do not "search out new articles to see if stuff is garbage", I've been an editor on the evolution article off and on for years; your assumption that I was simply jumping on a new article and was ignorant of its history and its past discussions is in error, and therefore the overly hasty removal of the NPOV tag was also in error. -Silence 18:51, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I have to agree with orangemarlin on this one. If there really was an NPOV problem with this text/section/article, it would have manifested itself on the evolution page. --ScienceApologist 18:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
It did manifest on the evolution page, quite regularly. It's just that no one's bothered to really tackle the issue head-on before now; now is the time to do so. You must be very new to that article, or have very selective memory, to believe that nobody's mentioned the POV problems of having a "misunderstandings" section:
Talk:Evolution#Evolution_article_as_a_soap_box
Talk:Evolution/Archive_20#Creating_a_new_article_for_Misunderstandings_About_Evolution
Talk:Evolution/Archive_19#.22Misunderstandings.22_NPOV_problems
Sheesh. -Silence 21:00, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Orangemarlin and ScienceApologist here. If you label something as a misunderstanding, it either is or it isn't. Where does a point of view come into this? If you feel that particular argument isn't given enough weight, by all means bring that up, but I don't think slapping a POV tag on the article and calling it a day is going to help. darkliight[πalk] 21:14, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Where did I suggest "calling it a day"? I suggested discussing the issue, rather than ignoring the problem altogether. As I said, we should work to present the information in a less biased manner, and discuss ideas to that effect; the hostile attitude to discussion here so far is remarkable, and an inauspicious start. In the interests of getting, I mentioned the section-turned-article at Wikipedia_talk:Neutral_point_of_view#Misunderstandings.3F not long ago, and have already gotten two concerned responses. -Silence 21:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Silence, after reading your user page, it looks like you and I sit on the same side of every issue about evolution, politics, and religion. Yet, when I read what your saying, you seem hostile and angry, just like one of the Creationists that jump into the fray. Honestly, I don't get your point. The way everyone is responding to you, I don't think they get it either. So we're either all pretty daft, or we're not getting it. Moreover, the three discussions you linked above all seem to be one-man rants. One of the conversations was a Creationist who was claiming that this was POV because we didn't give Creationism equal weight as a valid theory (which I am guessing would NEVER be your personal POV. So what gives? I'm confused. Orangemarlin 22:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
The fact that we agree on every issue shows that this is not a dispute over what we believe, but rather a dispute over Wikipedia policy. We should therefore keep it that way, and not insinuate motives or bad faith on anyone's part. I realize that editing evolution articles tends to predispose us to suspecting sinister creationist motives whenever anyone calls for "moderation" or "balance", so I understand why you'd be quick to jump on the addition of an NPOV tag here. However, our first concern should be to correctly interpret and apply Wikipedia's NPOV policy, not to push a POV (however righteous) at that policy's expense. Since several editors have endorsed this article, I will refrain from re-adding the NPOV tag at this point. However, I think it is an important discussion to be had nevertheless, partly for the precedent this will set if it is accepted; will we list unsupported and misunderstanding-based minority views regarding economics on "Misunderstandings about economics" someday? It's at the very least something we need to think carefully about. Also, at most one of the links I provided above in any way involved a "creationist", so what are you talking about? How are the conversations "one-man rants"? You should pay particular attention to the second link, where the idea of creating this article was proposed, discussed, and universally rejected. -Silence 22:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Answer to silence: a summary of projects with orangemarlin

I would suggest calling it Objections to Evolution, which is the name of a draft that expands on some of these points that Orangemarlin and I are working on. We would then just fold our rough draft into this one for a more complete and broader article.--Filll 21:29, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

A misunderstanding is not an objection. Either it's one or the other; what are you guys actually writing about? -Silence 21:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


Orangemarlin and I are the people mainly responsible for Evolution as theory and fact, the summary section of which you see in this article (and also in the controversy article). So we decided to take a crack at some of the other objections (some of which are based on misunderstandings like the "theory and fact" sections and article). Specifically, the draft right now address in abbreviated form:

  • 1.1 Evolution is just a theory not a fact
  • 1.2 Evolution is a religion, and creationism is a science
  • 1.3 Why not let the supernatural into science?
  • 1.4 There are a lot of scientists that disagree with evolution
  • 1.5 Evolution is atheism
  • 1.6 Support for evolution leads to social ills
  • 1.7 Evolution has never been observed

There is a draft of an extended version of 1.2 as well. A draft of a rewrite of 1.1 that is far more carefully done and has more references exists also. Section 1.3 is a bit short and probably needs more developing. Not sure if a longer article could or should exist. A longer version of 1.4 exists as a separate article right now as Support for evolution; it looks like it will survive its deletion hearing and be renamed as Opinions about evolution or something similar, but we will have to see. It will be expanded to include much more of the creationist/ID POV to make it more NPOV. Sections 1.5 and 1.6 are pretty short but I do not see a great need to expand them. Section 1.7 has really not been written very much yet and will mainly just touch on a few topics and then mainly link to Evidence for evolution. That is where it stands at the moment. Comments?--Filll 23:04, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, there is a draft of a longer article on falsifiability which is sort of an expansion of section 1.2, waiting for some more input from other editors who are busy at the moment. The longer falsifiability we have had quite a few comments on and is in a bit of a ragged state, but can be seen at Talk:Evolution/falsifiabilitydraft, and the stub that might turn into a longer version of 1.2 is in Talk:Evolution/evolutionreligiondraft. Obviously, we are not quite sure how to organize all this material. The Evolution as theory and fact was the first to sail out into WP. The Support for evolution was the second, and we probably didnt get enough community input first. I will not make that mistake again. So, that gives you more of an idea.--Filll 23:15, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Another draft which I have sitting around is a stub that lists the main court cases at Talk:Evolution/legalcases. Many of these have their own articles and are also included at Articles related to the creation-evolution controversy so i am not sure if I should just fold them into Articles related to the creation-evolution controversy, or if a separate article listing these and other cases would be worthwhile. I am glad to hear any comments or input since the legal stuff is important, but not really my main bag. I will note that my understanding is that the cases have left huge loopholes which are not widely understood. That is, it is not against the law to teach creationism in the science classrooms in public schools in the USA, it is illegal to require it to be taught however. I need to explore this to find more details, since this might be incorrect.--Filll 00:04, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

This might seem like a bit much, however I did an amateur survey (not yet complete) of the articles related to the creationism controversy and the version I have so far is at Talk:Evolution/controversyarticles. Stuff that is not in the very nice Articles related to the creation-evolution controversy will eventually be added in there rather than produce a separate list (I had not originally realized that a list existed). My impression is that there are a lot of articles on the creationist side, exploring their reasons, but the evolution side is mainly focused on science and not on the evolution side of the controversy. Many of these topics are not addressed in much detail. I do not mean to duplicate talkorigins or anything else; this is impossible. What I hope we can offer is a better organized and more current and slightly different encyclopedic survey of the main arguments used on both sides, with links to the sites that include the literally thousands of other arguments, since this is well beyond the scope of WP. The controversy has been around for a long time. It has aspects in other religions besides Christianity. It has been the subject of many court cases. And it is very important politically in the US, and some in other countries as well. So , I just thought it deserved more than a statement that "well no controversy exists because we all know that evolution is a fact". This is not helpful and does not help the reader of WP who wants to understand what the arguments are, who the players are, what the history is, etc.--Filll 23:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Why is this fork in existence?

I'm really confused. We had a major war over the Support for evolution, and I'm not sure much different this fork is to that one. Could we merge the articles? Orangemarlin 16:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we can merge the articles. This article is forked because evolution was getting too large and this information was iteratively removed from the topic of evolution itself. If there is stuff in support for evolution you think belongs here, bring it over. --ScienceApologist 16:31, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I have pushed for this fork for months. It presents both sides. But then, I am biased. Orangemarlin and I have some more "misunderstandings" or objections to evolution that are of a slightly different character that could go in here so maybe the title is too narrow. I am not sure. Anyway, I applaud offloading the science article of evolution by putting the objection/misunderstanding discussion in a separate article.--Filll 16:56, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

As the evolution article has grown unwieldy, this is part of the normal process of splitting off sections as main articles, leaving a small summary style section. There's no need for it to be pov, as people often genuinely misunderstand wording or issues about evolution. The fact that many creationists base their claims on what scientists consider to be misunderstandings needs a brief mention, but it's not an absolute: for example, AiG may be quite a useful source for debunking some misunderstandings which they tell other creationists not to use. Wording does have to be carefully considered to achieve NPOV, but that should certainly be possible. .. dave souza, talk 00:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
This AiG link might prove useful: Arguments we think creationists should NOT use – note for example that they argue against using "evolution is just a theory"...... dave souza, talk 01:07, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

One can see what we did at Introduction to evolution in its very minimal section on objections to evolution for example.--Filll 00:38, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Merge I consider the title of this article inherently POV. A merger to Objections to evolution, as suggested on the article page, would be advisable. YechielMan 15:07, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Removing "Social and religious controversy"

A social/religious controversy may be based on misunderstandings, but it is not itself a misunderstanding, anymore than a war started by a misunderstanding would properly be included in a list of misunderstandings. I am going to re-add the section to the main evolution article, and work on trimming it down a bit so it doesn't bloat that page much. It's too noteworthy of a topic not to have a section on there anyway. -Silence 21:53, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok if you think so. What about an expanded version taking this material, adding to it similar material from the controversy article plus from the rough draft orangemarlin and I are working on ? So the controversy article would then be more on the details, history etc of the controversy, but not the points of controversy, misunderstanding, objection etc which could bein a long dedicated sister article. The reason for this is that there are many more misunderstandings/objections than this, and the controversy article is sort of bipolar, and already too long as well.--Filll 22:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Are you talking about the Creation-evolution controversy article? -Silence 22:47, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes. I get the impression, because of the similarity of this material, and the corresponding material in the Creation-evolution controversy article, that the Creation-evolution controversy article at one time was a fork off evolution. However, it has also grown fairly long, and has a lot of sort of dense text in it and is not that clear. --Filll 22:54, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Agree. That resolves problems on both pages. I'd suggest that this should still have a brief summary style section on the relationship of misunderstandings to the controversy, but it should be pointing to that as a main article and should not go into other aspects of controversy. .. dave souza, talk 00:40, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Do we really need a singular "misunderstandings" article?

The outline given by Filll above is an interesting potential article, and I'll give you time to finish on it, but in the interests of keeping our options open, here's another way we could present all those topics, without placing them under the unacademic and unneutral article title like "Misunderstandings". We could simply use the singular section at Evolution to give a brief overview of all these misunderstandings (I provided, free of charge, an example of an especially brief overview exactly of this sort, which could be expanded if necessary: see Evolution#Misunderstandings), and then, rather than providing a singular disorganized and ill-conceived article on "Misunderstandings" for the daughter article, we could provide a whole set of different articles for each of the different misunderstandings.

For example, our sections on "Speciation", "Entropy and life", and "Information" are very short, and could probably simply be listed in near-complete form in Evolution, while daughter articles like Speciation and Entropy and life can easily serve for any details we wish to add on these misunderstandings. Likewise, we already have the daughter article Evolution as theory and fact for "Distinctions between theory and fact". So, as an alternative to your singular "Misunderstandings" article, how about something like:

1.1 - We already have an article for this, Evolution as theory and fact.
1.2 - A more neutral and informative article title to discuss this under would be Evolution and religion.
1.3 - As above, Evolution and religion (or more generally Science and religion, really).
1.4 - This can be discussed under Teach the Controversy, since there's a specific campaign devoted to it.
1.5 - Again, Evolution and religion. I think a more common argument, though, is "Evolution leads to atheism" or "Evolution leads to materialism".
1.6 - As we've gone down the list, we've gotten more and more into the area of the Creation-evolution controversy, rather than actual misunderstandings of the science of evolution. These are best categorized as criticisms of evolution or the scientific philosophy; the fact that they're baseless criticisms doesn't make it fair to simply describe them as "misunderstandings", when they're more misunderstandings of fundamental philosophical and social concepts than of specific facts about the science of evolution.
1.7 - This should be discussed at Speciation (for the claim about speciation) and Macroevolution (for the claim about macroevolution).

This would resolve both actual and potential NPOV issues with a "Misunderstandings" article like this, while keeping (and, indeed, enhancing) its informational value. It simply doesn't seem to merit an intermediary article; for example, it truly seems excessive to have such a lengthy intermediary between Evolution and Evolution as theory and fact, when the former could just as easily simply summarize and link to the latter. -Silence 03:59, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


I really like silence's new summary section in the evolution article. Very tightly argued. To me, smaller is better. I do not understand this seeming need to make the articles so long and bulky that people are overwhelmed with details in the main articles. I personally just get turned off when I see an article that is too long but I am glad to have other articles available if I want to know more about a particular aspect.
I obviously am quite fluid at this time about the names. I personally think misunderstandings is a bit of a dangerous name for an independent article because it seems a bit too POV and a bit too narrow. We are slowly just plugging away at this project but I want to be flexible about how we organize this material eventually so that most people are happy with it. I also want to avoid any articles that are too long, or not focused on one reasonable NPOV theme if possible.--Filll 04:15, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
The growth a eventual splitting off of a sub-section is the natural progression in Wikipedia. When I proposed this sub-section a while ago it was immediately thought it would gradually grow and mature sufficiently to be split off. Part of what allows someone to tightly argue and summarize a section in the first place is that it is stable and mature. As to the name, we specifically choose it because it was the most accurate and descriptive. - RoyBoy 800 02:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
It sounds like we agree, then. I'm open to experimenting with various possibilities, as long as we keep an open mind about weighing their pros and cons. -Silence 05:23, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

As long as we dont dump any important material, and can try to fit it together like a jigsaw puzzle, then I will be satisfied.--Filll 05:50, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Misunderstandings articles are all good; for instance, mondegreen about misunderstanding song lyrics and 0.999... about misunderstanding decimal representations of real numbers. Having said that, we need to carefully distinguish between:

  1. Misunderstandings regarding evolution; e.g., that theories are facts we don't yet know for sure, or that change is always an improvement.
  2. Easily refuted arguments that evolution is false; e.g., that evolution violates thermodynamics (a misunderstanding of thermodynamics, not evolution.)
  3. More serious arguments that evolution is false; (can't think of an example off the top of my head.)
  4. Arguments that evolution can't be proven to be true; e.g., that evolution makes no predictions.
  5. Arugments that evolution is evil or shouldn't be believed in (regardless of truth value); e.g., evolution leads to athiesm.

Currently only the "Disconnections between theory and fact" and "Evolution, complexity, and devolution" sections seem to discuss misunderstandings; the other sections belong in some other article (objections? controversies?). I like to imagine that a militant pro-ID fanatic would read the ideal evolution misunderstandings article and think only "Oh. I didn't realise that. That changes things. That's a different position to what I thought evolutionist scientists took." There should be no NPOV issue because the article shouldn't make claims as to whether or not evolution is true; it should dispell evolution's Straw Men and no more. Having said all that, the misunderstandings section in the evolution article seems to cover it pretty well, so I'm not sure if this article is even required. Endomorphic 02:18, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

No, it doesn't cover it very well, it summarizes it very well. There's a substantial difference between the two. The summary presents the concepts, this sub-article elaborates on the evidence. - RoyBoy 800 02:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Image misspelling

In the image at the top, "flaggelates" should be spelled "flagellates". I didn't see a way to contact the image's contributor (file history doesn't work). Art LaPella 07:03, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I must be blind. I dont see the image you are describing at all.-Filll 07:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
You don't see Image:Tree of life.svg? -Silence 07:09, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Now I do. I just never bothered to blow it up.--Filll 07:24, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Fixed. darkliight[πalk] 07:45, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Falsifiability

I was looking for something on the falsifiability of evolutionary theory to link to another article, and couldn't find it. Should a section on the subject be added to this article? 1Z 02:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)1Z

We are working on a rough draft now on falsifiability. You are welcome to use any of our text that you want but I warn you that it is not finished yet. Let me get you the link to the draft.--Filll 02:38, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The falsifiability draft is at Talk:Evolution/falsifiabilitydraft. My plan, which I am not sure everyone agrees with, is to make one "objections article" that would be a lengthened version of this article, with longer articles like Evolution as theory and fact and a falsifiability in evolution or whatever longer title and a bunch more, as you see described above.--Filll 02:41, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Objections to evolution

Per Filll, I like the idea of an article like Objections to evolution much more than one like Misunderstandings about evolution (or the grammatically correct "Misunderstandings of evolution"). It is potentially NPOV, and a much more significant and wide-ranging topic for an article, while still serving all the same informational functions as a "Misunderstandings" article. Here's my current suggestion for a good potential layout for such an article:

0 - Introduction
1 - Defining evolution (discuss the scientific definition of biological evolution, contrasted with critics' definitions of evolution)
2 - History of objections (gives a historical and social context to the objections to follow, clarifying both when and how evolution came to be scientifically accepted, and the fact that all major critics of evolution in recent times have been creationists; 'further information' links to History of evolutionary thought, History of creationism, and Creation-evolution controversy)
3 - Objections to evolution's scientific acceptance (objections generally intended to discredit evolution in order to advocate creationism as either a superior, or equally good, theory)
3.1 - Evolution is just a theory, not a fact (discusses misunderstandings of scientific 'theory' and 'fact', and their applicability to evolution, as well as discussing the idea that evolution is 'unproven'; 'further information' links to Evolution as theory and fact)
3.2 - Evolution is controversial (discusses the view that evolution either is or will soon be rejected by a large portion of scientists, based on appeals to creationist petitions, and discusses the idea that a social controversy is sufficient for undermining the teaching of evolution; touches on the idea that various scientists reject evolution, including the common myth that Darwin himself renounced his views)
3.3 - Evolution is just one of several scientific views (discusses the "fairness" objection to teaching evolution, centering on the Teach the Controversy campaign, as well as the false either-evolution-or-creationism dichotomy and misunderstandings of basic scientific standards)
3.4 - Evolution is unscientific
3.4.1 - Evolution is a religion (includes the claim that evolution requires "faith", that it is dogmatic, etc.)
3.4.2 - Evolution is unfalsifiable (includes the related claim that evolution is tautological, or that evidence for evolution relies on assuming evolution, and vice versa)
4 - Objections to evolution's reliability (more concrete objections, focusing more on the specific evidence for (and, supposedly, against) evolution)
4.1 - Evolution doesn't explain everything (addresses the idea that if there are any mysteries or unknowns in evolution, evolution must be thrown out; deals with specific claims about what evolution doesn't explain, including things that it should and does explain, shouldn't and doesn't explain, and hopefully someday will, but doesn't yet, explain)
4.2 - Evolution is implausible (addresses the idea that it is too unlikely for species to have developed as they did, or, more generally, for the universe to be life-sustaining or evolutionary without a God; addresses the general claim that "life can't have come about by chance", and the common creationist argument from incredulity)
4.3 - Evolution has never been observed
4.3.1 - Macroevolution has never been observed (includes the claim that inter-species or inter-genus change is possible, but nothing outside of this, and disputes over what a "(created) kind" of life is)
4.3.2 - Speciation has never been observed
4.3.3 - Transitional species have never been observed
4.4 - Evolution's evidence is unreliable ('further information' at Evidence of evolution)
4.4.1 - Past evidence for evolution has been overturned (discusses a number of valid evolutionary evidence and models, such as the peppered moth evolution, and false ones, such as Haeckel's embryo drawings, which are claimed by creationists as hoaxes or errors that invalidate or undermine evolution itself; also briefly touches on the creationist claim that because of past scientific revolutions, we can't know that another one isn't about to occur)
4.4.2 - Fossil evidence is unreliable
4.4.3 - Radiometric dating is unreliable
5 - Objections to evolution's possibility (more radical than the above objections, these claim that evolution is not unscientific or implausible, but rather impossible, because it contradicts some other law(s) of nature)
5.1 - Evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics (discusses the misconception that organisms are the type of systems that subscribe to the second law of thermodynamics; 'further information' at Entropy and life)
5.2 - Evolution cannot create information (addresses the many information-theory-based arguments against evolution, and the assumption that mutations cannot create new information; can also briefly touch on the misconception that all mutations are harmful)
5.3 - Evolution cannot create complex structures (addresses the idea of "partly-developed" structures, e.g., "what use is half an eye?")
5.3.1 - Evolution cannot create irreducibly complex structures (addresses the question of whether irreducibly complex structures exist, and whether, if they do, they cannot evolve; 'further information' at Irreducible complexity)
5.4 - Life can't come from non-life (discusses the misconception that evolution is synonymous with, or reliant upon, abiogenesis, and that abiogenesis is impossible; can also briefly discuss other "arguments against evolution" that aren't actually directed at any aspect of evolution, such as "anti-evolution" arguments that are really directed at the Big Bang; 'further information' at Abiogenesis)
6 - Objections to evolution's morality (objections that generally amount to an appeal to consequences, arguing that various bad beliefs, behaviors, or events were caused by the teaching of evolution)
6.1 - Evolution says that humans are no better than animals (addresses the general claim that evolution "degrades" humans)
6.2 - Evolution leads to immorality and social ills (in addition to pointing to objectionable events and philosophies supposedly based on evolution, includes a variety of claims about the morality of specific proponents of evolution, such as Darwin)
6.3 - Evolution leads to atheism (in addition to addressing the idea that evolution promotes irreligion and godlessness, and both its rebuttal by theistic evolutionists and its "so what?" by atheists, touches on the claim that evolution presupposes or relies on atheism)

Thoughts? -Silence 08:59, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

In some ways it sounds good, but you're presenting it as a strawman argument: for NPOV the assertions will have to be sourced and fairly represented. It doesn't cover common misconceptions which are genuinely not objections: an example is the idea of evolution meaning progress which is widely held. .. dave souza, talk 11:29, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
How am I presenting it as a strawman argument? And what is being presented as a strawman argument? I plan to include no arguments which are not well-referenced from creationist sources, like Answers in Genesis and the Discovery Institute. (Unlike the current "Misunderstandings" page, which lists a number of supposed misunderstandings and creationist arguments, without citing them to any actual sources that use them.) Those are simply the section titles I'm proposing at the moment; obviously we can't include references in section headers, that's what the body of the article is for.
And it doesn't cover common misconceptions because it's an "objections" article, not a "misconceptions" article. Frankly, we don't need a whole article for misconceptions. There are very, very few common misconceptions about evolution that are not regularly utilized by the creationist movement. Moreover, I could see us mentioning that misconception quite a bit in the "Evolution says that humans are no better than animals", when we explain the creationist justification for that claim. But really, having a whole "misconceptions" page just for one or two misconceptions (that aren't also covered as "objections") is terribly inefficient. We can simply use the "Misunderstandings" section on Evolution to adequately explain the idea of progressive evolution, and we can link to the daughter article Orthogenesis there for anyone who wants to read up on the topic in more depth. -Silence 11:36, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I like this. It is an outline of a proposed article, and it is an expansion of the material that orangemarlin and I are playing around with. There might be a topic or two missing, but these can be added in a general Objections to evolution article. I worry that it might be too long, but we can cross that bridge when we come to it. I do not understand in what way it is a strawman. One definitely needs links to creationists to show that these are real objections of course.--Filll 16:40, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I will also point out that there is no way we can cover all objections. For less common objections, we can just link in talkorigins and other external sites.--Filll 16:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm starting to notice something. Evolution states a fact. The Creationists come up with objections to one or more points. Editors counter to maintain NPOV. New objections to the counters. It's endless. Look at the so-called scientists that support Creationism. You ask for 5. Well, no one has responded, but someone will. You look at the scientists, find out that they aren't really, then it goes on and on. I think there comes a point where we should just lay out the points, and so be it. This is tiresome to be honest. Orangemarlin 18:13, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Part of the tactic, which is why Creationists so often win debates, is to ignore the main points of the scientists. You give them 10 reasons why evolution is correct and creationism is wrong. The creationists respond to some other reason, or maybe a tiny detail of one of the 10 reasons. The scientists respond, getting distracted. The creationist never answers the 10 reasons. And on and on. And the advantage that creationists always have, is they can come up with outrageous responses that are unchallengeable, like "God (or the devil) made the world look old to test our faith" and "God (or the devil) put inconsistencies in the bible to test our faith" or "There is a deep truth here that we cannot yet understand but in time it will be revealed that science is wrong and the bible is right". You cannot argue against that. But for readers of WP, we need a place that lists the main objections, and responses, and then the POV of both scientists and creationists. And be done with it.--Filll 18:25, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I really like this. My only concern is that the Creation-evolution controversy is only really discussed in the history section. I can think of a few ways to deal with that, but none of them really appeal to me, so does anyone else have any thoughts on it? I'm tired and about to go to sleep, but the best I thought of for now was maybe a section to briefly discuss major groups, countries, etc. that still object, and then link to their respective articles, a "current" (for lack of a better word) section to compliment the history section. I just don't want readers to get the impression that objections are a past issue. I'll check back in the morning, cheers, darkliight[πalk] 07:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
The bottom of the history section will include all of that stuff. Recent history is part of history too. -Silence 08:32, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Re-reading it, it looks pretty good. My strawman concern is that from the title one would expect the creationist case to be given front stage, and fully represented: as long as the arguments are fairly treated that should be fine. Looks like 6.3 could get pretty big, since it will have to cover "materialism", business practices, eugenics, the Nazis and Stalinist Communism: no doubt summary style with references to sections in the relevant articles will work out. The Creation-evolution controversy and theistic evolution should presumably get a mention in the introduction / lead section, and there's no need to go into any detail on them since it's only their arguments for or against evolution that are of interest. .. dave souza, talk 09:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC) On second thoughts "materialism" and communism might fit better under 6.3. Ah, all these bestial heresies! ... dave souza, talk 09:40, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I've reconsidered the placement of the "evolution makes things 'better'/more complex" and decided to explain this misunderstanding, in great detail, in the "Defining evolution" section, because of its importance in understanding and comparing the most common scientific and creationistic views on "evolution". Also, I've been working on a very bare-bones model for how an Objections to evolution article could look; I've only started work on a handful of the sections so far, but it should give an idea of what I'm currently advocating as an article in lieu of "misunderstandings about evolution" for detailing these claims. Feel free to contribute whatever you want to the page; it's in my userspace at the moment, but anyone can make any additions or changes they wish to help bring it up to shape. The page is at: User:Silence/Evolution. -Silence 12:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

<reduce indent> On a related topic, the Adolf Hitler article helpfully explains that the Holocaust involved "application of the brutal and crude concept of social Darwinism to all the different kinds of victims", and makes a similar reference under the "religion" section. Since this general use of the term apparently began in 1944 this is wildly misleading: if anyone's got the time and references handy to tackle this issue in the Hitler / Nazi series of articles it would avoid them contributing to the misunderstanding. .. dave souza, talk 13:54, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The term "social Darwinism" originated in 1944, but that doesn't imply that the concept originated then, or that it is anachronistic in a Nazi context. Indeed, since the social Darwinism article states that the term is mainly used to criticize others' philosophies, rather than to express one's own views, it makes little difference whether it is used to describe someone who predated the invention of the term social Darwinism; it is apparently likely to not have been used by the person himself either way. In other words, it's acceptable to describe Hitler's philosopher as socially Darwinian, but only if that description is entirely uncontroversial (from a modern standpoint; whether it was used at the time makes little difference), and/or if it is attributed to a source rather than stated as fact. Of course, either way the description of social Darwinism as "brutal and crude" must be removed, because it violates WP:NPOV for the same reason that describing Nazism itself as "brutal and crude" does.
Ultimately, however, none of this is in itself relevant to an Objections to evolution article. "Social Darwinism" is widely acknowledge to have little to nothing in common with actual Darwinism; accusations that evil people followed social Darwinism are thus relevant only on the social Darwinism page, not on the evolution pages. What we should do in the "Evolution leads to immorality and social ills" section of "Objections to evolution" is not list every evil person or movement that's ever been described as socially Darwinian, but rather list the people who claim that social Darwinism is a direct consequence of natural Darwinism (and objected to Darwinism on those grounds), or to people who consider Darwinian evolution to be at fault for social Darwinism, such as Answers in Genesis and Richard Weikart. Only claims that evolution leads to social Darwinism (which is bad), not other criticisms or indictments of social Darwinism, are relevant to "Objections to evolution". -Silence 15:27, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

What orangemarlin and I have written in our objections to evolution draft in the sandbox does exactly that. It finds several creationist arguments that Darwin was responsible for Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao, etc. And lots of other social ills as well. And then we include that article in the Catholic research journal that demonstrates a positive correlation between belief in creationism and social ills, and a negative correlation between belief in evolution and social ills. --15:38, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

...controlled experiments

Forgive me for the rather lame question, but I'm not very well versed on this subject. The article says that "in science however, a theory is a model of the world (or some portion of it) that makes predictions that can be tested through controlled experiments" and then goes on to say that evolution is a theory. I was under the impression that no experiments could be done in the field of evolution given that evolution is a process that could span thousands of years or more. .V. (talk) 19:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

This is a good indicator for another misunderstanding to include in the article: no experiments could be done in the field of evolution. Of course, "experimental science" is subject to the definition of experiment. It's probably better to use "controlled observations" since people tend to be under the impression that an "experiment" follows some idealized cookbook recipe where the scientists don't know what to expect and whatever cake comes out of the oven is the "result". I am reminded of the objections of many creationists that evolution/geology/astronomy are not "real" sciences because they can't be tested in a lab under controlled environments. --ScienceApologist 19:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

royi This is part of the confusion about science. There are experimental sciences, and there are observational sciences, and there are sciences that are both. It depends on how you get your data. Evolutionary biology happens to be BOTH an experimental AND an observational science. Other observational sciences:

  • meteorology
  • seismology
  • volcanology
  • geomagnetism
  • oceanography
  • geology
  • paleontology
  • anthropology
  • archaeology
  • astronomy
  • astrophysics
  • cosmology
  • atmospheric chemistry
  • solar physics
  • planetary science
  • all other earth sciences
  • field biology
  • marine biology
  • glaciology

and so on and so forth. Some of these fields also have laboratory (i.e. experimental) components as well. Although some people call the laboratory or experimental sciences empirical sciences, by some definitions empiricism includes both field observation and laboratory expirmentation. Now obviously, some of these observational sciences can be done in real time, and some are only done on historical data. And the notion of "prediction" in science is a bit more complicated than just temporal prediction, but prediction possibly of something that has not been yet discovered, or even include "postdiction" or retrodiction. Hopefully this is clearer?--Filll 20:55, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the article says "controlled experiments." The definition of an experiment is "A test under controlled conditions that is made to demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy of something previously untried."
Obviously empiricism includes both field observation and lab experimentation. However, the article should be clear as to what's going on. As it stands, it's saying that there are literal experiments here. .V. (talk) 00:51, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I was not clear enough. There ARE literal experiments here. In the laboratory. With controls. Repeatable. Better?--Filll 00:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I sense a little contentiousness here. No need for any of that, just inquiring as to the nature of the phraseology in the article. Might you be able to point me to some laboratory experiments regarding evolution? .V. (talk) 02:17, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
You could start with Nylon-eating bacteria. There's another I vuagely remember which I will share when I can properly source it. Endomorphic 02:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

That nylon-eating bacteria one was more in the field over the last few decades than in the laboratory. The laboratory examples are all on fast-breeding creatures like fruit flies and bacteria, obviously. There are some examples at Evolution as theory and fact. There are many more at talkorigins.com. Probably a fully detailed list would include hundreds or thousands of publications. Of course, die-hard creationists reject them all, or come up with excuses about why they don't count. If you say it is true, they say fossils dont count. So you show it to them in the field, and they say field observations dont count. So you show it to them in the laboratory, and they say that it wasnt repeatable. So you show them it was repeatable, and they say it didnt create species. So you show them speciation in the laboratory, and they disagree with your definition of species. So you address that definition, and they claim that is meaningless since all creationists know about microevolution but draw the line at macroevolution. So you show them there is no boundary and macroevolution has been seen in the lab, and they claim that is meaningless because all creationists accept speciation and microevolution and macroevolution and natural selection. And then they object to something else, like abiogenesis, which is not part of evolution. And if you point that out, they call you an atheist. So I am sorry to say, it is all pretty stupid. You cannot actually win. You can show them tree ring data and coral ring data or mud layer data or snow layer data etc that go back hundreds of thousands of years or 100s of millions of years. And they will claim all creationists believe in an Old earth so it is meaningless. Or they claim that God created the earth to look old on purpose to test men's faith. Or that Satan put that data there to tempt men away from God. Or they declare that it is evidence of a miracle and it proves the bible is true. So you cannot "win". It is absolutely impossible. All you can do is present the information, and if they refuse to accept it for whatever reason, then so be it. All you can do is try to keep them from shoving some hair-brained view of the world and science on everyone else by aggressive means. And end up destroying science.--Filll 03:08, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I particularly like the creationist refutation of the Nylon-eating bacteria - "God gave bacteria an ability adapt to their surroundings which looks *amazingly* similar to evolution, but really isn't evolution at all."
You appear to be more seasoned that I in this field, Filll. Do you remember the story about the researchers who wanted to find a specific missing evolutionary link? They looked at the standard evolutionary and geological models and decided that fossils from the period they were interesed in probably lay in a particular place in Canada. They traveled, dug around a bit, found a fossil which turned out to slot into history exactly where they wanted it to. Nice story, was on Wikinews perhaps a few months back, but I can't find a reference :( Endomorphic 03:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I do not remember the details, but it does sound familiar. --Filll 03:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Barney the Bishapod
Barney the Bishapod
Filll, that was an outrageously POV rant! How dare you leave out the true faith of the FSM! Anyway, the Fram formation beastie Endomorphic refers to is the Famous Fishapod known as Tiktaalik. A field experiment rather than a lab experiment, and the usual suspects including the DI crew were quick to try to discredit it. ... dave souza, talk 09:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
But still, are there any valid laboratory experiments that actually show us bacteria wich join into clusters and becomes a progressively evolving multicelled organism? Clearly, a natural resistance to antibiotics is not really much evidence for evolution, as it is only evidence of a minor alteration of pre-existing variety of genes (it neither transforms the bacteria into a multicellular organism, nor does it provide room for growth and development of new organelles. After all, an antibiotic resistant streptococcus still remains a streptococcus with the same organelles and appearance). Furthermore, according to a detailed conversation between Dr. Lee Spetner and Dr. Edward E. Max, it really seems as if experimental evidence for one of the most crucial and fundamental mechanisms of macroevolution - the gradual random "by trial and error" addition of new information to the biocosm of living cells - to date, have never been obtained (with the sole exception of the immune B-cells, wich are irrelevant because these cells mutate at a rate of over a million times that of the germ-line cells, wich would have been fatal to any living organism). Hence, the argument from bacterial resistance is faulty and does not add even an iota of convincing evidence of the very processess wich are assumed to account for the "bacteria to man" scenario. Therefore, the "bacteria to man" hypothesis remains a weakly supported scenario and most certainly not a demonstrable "fact". 193.217.34.35 10:28, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Main Page

Wow. This article showed up in the "did you know" list. Not bad for an article under consideration for deletion. By the way, aren't we over that deletion thing? Orangemarlin 00:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

and I'm going to guess this means that we should watch for trolls, vandalism, and all kinds of fun things!!!! Orangemarlin 00:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
"Over" the deletion thing? The option of deleting this article is more popular than ever, now that we've had a few days to discuss better methods of presenting all of the same information, and more (i.e., "Objections"). -Silence 00:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Never mind. I think they removed it from the Main page now that someone discovered it's being discussed to be deleted. Oh well. By the way, I don't care about the deletion. The Creationists keep winning on Wikipedia, so I'm not sure I care anymore. Orangemarlin
I removed it from DYK because it would not be appropriate to have an article currently at AfD to be featured on the Main Page. Nishkid64 00:37, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Orangemarlin, do assume good faith. If anything, the fact that we removed a low-quality, poorly-focused, disorganized, and exceedingly uncomprehensive article is a victory against creationism, as it allows us to regroup and do a much better job next time of providing Wikipedia with a truly NPOV, useful, and comprehensive page on creationist misconceptions. You should rejoice that we removed it from the main page as quickly as we did, as it means we minimized the damage that would have been done both to Wikipedia's reputation as a reliable resource and to the cause of correcting common misunderstandings about evolution, had so defficient an article been highlighted for an entire day on the main page.
Remember that because misunderstandings are so fundamental to many of the "objections to evolution", we can discuss pretty much all of the things on Misunderstandings about evolution in any Objections to evolution page. Moreover, the advantage is that we avoid giving the strong impression of POV that characterizing creationism as a "misunderstanding" will lead to; and, most importantly of all, the article will be able to be vastly more thorough and comprehensive.
You see, while an "objections" article can cover pretty much every "misunderstanding" quite effectively, a "misunderstanding" article is completely incapable of addressing the vast majority of "objections" without betraying its topic (and thus leading both to problems both with POV and with focus). The greater scope of an "objections" page thus makes it a vastly more useful resource for our readers; it could become something akin to a Wikipedian version of the fantastic talk.origins "Creationist Claims" page. And clearly having both an "objections" page and a "misunderstandings" page, at least in the context of the creation-evolution debate, would lead to enormous redundancy. So I see no point in spending any further time on this "Misunderstandings" article; there are better ways to convey the same information, without trying to find loopholes in NPOV policy. -Silence 00:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
You seem poisoned with your POV on the issue. It's a well-written article! Nishkid64 00:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
No offense Nishkid64, but this is just an ancient piece extracted from evolution. Some parts of it have been around for years. It just got spun out to cut down the size of evolution. Most of these arguments about misunderstandings have been around for years on places like talkorigins. If we are going to open the doors to invite in the world, we want to be armed to the teeth and "loaded for bear" as it were. I think that if were hit by a flood of CREaTIoNistS when we were unprepared, it could be pretty ugly. So I am sort of glad we can prepare so when they come charging at us, we will at least have some defenses ready.--Filll 00:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't consider it ancient since I proposed and started the core concepts of the section in late 2005. Part of the reason we choose to focus on misunderstandings; is to avoid needing to include every major "argument" or "criticism" from talk.origins here. Currently I think its enough, easier to maintain and much more summarized, to clarify the basic misunderstandings that lead to those arguments and criticisms in the first place. (BTW, the section was started because they charged at us multiple times, when intelligent design was in the headlines; and specifically because a bishops assertion that intelligence is required to create information.) Loading to bear, runs the risk of detracting from focusing on important misunderstandings; and burying it in trivial points and sub-articles with invalid creationist assertions on this or that minor subject. For example I took on a creationist on Talk:Oort cloud regarding an creationists authors claims. I browsed through the website, found a blatant mistake, detailed that on the creationists article and left it at that. I don't want to see stuff like that anywhere near main articles like this. Expanding this article is great, just don't get overenthusiastic. Also please do not fragment the subject by creating sub-articles like Evolution_as_theory_and_fact. - RoyBoy 800 03:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
And what, exactly, is my POV on the issue? I am not a creationist, nor do I consider creationist arguments to have any merit. Again, remember to assume good faith. Whether the article is well-written or not has nothing to do with whether it is NPOV, or whether its topic is appropriate, or whether it's the best way we could provide our readers with the information in question. I have no intention of removing, or even dramatically changing, any of the verifiable, NPOV, well-written material in this article; my only purpose here is to rework it into a format that is both more NPOV and more valuable (by virtue of its wider scope) to our readers, thus killing two birds with one stone.
Also, I would remind Orangemarlin that the purpose of Wikipedia is not to battle against creationism, but to provide our readers with reliable and useful information. We are not here to push our agendas or POVs, no matter how noble they may be. We are here to make an encyclopedia. The reason your objectives almost entirely align with Wikipedia's objectives is because providing reliable and useful information is an excellent way to combat creationist misinformation; but you must always remember that combating that misinformation is a side-effect or our task of encyclopedia-building. It is not a goal that takes precedence over Wikipedia itself, or over its policies. Just let the facts speak for themselves, and don't sweat the rest. -Silence 00:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
For one thing, articles do not go to AfD for POV reasons. I don't know who AfD'ed this article, but that doesn't really seem important. At best, I suggest we clean up the article with whatever inaccuracies it contains and move the article to a NPOV name. Nishkid64 00:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with moving it to a more NPOV title as well as rewriting good portions of it, and I voted as such on the AfD. .V. (talk) 00:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
AfD is indeed appropriate for article subject matters (as opposed to only the contents) that violate NPOV. You can cleanup an article with an appropriate subject matter but inappropriate contents; the same is not true for an inappropriate article subject. I'm perfectly fine with moving it to a different article, but since conversation has stagnated and since people seemed to simply be unaware that deletion or moving was being discussed (hence the amazing error of the article being put on the main page), I decided to be bold, if only to ensure that the problem be discussed and resolved as quickly as possible. Plus several users have advocated deletion so far, so I would prefer to see what people think on the matter rather than taking any sort of unilateral action.
Also, the fact that you disagree with my choice to AfD the article does not excuse saying "You seem poisoned with your POV on the issue." without any basis. Editors disagree; it happens. I fully acknowledge that I may have made a mistake in AfDing rather than just proposing a move. But we can be civil and assume good faith regardless of such disagreements, surely. I wish you well. -Silence 01:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
The subject matter of this article does not violate NPOV. The article should expose Straw men placed in the evolution camp, irrespective of evolution's validity. Endomorphic 02:32, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
A straw man is a misrepresentation, not a misunderstanding. That's another problem with this article: it presumes that everyone who says untrue things about evolution must be "misunderstanding" evolution. It is perfectly possible to both understand and misrepresent something. This is not to say that there aren't misunderstandings aplenty, but the impossibility of reading people's minds makes an "objections" article vastly more verifiable, while still making it possible to correct various misconceptions. -Silence 02:40, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Invalid arguments based on misunderstandings are still Straw men; it's an attack on a position that no-one holds. The argument "Evolution should not be believed because scientists only consider it theory (rather than fact)" is a straw man fallicy; for a scientist an un-falsified theory is the epitome of knowledge. Endomorphic 03:31, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

<reduce indent>"It's only a theory" is widely believed and is a common misunderstanding as well as a common creationist claim. There's a lot of merit in the proposal to move this to a Objections to evolution page so that this becomes a redirect. May I suggest that the intro include something like "many of the objections are based on genuine misunderstandings of evolution and of science generally". The alternative, confining this article to misunderstandings and avoiding deliberate disagreements, would mean duplication of content and make this less valuable as a resource for many articles. p.s. see "it's only a model" ... dave souza, talk 09:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ownership

I think I am witnessing a WP:OWN rant. Take a look at some extracted material at Talk:Misunderstandings about evolution/TheoryvFact.

What is in the subpage

  • Section 1 is a discussion that spurred us to create new Fact vs. Theory material.
  • Section 2 is the Fact vs. Theory section in the evolution article before Orangemarlin and I applied our new changes
  • Section 3 is the Fact vs. Theory section in the evolution article before Filll's involvement
  • Section 4 is the Fact vs. Theory section in the Creation-evolution controversy article before Orangemariln and I applied our new changes.

History of my involvement with Theory vs. Fact

OrangeMarlin first raised the issue of the Fact vs. Theory section inaccessibility on Dec 11, 2006. I had asked previously about it on several occasions for about 1 month. In both cases, we recieved no reply or interest. So on Dec 13, 2006, we decided to WP:Be Bold and make a draft of a new version at Talk:Evolution/FactvsTheory, which we did. We invited the community to edit it. We did get some community edits, as you can see. Another 4 days later, when there were no strong objections, one or two other editors advised me to WP: Be Bold and apply the changes, which I did. I included an abbreviated form of the material at the Creation-evolution controversy page, and the evolution page, and since there was too much to include in the article, we produced the separate Evolution as theory and fact article with links. The section in evolution was the subject of heavy edit-warring by editors who had previously written them I assume. I basically gave up and let them turn it into a mess because it was too tedious to fight with them and they were too anxious to keep it as it was. However, the discussions spurred me to start working on a rewrite of Evolution as a theory and fact because several things about the issue were revealed in the discussions:

  • One editor, even though he supported evolution, was not aware that there was a THEORY and a PROCESS both called evolution, and fought this notion extremely hard and was very belligerent about it. This obviously needs to be explained more carefully with cites
  • The editors refused to accept dictionary definitions, so these probably need to be cited carefully
  • Gould was treated as though he had written some sort of sacred text, even though I think it was a hastily written column for Discover magazine.
  • The editors wanted to read Gould selectively, picking and choosing which passages to use and which to discard since these Gould passages did not fit their model of reality
  • The editors did not want to accept evolution as a fact because it was observed and formed data. The editors wanted to describe evolution as a theory that was so well established we might as well call it a fact. Investigation of this issue in dictionaries and the National Academy of Science official publications and position papers on this issue show that both usages are acceptable, although one is clearly preferred and predominant. This has to be explained, since Gould and other authors do use both of these, but only if you know the details can you parse what they are writing. Otherwise, it just sounds like "double talk" or "new speak". This argument went on for days; you can see a bit at Talk:Creation-evolution_controversy#Evolution_not_a_piece_of_data_from_an_experiment

Theory vs. Fact before my involvement

Examining Talk:Misunderstandings about evolution/TheoryvFact one can get a good look at the kind of material the previous editors seem so bent on preserving at all costs. From the point of view of a scientist, they are wrong, or very misleading at best. Certainly add to the confusion rather than dispell it. There is way too much "philosophy of science" jargon and nonsense that makes it sound like a frantic effort to sound pedantic and learned, but adds very little to the sections. It is more a form of mental masturbation and show-boating, to try to show how smart the editor is. One section was even marked by someone as "confusing or unclear for some readers". I did not do this; it was marked that way when I first saw it. There is not enough information to be able to parse Gould's famous quote clearly, or read the rest of his article and make sense of it.

Discussion on various talk pages:

From what I have seen, this issue needs to be explained well with good sources. It is a source of constant confusion for creationists, although some creationist websites include it on their lists of arguments not to use. It is also very poorly understood even by evolution apologists. The philosophy of science material is unhelpful, generally.

Orangemarlin came to WP just trying to find out something on this to take to a schoolboard meeting, and found WP useless. Casual readers like Orangemarlin trying to get information are completely frustrated by the kind of material WP has on this issue, which is VERY bad. If there is nothing of value for readers, what is this stuff anyway?

If truth be told, is not really that deep if explained properly.

Also, "Fact v. Theory" confusion has been at the root of many proposed laws in different states (over 20 and as many as 40) and in some cases those laws were actually enacted. Also it has been part of numerous court battles. It is important and there needs to be a place where someone can find references and discussion of this issue. It does not seem to die; it has not died although it has been explained thousands upon thousands of times over the last few decades. It still might not die even if WP does a good job of it, but at least we can try to be a reliable encyclopedic reference on this issue. Anything that has spurred the creation of dozens of laws and lawsuits is worth a WP article. --Filll 14:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Ha! I was unaware court battles focused so much on that specific issue. Good enough for me; meaning I don't mind the Fact vs. Theory subpage anymore. - RoyBoy 800 22:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Comparison with talkorigins

I think that we can offer something that talkorigins cannot.

  • First, we have wiki-technology, so we can write much nicer articles with much nicer links.
  • Second, we can be updated more rapidly
  • Third, we are not trying to advocate for a given position like talkorigins or National Center for Science Education or Answers in Genesis is. We are compelled to present both sides, with their strengths and weaknesses. This creates a very different and in some ways more "honest" appraisal of the current situation than the more biased venues can or do.
  • fourth, we are open to a much wider range of contributors, so we can in principle have a much wider range of material
  • Fifth, we can function more like a review site or meta site than the others. I cannot go to Answers in Genesis to find this kind of information about competing organizations that support creationism:
because basically, these organizations, all ostensibly on the same side, and nonprofit (some of them), are in actuality competing commercial enterprises that disagree drastically with each other on doctrinal issues and strategy.
  • Sixth, Wikipedia can take a far more academic approach to the subject, drawing on a much wider range of expertise than the pure creationist websites, or the science apologist sites. Wikipedia can offer the subject from multiple perspectives, critique and summarize the perspectives of the other organizations involved, etc.
  • Seventh, I am not sure that any of the others have their information organized in a reasonable fashion for someone who just wants to learn about subject, from a neutral perspective, or even from the scientific or creationist perspectives.
Orangemarlin first came here to find information on the subject to combat trouble at his local school board. He was very disappointed with what WP offered on the subject. What WP had was basically worthless for him trying to learn about the issue, so he joined up to help contribute. The average person on the street does not even know to go to talkorigins. They know Wikipedia has articles on lots of stuff. And I personally use Wikipedia as sort of an intelligent search agent to point me to sites that I am interested in, rather than digging through pages of google output or dogpile output. Someone has already done that and organized it for me, on many many subjects, on Wikipedia already. It is far easier and faster to use Wikipedia than to reinvent the wheel. And that is what Wikipedia can do on this subject; Wikipedia can organize this incredible mass of information into something accessible (like an encyclopedia does, actually) for someone who just wants to know where to get started, what the issues are, what sites to visit, what is there, etc. --Filll 22:53, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Objections to evolution

Now that the AfD's over, there's no obstacle to moving this article to a new title. As discussed, I recommend that we broaden this article's scope so that it can cover a much wider range of topics. The draft at User:Silence/Evolution gives an idea of current plans for the "Objection" article, and anyone is feel to contribute to that page and help expand or improve upon it.

As I see it, if we keep the current "Misunderstandings" article, we'll have to delete most of its contents as being outside of its scope: "Social and religious controversies" clearly doesn't belong, and "Entropy and life" and "Information" are not really misunderstandings about evolution, but are rather misunderstandings about thermodynamics and information theory which are used by creationists to dispute evolution. If we keep the article as-is, therefore, we'll end up only having two sections left, and both of those sections already have comprehensive articles on their respective topics anyway: Evolution as theory and fact for "Evolution is just a theory", and Devolution for "Devolution can occur". (And most of "Devolution" is an irrelevant digression in the context of this article, since it's an excessive and bloated list of unnecessary examples.)

On the other hand, if we broaden the current article's scope, we can not only keep all of the important information currently here, but we can also add lots more highly important, relevant, and verifiable misunderstandings about evolution, by reframing them as general anti-evolutionary creationist claims. Again, see User:Silence/Evolution for how much more comprehensive, concise, and informative the "Objections" article can be, even on the topics which the "Misunderstandings" article currently specializes in, like the "Controversy" section (covered in "History") and the "Devolution" section (covered in "Defining evolution"). It's really a win-win situation. And we can keep the basic misunderstandings intact in their heavily summarized, super-concise form on Evolution#Misunderstandings while providing the links to specific articles for anyone who's interested in the details, which makes it a win-win-win. I see no disadvantages to a move to Objections to evolution, and dozens of advantages. -Silence 17:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Like several others, I made clear in my AfD reply my desire to see this page renamed and adjusted properly for the article name Objections to evolution. The article you have as a draft seems to be well done (nice image selection, by the way.) I think that this article should be renamed as such, and replaced with the draft. Remember, though, the draft could use a little more work... there seem to be several unfinished sections at the bottom. .V. (talk) 19:32, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the draft isn't finished yet, or I'd have probably made the article already. In addition to the unfinished "placeholder" sections, some of the finished ones could use a fair amount more work in providing good sources, clarifications, etc. And I'm considering the possibility of merging certain sections, since the ToC is quite long. But the draft should at least give a general idea of what's planned; we can hammer out the details over time. -Silence 19:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Hopefully the material Orangemarlin and I have in our rough draft can be folded in without too much difficulty. However, I have been remiss in that I have been working on other articles, such as the rewrite of Evolution as theory and fact, which still seems to get people's blood boiling. It is amazing, since it is such a simple semantic misunderstanding.--Filll 19:56, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you and orangemarlin have a specific "Objections to Evolution" rough draft I could see? Or are you only referring to the subsections/articles (e.g., the "religion and evolution" page) you linked me to before? -Silence 20:01, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
  • User:Silence/Evolution is coming along nicely; only a few unfilled sections remain. It should be ready to replace Misunderstandings soon. -Silence 21:49, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
  • There's still a lot more work to be done, but the sections at least all have basic info in them by now, and I want to encourage input and contributions from more users than myself, so I've moved the draft out of articlespace; as agreed, the talk page and edit history of "Misunderstandings" will be preserved through this page-move, and a section on the common misunderstandings that don't solely amount to creationist arguments can be maintained at Evolution#Misunderstandings. So, for now, let's give it a try; make whatever changes y'all see fit, and we'll discuss how best to present this information. -Silence 06:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Comments on new article

Comments: I read it through for the first time in a couple of weeks. I like it. I have a couple of comments:

  • I would suggest a sort of Reader's digest version of the objections and major rebuttals someplace early on, so someone can get the broad sweep of it without it being Too Long To Read. Sort of a guide to objections or summary or something. Maybe in point form? I do not know.
  • In a sense, one could say that the ToC serves that purpose, since it provides a one-line summary of all the major objections covered in the article. If you believe that's insufficient, do you have a recommendation for how best to summarize them all early in the page? My concern is that if we start adding too many summaries we'll make the page longer, and it's already a very long article that is likely to expand in the future. -Silence 22:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes I was thinking that, but I am thinking more along the lines of annotated index almost. It is pretty long already so I am not sure. I will give you an example of what I did previously. You might disagree however. Look at History of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon. The reader gets a choice of what to read, in successively more detail. Now there are 4 levels there so that might be a bit much; 2 or 3 might suffice (lead, summary in point form, body). I will think about it some more.--Filll 22:26, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I wonder if the first few review paragraphs, which are beautifully written, might not be a bit much for this article. I do not know what to suggest because they are really beautiful.
  • Usefulness, not beauty, is what matters for Wikipedia article content. Feel free to destroy their beauty if it makes them more useful. We should not forget the best interest of the readers in our pride over our own achievements. What do you mean by "a bit much" for the article? Do you mean that, in their attempt to provide a context for the rest of the article, they are too general to fit into this article? Do you mean that they are too long or verbose? Or do you mean that they are too flowery or unencyclopedically eloquent, rather than simply straightforward and factual? It's hard for me to parse your meaning here. -Silence 22:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
I think they are a bit long and detailed when they are covered elsewhere. However, I prefer your summaries to what is elsewhere. Lets see what Orangemarlin thinks. I also trust DGG's opinions. And Adam's. --Filll 22:26, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I might have some more material for it but it is pretty long already. So I am not sure what to suggest.--Filll 21:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Feel free to make additions. We can always remove content later, or make new daughter articles to suit the expanded content, or summarize stuff that's already there, as the need arises. It is easier to make an article shorter than to make it longer, so you shouldn't be discouraged from adding to it, at least in the short-term; and it's easy to revert bad changes, so you shouldn't be discouraged from experimenting with new ideas for the article either. -Silence 22:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok let me think about it. I have been working on History of creationism and I keep turning up great new stuff.--Filll 22:26, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Some thoughts

  • This is a beautiful article. It should be posted and submitted for all the pats on the back, including GA status.
I strongly agree. Incredible work by everyone involved! After my experience with Evolution and its talk page, my jaw is literally hanging wide open at the idea that a fantastic article like this could come together with only minimal bickering. I'm going to go find out how to nominate it as a featured article. Great work, guys! Gnixon 20:09, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
  • That being said, I never liked the darwin fish metaphor. It's amusing, but highly POV and inflammatory. I know, it's a Creationist thing, but I'm trying to head off a war.
  • Don't forget that Old Earth Creationist, oddly, probably dislike YEC as much as we do. Throw them a bone somewhere in the article?
  • Otherwise, I have no further suggestions. It's so wonderful, I might cry.Orangemarlin 22:49, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
It is a thing of beauty. I might note that William Jennings Bryan was an Old Earth Creationist. Almost all of the creationists except for Price until Morris published his book were OEC. And now we have a mix of YEC and OEC and assorted whacky offshoots like the Adamites and the multiple creation people and so on.--Filll 22:56, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
  • I put up the article last night; you can see and contribute to it at Objections to evolution. (Not sure why these comments weren't posted to that Talk page instead of this one, in fact; anyone wanna double-post 'em there?)
  • OEC's disagreements with YEC are only relevant here inasmuch as they have noteworthy objections to evolution of their own or widely disagree with certain common YE objections, and I don't think that there are many OECs who dispute evolution and yet would disagree with the arguments on this page, with perhaps a few exceptions. If you have any such info, feel free to add it!
  • As for the ichthys thing, what do you consider inflammatory about it? I don't see it as any more inflammatory than any other anti-evolution creationist icon. In fact, it's dramatically tamer than most of the ones I've seen, since it makes no personal attacks, no insinuations about the sanity, ethics, or honesty of evolution-supporters, and no distortions of anyone's statements. Sure, it's confrontational, but it's general enough to be more of a philosophical statement than a directly offensive or insulting put-down. -Silence 22:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok, my problem with the creationist icon is that I'd rather be as NPOV as possible. It is inflammatory and this should note be "those creationists are crazy, and we want to show you how" article. I never liked that kind of discussion. But it's really not a big deal. Also, the Evolutions is fact vs. theory thing really isn't used that much, except by Creationist amateurs. If you take a look at [5] you'll note that the Creationists are becoming fairly sophisticated in their discussions. My point about the OEC types isn't that I think they're right, it's that they have as much trouble with the YEC's as we do. In fact, they throw science AND the bible at the YEC's. It's kind of amusing. Orangemarlin 23:06, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I found another 2 references for that "do not use these facts" advice besides the answers in genesis one. So at least some people know it. But lots do not, given that it appears in so many laws or proposed laws etc. on OEC vs. YEC vs. mainline Christianity: I have tried to point this out to the creationists, that this is basically an internicine dispute between different interpretations of Christianity, like about the last bazillion disputes of that kind, and they do not seem to take it too well. It is like catching the shiites and the sunnis at war with each other: they do not want to admit it to outsiders that they hate each other, but they clearly do.--Filll 23:28, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

It is also true that each creationist tries to claim that the other types do not exist or are obsolete or have minimal support. And they also try to appropriate the name "Christian" for themselves and claim that those other guys are blasphemers, infidels, apostates, heathens, pagans, atheists, satanists, etc. I heard a documentary that said the same happens with extreme branches of Sunnis and Shiites; they each claim that the other types of Islam are not real Moslems and should be killed for it, of course.--Filll 23:33, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Tremendous effort and article. - RoyBoy 800 04:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Reader's Digest Experiment

As I stated above, I am wondering (although not sure yet) about a possible Reader's Digest version of the TOC. I gather that the display of the regular TOC can be suppressed if we want as well. So I have mocked up an unfinished version of a table that has as entries a list of the objections and then a short statement with some references (see Talk:Objections to evolution/Readersdigest). I also propose to link each of these objections to the appropriate section in the text, as I did with the "theory not a fact" objection in the table. As an experiment, I also made the response text a smaller font, but this is not required. Comments?--Filll 16:55, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I like this idea. I'm not sure how, or whether or not, we'll be able to fit something like this into the article appropriately, but I was thinking of doing something similar a little while ago (albeit in list, rather than table, format). Some concerns:

When I initially saw the list, I expected the bold text to reflect the basic claim, and the unbold text to explain that claim in more detail so it's comprehensible; almost none of the arguments are clear to someone unfamiliar with them, unless they're given explanatory text detailing them. I was thus very surprised to see that the non-bold text is a criticism of each of the objections, rather than descriptive or explanatory text on them. This seems to be jumping over an absolutely key step: you're essentially saying "Creationists say [technobabble]" (e.g., "Creationists say evolution cannot create information", or "Creationists say evolution is unfalsifiable"), then going on to say "But they're wrong!" rather than "By this they mean...". This is not encyclopedic at all; the primary purpose of this article is to explain the objections, so readers understand the issue better. The primary purpose of this article is not to rebut them; that is a secondary purpose, necessary for the sake of WP:NPOV (mainstream scientific views must be included). The format you propose risks turning the article from an encyclopedic analysis into a polemic, by shifting the focus from explanation to argument and counterargument.
The table format is quite ugly. You might as well just replace it with a list if you're going to make such a plain, unappealing-looking one. Look at templates like the ones on Saffron to see how much more visually appealing and professional templates can look with only a few minor changes, like color-coordinating the backgrounds, adding more border space between the text and table edges, making the template a little less dense and intimidating by shrinking the width a bit, and replacing the distracting lines between each criticism with something subtler, like lines that almost blend into the background, or simply an empty gap.
The actual explanatory text is not only POVed (though true), but also written in an unacademic, polemic style. Note phrasings like "This is absolutely false", "By every reasonable definition of evolution, evolution is no more a religion than plumbing is" (this was never a good analogy, and to state it as fact rather than as an attributed statement is absurd, as it explicitly states "If you use a different definition of evolution than the one we like, you are being unreasonable"), and "This is based on an old misunderstanding and is absolutely not true".
Some of the claims made are unverified or unverifiable. We don't know that 99.9% of biologists in the world dispute evolution, only that 99.9% of the ones in the U.S. do, based on the stats we're using. And what stats are we using to show that "Many creationists suggest that it no longer be used", as opposed to the more moderate "Certain creationist organizations, such as X and Y, suggest that it no longer be used"? Even more so, "This replacement of the theory is proof that evolution is falsifiable." is a very dubious statement; the fact that evolution has been revised in the past is hardly proof that evolution is falsifiable now. Plus any informed creationist could rightly point out that only certain aspects of evolution have been falsified and replaced; they could argue that certain other aspects, such as common descent or natural selection, are unfalsifiable, and use the same argument you're making (an appeal to history) to show that they haven't already ever been falsified or replaced since Darwin's day, and thus may not be falsifiable. Likewise, consider "in fact, the opposite [i.e., evolution leads to morality conduct] appears to be true". This is an absurd claim; no statistics show a causal connection between learning evolution and morality. Some may show a correlation, but correlation does not imply causation. Just because creationists rely on clearly fallacious reasoning doesn't mean that Wikipedia needs to rely equally on fallacies to make counterarguments. I'm also concerned by the lack of a stat to back up "This is incorrect, as demonstrated by the religious beliefs of most scientists that accept evolution", plus I don't think this quite rebuts the creationist claim (just because not everyone who supports evolution is an atheist, doesn't mean that evolution doesn't at least promote atheism; there are more atheists who believe in evolution than who disbelieve in it, for obvious reasons :)).
Some of the information and references you include in the summary would be excellent additions to the actual article text, which I think should be our #1 priority at this point. For example, why not add the information regarding "Many creationists suggest that 'evolution is just a theory' no longer be used because..." to the theory/fact section, as it's certainly relevant? Likewise, we could provide a much more informative and NPOV explanation of "A Nobel Prize was even given for a more careful discussion of this issue." in the actual second-law-of-thermodynamics section. Also, pointing selectively to one of the only stats that suggests that a large portion of Americans aren't creationists, when dozens of other stats clearly do, and refusing to acknowledge those other stats at the same time, is both misleading and intellectually dishonest. It is an example of misuse of statistics to try to prove a point: pick selectively from whatever stats suggests the point you want to make, and ignore all the others.
Some of the phrasings are just awkward. What does "Evolution within species have been observed in the laboratory, and new species have been observed in the laboratory." mean? Why the repeated "in the laboratory"? What have the new species been observed doing in the laboratory? Do you mean to say that "new species have been observed evolving", or "arising"? Is "laboratory" even relevant or informative here? -Silence 17:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I will admit that the table looks much worse than I had imagined it before I tried it. I also do not claim the wording is great, as you noted. I was just trying to see what it might look like. I did start with making the unbold text to be explanatory, and then tried making it both explanatory and also including a response, but then switched to the response only as it was getting too long. As you point out, this might cause a NPOV problem. That is why this is just an experiment. This also starts to look like an FAQ, which is another concern. I agree with most of your other points about wording and falsifiability. I was just experimenting with the idea to see what it might look like. And it looks much bulkier and more awkward than I had anticipated, to be honest. Of course, I have no problem with incorporating the extra references in the main body of the text. On the thermodynamics issue and many others I have a lot more information to add, potentially. For example, it was Prigogine whose Nobel Prize-winning work was involved with and lead to an undestanding completely contrary to this 2nd Law objection. I notice that Prigogine's biography here only hints at it, so it might need some rewriting and more references. I also have some more thermodynamics references, some which are produced by anti-creationist scientists. And more material for the other objections. This makes me a bit squeamish about the length of course, as I mentioned before. As you noted, we can spin it off into supporting articles if we have too much. I agree with the "correlation and causation" comment as well. I and other scientifically-minded people (and a few creationist friends) have tried to understand why this result even exists. We came up with a long list of potential reasons, but we were basically puzzled why there would be this correlation. It is not really the excess influence of the US as an outlier alone; there is something else going on.--Filll 18:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

In spite of these problems, I am still wondering about accessibility. What I have in mind is someplace where a reader can see quickly the full range of objections we address here, and possibly a short response if possible. I am thinking of the user who does not want to read a lot of stuff (the "Too long, didn't read" argument) and just wants to see quickly what the objections are and that there are responses (possibly with links to short responses, or to response articles with readable LEADs?). The reader who is more interested can then read the longer exposition in the body of this article. The reader interested in more in-depth development of the discussion can then go to a spin-off article (where they exist) and then on to the links and references. I guess I am looking to see how can we make this as accessible as possible, more so than the talkorigins or National Center for Science Education resources. On this issue, I would note that the creationist websites presenting the opposite side are far more attractive visually for a browsing visitor, although still a bit awkward to navigate.--Filll 18:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Your change does make it look prettier alright. But it is still pretty large. Maybe if it was a narrow table down the right hand margin, like the creationism template? Maybe small fonts? Better use of color? Maybe one color for text explaining the objection, and one color for response text?--Filll 18:46, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

How about two columns? Left column would be objection, and right column would be response? I am just throwing out ideas here because I am not sure really which direction we should go.--Filll 18:49, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok after playing around I am not sure that two columns is a good idea. I tried some colors but I am not convinced about different colors either-it might look too busy. One could try to use different font styles, or make one part bold and one part italic, but then you have used italic very effectively in your example. Also, distinguishing the objections discussion from the response discussion in the explanatory text would limit the explanatory text to have two parts: sentences that are only about explaining the objection, and sentences that only explain the response. Your version certainly flows more easily, with sentences that contain both in one sentence. I would like to try a "point" format (the main points being listed in point form), but it might take up too much space. Also, if the objection and response are not of similar length, then the table will have blank spots which is not good if the point format is used. The sentence format appears to make better use of space. We could also shrink the fonts a bit more to make it more compact. Would it still be readable then? Anyway, I am just thinking here, obviously. I am open to anything really, as long as we can try to push towards accessiblity. If this is not attainable, then that is ok too. For example, in introduction to evolution, we have a nice "cheat sheet" down the right hand side that people can peruse if they do not want to read the whole thing. The readers can just hit the highlights (this had originally been suggested for evolution itself, but it was getting too long and too complicated, so I made it simpler and shorter and stole it for the introductions article). We have had requests to make the text in introduction to evolution linked to the text in the body, but when I looked at doing it, it did not look so easy to do. However, if we used your suggestion, it would be far easier to do for this article. And it might be quite useful and appealing. What do you think? --Filll 19:42, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Anyone else have any ideas comments or suggestions about the Reader's Digest version of the objections in a table at see Talk:Objections to evolution/Readersdigest?--Filll 20:03, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

For the record, I object to any non-standard formatting, including this sort of table of contents. Uniformity in appearance and layout is a good thing. I'm sorry, but it will not do. We are not here to decide Wikipedia formatting.
You may wish to take a look at the redesigned Community Portal, which has featured a table of contents since the redesign. The table was specifically designed to match the appearance of the standard table of contents, for the sake of uniformity. In my opinion, when even such a page uses 'standard layout', a mere article cannot dare to deviate. -- Ec5618 23:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
moved off-topic discussion on the principles and merits of civility to User talk:Silence -- Ec5618 16:58, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Can we include it as a guide down the right hand side, as some templates do? My main goal from proposing something like this is accessibility for the reader. Of course we must still conform to WP standards, but those are still fairly broad and flexible. --Filll 23:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I tried experimenting with that a few times, but it didn't work very well; there's just too much information to summarize well in such a tight space. It isn't going to work. I recommend giving up on the table idea for this situation and just turn it into prose summaries, which we can use either for a section on "Creationist objections to evolution" in Creation-evolution controversy, or for an "Overview" section in this article (the former is preferable, because this article is already so long). -Silence 23:20, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok fair enough. My main concern is accessibility. Part of my difficulty with talkorigins and most of the others that address this topic in one way or another is that for the casual reader, who just wants to glance at a summary, a big chunk of text is too overwhelming.--Filll 23:30, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Trying to emulate talk.origins hardly seems wise. This is still an encyclopedia project, not an attempt to convince people of anything, not even facts. -- Ec5618 23:41, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Of course and I have written extensively on this other places, like the talk page of misunderstandings about evolution I believe.--Filll 23:46, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Filll's above comment specifically states that he thinks Wikipedia should be less like Talk.Origins, not more like it. -Silence 23:54, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. Even if the MOS etc of WP allowed a duplication of talkorigins, it would be inadvisable because:

  • talkorigins already exists
  • talkorigins as it stands is not particularly useful or accessible. We can offer something different.--Filll 00:04, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
It still seems that you are trying to create a set of articles that, when read by an intelligent design enthousiast, will convince them that intelligent design is a horrible joke. That is not our purpose. In the past you have created a number of articles with the express purpose of explaining, once again, that evolution is science, while intelligent design is not, and that evolution enjoys a great deal of support.
That is not our purpose. It is the purpose of talk.orgins. This is still an encyclopedia project, not an attempt to convince people of anything, not even facts. -- Ec5618 09:52, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
I essentially agree. However, in fairness, explaining that evolution is science is comparable to explaining that gravity is science; it's true by definition, even if all the creationists' claims are true. (Likewise, even if all the creationists' claims are true, ID still isn't science, simply by definition.) The idea that evolution isn't scientific thus falls squarely into the realm of "common misunderstanding", just as much "Gravity isn't scientific" would be if it was widely disputed. The purpose of an encyclopedia is to be informative, not to advance an agenda; sometimes being informative, however, has the side-effect of advancing agendas which depend on informativeness. For example, being informative on the topic of evolution tends naturally to advance the agenda that evolution is scientific; being informative on the topic of the Holocaust tends naturally to advance the agenda that the Holocaust is historical. Neithe rof these is a violation of Wikipedia policy, just a happy coincidence. I've cautioned Filll in the past that Wikipedia's purpose is not to make points, but to provide useful information to our readers; however, that doesn't mean that evolution's scientific status, or ID's lack thereof, is a matter of serious contention. If it were, you would be entirely correct. -Silence 12:48, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

NPOV on these issues is is in the eye of the beholder. Consider the following text:

98% of all dieticians think that eating transfats is unhealthy. 80% of all people think that there are no health problems that will result from eating transfats. 92% of all food corporations believe it is essential not to ban transfats to maintain profit margins and claim there is no proof of health dangers from intake of transfats.

Is this text NPOV or not? It depends on one's interpretation. Some might look at it and say, well obviously the dieticians are better informed about nutrition and health and food, so it is biased against the consumption of transfats. Others might look at it and say that it clearly the overwhelming public and corporate opinions are that transfats are safe, and necessary, so it is biased in the opposite direction. Which is it? Well it is really neither; it is reporting a situation. And the groups involved in the situation exhibit certain biases. And how you interpret the exposition of the situation can be a large factor in whether you think it is NPOV or not. Is this text trying to make a point or is it reporting in a neutral manner? --Filll 13:20, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Exterior links

I would also like to see links to the outside anti-creationist sites and creationist sites where these objections are discussed at length. Do we have room for this? Is it advisable?--Filll 18:18, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I recommend citing any noteworthy creationist and anti-creationist sites wherever they are relevant to various parts of the article, and providing the links in the citation. This avoids any potential link-farm problems, while simultaneously improving the article's referencing of the text (we have almost 100 cites now, but most of the article's statements are still not very well cited). -Silence 19:08, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I have a partial list of outside sites that consider this problem. Should I give just the partial list or continue compiling?--Filll 20:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Here is a look at some links that deal with the same subject as this article: Talk:Objections to evolution/Extlinks. Some of them are far more extensive of course than this short article, but they might be a good resource. Most of them are pro-evolution sites. I have a link or two to creationism sites. I would like to have an equal number of each.--Filll 23:18, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

A great video demonstrating why evolution is wrong

And illustrating a few objections to evolution: [1]--Filll 17:13, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Heh. Best be careful, lass: People might think you're serious. Adam Cuerden talk
A good example comment demonstrating why some evolutionist supporters are so profoundly addicted to straw man's in pushing their naturalistic dogma of unproven and imaginary mechanisms tagged "unguided macroevolution". This is often done by means of constantly broadcasting and ridiculing the "opposing" side as being comprised of a bunch of superstitious religious fundamentalists/bible zealots in the popular media.193.217.34.35 10:51, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
User:193.217.34.35 rightly objects to the tone of the above post. The link to the video was very helpful. The sarcasm, not so much. Gnixon 15:50, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Recent deleted segment

A counter-argument to this reasoning is that, while organisms and the Earth are not themselves isolated systems, the Universe as a whole is. This is a challenge addressed by Entropy (arrow of time) which shows that, while it is true entropy in the Universe as a whole does increase over time, it began at such low levels that it allows things like stars, planets and ultimately organisms to evolve: organisms, while having low entropy, still have much higher entropy than the early Universe.

I am not sure I understand why it was deleted.--Filll 13:41, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

It needs a citation, for one thing. -Silence 04:43, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
[I have inserted the text for reference, as a quotation above.] Well, it was getting in the way of the flow surrounding some text I was working on, and there were a whole bunch of problems with it:
  • It introduced itself as "a counter-argument to this reasoning", but it was not a counter-argument to the previous paragraph, so this was quite confusing.
  • The hyperlink to the article "Entropy (arrow of time)" disrupted the sentence it appeared in, leaving the grammar very broken.
  • It was a new addition from an anonymous contributor with no citation, leaving subsequent contributors at rather an impasse.
I would have repaired it if I could, but the main thrusts of the paragraph seemed to be:
  • That a low entropy universe "allows these things to happen" - but this feels very counter-intuitive to me. And processes like evolution can still happen just as well in an old universe if there is a working star to power them.
  • That some comparison can be made between the entropy of an organism and the entropy of the universe containing it - but the only way to properly track entropy is by examining an absolutely closed system; to break this rule is to fall into the same trap the creationists fall into.
Anyway, if other contributors feel up to the task of rescuing something here, please feel free to repair the paragraph. If one would be willing to preview the repairs on this Talk page, it would also put me further at ease. I really like the directness and clarity of this article and would not like to see it become confusing. TheDewi 16:40, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

There is no theory of evolution..

just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live. High King of the Noldor 23:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you have any sources to back that up, but you make a compelling argument. .V. [Talk|Email] 19:08, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Chuck Norris doesn't need sourcesShniken 12:32, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Introduction

The following, from the introduction of the current article:

“ ...The observation, or fact, of evolutionary processes occurring, as well as the current theory explaining that fact, have been uncontroversial among biologists for nearly a century.


Since then, most criticisms and denials of evolution have come from religious, rather than scientific, sources.

 ”

Might be changed in light of the following (from the Creation-evolution controversy article:

“ A watershed in the Protestant objections to evolution occured after about 1875.[15] Previously, citing Louis Agassiz and other scientific luminaries, Protestant contributors to religious quarterlies dismissed Darwin's theories as unscientific.[15] After 1875, it became clear that the majority of naturalists embraced evolution, and a sizable minority of these protestant contributors rejected Darwin's theory because it called into question the veracity of Scriptures.[15] ”

Numbers, Ronald L. (1998-11-15), Darwinism Comes to America, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674193121


Hope this helps. StudyAndBeWise 02:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


Title suggestion

How about Societal acceptance of evolution or something along that line? (Public acceptance? Societal objections?) Adam Cuerden talk 02:20, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I don't quite understand. Did you post this comment here accidentally? We already have a Social effect of evolutionary theory article. This article is about objections to evolution. And I don't quite understand what a "social objection" would be. An objection that likes socializing? -Silence 02:24, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I got this and "Level of support for evolution" confused, as I didn't double check I was at the right article. Adam Cuerden talk 03:04, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Common knowledge

The creationists are for the most part defending biblical literalism. This is soapboxing? Controversial? It needs references?--Filll 15:31, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

I suppose that old-earth creationists might object. Whether they'd be justified is another question entirely. It's like the geocentricists denying all connection with those "nutty flat-earthers": "At least we aren't as far from science as THEM." Adam Cuerden talk 20:35, 18 February 2007 (UTC)


Filll, do you really want to start up the wrong conversation here? Because you know, i'm feeling like there's plenty of delicious bait in your speech for creationists like myself. And it's cream filled to boot to add to the appeal, though peculiarily spicy, as if it were set aflame perhaps.... Homestarmy 03:31, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Ok sorry I edited my rant out.--Filll 03:51, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Good for both of you. Civility, good faith, and humor just had a big group hug.  ;) Gnixon 21:58, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Falsifiability

I can't help but think we can do far better than this. Have a look here - we can use such things as cladistics (no matter what method you use, morphological, genetic, fossils, etc, you get cladistic trees with high levels of similarity, and the genetic work was done after the morphological work, making it a test), Tiktaalik, etc. We need not waffle on so. Adam Cuerden talk 19:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree with providing better examples of ways to falsify evolution in this section (since it sounds like that's what you're proposing). However, remember that we're limited by our need to rely on viable sources. We need to provide examples that notable sources have said are ways to falsify evolution; we can't just think of ways for ourselves and add them to the article, no matter how good they are (and I've seen some absolutely excellent proposed ones at Talk:Evolution/falsifiabilitydraft). -Silence 21:22, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Conlusion Section

I think this needs a conclusion paragraph. I will start it on this page but I will need some help... Cheers Shniken 08:10, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Homosexuality is a Social Ill?

Should somebody change the text to read "...percieved social ills, such as... homosexuality..."?

Well, you would think so at first glance. However, it's a bit of a weasel word, but more importantly this sentence is reporting what a particular group says. If they think it's a sexual ill, and have said so, we can - and should - report that. Perhaps the best solution would be to find a quotable quote and quote it using, well, quotation marks to make it clear that wikipedia doesn't think homosexuality = social ill.
SheffieldSteel 16:13, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Removal of Evolution3 panel

Problems with the Evolution panel:-

  • The graphic is locking horns with the truth-fish image, and I don't think it's an easy task to make that look good on all the various browsers, resolutions etc.
  • I don't think people who study evolution are necessarily going to want or need handy access to this page. There is a controversy, but it is not a scientific one. It is political and/or theological in nature. SheffieldSteel 17:09, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Summarize for Evolution?

This is a fantastic article. It would be a great service to the Evolution article if some of the editors here could replace its "Social and Religious Controversy" section with a summary of this article. Gnixon 20:12, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

There was one originally, indeed this entire article in part came from an entire sub-section that use to exist in Evolution. - RoyBoy 800 22:14, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Ideally the lead (or a better summary) from this article would be copied and pasted back into Evolution. The separation of this article from its parent article seems excessive; and makes it harder to get to. - RoyBoy 800 22:20, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
I tried that, but it was reverted by someone as too drastic a change to not discuss first. Support for the idea on Talk:Evolution would be helpful. Gnixon 18:12, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

POV and Original research

I've made several changes to the intro and cut an entire paragraph from the section about atheism. My reasons for each can be seen in the history, but several were related to NPOV and Original Research. As this article grows, we need to fight anti-creationism POV and pro-evolution Original Research as hard as we fight the same sins in the opposite direction. Gnixon 05:50, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Yikes! The more I read the article, the more it looks like a long list of why creationists are wrong. This is *bad*, and it didn't use to be this way. The quality of this article will be defined almost entirely by whether it maintains a neutral tone and relies on good citations, so remember: we have two sides of an argument to cite, and it's no good to argue for either one of them. Editors, if you're looking for something useful to do here, pick a section and spend awhile on the tedious chore of purging POV. Gnixon 06:06, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Widespread?

"Many of the arguments against evolution have become widespread"

Widespread where? I added "in conservative regions", which has been lost in the shuffle. I can only assume "widespread" is speaking to the fact these arguments received national (international?) attention in the media. My thinking is, I do not consider a recent media blip about Intelligent Design necessarily constitutes "widespread" anymore. It has fallen off the radar since the court case (or shortly thereafter) and I think can only be considered widespread in sympathetic regions. Either way it needs a ref for clarification. - RoyBoy 800 15:30, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

A better question might be, widespread when? Perhaps "Many of the arguments against evolution briefly became widespread" might be closer to the truth. Either way, we need a source. SheffieldSteel 16:16, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree with both of you about citations. Don't have much time to work on it now, but [2] is a 2004 article mentioning schoolboard issues in California, Tennessee, Georgia, and Pennsylvania that seem to be partially based on arguments against evolution. Evolution described as "controversial theory," "unproven belief," "theory, not a fact." There must be some appropriate poll to be found somewhere. Gnixon 13:48, 25 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm very skeptical that "briefly" or "in conservative regions" are appropriate qualifiers. I've heard the arguments raised by conservative people in a very progressive region of New Jersey only a year or so ago. I also heard them within a conservative Lutheran community in Indiana 10-15 years ago. Gnixon 13:48, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Intro

Orangemarlin and I seem to be going back and forth on a line or two of the intro. He prefers

Many religions, including most Abrahamic religion, do not consider evolution to be antithetical to their faith, whereas some religions accept a theistic form of evolution. However, others reject evolution in favor of creationism, ...

whereas I prefer

Many religions accept at least a theistic form of evolution, but others reject evolution in favor of creationism, ...

OM has argued that my version emphasizes theistic evolution too heavily, to the extent that it takes the POV that most religions believe in theistic evolution. I have disputed that, arguing that "at least a theistic form of evolution" is a concise way of including both those who accept evolution outright and those who accept the theistic form.

I have also argued that OM's version is much too bloated for the intro, requiring an extra sentence and making a particularly extraneous reference to Abrahamic religions.

Moreover, I think OM's version takes a POVish, anti-creationist tone by going out of the way to emphasize how many religions accept evolution and marginalize those that do not.

Input from others would be much appreciated. Gnixon 14:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps a good compromise would be to remove the clause about Abrahamic religions and otherwise streamline that section, but retain the distinction between theistic and mainstream evolution (I'm not sure that one can be fairly categorised as simply a subset of the other). So the outcome might look like this:-
Many religions do not consider evolution to be antithetical to their faith; some accept a theistic form; others reject evolution altogether in favor of creationism, ...
On the other hand, I don't want to end up with a (quite long) sentence that doesn't really say much beyond, "there are three positions to take, and there are religions taking all three."
SheffieldSteel 14:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
The sentence basically exists just to say "Some religions reject evolution in favor of creationism." First we got a clause pointing out that many religions accept evolution, then one saying that some religions accepted theistic evolution, and finally an entire sentence emphasizing that most religions accept evolution outright, without the theistic qualification. (Is this even true? In any case, it's extraneous info in the intro.) Gnixon 14:37, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I've tried an edit that stays concise and focused, dropping all the qualifiers and information about religions that accept evolution and just saying
Some religions reject evolution in favor of creationism....
I hope this is satisfactory to everyone. Gnixon 14:46, 28 March 2007 (UTC)
I still would rather see that most Judeo-Christian religions are neutral to evolution or in fact do not consider it antithetical to their faith. I think your sentence is a bit of a weasel sentence. Let's make it clear that evolution annoys a small subset of religious types in the world. Some could be 49.9%. Or it could be .1%. Can you see my concern in this sentence? Orangemarlin 17:10, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

<arbitrary indent reduction>In the vast majority of the Christian world, there is essentially minimal support for creationism. Among Buddhists and other Dharmic faiths, the support for creationism is very very limited. Among Muslims and Jews, the creationist view is a minority viewpoint, except in Turkey and a few other places. The United States is an exception among countries that are dominantly Christian. Depending on how one defines things, the US Christian sects which support evolution are the chosen faiths of 77-90% of US Christians. The religious groups that reject evolution are a minority, even in the US. Therefore, the phrase should reflect this. I realize that creationists are frequent contributors to Wikipedia. And if a creationist talks to their friends and family, they feel like the entire world believes what they believe. This is just not true. It is a well known bias, related to a confirmation bias or an anthropic bias. But wake up and smell the coffee: creationists are not a majority unless one twists the statistics frantically, and limits one's frame of reference to a restricted physical area or class of people. So any statement should reflect this. Just stating "some religions reject evolution" is very weak and not descriptive, and might even be viewed as misleading. Why not be honest and as accurate as possible? A small number of Christian sects reject evolution, and this phenomenon is most common in the US. It is less clear exactly what muslims and Jews believe, but it appears that creationism is not a majority view among muslims and Jews. If you want to claim otherwise, produce evidence demonstrating it. I also am uncomfortable with claiming that many religions accept at least a theistic form of evolution. Who cares how they reconcile doctrine with evolution? They either accept evolution as reasonable, or not. And most do. There are a wide variety of ways to come to this accommodation. It just makes things more complicated to try to describe how each comes to this position and what the details are. This article is not the place to do that.--Filll 19:11, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


Filll, your numbers on support for evolution in the U.S. are extremely suspect and highly misleading. According to the Gallup poll referenced here [3], almost 50% of *all* Americans clearly believe in young-earth creationism. I doubt, therefore, that evolution is accepted by the chosen faiths of 77-90% of U.S. Christians. I really don't want to get into a big discussion about the numbers, but it's clear that young-earth creationists are at least a significant minority in the U.S. I see others have commented below while I was typing. Sorry if my comments are in the wrong place or redundant. Gnixon 22:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I knew you were a creationist. First of all, the poll is irrelevant. The religion's faith and dogma is separate from what individual members may or may not believe. Second, the poll is irrelevant, since this is not an article about polls. Orangemarlin 22:28, 29 March 2007 (UTC)


I guess that's why I wanted the sentence to be "most Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic religions do not consider evolution to be antithetical to their faith and dogma. It's simple, verifiable, and positive to the fact that religious objection to evolution is really a US-centric, very right wing, ideology. We can then point to other articles that discuss this topic in much more detail. What say you? Orangemarlin 21:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
I think you'll have a hard time verifying that, but it's not my main objection. I think it's a huge mistake to start off the article by trying to marginalize those who object to evolution, because it sends a big neon message to everyone that this article is going to have an anti-creationist slant. For the same reason, someone's gotta go through the article and change almost all the sentences to start with "critics of evolution say..." and "supporters of evolution say...". These points are very clear from NPOV and self-identification policies. On the other hand, I think it would be wonderful if we had a section here or in creation-evolution controversy simply listing all the numbers on how many people and which religions/sects accept or oppose evolution. But in a simple, unbiased tone! Wikipedia policy is clear that it's much better to use numbers than say things like "small subset" or "most," or, indeed, "some". OM, I appreciate your concern to not be misleading, but I think going on in the intro about how many religions accept evolution is more weasel-wording than very simply saying "some religions" and continuing to the meat of the sentence. Yes, some could be .1%, 50%, or 99%, but the number really isn't relevant to the sentence or even the paragraph, which only seeks to state the existence of creationists and define some terms. I know you guys have good intentions, but I'm pretty sure there aren't many creationists helping with their side of this page, so we really need to be extra careful to avoid bias. How about this for a compromise? Let's just say "Some creationists...", but wikify "some" to link to a section or article that very simply and factually provides the numbers. What do you think? Sorry I don't have much time to help with this now, so I won't comment further for a few days, but I'll be more than happy to put in some work later. Cheers, Gnixon 22:19, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
level of support for evolution? SheffieldSteel 22:24, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Maybe, but it's not quite about which religions believe creationism. Perhaps a link directly to the gallup poll table in that article would be better. A new article or section somewhere would be ideal, as the subject is very worthy of documentation here. BTW, Filll, I think your 77-90% numbers must have been support of evolution being taught. (See same article.) I hereby officially mute myself for a few days. Gnixon 22:30, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Filll, it seems to me you should get some sources for those claims. If you can't you should retract your statements. If they're sourced then they're good information that should be in an article. If they're already documented in some other article, or if it would disrupt the flow of this one, a link should be available in the middle of the relevant paragraph. Either way, rather than bickering about whether or not "many religions" or "some religions" is misleading, we shuold simply provide all the sourced information required to make that judgement for oneself. Endomorphic 21:52, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
This is an interesting case of looking at not quite the same question from different viewpoints. The answer looks different depending on whether the question is related to religions, religious groups, Christian sects, clergy, laity or the general public. Thanks to Gnixon for the poll link: it indicates as a 1991 US poll showing 47% choosing "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." – this is taken as "Creationist view". 40% chose "Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's creation.", taken as TE, and 9% chose a similar statement with "God had no part in this process." The 1997 poll figures are 44%, 39% and 10%, with figures showing only 5% of "scientists" taking the "creationist" view. The 1991 US poll gives some detailed breakdown, but no indication of religious affiliations or of what proportion of sects/faith groups support creationism or are officially compatible with evolution. Note that some groups, such as the Roman Catholic church, officially accept theistic evolution, but have adherents who are creationist.
The page gives a link to a page on poll figures for beliefs in various Christian countries which are of interest: the relevant poll is from 1991, with those agreeing to "Human beings developed from earlier species of animals" around 35% in the US and Poland, 41% in Russia, 51% in Northern Ireland, 57% in Israel and 60% upwards elsewhere, with the UK at 76% topped only by East Germany at 81%. Note that this doesn't touch on other religions, and obviously Israel is Jewish rather than Christian.
Filll's looked at which sect takes which position, but it's difficult to balance the figures - how do you weigh Jehovah's Witnesses (creationist) against Roman Catholics (theistic evolution)? There must be a handy parable somewhere....... dave souza, talk 10:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Creationist terminology

(copied from Talk:creation-evolution controversy becuase I think it's very relevant here. Gnixon 16:02, 31 March 2007 (UTC))

I have seen objections to using the terms evolutionist and darwinist. But the term creationist seems to be used very often and many times inaccurately. What would be the accepted term for someone who believes in common descent and modification by natural selection and what term should we use for someone who believes that life was created by a some sort of intelligence? 69.211.150.60 13:56, 31 March 2007 (UTC)

"Supporters/critics" of "evolution/creation" can be combined where appropriate in an NPOV way. Wikipedia's policy on being guided by "self-identification" is useful here. For example, it is unfair to refer to proponents of Intelligent Design as "Creationists" or "Neo-creationists" because they may object to those terms, arguing that ID is different from creationism. Similarly, since the term "evolutionist" is regarded as a pejorative by many who support evolution, it should be avoided. The objection is that it puts supporters of evolution on the same footing as "creationists," whereas they may prefer to differentiate between evolution as science and creation as religious belief (no such thing as a "gravityist," for example). As I understand things, those who support creationism do not object to "creationist," but perhaps that term should be avoided, too, for balance. You raise a very good point, and articles like these often have a big problem with allowing a subtle bias in how groups are identified. See, e.g., Objections to evolution, where many sections start with "Creationists claim...," followed by unattributed arguments against those claims. Gnixon 15:55, 31 March 2007 (UTC)
Creationist doublespeak. Meh. Orangemarlin 03:30, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
OM, that's the second time you've used "creationist" as a pejorative to attack me, as though I'm going to be hurt and think you insulted my mother. Presumably you hope the label will discredit me among other editors around here. In any case, just like the last time you did it, I think it's pretty silly. It wouldn't take much effort to look through the comments on my user talk page and article talk pages and decide I'm unlikely to believe in creationism. I'm pretty frustrated, by the way, that you've gotten me to stoop to "defending" myself on that point. As I explained in the comment on your talk page that you removed so quickly (presumably it got in the way of your barnstar), I think it's very damaging to Wikipedia when you hijack it to wage war against creationists. If anything, making hostile comments about creationists will only chase them away from Wikipedia, but we especially need them around to help write articles like this one. Gnixon 21:49, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm attempting to have Orangemarlin blocked. Please ignore his silly comments. Gnixon 01:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Let's get back to the original point. It would be very helpful if we identified an NPOV way to refer to supporters and critics of evolution, creationism, etc., i.e., a way that is consistent with Wikipedia:Naming conflict#Proper nouns. Gnixon 21:49, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

"Hicks"?--80.164.62.165 19:21, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Fred Hoyle

OK, I just wasted a good 30 minutes of my life. The Journal Nature has an outstanding archive on its website, one where you can go back nearly 60 years to review a citation. Well, I thought to myself, I wanted to read this article by Hoyle, oft-quoted, about the 747, tornadoes and such. Lo and behold, in Volume 294, November 1981, page 105 there is no article by one Fred Hoyle.[4] OK, maybe there was some problem with the exact date or volume or page. So I search Hoyle. No article called "On Evolution." Strange. So I go to google and see who might use the reference, so that I can find the correct reference. Well, not a single, I mean not one, academic peer-reviewed article used the reference. In fact, outside of this Wikipedia article, the only place I saw the reference time and time again in basically Creationist tilted articles. They all use this story, with the oft-cited Nature reference. But, in fact, unless someone can tell me the correct reference, I think this is an urban myth. Far be it for me to say this, but I think this is a bunch of BS. In my search, I could find no proof that Hoyle actually made these comments about the 747, that he made them with regards to evolution nor with regards to anything. Apparently, he gave a speech to some Astronomy society or another in the mid-80's telling the story, but I have no clue as to its context. Because Hoyle believed in Evolution, he has become the prime example of an "Evolutionist" changing his mind. But a review of some of his writing in the late 80's does not indicate that he believed in anything else but the Big Bang and Evolution. I can't believe this.Orangemarlin 23:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

More information. On page 113 of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, he wasn't even sure if Hoyle said this. He thinks it's a story passed on by Hoyle's colleague, Chandra Wickramasinghe. I'm sure Dawkins would have even better access to references than I would, and he couldn't find it. This is definitely a myth. Orangemarlin 23:13, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Firstly, thanks for the research. Fascinating – now you've got me time wasting. However, you should read the good book, or at least the good FAQ: as this says, "As was the case with Quote Mine # 57, the creationists have frequently mangled the citation in passing around the quote.". More on topic, a brief summary and a more detailed discussion both cite the source. Should keep these bloomin' Boeings in their junkyards, mutter mutter. ... dave souza, talk 21:54, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I wish I had access to the book. I'd love to see if it's quoted right, but I will trust talk.origins over anyone else. It's funny that the Nature reference is used in 100's, and I mean 100's of creationist rants about evolution. A google search was telling. It's interesting that Dawkins couldn't find the quote either, and I'm sure he can afford 10 graduate assistants to do the grunt work for him. In the end, it is quote mining, but they only found fool's gold. Orangemarlin 22:17, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
If a person investigates quote mining just a little bit, it soon becomes very apparent that creationists and others of that ilk are lying and dishonest, and cheaters. This however is completely inline with their other contradictory and hypocritical beliefs on many other issues. I have looked at several examples of this, some that go back much more than 100 years, and they are by turns funny and infuriating. This is particularly true to people who are misquoted like Dawkins or Gould who are made to sound as though they disbelieve evolution and think it is a fraud and a hoax in assorted quotes that creationists use. I might point out that there was a famous quote by Martin Luther (which I will only paraphrase, and possibly mangle) that in the service of his faith, it was permissible to lie. It seems that creationists take this advice to heart!--Filll 13:36, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
It appears that Martin Luther was quite an authority on lies. He apparently published a book entitled "On the Jews and their lies".--Filll 13:39, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Here are a couple of great Martin Luther quotes:

"Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spritual things, but--more frequently than not --struggles against the Divine Word...."

"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God."

A bunch of other great quotes can be found at [5].--Filll 13:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Talk.origins

I agree with Fordmadoxfraud's reverts of the anonymous users edits. Talk.origins, though a usenet resource, utilizes verifiable references in the discussions. It is not, like old usenet, which were the ramblings of individuals with or without references. Orangemarlin 20:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Misunderstandings about evolution

I'm just wondering if anyone knows what the story is with this article? Its history was copied here, and Silence rewrote the article, but I'm not sure why the old article still exists? Cheers, darkliight[πalk] 14:01, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

It still exists because people objected strenuously to its removal. So it remains, because the consensus was that it should remain. I and Silence had suggested that it be replaced with this current article, but others disagreed. So there you have it.--Filll 14:33, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, I remember the AfD, but I thought that was before the article was moved here and rewritten. Or am I mistaken? darkliight[πalk] 14:46, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
If memory serves me correctly, you are mistaken.--Filll 15:28, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Not trying to cause an argument, just trying to get to the bottom of this - at least then we'll have a record in case anyone else asks later. I went and checked the page histories, W.marsh (talk · contribs) closed the Afd here on the 17th of January, then on the 22nd of January Silence moved the page across here per this talk page. I can't find any other AfD, and no real talk of deleting the old article after it was copied here either. I'm happy to nominate it again if this is the case and no-one wants the other article. I'll check back tomorrow sometime before I do anything though. Cheers, darkliight[πalk] 15:50, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
Nominated for deletion. darkliight[πalk] 03:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I thought that article was deleted months ago. I don't even watch it any more. I'll vote for deletion, so please post the page where the discussion occurs. Orangemarlin 05:01, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
I thought the same, but here is the AfD. Cheers, darkliight[πalk] 05:09, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Universal Claims

The opening of the article, in particular makes the statement that the Scientific community accpets evolution as fact in a way that implies that there is 100% acceptance, which cna be proven false. I'm not aying the dissenting opinion is correct, siply that it is POV to remove any mention of dissent at all, particualry as this is nto the main page and it explicitly a page to discuss objectiosn to evolution. I have tried three different methods of removing this pov, such as:

accepted by all but the entire scientific community
offcialy acepted by the scientific community
accepted by the majority of the scientific community
acepted byt he vast majority of the scientific community.

If none of these is a proper way to address the fct that there is a minority opinion among some scientists that evolution is nto correct, then another mention msut be found. But to use universal claims is easily verifibly false and blatant pov. 100% of scientists need to agree for universal statements to be true. 99% is quite simply not enoguh to be universal.65.74.73.30 08:25, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Specifically, I am able to verify falsehood with the following links:
http://www.dissentfromdarwin.org/ - A scietnfic text that is highly critical fo darwinism.
http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660 - The list of scientists contributing to the work, including professors from Harvard, Princeton, and Johns Hopkins.
This is verifiable proof that there are dissenting scientific opinions.65.74.73.30 08:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello 65.74.73.30! Thanks for taking this to the talk page. If you get a chance, it might be worthwhile signing up for an account. There are a bunch of good reasons at WP:WHY. As for your request that we mention dissenting opinions, it is discussed in detail at Talk:Evolution/FAQ - it's a worthwhile read, but as far as this particular concern goes, the problem is you're asking us to give undue weight (See the policy here: Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Undue_weight) to a minority opinion. I'll leave it up to the respective pages to fill you in a bit more, but if you have further questions then by all means feel free to post away. Cheers, darkliight[πalk] 08:43, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
Not at all, you misunderstand me. I'm simply saying no universal claims. You don't have to mention what the minority believes to eb true, simply that they exist. And not even that much really. Im jsut syaing it's pov to say the entire scientific community believes it to be true, and it is proven false by this evidence. The entire scientific community does nto believe it to be true. You don't have to mention the minority at all. Simpyl syaing evolution is accepted by the majority, or the vast majority of the scientific community is sufficent to remove the pov.65.74.73.30 08:47, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
I mean, what the sentence says right now is basically that "Every scientists believes in evolution." What Giving undue weight would be syaing "Most scientists believe evoluion, howver there are a number of scientists that disagree, a number which is rising by the day." What I'm proposing is jsut saying "PRetty much every scientists agrees with evolution." 65.74.73.30 08:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
The article does not assert that every scientist holds a particular belief. It states the the scientific community rejects a set of arguments. There are always exceptions, but noting every possible exception on every possible topic is simply not feasible, and this is where the undue weight clause comes in. Until you get support for the change here, please leave the article as is. Cheers, darkliight[πalk] 08:57, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
It is universal. There are so few scientists that do not believe in evolution, it's almost rounding or counting error. Why discuss a minority viewpoint that is so small that it barely exists? And as for growing, I would posit that it is not only not growing but getting smaller. I believe the Discovery Institute put out a list of so-called scientists that believed in evolution. Most of them had either bible college degrees or worse yet degrees from diploma mills, some were not scientists (sorry, but a computer scientist is not a scientist), and some had their views misrepresented. And as I have stated elsewhere, scientists do not "believe" in Evolution. I don't believe in Evolution, and I don't accept Evolution because of faith, opinion, conviction--I accept Evolution as a fact, because it has been subjected to rigorous scientific analysis, because of the substantial proof, and because a lot of people smarter than I have studied and accepted it. Evolution is not a doctrine, it is not a dogma, and it does not require faith to accept.Orangemarlin 14:01, 21 May 2007 (UTC)