Dawkins’ Gift to Kansas

Posted by Burt Humburg on May 24, 2005 11:45 PM

Richard Dawkins has penned another good article on evolution. Read through it and we’ll discuss it on the flipside.

Dawkins makes a lot of very good points. First off is the way that creationists hijack the language of teaching to their own ends. Teleological thinking is generally shunned as a scientific method because it’s not useful, but concepts in science are often a lot easier to get across if teachers refer to enzymes or organelles being “designed” to do a particular function. To a creationist, this is tantamount to endorsing ID creationism.

To a scientist, doubt inspires investigation and can be used to intrigue an audience. To a creationist, it’s an admission of defeat. And don’t get me started on quote mining. Dawkins’ point about hijacking language is quite valid.

Similarly, Dawkins talks about the incorrect default explanation of design. That is, to a creationist, once one rules out a current understanding of science or evolution, it’s as good as proving design. This is an intrinsic failure of an eliminative method, like Dembski’s “Explanatory Filter.” (Suspect design, rule out chance; rule out science: design.)

I don’t want to gild Dawkins’ lily but he’s absolutely correct. Eliminative methods can be used in science, but not as evidence for something. Rather, eliminative methods are used in place of evidence - as a surrogate for positive reasons to consider one explanation over another.

An example would be Alzheimer’s disease, for which there is no good test but highly reliable post-mortem findings. What we do is suspect Alzheimer’s disease (a patient presents of likely age with a good history for Alzheimer’s dementia), rule out reversible causes (vitamin deficiencies, too much narcotics, etc.), and then we diagnose Alzheimer’s. For a population of people that fit this description, post-mortem examinations have been found to be (and are) extremely likely to verify the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, even in the absence of a really good clinical test for it or other positive evidence while the patient is alive.

But what if the patient in question was 30 years old? A 30 year old is incredibly unlikely to have Alzheimer’s disease. To get me to believe a patient like this had Alzheimer’s, I’d have to see a reliable brain biopsy that confirmed the diagnosis, and I’d do that only at the end of ruling out every form of temporary dementia (aka, delirium) I could think of. Even then, I’d be hesitant to settle on that diagnosis unless it was really my last option.

What’s going on here is that making any sort of eliminative argument in favor of a diagnosis, what we call the “wastebasket diagnosis,” is itself an occasion for consideration. You can’t just see dementia and diagnose Alzheimer’s by elimination: you’ve got to be smart about what gets the default, wastebasket status. The implications for untreated, reversible delirium in a young person are too terrible to not error on the side of vigilance. On the other hand, for a patient in the correct age group with a good history, you don’t want a million dollar workup to determine what is painfully obvious. Again, what gets default status is itself an occasion for consideration; it is a surrogate for good evidence, not good evidence itself.

Now consider evolution. Michael Behe used to claim the absence of whale transitional fossils as evidence in favor of design. Specifically,

Michael Behe wrote:

… (if) random evolution is true, there must have been a large number of transitional forms between the Mesonychid and the ancient whale. Where are they? It seems like quite a coincidence that of all the intermediate species that must have existed between the Mesonychidand whale, only species that are very similar to the end species have been found.

Notably, the year after he published his paper, not one, not two, but three whale transitional fossils were found.

Where Behe errored is in using design as his wastebasket diagnosis. Rule out current understandings of evolution or science and Behe chose to believe that design was the best explanation. What Behe should have done was recognize the brilliant history of evolution and science in terms of explaining away mysteries that used to be the work of God and credit future understandings of evolution and science as his wastebasket diagnosis. Then, he would have been less likely to make the mistake of diagnosing design inappropriately.

Finally, Dawkins points out that creationists have an unfortunate propensity to advocate for ignorance and confusion. I think I speak for everyone here at the Thumb when I agree wholeheartedly with his sentiment. As my recent essay Creationist Fears, Creationist Behaviors has hopefully convinced the reader, this is the whole point of intelligent design creationism: to confuse students about the validity of evolution or the methods of science.

BCH

EDIT: Ficksede badd spleing erurs an gramer.

Trackback URL: http://www.pandasthumb.org/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1068

Comment #31994

Posted by OJSBUDDY on May 25, 2005 01:26 AM (e) (s)

Darwin never argued that man ‘evolved’ from simple matter . Darwin , a Minister of christianity , only pointed out that God’s ‘created’ creatures adapt to the envionment they are given .

If matter , alone , ‘evolves’ of its own volition , then do not bother to waste your time building an automobile or an airplane :: in time , IT will build (‘evolve’) itself .

If matter alone can evolve into a human being , then for Godsake it can ‘evole’ into a simple motorcycle ! !

Darwin and Evolution are totally misrepresented by the idiot followers of the genius thinker .

ERGO :
It is the ‘evolutionsts’ who preach nonsense .

‘Existence’ requires WILL. - - Shakespear , ” To Be or Not to Be ” .

It is your Will that determines your existence .

Comment #31995

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 01:33 AM (e) (s)

hey there, buddy.

define evolve for me.

Comment #31998

Posted by Sandor on May 25, 2005 02:31 AM (e) (s)

Hmmm yes ofcourse now I see it. Humans exist because there once was an ape who really really wanted very badly to be a human :P

Comment #32000

Posted by outeast on May 25, 2005 07:11 AM (e) (s)

No, humans exist because a speceship carrying a load of hairdressers and telephone hygienists crashed here a few thousand years ago.

Comment #32002

Posted by darwinfinch on May 25, 2005 07:41 AM (e) (s)

OJSB!  Yeah!  Kepp those jokes coming, you ol’ Loki, you!

Comment #32003

Posted by Burt Humburg on May 25, 2005 07:49 AM (e) (s)

Evolution is the non-random selection of randomly varying replicators.

Evolution requires replicators. Prior to that, we aren’t talking about evolution.

Machines do not replicate. Cells and animals do.

Thank you for your contributions to the Thumb.

BCH

Comment #32004

Posted by PaulP on May 25, 2005 08:05 AM (e) (s)

Matter does not evolve, life does. The process by which matter became living is not evolution.
Life can evolve into other forms of life, and I assume you do not believe a motorcycle is living.
Unless you adhere to De Selby’s mollycule theory (see http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/156478214X/qid=1117007257/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/104-9208945-7099146?v=glance&s=books&n=507846).
Noting that mollycules at a surface are not tightly bound, he postulated an exchange of mollycules at a surface under friction, for example between a bicycle saddle and the ..er.. part of the cyclist’s anatomy in contact with the saddle (Phew, that was close, almost typed “bum”. DOH!). Now imagine a bicycle which has been with one owner for decades, so many mollycules will have been exchanged that the rider will
have become the bicycle and vice versa. So you can see the immorality of a man riding a woman’s bicycle.

Comment #32005

Posted by Ginger Yellow on May 25, 2005 08:09 AM (e) (s)

Telephone sanitation engineers, thank you very much.

Comment #32008

Posted by fwiffo on May 25, 2005 08:28 AM (e) (s)

Buddy - have you ever read Origin?  Have you read anything Darwin wrote?

Comment #32010

Posted by Flint on May 25, 2005 08:36 AM (e) (s)

Something strikes me as not quite right here. I have never yet seen what I consider a conclusion of Divine creation based on an eliminative argument. But to support this claim, I need to distinguish between what I consider a logical progression, and what I consider a rationalization.

Without question, the presentations from (especially) Dembski, but most of the ID school generally, take the form of an eliminative approach. They say, life is too complicated to have evolved blindly. And this being creationism’s only real competitor, once we eliminate it creationism remains. Many have pointed out the logical error here: Not A does not imply B.The problem is, they are pointing out a logical error in what was not a logical process.

I should think it would be pretty obvious that creation is not *deduced* in any way, as a proposed answer to “What’s going on here, anyway?” The creationist answer is already known, it is axiomatic, a priori, not subject to doubt or question. All of these superficially eliminative arguments are attempts to rationalize a foregone conclusion. It’s apparently not considered persuasive to say “I believe this because it’s true” except to someone who already shares the same belief.

Surely nobody thinks that Dembski, objective and agnostic, sat down with his mathematical training (and no biological knowledge) and by a sequence of symbolic manipulations within the rules of his discipline derived the conclusion that life could not have evolved — at which time he experienced a blinding flash of insight and leapt up shouting “I will henceforth worship Jesus Christ, whom I have found in my equations!”

I think it was Dawkins who had a more useful proposal: That humans are born able to accept what they are told implicitly and unthinkingly, because being able to follow directions without question or analysis was for a few hundred thousand years (or more) an essential survival trait, without which children could not have reached the age where they could reproduce. And neotony being what it is, especially with constant reinforcement, by the time the child reaches the age where certain notions can be usefully questioned, they can no longer be neurologically displaced.

(I saw a study where a roomful of people underwent some sort of brain scan while watching a video of someone lighting up a cigarette. Half the people watching had never smoked, the other half were ex-smokers who had quit for at least ten years. The smokers’ brains lit up like Las Vegas as they watched, while those who had never smoked showed nothing. There are in this sense no ex-smokers in the same way there are no ex-alcoholics. There are only smokers and alcoholics currently not smoking or drinking. There is what I consider intriguing evidence that religious belief also becomes neurologically hardwired. Perhaps there is some physical age before which this wiring becomes indelible?)

Consider that Behe used the whale fossil claim to buttress his Belief, but that when his whale claim became obsolete in light of clear contrary evidence, Behe’s Belief didn’t budge an iota. And this, ultimately, is why we are not really seeing eliminative logic. Eliminative logic says Because no A, therefore B. Produce lots of A, and B doesn’t move!

Saying that creationists hijack the language is also misleading, because it implies that they know better but are doing so as a tactic in part of a larger battle. I submit that this isn’t so. They are describing the world according to their own model. What Dawkins and others can’t quite realize is that believers Believe. Their minds are stuffed with crystalline certainties based on no evidence or experience they can remember, and therefore not capable of being altered through evidence or experience. The creationist strives to find some way, ANY way, to make external reality fit and support those certainties. Reality can be interpreted across a broad range. Trained-in Truths cannot.

Comment #32013

Posted by FL on May 25, 2005 08:50 AM (e) (s)

Evolution requires replicators. Prior to that, we aren’t talking about evolution….

Matter does not evolve, life does. The process by which matter became living is not evolution….

…Unless you consult actual evolution textbooks such as Volpe-Rosenbaum’s and Freeman-Herron’s.

Then, it becomes quite clear that prebiotic chemical evolution claims are considered part and parcel of evolution theory.  No denying, no sidestepping.

FL

Comment #32015

Posted by Nat Whilk on May 25, 2005 08:54 AM (e) (s)

Burt Humburg wrote:

Finally, Dawkins points out that creationists have an unfortunate propensity to advocate for ignorance and confusion. I think I speak for everyone here at the Thumb when I agree wholeheartedly with his sentiment. As my recent essay Creationist Fears, Creationist Behaviors has hopefully convinced the reader, this is the whole point of intelligent design creationism: to confuse students about the validity of evolution or the methods of science.

Speaking of Dawkins and your “Creationist Fears, Creationist Behaviors” essay, Dawkins’ recent letter to the editor of Nature suggests to me that he would strongly disagree with some of the strategy you advocate in your essay.  Am I misreading him or you (or both)?

Comment #32018

Posted by Nat Whilk on May 25, 2005 09:17 AM (e) (s)

Burt Humburg wrote:

Teleological thinking is generally shunned as a scientific method because it’s not useful, but concepts in science are often a lot easier to get across if teachers refer to enzymes or organelles being “designed” to do a particular function.

Why should that be so?  Are students’ brains wired differently than researchers’?  Has anyone even bothered to try teaching biology without using teleological language?

Comment #32019

Posted by Pedant on May 25, 2005 09:23 AM (e) (s)

I don’t want to guild Dawkins’ lilly

I’m guessing you don’t want to gild his lily either.

Comment #32020

Posted by Burt Humburg on May 25, 2005 09:33 AM (e) (s)

Heh. Point well taken.

I wrote once that I was loathe to do something. Someone corrected me on that as well. Touché.

BCH

Comment #32026

Posted by frank schmidt on May 25, 2005 09:46 AM (e) (s)

Then, it becomes quite clear that prebiotic chemical evolution claims are considered part and parcel of evolution theory.  No denying, no sidestepping.

Here we have FL proving Dawkins’ point. Here he makes his stand for where God did it. Why? Because he fears that the evolutionary biologists might actually be right, and his own species did evolve from some other life form. What will he do? In trembling he seeks, and finds

THE ANSWER

God made the first self-replicating molecules! Ha, take that you lousy scientists! Tremble, Stanley Miller! Grovel, Richard Dawkins! You’ll never prove that life came from some primordial soup! HaHaHaHaHaaaa…..

He goes to bed, his faith in his own ignorance vindicated.

Comment #32029

Posted by Kevin on May 25, 2005 09:52 AM (e) (s)

Thats a very good point flint.  It seems very unlikely that the majority of creationists believe what they believe as a result of a logical process, leaving them mostly immune to any logical counter-arguement.  The decietfulness on their part comes when they try to conceal this, such as they are doing by advocating the teaching of ID in schools.  They know what they believe isn’t science (or those of them with any self-examination skills do) so why are they trying to get it taught as science?  Because they know that if they frame their arguement in the way they feel about the subject- as a matter of revealed truth, they will get no traction in their effort to subvert the wall between church and state.  So they pretend to accept science, then go about the process of undermining it.  So while using logic to point out the obvious flaws in their arguements won’t actually convince any of the people making those arguements, it will expose them as being either fools or the cynical theocrats they are.

Comment #32030

Posted by Harq al-Ada on May 25, 2005 09:54 AM (e) (s)

Hi, FL.  My geology textbook’s introduction talks about cosmology and the creation of the Solar System.  Does this mean that these subjects are part of geology?  Oh wait!  I’ve got it now.  No.

Comment #32036

Posted by PvM on May 25, 2005 10:28 AM (e) (s)

Dawkins wrote:

Creationists mine ignorance and uncertainty, not as a spur to honest research but in order to exploit and abuse Darwin’s challenge. “Bet you can’t tell me how the elbow joint of the lesser spotted weasel frog evolved by slow gradual degrees?” If the scientist fails to give an immediate and comprehensive answer, a default conclusion is drawn: “Right then, the alternative theory, ‘intelligent design’, wins by default.” Notice, first, the biased logic: if theory A fails in some particular, theory B must be right! We are encouraged to leap to the default conclusion
without even looking to see whether the default theory fails in the very same particular. ID is granted (quite wrongly as I have shown elsewhere) a charmed immunity to the rigorous demands
made of evolution.

Hear hear. The vacuity of ID combined with the argument from ignorance. Dawkins is right on the mark. While I hardly approve of his use of evolution to support atheism, Dawkins does have a good point hear. And many Christians are listening and getting the message

Comment #32038

Posted by Flint on May 25, 2005 10:30 AM (e) (s)

Kevin:

The underlying problem here is that a very high percentage of voters are well aware that revealed truth and science aren’t the same process, but still have a very strong desire that the two agree. If only science could find God, all these problems would go away. And that means anyone making the claim that science HAS found God is going to get a very respectful hearing.

I suggest that most Believers are neither fools nor cynical theocrats. In Dawkins-think, they are victims of their parents’ delusions. And so when a closer examination shows that science hasn’t found God after all, something has to give. And their faith very rarely compromises with anything, it’s too deeply rooted in the back of their brain. God IS. Therefore, if science disputes God’s word, science is wrong by definition.

Creationists are well aware of the same thing we are: there is a cut-off age beyond which Belief can no longer be fully internalized. Get your message to a child young enough, and in nearly every case that child will grow up permanently unable to adopt a new Belief or to discard a Belief that got trained in. The younger they can be reached, the more indelible the training — whether that training be in fundamentalist doctrine or scientific method.

Granted, ID is an artificial posture, ginned up in a rather transparent attempt to make an end-run around existing legal tests. These people can well be regarded as cynical, but the rank and file have consistenly rejected this disguise. They can’t help agreeing with Dembski that if Jesus Christ is not central, the position is not valid. And science is the Big Kahuna, because people can’t help but be aware that it works so fabulously well.

Comment #32041

Posted by Pierce R. Butler on May 25, 2005 10:48 AM (e) (s)

The article which (nominally) inspired this thread is mistitled: it might more accurately be called “Dawkins’ Slap in the Face to Kansas”.

Dawkins’ passing sneers at “a simplemindedly pious audience” and “Ignorance is God’s gift to Kansas” could fairly be used, with no basis for charges of quote-mining, to illustrate the case of arrogant intellectuals holding the general citizenry in contempt. Moreover, he disregards the abundant evidence for the existence of clear-thinking pro-science Kansans, taking the part (the state Education Board’s current majority & their supporters) for the whole: wouldn’t he flunk any student who handed in a two-page paper doing the same?

Comment #32042

Posted by Flint on May 25, 2005 10:55 AM (e) (s)

Pierce:

You are upset because Dawkins failed to isolate the majority of voters who elected the majority of the school board? But unfortunately, the resulting antiscience curriculum is inflicted on ALL the children of Kansas, not just the children of those who wish to victimize everyone else.

We’re all aware that this thread was started by someone in Kansas. Aren’t we?

Comment #32046

Posted by Moses on May 25, 2005 11:15 AM (e) (s)

Flint,

Your comment in 32010 was a masterpiece.

Comment #32047

Posted by murky on May 25, 2005 11:16 AM (e) (s)

Not really a propos, but here I have a gift to Kansas, ala Billie Holiday and Lewis Allen

http://murkythoughts.blogspot.com/2005/05/strange-fruit.html…

Comment #32051

Posted by Russell on May 25, 2005 11:38 AM (e) (s)

FL wrote:

Then, it becomes quite clear that prebiotic chemical evolution claims are considered part and parcel of evolution theory.  No denying, no sidestepping.

FL very clearly exemplifies one of the key characteristics of fundamentalist thinking, which ties a lot of things together, and highlights anti-evolution as a central issue.

It’s this all-or-none thinking. Consider:

With regard to abortion: one moment it’s prelife (say gametes just prior to fertilization); one fraction of a picosecond later, it’s fully human, entitled to all the rights and privileges…

Likewise at the end of life: either one is alive or not. None of this “persistent vegetative state” or shades-of-gray nonsense for the Fundie.

What about the dawn of life? The Fundie is comfortable with the instantaneous divine “poofing” of nonlife into life. But this whole transition period, where at time 0 it’s more of a chemical process; a million years later it’s a little more “life-like”; another million years, still more so…  It just seems to give them the heebie-jeebies. The Fundie doesn’t seem to be able to deal with the whole “becoming” process: is it A or is it B? Which is it? No sidestepping!

I think this is one manifestation of “typological” thinking vs. “evolutionary” thinking. Mayr wrote about this some in “What Evolution Is”; Anyone know of better developments of this theme somewhere?

Comment #32059

Posted by Charles on May 25, 2005 12:21 PM (e) (s)

You are upset because Dawkins failed to isolate the majority of voters who elected the majority of the school board?

Unfortunately, Pierce, our electoral system doesn’t work that way. I honestly don’t know if a majority of the voters elected the majority of the school board, but mathematically they didn’t have to.

Consider this:

Let’s pretend that there are 21 members of the school board (just to use an odd number). Then the creationists only need 11 for a majority. In order to elect those 11, they only need “50% + 1” votes in each of the 11 districts.

So it becomes ((11/21) * (0.5)) + 11 votes to elect a creationist school board. Or 26.19% + 11 votes!

Consider that fewer than half of eligible voters actually go to the polls, and the percentage is actually less than 1/2 of this. Of course, this assumes that the creationists got zero votes in the other 10 districts - not a realistic possibility. But it does show that you don’t need anywhere NEAR majority support to get such nonsense through.

I’m going to go off and be sick now.

Comment #32064

Posted by Flint on May 25, 2005 12:47 PM (e) (s)

Moses,

Thank you.

Comment #32065

Posted by Steve U. on May 25, 2005 12:48 PM (e) (s)

To get me to believe a patient like this had Alzheimer’s, I’d have to see a reliable brain biopsy that confirmed the diagnosis, and I’d do that only at the end of ruling out every form of temporary dementia (aka, delirium) I could think of. Even then, I’d be hesitant to settle on that diagnosis unless it was really my last option.

Some people are genetically prone to a disease referred to as early-onset Alzheimer’s.  As I recall, the disease is associated with a mutation in the B-amyloid gene which affects its processing and which causes plaques to ]appear which resemble those observed in elderly Alzheimer’s patients.

At one time, our ancestors might have imprisoned or tortured or killed such people because they were “possessed by evil spirits”.  We know better now, thanks to the scientific method.  Or at least, many of us know better.

Comment #32069

Posted by Sheikh Mahandi on May 25, 2005 01:17 PM (e) (s)

Quote
Get your message to a child young enough, and in nearly every case that child will grow up permanently unable to adopt a new Belief or to discard a Belief that got trained in. The younger they can be reached, the more indelible the training — whether that training be in fundamentalist doctrine or scientific method.

Wasn’t it the Jesuits who started the motto - “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man” ?

Comment #32071

Posted by Flint on May 25, 2005 01:25 PM (e) (s)

Wasn’t it the Jesuits who started the motto - “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man” ?

Maybe it was Jean Piaget? It’s no mystery to developmental psychology in many respects, from learning languages without accent to learning not to wet the bed.

Comment #32072

Posted by Greg Peterson on May 25, 2005 01:28 PM (e) (s)

“But show me a man, and I’ll teach you to fish.”

No, wait.  Something like that.

Comment #32074

Posted by Arden Chatfield on May 25, 2005 01:31 PM (e) (s)

Some people are genetically prone to a disease referred to as early-onset Alzheimer’s.  As I recall, the disease is associated with a mutation in the B-amyloid gene which affects its processing and which causes plaques to appear which resemble those observed in elderly Alzheimer’s patients.

At one time, our ancestors might have imprisoned or tortured or killed such people because they were “possessed by evil spirits”.  We know better now, thanks to the scientific method.  Or at least, many of us know better.

I suspect that for the great majority of human history/evolution, almost no one lived long enough for this syndrome to be much of an issue.

Comment #32077

Posted by andy on May 25, 2005 01:38 PM (e) (s)

“Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he eats for life.”

Comment #32078

Posted by Just Bob on May 25, 2005 01:40 PM (e) (s)

I think this is one manifestation of “typological” thinking vs. “evolutionary” thinking. Mayr wrote about this some in “What Evolution Is”; Anyone know of better developments of this theme somewhere?

This isn’t better, but it’s looking at the same problem:

Viruses
Viruses hardly fit into the creationist’s view of the world at all. In the first place, nothing even remotely like them is even remotely alluded to in either Testament. About the only “biblical” disease that anyone can remember is leprosy (a bacterial disease), and there’s no clue that any of the writers that mentioned it knew that it was caused by any sort of micro-organism. Egyptian cattle suffered a “murrain”— with no apparent cause other than a divine curse. A blight on crops is mentioned in a place or two, which, if it were naturally caused, might be a viral disease, but again only the disease is mentioned, not any organic cause. Then there are the “emerods” (hemorrhoids) with which God afflicted some folks he was miffed at. I have been told both of the following by “creation scientists”:

o  The Devil created viruses.

o  Viruses are not in the Bible because they are “imperfect.”

But the really disturbing thing about viruses is that they occupy the twilight zone between living and dead, a zone that would seem ought not to exist in a creation in which creatures were “given life,” or have “the breath of life.” Of course, the creationist may arbitrarily assign them to either the “living” or “dead” category, but either assignment is a forced fit. Can they be alive if they don’t move, breathe, eat, excrete, or metabolize at all, and can even be crystallized, like other non-living chemicals? Can they be dead if they can self-replicate (reproduce) using the same basic methods as other living things, parasitize other creatures, and are made of nearly the same proteins and nucleic acids as we are? Evolutionary theory doesn’t demand that there be a sharp distinction between living systems and nonliving molecules. That’s the premise of abiogenesis, which creationists insist on lumping in with evolution, so what the heck… we’ll take it. Evolutionary theory can also explain where viruses came from, or why they exist. The fact that there are presently several tentative explanations in no way threatens the structure of evolutionary theory; we’re perfectly happy with hypotheses until the preponderance of evidence clearly favors one over all others. In evolutionary theory (with abiogenesis) there should be some hazy area between living and nonliving, and viruses are dwellers of that twilight zone.

I bet someone at PT can inform me of the latest thinking on the origin of virus.  How about it?

Comment #32081

Posted by Sheikh Mahandi on May 25, 2005 01:42 PM (e) (s)

No, no, I think I remember now it’s “Give me a child till he is seven, and I will teach that mans fish to cycle!”

Comment #32084

Posted by LongTimeLurker on May 25, 2005 01:47 PM (e) (s)

Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; give him a religion, and he starves to death while praying for a fish.

Comment #32088

Posted by andy on May 25, 2005 01:52 PM (e) (s)

“Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he eats for life.”

Comment #32091

Posted by Sheikh Mahandi on May 25, 2005 02:00 PM (e) (s)

If viruses are such a problem, what about poisonous plants? Who created them? God? Why?

Comment #32104

Posted by Greg Peterson on May 25, 2005 02:44 PM (e) (s)

Andy, friend—I get it.  I bet we all get it.  I was making a joke.

As far as God creating things like poisonous plants, venomous snakes, viruses and the like, as a former creationist, I can tell you what I said.  I basically insisted on TWO acts of creation, the original, in which all things were “good” and death did not yet exist, and a second creation after the fall (that whole bootleg apple incident) in which creation was retooled with fangs and thorns and squirmy pathogens.  That was when death entered the cosmos, and with it, the sundry means of exacting it.

No one has to tell me now what absurdity that all is.  And the biggest problem is not even biological (it is madness to suggest that something like a functioning ecosystem could exist without death)—it’s theological.  Why would an omniscient creator, who would have known full well that humans were going to screw up and get eighty-sixed from Eden anyway, why go through the futile gesture of first creating a perfect, death-free world, only to a short time later reverse engineer the whole thing for maximum carnage?  Such a short-bus god deserves only scorn.

Anyway.  My two cents on viruses.  Hey, my degree is in Bible, not biology.  For that perspective, bring on the virologists.  I’m curious myself what the latest is.

Comment #32105

Posted by speaker4thedead on May 25, 2005 02:45 PM (e) (s)

Preposterous. Fish on cycles, indeed. Next, you’ll be telling us about fish taking long moonlight strolls along the mudflats of indonesian islands.

Comment #32107

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 02:48 PM (e) (s)

“they are victims of their parents’ delusions”

“Wasn’t it the Jesuits who started the motto - “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man” ?”

this brings up an interesting issue.

If hard-held religious beliefs are mostly due to what essentially could be termed “brain washing”, what happens when there is no early indoctrination?

are there studies indicating what happens in such circumstances?  any psychologists lurking about that know of any such studies?

this goes back to another article nick posted a while back where researchers had found evidence to support the idea that there is a genetic component to religious behavior.

Although this begins to sound like a nature/nuture argument, I’d certainly be interested in seeing any such studies that might shed light on the issue.

Indeed, someone proposed in another thread that it would be worthwhile to get the fundies to think about something else for a change; put them on the defensive so to speak.

can you imagine the reaction to evidence indicating that their beliefs are primarily genetic in foundation?  that evolutionary theory itself might explain extreme funamentalist behavior?

they’d be busy for years trying to tear that one down.

Comment #32108

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 02:52 PM (e) (s)

“Preposterous. Fish on cycles, indeed. Next, you’ll be telling us about fish taking long moonlight strolls along the mudflats of indonesian islands.”

Humbug indeed!  or perhaps he will even tell us that fish can “fly”…

ludicrous.

Comment #32117

Posted by speaker4thedead on May 25, 2005 03:09 PM (e) (s)

LOL. Flying fish. We don’t need any such muddled thoughts here.

Comment #32122

Posted by Bill Ware on May 25, 2005 03:20 PM (e) (s)

No, no! Isn’t it “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”?

Note: Congressman Harold Ford (D-TN) anounced he’s running for the Senate.

Comment #32123

Posted by Ed Darrell on May 25, 2005 03:21 PM (e) (s)

No, no, no, no, no!

“Show me a man, and get out of my way.”  — Mae West

“Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; show a man how to fish, and he’ll spend all day in a boat drinking beer.”

Comment #32126

Posted by speaker4thedead on May 25, 2005 03:26 PM (e) (s)

What happens if you show a creationist a flying fish?

Comment #32127

Posted by H. Humbert on May 25, 2005 03:32 PM (e) (s)

The problem with funny scientists is there often aren’t enough peers with a healthy enough sense of humor to get the joke.

I am mostly a lurker to this site, but I am perpetually amazed at two things: your gentlemen’s collective intelligence and the frequency with which jokes sail over heads. I say this only in a good natured manner.

Comment #32129

Posted by Just Bob on May 25, 2005 03:33 PM (e) (s)

What happens if you show a creationist a flying fish?

Don’t matter—it’s still a fish, ain’t it?  So what if it glides a bit, crawls across the mud, or even breathes air now and then.  It’s still a fish. Now show me a fish giving birth to a chihuahua, and then you’ve got evolution.

How about it—do I sound like Hovind yet?

Comment #32130

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 03:36 PM (e) (s)

“What happens if you show a creationist a flying fish?”

uh, you’re kidding, right?  a flying fish would of course be evidence for special creation.  how on earth could a fish “evolve” wings.  preposterous.

;)

Comment #32132

Posted by Bill Ware on May 25, 2005 03:37 PM (e) (s)

The God Gene by Dean Hamer might be the book you’re referring to. It’s more like a propensity toward spirituality - being “one with the universe” - than any doctrinal religion. In fact it might be the opposite.

Lots of fuzzy thinking. Write on a popular topic, make lots of money.

Comment #32134

Posted by yellow fatty bean on May 25, 2005 03:42 PM (e) (s)

Good article from Reason here

[IMG]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y232/doctorblumpkin/moron.j…[/IMG]

Comment #32136

Posted by Flint on May 25, 2005 03:49 PM (e) (s)

ST:

If hard-held religious beliefs are mostly due to what essentially could be termed “brain washing”, what happens when there is no early indoctrination?

Are you kidding? There is ALWAYS early indoctrination. Even children locked in attics and ignored except to feed and clean up after them are undergoing “early indoctrination”, and the results are striking. It’s fair to say that every experience we have early in life, of whatever nature, indoctrinates us.

If you want examples, consider studies of adoption into cultures very different from those of the biological parents, as well as studies of assimilation of immigrants into a very different culture, as well as linguistic studies of the development of creoles. The results are in broad agreement — early in life, the human brain is amazingly plastic and malleable. I’m willing to bet (since there’s no possibility of anyone paying off on it) that if we had the power to exchange the places of Kent Hovind and John Stuart Mill at the instant of their birth and exchange them back at the age of six, Hovind would have been the brilliant polymath and Mill the claptrap-addled bozo.

“As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined.” And by some age, straightening out the religionated irrationality requires as much effort, and has as destructive an effect, as straightening out a bent treetrunk. The nature/nurture territories seem fairly clear: it’s the nature of our brains (and much of the rest of our bodies — see oriental body-binding examples) to be subject to the most exquisitely wonderful or terrible training during the formative years. It’s the nature of our culture to fill those brains with riches or bollocks, according to what was done unto us at the same age.

Give me one generation to raise rational, and the world’s religions would be objects of pity and incomprehension for many generations afterward. The Sane Generation would marvel that people had seriously believed that stuff. Many, like myself, would be able to accept it only for the sake of argument. Surely real people couldn’t be that brain-damaged. Could they?

Comment #32143

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 04:13 PM (e) (s)

show a creationist a flying fish, and specifically you get:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v20/i1/fish_fly.asp…

show a scientist a flying fish and you get:

http://www.springerlink.com/app/home/contribution.asp?wasp=8…

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html…

moreover, creationists ignore the fact that there are many species of extant fishes that exhibit all the precursors of “flight” (which of course is really just gliding, not true flight), and that there are at least two groups of fishes that show gliding behavior (lots of different “flying” fish).

the transitional fossils are all over the record, but perhaps creationists don’t recognize them as “transitional” because many of these species still exist today.  it doesn’t take much to extend a pectoral fin long enough to allow gliding behavior; a quick glance at the members extant within the family that includes the common “flying fish (it’s a relative of needlefish and billfish) reveals many members with elongated pectoral fins and modified anal fins.  In fact, flying fish are often used in standard biology texts as a great example of co-option.  Pectoral fins are quite useful to any fish as a steering and propulsive mechanism, and if you live near the surface…

sorry, I’m an ichthyologist and just couldn’t resist tossing out a bit about such a wonderful fish.

Comment #32146

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 04:24 PM (e) (s)

flint:

you should go back and read that article posted by nick.

“early in life, the human brain is amazingly plastic and malleable”

this is not actually the case in many instances.  it is an oversimplification of how learning actually works.  there are demonstrable genetic components to learned behaviors, even in humans.  IIRC, there has been significant research indicating that children’s brains are NOT in fact, a blank slate or a lump of clay.

Not my area of expertise to be sure, but even 20 years ago i can recall reading dozens of studies to this effect when an undergraduate.  I’m sure all you have to do is do a search on google scholar for nature/nuture to find thousands of articles about genetic components to learned behaviors in humans (weren’t we just talking about homosexuality a while back?).

to put it bluntly, i rather doubt your example of Hovind vs. Mill swapping would give you the results you expect.

that’s why i am particularly interested in any studies that have attempted to tease this issue out.

the one that nick posted (i’ll dig it up later) was the first i had seen looking at the actual genetics, but I’d be willing to bet that there have been “twin studies” and similar looking at the impact of environment on religious thinking as well.

I think both scientifically, and for the impact the studies themselves would have (politically), it would be worth pursuing.

Comment #32149

Posted by RBH on May 25, 2005 04:37 PM (e) (s)

Flying fish aside (and no one has yet mentioned that if you teach a man to fish you can sell him a helluva lot of funny-looking lures with feathers and spinners, expensive rods, big boats with twin 225 horse Mercs, and so on), Flint mentioned Piaget.  I think the Piagetian concept that is most appropriate to this discussion is called “assimilation.”  Piaget distinguished between accommodation (altering/modifying one’s cognitive schemata to take account of new information) and assimilation (altering/filtering new information in order to fit it into existing cognitive schemata).  The cognitive schemata that dominate are originally constructed during childhood — Piaget’s was a theory of cognitive development, after all.  The mindset Flint describes illustrates the total victory of assimilation over accommodation.

RBH

Comment #32150

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 04:38 PM (e) (s)

ah, i think this is the reference that was refered to a couple months back:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7147…

Until about 25 years ago, scientists assumed that religious behaviour was simply the product of a person’s socialisation - or “nurture”. But more recent studies, including those on adult twins who were raised apart, suggest genes contribute about 40% of the variability in a person’s religiousness.

the conclusions have interesting ramifications, don’t you agree?

Comment #32151

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 04:42 PM (e) (s)

“the one that nick posted (i’ll dig it up later) was the first i had seen looking at the actual genetics, but I’d be willing to bet that there have been “twin studies” and similar looking at the impact of environment on religious thinking as well.”

er, strike that sentence; what i was recalling was the twin study, and confused it with another article i can’t seem to locate now that was attempting to track down the specific genes involved.

only 40 and already my memory is going.

;)

Comment #32153

Posted by RBH on May 25, 2005 04:42 PM (e) (s)

(And, as an addendum, Piaget was originally trained as a zoologist.)

Here’s a description of a twin study on religiosity.

Comment #32154

Posted by Boyce Williams on May 25, 2005 04:48 PM (e) (s)

Back in the mid ’70s, when I took a course on language acquiring in children, the concept of children being pre-wired to learn any language before a certain age was put forward by Chomsky and thus not a “blank slate” as previously thought.  Several tests seem to confirm the concept.  In light of evolutionary theory, it makes sense as a child needs language to learn survival skills in his/her culture and must acquire it early enough to succeed.

Comment #32156

Posted by Stuart Weinstein on May 25, 2005 04:52 PM (e) (s)

I have long felt that creationism/ID was just a well financed, well orgnaized dis-information campaigne..

Comment #32157

Posted by Arden Chatfield on May 25, 2005 05:01 PM (e) (s)

Back in the mid ’70s, when I took a course on language acquiring in children, the concept of children being pre-wired to learn any language before a certain age was put forward by Chomsky and thus not a “blank slate” as previously thought.  Several tests seem to confirm the concept.  In light of evolutionary theory, it makes sense as a child needs language to learn survival skills in his/her culture and must acquire it early enough to succeed.

While it’s true that our brains are very likely hardwired for language, Chomsky and his followers go on to make many statements about what kinds of languages our brains are hardwired to accept — that is, that our brains can intrinsically accept certain types of grammatical structures, but not accept others. In other words, certain types of languages are supposedly ‘impossible’. However, it’s important for nonlinguists to realize that there is extremely little real empirical evidence for these posited ‘possible grammars’, and not too hard to find counterexamples to them.

Comment #32158

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 05:03 PM (e) (s)

@rbh

that’s the same study; just a different article.

Comment #32159

Posted by Boronx on May 25, 2005 05:04 PM (e) (s)

As seen on Slashdot:  Give a man some fire and he’ll be warm for a night.  Set a man on fire and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

Comment #32163

Posted by Arden Chatfield on May 25, 2005 05:25 PM (e) (s)

Darwin never argued that man ‘evolved’ from simple matter . Darwin , a Minister of christianity , only pointed out that God’s ‘created’ creatures adapt to the envionment they are given. If matter , alone , ‘evolves’ of its own volition , then do not bother to waste your time building an automobile or an airplane :: in time , IT will build (‘evolve’) itself .

If matter alone can evolve into a human being , then for Godsake it can ‘evole’ into a simple motorcycle ! !

Darwin and Evolution are totally misrepresented by the idiot followers of the genius thinker .

ERGO :
It is the ‘evolutionsts’ who preach nonsense .

I’ve never seen this one before — this claim that Darwin was right, but that everyone after him got it wrong. For obvious reasons, I can’t follow this guy’s argument well at all, but is this some attempt to invalidate evolution by claiming that Darwin was really a creationist? Has anyone else here seen this particular ploy?

If so, it’s a fascinating contrast with the creationists who act like Darwin was a Satanist.

Comment #32164

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 05:34 PM (e) (s)

it just goes to show how far the folks will go to rationalize their belief systems.

Comment #32166

Posted by Arne Langsetmo on May 25, 2005 05:59 PM (e) (s)

“Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he ….”

… takes Fridays off all the time.  ;-)

Cheers,

Comment #32167

Posted by hortensio on May 25, 2005 06:08 PM (e) (s)

Saying that creationists hijack the language is also misleading, because it implies that they know better but are doing so as a tactic in part of a larger battle. I submit that this isn’t so. They are describing the world according to their own model.

Up to a point.  Quote-mining and all its trappings isn’t “describing the world” according to any model, unless the “hardwiring” somehow causes their minds to glaze over everything until they come across a single isolated sentence that seems to support their opinion [in which case they light up like Las Vegas]…

The creationist strives to find some way, ANY way, to make external reality fit and support those certainties.

Except that not all creationists feel compelled to do this.  Plenty of people are content to just accept the presence of scientific evidence without trying to explain it away, the same way that plenty of people accept that there is evil in the world trying to figure out precisely what this implies about the Creator, his goodness, his omniscience, his sense of humour, &c.  The hard-core rationalisations about X [or the absence thereof] in the fossil record, or in the bacterial flagellum, or any of these bizarre contortions we’re seeing, are usually motivated by something other than [or in addition to] an unquestioning faith in a creator.  I grew up in Ethiopia, where a huge percentage of the population is quite religious; also in Ethiopia, hominid fossils get forked out of the wasteland every day.  Is there any hysteria over a perceived crisis of faith/schooling/materialism?  Among the foreign missionaries, yes, but to almost everyone else the fossils are near-venerated as national treasure.  You don’t really have to take on the evidence of the world if you don’t want to— the hardwiring, if such there is, seems to have more to do with proselytising and politicising the creator rather than a simple belief that the world was created.  And it also requires some doctrine about “evidence” and “the real world”.

[Sorry for the ramble.  All I’m trying to say is that, when forced to say “I don’t know X”, there are plenty of ways people deal with it— some say “I’ll try to find out,” some say “I’ll try to convince everyone that it can’t be known” and some just say “I’m not going to worry about it”.  Choosing the second rather than the third seems to have quite as much to do with politics/strategies/plans as with purely theological beliefs…]

Comment #32168

Posted by Arne Langsetmo on May 25, 2005 06:11 PM (e) (s)

“Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he ….”

… takes Fridays off all the time.  ;-)

Cheers,

Comment #32169

Posted by Air Bear on May 25, 2005 06:13 PM (e) (s)

Greg Peterson wrote:

As far as God creating things like poisonous plants, venomous snakes, viruses and the like, as a former creationist, I can tell you what I said.  I basically insisted on TWO acts of creation, the original, in which all things were “good” and death did not yet exist, and a second creation after the fall (that whole bootleg apple incident) in which creation was retooled with fangs and thorns and squirmy pathogens.  That was when death entered the cosmos, and with it, the sundry means of exacting it.

I was raised by near-fundamentalists, but I never got a real detailed education on the Bible.  I guess that’s why, as a lapsed believer, I’ve read the Bible critically and have been dismayed by the sorry shape it’s in.

I’ve wondered about the Tree of Life.  If there was no death at the time of Creation, what was the Tree of Life about?  Was it redundant?  I can’t ask a fundamentalist about this, because I’ll never get a straight answer from them.

I suspect that the doctrine that there was no death in the prelapsarian Garden, is just made-up speculation. Nowhere does Genesis make that claim, only that Adam and Eve would have a hardscrabble life outside the Garden (and who wouldn’t?).

I think that this idea of no-death-before-the-Fall is just more defective fundamentalist thinking.  Would any of our resident self-proclaimed religious experts (Prof. Heddle?) disagree?

Comment #32171

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 06:30 PM (e) (s)

heddle fled; he mentioned something about “getting a life” or some such nonsense.

Comment #32172

Posted by Flint on May 25, 2005 06:42 PM (e) (s)

Sir ST:

I wasn’t saying (or not intending to say) that the human mind is born as a blank slate. I think there’s plenty of evidence that certain skids are greased more than others, likely as an epiphenomenon of the structure of our brain. Nor do I really think swapping Mill and Hovind would turn each into a copy of what the other became — only that it would have what I expect would be substantial impact on their adult directions. I insist that early in life, the human brain IS amazingly plastic and malleable, but I was using those terms in comparison to the mind later in adult life, and not in comparison to some hypothetically infinite plasticity.

I’m also interested by studies suggesting that some brains are more resistant to religious training just as some bodies are more resistant to cancer or obesity, all else being equal.

hortensio:

My (admittedly limited) experience is that very few creationists actually mine quotes. In fact, I have yet to encounter a single one head-on. Instead, I meet lots of creationists who spout quotes alreadly mined by others, polished, and mounted on creationist websites everywhere. I’ve also noticed that creationists never seem to leave the circle of creationist websites, partly because creationists NEVER link to actual science, and partially because even if they did, their target audience wouldn’t be interested anyway. Many times, I’ve asked “Were you aware of the ENTIRE quote, and its context?” and I have never once received a reply. I understand why — a NO answer would admit ignorance, a YES answer would indicate dishonesty.

Except that not all creationists feel compelled to do this.  Plenty of people are content to just accept the presence of scientific evidence without trying to explain it away…

I think we have a terminology issue here. When I refer in the context of this forum to a creationist, I’m referring specifically to the virulent (mostly) American species of YEC Biblical literalists. Those who would find Ken Ham’s museum convincing and read AnswersInGenesis for enlightenment and science.

RBH:

Thanks, I had forgotten Piaget’s terminology for dealing with information that didn’t fit neatly into the ever-more-detailed model we build of the reality around us. But that’s the genesis and lifeblood of this entire blog — the assimilators versus the accommodators.

Comment #32173

Posted by 'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank on May 25, 2005 06:49 PM (e) (s)

“Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he eats for life.”

No. It’s “Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, and he spends all afternoon on a boat drinking beer with his buddies”.

Comment #32174

Posted by 'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank on May 25, 2005 06:53 PM (e) (s)

While it’s true that our brains are very likely hardwired for language, Chomsky and his followers go on to make many statements about what kinds of languages our brains are hardwired to accept — that is, that our brains can intrinsically accept certain types of grammatical structures, but not accept others. In other words, certain types of languages are supposedly ‘impossible’. However, it’s important for nonlinguists to realize that there is extremely little real empirical evidence for these posited ‘possible grammars’, and not too hard to find counterexamples to them.

Backwards must you talk, if sound like Yoda you would… . .

Comment #32175

Posted by 'Rev Dr' Lenny Flank on May 25, 2005 06:56 PM (e) (s)

I think that this idea of no-death-before-the-Fall is just more defective fundamentalist thinking.

Here’s the question I always ask any fundie kook who blithers to me about “no death before the Fall” … .

Humans have E coli living in their intestines.  E coli reproduce about once every twenty minutes.  If Adam had just ONE E coli in his intestine when he was created, and if that ONE individual; reproduced normally every twenty minutes, and the resulting pair then reproduced every twenty minutes, and so on and so on and so on, and NONE OF THEM EVER DIED, then within two weeks, poor Adam would have enough batceria living in his guts to make up a small mountain, and within a year, the number of bacteria in his guts would cover the entire planet to a depth of several inches.

So why didn’t Adam’s guts explode within hours from all those fruitfully-multiplying immortal bacteria in there?

Comment #32176

Posted by Gary Hurd on May 25, 2005 06:57 PM (e) (s)

The fish I caught today for dinner tonight cost about $50.  Side dishes and drink add maybe another $10. 

Sheesh, for $60 I could take the wife out to a nice resturant and had no dishes to wash.

Oh well, I’ll just have to catch more next week.

Comment #32177

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 07:01 PM (e) (s)

flint, my whole point of bringing up the issue was to discuss its ramifications, not to argue over the semantics of cognition.

when a behavior is indicated to have as much as 40% genetic influence, that is pretty significant.

I wanted to discuss the impact of studies like this one on the whole creationism argument to begin with, which i personally would find more interesting.

please, read the summary of the article i linked to (or the one RBH linked to - as they reference the same study), and tell me what implications you see arising out of it.

cheers

Comment #32187

Posted by JSB on May 25, 2005 07:59 PM (e) (s)

I don’t have many references handy at the moment, but hypotheses about the origin of viruses include hold-overs from the RNA world, and degenerated cells. Due to radically differing life-cycles, it is not thought that all viruses have common ancestors—not in the normal sense of the term. (See here and here.)

It strikes me that viruses are potentially excellent candidates for irreducible complexity, since some RNA viruses depend on viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerases for their replication and gene expression. I wonder if the DI crowd wants to own them?

Comment #32192

Posted by KiwiinOz on May 25, 2005 08:22 PM (e) (s)

Give a man a fish and he’ll come back for more.  Teach a man to fish and you lose your market.

Comment #32194

Posted by Flint on May 25, 2005 08:38 PM (e) (s)

test

Comment #32195

Posted by Flint on May 25, 2005 08:42 PM (e) (s)

Damn. The software ate my entire post.

Comment #32196

Posted by Steve U. on May 25, 2005 08:52 PM (e) (s)

Was it the software, Flint … or the Ghost of David Heddle?

Mooo hoo hoo hah hah ha!!!

Comment #32198

Posted by Arden Chatfield on May 25, 2005 09:08 PM (e) (s)

While it’s true that our brains are very likely hardwired for language, Chomsky and his followers go on to make many statements about what kinds of languages our brains are hardwired to accept — that is, that our brains can intrinsically accept certain types of grammatical structures, but not accept others. In other words, certain types of languages are supposedly ‘impossible’. However, it’s important for nonlinguists to realize that there is extremely little real empirical evidence for these posited ‘possible grammars’, and not too hard to find counterexamples to them.

Backwards must you talk, if sound like Yoda you would… . .

Well, since you asked:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002182.h…

Comment #32199

Posted by DrJohn on May 25, 2005 09:34 PM (e) (s)

Arden Chatfield wrote:

While it’s true that our brains are very likely hardwired for language, Chomsky and his followers go on to make many statements about what kinds of languages our brains are hardwired to accept — that is, that our brains can intrinsically accept certain types of grammatical structures, but not accept others. In other words, certain types of languages are supposedly ‘impossible’. However, it’s important for nonlinguists to realize that there is extremely little real empirical evidence for these posited ‘possible grammars’, and not too hard to find counterexamples to them.

That we have a critical period for learning language (about two to puberty) is interesting and does indicate a brain based, biological imperative.  Puberty is the point in neural development when myelination of the axons (and I presume those huge dendrites, too) is going on, more or less setting the brain in, well, jelly, and eliminating a large amount of plasticity.

There are, thankfully, only a few experiments on humans kept from language.  A couple old European kings did so on purpose, and the gibberish was reportedly classed as Hebrew or the kingdom’s tongue.  Feral kids shed some light, but the best known, Itard’s wild child af Aveyron (sp?)is likely best explained as an autistic kid.  (Dman but I forget the kid’s name right now - but google can be friendly:  VICTOR!)  He did die in his 40s.

Recently, the best case was Genie, kept from language until about 12 or so if memory serves.  She might have learned new words, but no language.

Additional support for language being inherent in our particular animal is the basic existence of creoles.  Generally, when adults of differing cultures come together, in an arena other than that of war, they might establish trade.  For this, they need a common language.  This pidgin contains mostly single forms of verbs and nouns, and works well.  Over time, however, the children - yes, the little kiddies ‘learning’ the pidgin - actually modify it into a creole, a language with elements of syntax.  The kids’ brains, during their development, did what they always do - learned a language and literally demanded a syntax.  It was not there so it was imposed.

As to the syntactical structure of sentences from the deep structure, these analyses are based on counts of language forms.  Sure, an example or two of very rare occurances can, and has, been found.  However from my recollection, without digging into a box for a book, the most common language is SOV.  This is, BTW, what Yoda speaks.  In short, Yoda speaks Latin.  Next in commonality is our own basic structure of SVO.  Other forms diminish rapidly.  I think these two account for about 85% of languages.

So overall, the data do support Chomsky’s original premise:  Syntax is a natural part of the developing brain, and hence is now a derived trait of humans (Primack did some interesting things with P. trog. and found not language, but word recognition), and two, children, expressing this trait, will learn any language to which they are exposed within the critical period of language learning.  Additionally there is a limitation, though not quite rigid, on the form of the sentence production (i.e. syntax).  My bet this is rooted in our experience of the world over long time frames in both the motor and social aspects.  (Look into Richard Coss’ (and others’) work on species learning.)

Now Sue Savage-Rumbaugh has done some interesting things with P. paniscus.  Apparently they had a chimp actually learn English (receptive only - Kanji).  I have some stuff on my FTP site on her work.  It’s dated, but still interesting.  See, and root around:

[html]ftp://ftp.calweb.com/users/j/jmprice…[/html]

Comment #32201

Posted by Sir_Toejam on May 25, 2005 09:53 PM (e) (s)

arden:

(Or as in Anthony Lane’s “Break me a fucking give”.)

lol.

Comment #32204

Posted by Arden Chatfield on May 25, 2005 10:12 PM (e) (s)

Actually, this is a better link for the story of why Yoda’s language makes no sense:

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/002178.h…

Comment #32205

Posted by Arden Chatfield on May 25, 2005 10:37 PM (e) (s)

Additional support for language being inherent in our particular animal is the basic existence of creoles.  Generally, when adults of differing cultures come together, in an arena other than that of war, they might establish trade.  For this, they need a common language.  This pidgin contains mostly single forms of verbs and nouns, and works well.  Over time, however, the children - yes, the little kiddies ‘learning’ the pidgin - actually modify it into a creole, a language with elements of syntax.  The kids’ brains, during their development, did what they always do - learned a language and literally demanded a syntax.  It was not there so it was imposed.

Actually, this is not exactly true. All languages, including pidgins, ‘have a syntax’. I’m not even sure what it would mean for a language to not have a syntax. You’re right tho, in that once a pidgin becomes the first language of children in a speech community, then it expands into a creole, and its grammar becomes much more elaborate.

As to the syntactical structure of sentences from the deep structure, these analyses are based on counts of language forms.  Sure, an example or two of very rare occurances can, and has, been found.  However from my recollection, without digging into a box for a book, the most common language is SOV.  This is, BTW, what Yoda speaks. 

No. Not consistently. That’s what that link points out. Sometimes Yoda has SVO, like us:

“They are our last hope.”

Or sometimes it’s OSV:

“Obi-Wan, my choice is.”

This example looks like OVS:

“our spies contact, you must,”

The point of the article is that Yoda’s speech is totally unsystematic, apparently chosen to sound profound or goofy, or whatever, but not to follow any set rules.

In short, Yoda speaks Latin.  Next in commonality is our own basic structure of SVO.  Other forms diminish rapidly.  I think these two account for about 85% of languages.

Actually, I thought SOV and SOV were close to tied in frequency. (BTW, I think all pidgins and creoles are SVO.)

But: the 3rd most common type, VSO (Tagalog, Classical Arabic, all Celtic languages, et al) accounts for perhaps 10% of all the world’s languages. (It’s way ahead of whatever’s in 4th place.) There are hundreds of languages that are neither SVO nor SOV, or other languages where it’s hard to say that they have a basic unmarked word order. Since there are so many of these languages, any neurological theory of language has to account for them. Our brains can’t be hardwired for a pattern which is simply not followed by 10-15% of all the world’s languages.

Comment #32208

Posted by Air Bear on May 25, 2005 10:53 PM (e) (s)

The Rev wrote:

So why didn’t Adam’s guts explode within hours from all those fruitfully-multiplying immortal bacteria in there?

Maybe they weren’t fruitfully multiplying.  Fundamentalists used to believe that Adam and Eve didn’t engage in sex until after the Fall (despite having the plumbing for it!).  If they didn’t, maybe no other organisms reproduced either.  Again, we’d need to find a coherent, intellectually honest fundamentalist to ask.

Comment #32215

Posted by Engineer-Poet on May 25, 2005 11:46 PM (e) (s)

So if the bacteria weren’t multiplying and dying, what did Adam’s, er, excrement consist of?

The inhabitants of Eden DID eat, that much is written down.  To avoid lots of death it looks like more funny business has to be postulated on an on-going basis.

Like that would be a surprise.

Comment #32216

Posted by speaker4thedead on May 26, 2005 12:00 AM (e) (s)

The esteemed Rev. Hovind has said on more than one occasion that neither plants nor insects can be proven to be alive. Presumably this would extend to bacteria as well.

Comment #32217

Posted by Stan Gosnell on May 26, 2005 12:05 AM (e) (s)

Air Bear wrote:

Again, we’d need to find a coherent, intellectually honest fundamentalist to ask.

  So how do you propose to do that?  While you’re searching, perhaps you could find me the winning numbers for the lottery?

Comment #32218