Comments on: What A Waste of Quicktime

By: Mike Stroven

Mike Stroven — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:14:20 +0000

Well, as a Bible believer with more than a little interest in the scientific method, I surmise that it takes a lot more faith (and an even more distorted view of the age of the earth) to believe that we came from absolutely nothing, and that even if there were some eternal ball of mass/energy that just sudenly exploded, it is impossible that all of the minute changes necessary (even over a trillion years), could have resulted in the complex creatures we see in the mirror. If in fact, there was some “big bang” and even one simple cell just “happened”, there is monumental evidence that left to their own, simple living things do not become more-complex living things. And to this day, not a shred of evidence to the contrary has been produced. The fossil record does not support any of the theory. Everytime science claims to have found one of these mythical “transitional creatures”, it is either disproved shortly, or found alive and swimming in our oceans today. Please feel free to refute my conclusions. So no thanks. It is more likely that some higher being deposited life on this planet, and therefore the smart athiests are out looking for aliens.

By: bmkmd

bmkmd — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 19:08:27 +0000

I made a comment about evolution as an example of misunderstanding to a friend. He said, “You don’t believe we came from monkeys, do you?”

To which I replyed, “No. We share common ancesters. We’re counsins, only over a huge length of time to get there. You know, like the branching of a tree with monkeys and humans way out on the periphery.” Which stopped him more or less open to learning, after all I hold some authority in the relationship as a physician.

I thought about it too, Andy. How to peek peoples curiosity who have no idea about evolution.

There is a great passoge in Dawkins’ The Ancestors Tale, which I’m going to use with this person. It’s about the Salimanders around the San Jaquin Valley who can interbreed with their closest neighbor Salamanders(?)(I have to look up which species he’s referring to, but I’m on vacation just now), and all the way from the southern to the most Northern areas, but not across at the Southeran end of the Valley where the ring is geographically broken, demonstrating Natural Selection when separate environments limit interbreeding.

I hope to get this fellow’s interest, not argue a confrontation.

Hopefully people can challenge uninformed peopole with a bit of the wonder of the process or with a scientist’s curiosity. In non-literal bible-science religionists I hope we can educate.

By: aguy109

aguy109 — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 10:13:00 +0000

Lets give “ordinary, nonbiologist people” just a little credit for common sense. Even ifthe ‘anti evolutionary ‘ lobby peddle this as a a piece of disinformation , then its still no more than another piece of visual gunk on the net.

By: Ed

Ed — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 14:15:06 +0000

Evolutionary education in the form of whimsical discourse will only lead to vast misunderstanding by persons uneducated in the scientific field. It’s important our media doesn’t confuse misinformation with a chuckle. Thanks for ruffling feathers, Carl.

By: Mickey Mortimer

Mickey Mortimer — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 10:29:05 +0000

Andy, look here- http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC150.html

By: Andy

Andy — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 18:45:52 +0000

This is sort of an unrelated comment, but you brought up a question which is in my mind a lot. The people that ask “If monkeys evolved into people, why are there still monkeys?” I know several people in this boat, and I’m not sure quite how to answer them or where to direct them for the correct answer.

My general non-scientific (I’m a linguist/techie not a biologist) answer is “One thing doesn’t BECOME another thing, the parent species can continue just fine even if the child species has some competitive advantage over it. This doesn’t always happen, but there is nothing to prevent it from happening.” That’s probably not even a good answer, so what is?

By: joseph duemer

joseph duemer — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 13:13:15 +0000

Gould might have been amused, mordantly. In Wonderful Life, if I am remembering correctly, he writes that he as a collection of such evolutionary iconography, then goes on to demolish the reasoning behind the images.

By: Mel

Mel — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 02:37:07 +0000

The journalist didn’t address it and she knows it: statistically, only a miniscule percentage of readers will make it to the second-to-last paragraph. What journalist doesn’t know that? And as you say, the caption doesn’t help either.

Frankly, I’m not that impressed with the animation–there are freeware programs that can make that in 3 minutes, and it’s kind of silly.

I also think Gould would have disapproved. The horse essay comes to mind….

By: dr.steveb

dr.steveb — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 16:29:54 +0000

gould even more than most would have been appalled. gould wrote repeatedly about the falseness of simplistic chain of being image, the falseness of current primates (lemur or chimp be related to current Homo sap. as opposed to meaning of common descent/ancestor. WaPo gets this one so completely wrong. Hmmm.. how they doing on that encourage Bush into Iraq stuff?

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 13:47:15 +0000

Evidently the power of images and the fact humans are primarily visual animals would come as complete surprises to the folk at WaPo.

By: micro

micro — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 02:35:12 +0000

way to take things so literally, as does the rest of the populatation.

By: NelC

NelC — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 23:53:55 +0000

A bit of lax art direction, I think. I don’t know exactly how the WaPo handles their art, but I imagine that in this case the editorial staff just asked for an illustration for their evolution article. If the artist even saw the article, he probably just skimmed it for keywords, then let his imagination roam until he hit on the happy image of a lemur morphing into SJG.

Shrug. I’ve never read it, but I would think that artwise WaPo isn’t SciAm. I doubt that the readers expect an illustration to be factual. A diagram or a photograph, perhaps, but an illustration, not so much.

By: Steinn Sigurdsson

Steinn Sigurdsson — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 21:09:36 +0000

Agree, the movie was moronic.
Article was ok, as media articles go, in parts…

By: coturnix

coturnix — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 17:04:44 +0000

Thank you for doing this – I was equally incensed when I saw it this morning.