Tony Auth by Tony Auth

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kreole said, 4 months ago

That idiot is teaching?
Ken Warren said, 4 months ago

Great Cartoon, the whole thing simplified.

A theory is a theory right? So why doesn’t my theory equal your theory?

The answer is that a Scientific Theory has to meet certain rules, and guidelines. It must be something that can be questions, tested, and analyized.

If you say that there are little green men on Mars, you have to show some proof that they are there, explain how they can exist and survice on Mars, and why they are little, and why they are green.

To say that it is Gods Will is not a Theory, it is a belief, and just because you believe something doesn’t makes it true.

After all there are those who believe that the GOP is the party of the little people, and care about American values.
Radish said, 4 months ago

Neoconman is just trying to confuse us again.
comYics said, 4 months ago

:)) Tony Auth.
C. A. Brobst said, 4 months ago

Only ideas which are substantiated by reality are good.
Like, the Republicans are bigots who prey upon the uneducated with fear.
Since Reagan they have destroyed the middle Class doing it.
harleyquinn said, 4 months ago

Lets see here evolution is not a settled science. There are million of years that Humans were not around and we can only guess what whats going on. But there is a lot of good science out there about it.
Man made global warming is a hoax! so what is the problem?
Reagen and the R are bigots and blah blah blah… go under conspiracy tab.
Speaking of Conspiracies instead of the moon landing it should say 9/11 inside job. speaking of that has anyone heard from “human” since some guy opened fire on the pentagon?
Vernon Whetstone said, 4 months ago

Ah, the modern concept of education principles illustrated…
Fairportfan2 said, 4 months ago

kreole said

That idiot is teaching?

No - that idiot is a school board, telling teachers what to teach.

“God made an idiot for practice, and then He made a School Board.” - Mark Twain.

Sour Sam had their number over a hundred years ago.

harleyquinn - how do you manage to be totally and completely stupidly wrong on everything?
lonecat said, 4 months ago

Great cartoon. It goes on my office door.
NoMo'ol'tomcats said, 4 months ago

Is that supposed to be Don McLeroy? http://tinyurl.com/yehttma

Don’t think Ol’ Don has read much by or about Tom Jefferson.
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

@kreole

harleyquinn - how do you manage to be totally and completely stupidly wrong on everything?

Well, it takes a lot of effort. In fact, all of his waking hours. The key is making sure that you use the “right” sources. In his/her case, anything but well studied, peer-reviewed literature.

(And I say that as a professional evolutionary biologist. Ain’t no way harleyquinn has read and really understood the import of the data and experimentation supporting evolution.)
edrush said, 4 months ago

Unfortunately, kreole, that man IS teaching in far too many places.
M Kitt said, 4 months ago

Thanks Craig L.

Science is not a theory, it’s a set of principles with clearly repeatable, objective conclusions. Research takes place under carefully controlled conditions that remove outside influences.

That’s how Theories become established fact, summations of these facts become tools with proven practical applications.

Under ideal conditions these proven facts would constitute our body of LEARNING, information of value.

Politics, on the other hand, has been historically proven to equate to STUPIDITY all too often.

Supporters of this STUPIDITY want control of our Schools AND our political sytem, they’re called REPUBLICANS, and they’d like to make Science and established fact Optional based on Political and/or Religious choice.

I suggest that right wing supporters of this policy employ the HOME SCHOOL method, this would support whatever flavor of ignorance they want to inflict on their own children while sparing the rest of us and generations to come.
Justice22 said, 4 months ago

The “Teacher” has a list of names for scientific theorists on his right but only wacky theories on his left. Shouldn’t there be a list of conspiracy theorists there, not their theories. Hmm? Robertson, Limbaugh,,,,,,,,,,,,,,?
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

Thank you, M. Kitt. I live in Texas, and I and my colleagues have to put up with this nonsense constantly, with respect to many scientific issues.

It often seems like the Enlightenment never happened, or, perhaps more correctly, that many political groups wish that it hadn’t.
MurphyHerself said, 4 months ago

Maybe we should let Texas secede and all the right wing believers and religious nuts move there and stay away from the rest of us. Build a big wall around it while we’re at it. And cut off communication so we don’t have to listen to them.
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago
@MurphyHerself

I’ve heard that suggestion on many occasions. As a counterpoint, I have two ideas (only one of which is serious; see if you can figure out which one it is).
1. If you let Texas secede, at least make Austin the “Berlin” of Texas with massive airlifts of supplies as was done for Berlin after WWII.
2. The only real cure for ignorance is education. Large groups of ignorant humans are not only a danger to themselves but also to everyone else who has to live with the consequences of their ill-informed choices.
dtroutma said, 4 months ago

We also have “evidence” written in stone. On the one hand the religious have tablets nobody has ever actually seen.(stones or gold plates in a hat) On the other hand we have fossils in stone, coal and petroleum. (and records frozen in ice).

One side can put up, the other is a put on.
harleyquinn said, 4 months ago

harleyquinn - how do you manage to be totally and completely stupidly wrong on everything?

Interesting, when you argue against the lefts dogma you are stupid. Unenlighten and such.

Sorry buddy but even Darwin kept looking for answers after he worked out one of his theories. That is what I am talking about. My views on evolution are not that popular. I see the science and think wow there is so much more we do not understand. so from the left i get it is a fact and from the right I get your belief has to be..

MAN made global warming is far from a theory. it is a religion to the left.
So to put those two with the faking of the moon landing and then turn around and compare it to some great scientist? That is something only the left will do.
M Kitt said, 4 months ago

Agreed again, Craig.

Supporters of “Optional Science” teaching may well solve this issue without being aware of it, or their offspring will, if this ignorance is allowed to prevail.

Darwins “Survival of the Fittest” under practical application will solve the debate, given enough time :-)

Most of us would call this outcome EVOLUTION, suppose the right wing calls it an “Unfair Advantage” :-)

Wonder if that’s really their ambition, to level the playing field by removing education from the equation, bringing the rest of society down to their level.

That’s a repulsive thought.
lonecat said, 4 months ago

^^”My own views on evolution are not that popular” – what are they? why are they not popular?
Justice22 said, 4 months ago

An idea is a theory. Once the theory is proven, it is no longer a theory. It is a law. Because a theory hasn’t been proven doesn’t mean it is not true. Some theories are workable such as the theory of nuclear power. We know it works, but it is still a theory.

Everyone is entitled to their theory but it should not be forced upon everyone else. Auth is right.
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

There is some confusion here between the popular definition of “theory” and the scientific use of “theory.”

In the popular definition, theory can mean “contemplation or speculation and guess or conjecture” (American Heritage Dictionary). In science theory means “a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena.” (same source)

These differing uses of the same word are the source of lots of confusion about scientific theories. In the case of evolution, when scientists call it a theory they are elevating it to the status of an idea that has overwhelming support, e.g., the theory of relativity.

harleyquinn, you remind me of the female character in “An Education,” who is so profoundly ignorant that she doesn’t realize her ignorance. As Socrates said, a wise person knows what they don’t know.
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

Oh, and DrCanuck, thank you for your succinct statement about the ongoing nature of science. We can prove what is false, but we cannot definitively prove what is true. Hence, our ongoing search for the best and most comprehensive scientific explanation for the natural world.

It also helps to keep me employed ;-)
annamargaret1866 said, 4 months ago

An idea may become a hypothesis.
ahab said, 4 months ago

Dr Linder, welcome to the site. Great to have more science oriented persons to educate and correct inaccuracies. We have a unique group of folks on this site as I’m sure you are aware. darwin-online.org.uk/contents.html
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

Hi ahab,

I’ve been mostly lurking here for years because I rarely have the spare time to engage the menagerie of posters here (which makes me feel like I’m engaging in “hit and run”). But I am very aware of many of the folks that take the time to comment regularly. Mostly they’re a great bunch, but there are some for whom real conversation is clearly not the goal…
lonecat said, 4 months ago

Craig Linder, thanks for your interesting posts. Further on the Enlightenment – it seems to be under attack from two sides – one the one side, those who never heard about it, on the other side, those – including some postmodern academics – who think we can move beyond it – throwing the baby out with the bathwater. The first group by and large is just ignorant. I wonder if you have any thoughts on the second group? (Perhaps I beg the question with my characterization of them).
ExpressYourself said, 4 months ago

It should be apparent among thinking people, that dna is not transmutable beyond a set of obvious and quantifiable limits. Organisms do not “mutate” into viable self-reproducing populations of mutant organisms. Mutated organisms observed by science rarely reproduce and do not necessarily reproduce with their specific mutation. Furthermore, it is now known that dna “cleans” itself much like the computer your using runs on at least two sets of the same files and is continually checking itself against the other and eliminating errors in code.
The complete lack of fossil evidence for “evolution” is such an annoyance for Evolutionists that they have had to come up with theories which are beyond “conspiratorial” in their limits as to qualify for the term “fantastic”.But you go and teach whatever you want in your “schools”, you are paying for it.
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago
Hi lonecat,

I think I understand what you’re referring to when you talk about “some postmodern academics”–the ones that assert that science is just a social construct and therefore is not really objective or deserving of some special status of knowledge. If that’s not what you’re talking about then the rest of this post may be off base.

While I can agree that there are some aspects of science that are a social construct, I have to say that it always seems like the critique is leveled by folks that don’t really understand the scientific process and certainly not by folks who have committed themselves to doing real science. Science has at least some real objectivity because it is possible to collect data that contradict particular hypotheses about how the natural world works.

For example, if I say that I think E = mc^5, the data simply do not support that hypothesis.

I suppose a postmodernist would argue, that I cannot provide proof that the true relationship is E=mc^2. They might also say that there are some data that do not support E = mc^2, but that I choose to ignore them because I will claim there are extenuating circumstances or an experiment was not done properly etc.

It might seem like that last sentence is where they have a point and that a scientist uses the idea of a “good experiment” to weasel his/her way out of an insurmountable problem. I have a different perspective.

In science, we have been working our way toward a consistent explanation/model for the natural world by a kind of process of successive approximation that depends critically on experimentation (as opposed to the mere logic or assertion of an idea that is commonly agreed upon). We determine what cannot be true via experimentation, and provide stronger or weaker provisional support for what might be the correct explanation or at least a sufficient explanation.

The idea that an experiment can be well or poorly done doesn’t undercut science, because even the quality of an experiment can be demonstrated by the same means that any experiment is done. That is, if you have a hypothesis about why an experiment is poorly designed, the design features themselves can be the subject of experiment. We do this all the time and call it troubleshooting.

For me, there are two clear acts of faith that underlie science which might be called social constructs.
1. There is some sort of consistency to the natural world (lawfulness as opposed to either chaos or lawfulness with occasional supernatural intervention)
2. Cause and effect are real (maybe this is just a corollary of the assertion of lawfulness)
Ken Warren said, 4 months ago

PUP – Proves a good point, if you give a conservative a long, detailed, supported explainations of the facts they, like PUP, completely ignore it and make a false statement like “The complete lack of fossil evidence for “evolution…”, and consider the arguement closed. The Conservatiive doesn’t feel the need to give any evidence to support their statement, the statement is enought, and you are wrong!

Conservatives like the comfortable world they live in, and have no desire to change it, all they want is to make the rest of us live in it.
pbarnrob said, 4 months ago

So that’s what’s wrong with Texas (and Kansas). Amazing!
motivemagus said, 4 months ago

harley, evolution is a FACT. Darwin kept developing the concepts over decades, but this did not mean he thought he was wrong – nor was he. The theory of evolution was not complete, if only because Darwin didn’t have our knowledge of genetics, which was the one biggest missing piece in his theories, but he was a magnificent scientist by any measure – arguably the greatest of the past two centuries, and he managed to deduce enough of how genes worked to ensure modern genetics wouldn’t contradict evolution. The conceptual framework still isn’t complete, but it isn’t going away. The discussions are about the mechanisms, the idea of variable speeds of evolution, and newer work into genetics that makes it far more subtle than we imagined at first.
But none of this downgrades evolution – if anything, it supports it.
Now, theoretically it is possible for science to identify some other mechanism – though it’s kind of like saying there might be an alternative to gravity at this point – but the critics are not scientists, nor are they citing any science that has held up. They are using Genesis as a literal science textbook, which simply does not work.
motivemagus said, 4 months ago

Pup, ironically, you’ve just described the way in which real scientists evaluate the time when two species have split in the course of evolution - through changes in the genetic code. Man, read some of Stephen Jay Gould to get a better idea of how this works. We are the product of millions of years of mutations and genetic drift. The failures die; the successes continue.
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

^^TheMightyPup

“It should be apparent among thinking people, that dna is not transmutable beyond a set of obvious and quantifiable limits.”

State specifically what this is supposed to mean and how it relates to evolution.

“Organisms do not “mutate” into viable self-reproducing populations of mutant organisms.”

Untrue. For example, each and every person’s DNA has several point mutations compared with their parents’ DNA due to transcription errors by DNA polymerase. It’s true that most of those mutations do not affect their traits (phenotype), but some do. Are you trying to make a statement about how speciation occurs rather than mutation per se?

“Mutated organisms observed by science rarely reproduce and do not necessarily reproduce with their specific mutation.”

Organisms with new mutations cannot reproduce only if the mutation is dominant and so deleterious that it either kills the organism or makes it infertile. Many mutations are recessive, so even if they are very deleterious, they do not have an effect on reproduction when in the heterozygous state.

“Furthermore, it is now known that dna “cleans” itself much like the computer your using runs on at least two sets of the same files and is continually checking itself against the other and eliminating errors in code.”

It’s been known for decades that DNA polymerase has proofreading functionality and that there are mechanisms for repairing loss of nucleotides in just one strand of DNA, but this does not eliminate errors. With an average error rate of between 2 and 5 nucleotides per billion, each time a cell divides between 6 and 15 point mutations are introduced. And this doesn’t even include other types of DNA changes like insertions, deletions and duplications.

“The complete lack of fossil evidence for ‘evolution’ is such an annoyance for Evolutionists that they have had to come up with theories which are beyond “conspiratorial” in their limits as to qualify for the term ‘fantastic’.”

This statement betrays either deep ignorance on your part or willful deception. There are many examples of evolution in the fossil record. Check out diatom evolution recorded in Lake Yellowstone for one particularly well documented example.

http://paleobiol.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/32/1/38
harleyquinn said, 4 months ago

Lone cat read the book “The Language of God” I agree with about 90% of what this guy says and is the closest thing I have found to what I believe.

Doc, ” And with that statement, you betray your complete and utter ignorance of science.
Of course, he did! That’s the nature of science! Only religion claims to have final answers.”

You have just described the left very well. With evolution we have maybe a thousand pieces of the puzzle put together. We can then guess where a thousand more go. We can see some of the corner pieces. Problem is the puzzle is millions of pieces. So one side goes this is proof to there is no god and man came about this way. and the other goes this is proof that pieces are missing and there is no way it can be true. Both of which are using it for the wrong reasons. This science is not a reason to base your life on.
“harley, evolution is a FACT. Darwin kept developing the concepts over decades, but this did not mean he thought he was wrong –”
duh really duh
lonecat said, 4 months ago
Harley: I found this on Wikipedia – is it accurate as you understand Collins’ argument in The Language of God:
1. The universe was created by God, approximately 14 billion years ago.
2. The properties of the universe appear to have been precisely tuned for life.
3. While the precise mechanism of the origin of life on earth remains unknown, it is possible that the development of living organisms was part of God’s original creation plan.
4. Once life began, no special further interventions by God were required.
5. Humans are part of this process, sharing a common ancestor with the great apes.
6. Humans are unique in ways that defy evolutionary explanations and point to our spiritual nature. This includes the existence of the knowledge of right and wrong and the search for God.
Is this more or less what you believe? Where would you disagree?
Justice22 said, 4 months ago

Mr. Linder, Thanks for your sensible input. Thanks to all others too. You know I appreciate input from whomever because it gives clues as to whom I am dealing with. I never intend to hurt anyone’s feelings or rarely do I intend to hurt anyone’s feelings. Keep reading and keep smiling. Justice.
lonecat said, 4 months ago

HI Craig – you understood me perfectly. A further question, if you will indulge me – when you are teaching, do you meet opposition to evolutionary theory? Does it come mostly from “creationists” (loosely speaking) or from post-modernists? Or in what proportion? Just curious.
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

Hi Justice22,

No offense taken or even inferred as intended. I just wanted to try clearing the air of the usual, “it’s only a theory” argument.
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

Hi lonecat,

Well, I only teach biology majors, so I rarely encounter direct criticism in classes. When students have stated that they have problems with evolution, it is always on religious and not postmodern grounds. I doubt most undergraduates in science have a lot of exposure to postmodern thinking unless they’re taking a lot of philosophy or perhaps some types of literary or architectural criticism.

I do have biology colleagues who teach so-called “service” courses for non-majors, and they are confronted with students who are hostile to evolution more often than I am. They’ve only related incidents to me that involve religious/political beliefs rather than postmodern ideas.
fennec said, 4 months ago
Just to come in late, I, as a scientist, agree with Dr. Linder in his answer to lonecat on the “social construct” idea of science. Beautifully put, and the summary one I will try to remember. To repeat it:
“For me, there are two clear acts of faith that underlie science which might be called social constructs.
1. There is some sort of consistency to the natural world (lawfulness as opposed to either chaos or lawfulness with occasional supernatural intervention)
2. Cause and effect are real (maybe this is just a corollary of the assertion of lawfulness)”
JDG said, 4 months ago

Thank you Dr. Linder. Drop in anytime!
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

Hi DrCanuck,

Good question.

I hope you’ll forgive me for jumping in and also asking the same group what they consider the flaws are in what we consider extremely strong evidence for evolution. Specifically,

Evolution is defined as changes in allele (gene copy) frequency from one generation to the next.

(The definition encompasses both adaptive evolution due to natural and sexual selection, but also due to new mutations, migration between populations and random changes in gene frequencies [genetic drift].)

In natural populations, we’ve seen gene frequencies change in response to natural selection, including in well known cases like antibiotic and pesticide resistance. In several cases we even know exactly which genes were under selection.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=gene+for+antibiotic+resistance&btnG=Search&assdt=10000000000000&asylo=&as_vis=0

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=10&q=gene+for+pesticide+resistance&hl=en&as_sdt=10000000000000

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=gene+for+herbicide+resistance&btnG=Search&assdt=10000000000000&asylo=&as_vis=0

How does this evidence fail to provide strong support for evolution?
Craig Linder said, 4 months ago

Thanks for the bon mots everyone! No need to use “Dr.” I don’t like honorifics much…

I hope my comments will prove their worth by their content not my mere authority. If I started spouting off on topics I don’t know very well, I bet you’d find plenty of errors and reasons to criticize
lonecat said, 4 months ago

Dear Craig – very interesting series of posts. I’m a literary scholar, not a scientist. We don’t get many Christian fundamentalists in our program (I did have one brilliant student a few years ago who was Dutch Reform, and I had the impression he didn’t believe in evolution, though I never pressed him about it) but we do get some students argue for a kind of PoMo anti-Enlightenment position – a little Foucault mixed with some Derrida and a dash of Kuhn. I personally think these thinkers go together as well as red wine and fish, but that’s what these students seem to like. Mostly I teach archaic Greek lierature, so evolution doesn’t come up, but these student also don’t believe that we can know anything about human history, because it’s all interpretation. Well, sure, there’s interpretation, and without interpretation history is of no particular interest, but I just can’t believe that we know nothing about the past. I suspect they think of me as a sort of museum specimen.
fennec said, 4 months ago

Hi Craig
I’m also not all that much into honorifics, but people vary. Anyway, I just wanted to say I welcome your posts. You are obviously dealing with these kinds of questions on a day to day basis more than I am, as I am retired and also not in contact with a large student population (we get the cream of the crop wanting to do research stints here at NIH). I do mostly bioinformatics and protein modeling these days, but I have to say that I am finding your science impeccable. The more you post, the happier I will be.
harleyquinn said, 4 months ago

zekedog55 said, about 2 hours ago
Hey there harleyquinn…so very difficult for me to believe you are the real article!

Ok I not sure how to take that. But it is a deal if I can track it down and pick it up on my weekly trip to the library. I have 4 other books in front of me now so we will see.

Lone cat, I have slight problems with 4 and 5
4 because God had the plan and set the domino’s place and the wording “no special further interventions” just does not do justice to his plan. nothing more “special” needed to be done. We are here and God had the problems covered.
5 is not because I do not think ape and humans are not “related” It that I believe we are something apart from them. How I do not know. older man making fire. I do not know. but somewhere human kind gained a soul where the ape did not. so to break it down to a family tree is just plain silly to me.
harleyquinn said, 4 months ago

Ok “world without end” is on hold for me. I will try to get thru the 45 hours of CD. But what does a bunch of auguring catholics in who could not understand the black pledge times have to do with anything?
Let me guess you are one of those who point to the church history bad so bible must be bad?
O'Don said, 4 months ago

This has been an unexpected and enjoyable Sunday evening class.