Thursday, November 25, 2004

News Flash: An evolution discussion that generates more light than heat I've just spent the last hour or so reading the conversation at Dan Gillmor's site on a new Gallup poll on public attitudes on evolution. This is especially relevant for me, because the school board in Grantsburg, WI (on the other side of the state from me) passed an "equal time" rule on evolution and its critics last summer. Aside from my interest in the topic, and my general agreement with Gillmor's headline, I started reading the comments to see who showed up. Indeed, the first post was from a potshot artist who didn't have much to say except to criticize Gillmor's tone. Given what happened as the discussion went on, maybe the critic had a point. If you read it through, what you'll find are two unrepentant (word choice deliberate) critics of evolutionary theory. Both claim to oppose biblical creationism/intelligent design, yet have what seem to be somewhat serious questions about evolution. And you have a crowd of other people taking them seriously (to varying degrees) and trying to answer the questions/challenges they pose. When the evolutionists ask the two what their counter-explanation is, one responds (I'm paraphrasing here)  "OK, I'll tell you, even though you'll write me off and think I'm nuts," and posits an "ancient astronauts" hypothesis--and the opponents don't write him off! Now I don't want to give people the impression that these two guys impressed me with their critique (and neither side didn't really win anyone over), but I learned a few things, and the whole thing didn't degenerate into name-calling, at least not entirely. Now that's something you don't see every day in the blogosphere! There's a new CBS poll, too, that covers some of the same ground, with slightly different results. (Thanks to NCSEWeb for the link) Happy Thanksgiving to readers in the US. When I'm not eating, I'll be working on the book (with maybe an occasional glance at the football game). 12:11:34 AM    comment []