Posts by Archimedes Tritium

Faith in Evolution?

I don't have enough faith to believe in evolution. It's better to follow the evidence,wherever it leads.

Evolution -- meaning speciation and the origin of life (from non-life) -- is the modern version of flat-Earth thinking or Lysenkoism in the old Soviet Union.

It's not good science but a mechanism that enables one to tell any story desired, even mutually exclusive ones.

Thousands of generations of forced breeding of dogs (or "X") produces only other dogs. Mutations are either deadly or neutral, not beneficially constructing complex new organs out of nothing. Resistance to antibiotics isn't evolution; it's the same bacteria. Darwinian evolution has not been observed. I don't have enough faith to believe in it.

Drive through a desert and see a turtle beneath a billboard that says "Buy Pepsi". People assume the sign had to be designed even though it is very simple. But somehow, the trillions of times more complex turtle is a product of chance events and self-assembly.

A real scientist, not blinded, by dogma would think to ask how we are make those decisions, and if the analysis can be generalized and applied without bias.

If the very simple "Buy Pepsi" signs REQUIRES design, the extremely complicated turtle has be considered carefully.

Also, after thousands of years assuming the universe had always existed, it was discovered last century that space and time originated from nothing. Things that have a beginning require a cause. If not, give an example. (Note that by definition, a creator of space-time could not be defined by space-time, thus would not have a beginning).

The world should be filled with transitional forms if evolution was correct. It is not. The fossil record shows species suddenly appear fully formed, persist unchanged, then die. This is consistent with design, totally at odds with evolution.

If the age of the Earth was a football field, you would march from one end to the 16 yard line on the other side and see only primitve cellular creatures. Then, in the span of a footstep, all major phyla suddenly appear fully formed without preceding forms (Cambrian explosion). This is also unreconcilable with evolution, but consistent with design.

Evolution is a 19th century science turned dogma, maintained for philosophical reasons (fear of being accountable or subordinate to something larger; human ego) even though modern understanding of biology is passing it by.

why be a pure researcher

>Honestly, anyone who thinks researchers are in making this up

>for the money hasn't looked at scientist's wages recently.

>Research just doesn't pay. You don't go into research because

>you want to make money. You work in pure science to learn the

>truth.

>Academic/pure scientific research doesn't pay. If you want money, you

>go into industry. It's that simple. You double your salary over night.

No. You go into research and academia because you work ~6 months a year, maybe teaching some classes you developed the curricula for 20 years ago and have been sleep-walking through ever since.

All en route to tenure so you can do anything you want without getting fired. Such as re-engineer the world the way you think it ought to be, perhaps along lines shaped by the guilt you feel over having it so good without having earned it.

You don't go into industry because it's demanding and you may not be able to hack it; you have to produce results according to real-world standards, not just peer-review of people just like you. You can get fired and change comes rapidly. You don't have a ready supply of serf-labor (grad students) to do your work for you that you can then write up to impress your colleagues.