Talk:Objections to evolution/Archive 10

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Website that isn't objection -related ?

@Isambard Kingdom: - I see you've put in an external link to Human Evolution Timeline. While it's pretty, it belongs in an article such as Evolution and particularly Human evolution, but I don't see how that is felt relevant or useful and speaking to the topic criticisms and denials of evolution. Please explain. It does not show an objection to evolution or a response to objection, or material that relates to the existing sections. That is, it doesn't show anything related to 'second law of thermodynamics', 'Cambrian explosion', statements about the 'Status as a theory', and so forth. So -- unless you can explain where it has content specific to Objections, please remove. Thanks. Markbassett (talk) 03:33, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, one needs to understand what one is objecting to! Therefore, the linked site is relevant. BTW, same would hold for anybody invoking the 2nd law of thermidynamics as an ojection to evolution. One would need to know what it is, and once one did, it would be clear how erroneous the objection is. Thanks. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 03:49, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Isambard Kingdom - So nothing specific to the subject of this article, showing an objection to evolution or response to one, or background to the content that is currently in this article. I'll point out the lead already starts by links to the whole of History_of_evolutionary_thought and Evolution (far more visible than at the bottom) and that others links like Natural selection or Macroevolution show topics at at the objection involving them. Think WP:OFFTOPIC and WP:EL apply, particularly WP:ELNO number 13. This one isn't tightly related and guidance points to not include.

I'm going to take it out again, suggest you might consider the article really could use more help instead at the WP:BETTER writing style, and improving clarity such as on what is the objection. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 05:31, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

This article extensively discusses human evolution, without providing all the information contained within that link. Information therein can be useful to a reader by helping to contextualize or refine information contained within this article. That is absolutely the purpose of external links. Your claims that this is off-topic are flat-out wrong. This has been discussed at WP:ELN by several users, all of whom agreed that it was appropriate to keep it on articles such as this one. Threatening to edit war over this is not how we collaborate, and I will call in an admin to take a look at this page if you insist upon following through. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 13:31, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

 Done I put the link back in. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 16:26, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

User:MjolnirPants - thank you for the pointer to ELN previously not visible at this article, though I see this article was not one of the ones mentioned at that WP:ELN. I will point to the lines in WP:ELBURDEN "Every link provided must be justifiable in the opinion of the editors for an article." and "Disputed links should normally be excluded by default". Discussions about whether it suited some other article do not auto-magically mean it fits here. Since this seems an EL getting pasted about, and that discussions seems to have been confused with a universal permission, I will post a note at that ELN about the pasting here and that this looks like becoming a WP:LINKSPAM.

For this article of Objections to evolution, please note that your mention it "extensively discusses human evolution" factually is incorrect -- in topic this article simply is not one that focuses on that topic nor in content is it one that "extensively discusses human evolution". Factually, I see only small percentage that even indirectly relates: the phrase "human evolution" occurs only once in text; humans are at section 8.1 Morality.Humans as animals; section 4.2 Unfalsifiability at para 4 uses humans as example re apes; and the "human timeline" is not mentioned in text at all but is one of the already-better-presented items embedded at see also parts of the sidebar template in section 2 Defining Evolution and (less usefully) 6.1 Improbability.

The talk here has already stated the link in question is not about an objection or related to an objection, and seems mostly a pretty picture unrelated to this article, so I point to WP:OFFTOPIC and WP:EL, particularly WP:ELNO number 13. There also is not (yet) consensus here nor at the ELN so EL guidance points again to not include. And it's also bad for this article. All the relevant background is already more directly and better presented in other ways in the article at the places that are concerned. The EL to the picture is instead a tailend that hurts the article a bit, as it is a WP:SURPRISE whose information is not easily understood and basically a ending with diversion to an unrelated pretty picture. Cheers. Markbassett (talk) 18:21, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

please note that your mention it "extensively discusses human evolution" factually is incorrect No, it is not. The word "human" appears 43 times on that page, only once in a context that is unrelated to human evolution. There is a timeline of human evolution on the page. The genetic relationship between humans and other apes is covered extensively under the "Unfalsifiability" section. There is a subsection called "Humans as animals". There is another subsection called "Social effects" that deals heavily with human evolution. Furthermore, the phrase "human evolution" occurs 2 times in the article, not once, and an additional time in one of the sources.

I think you've confused the words "extensively" and "exclusively". MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 22:59, 21 September 2016 (UTC)

User:MjolnirPants - This article simply is not one that focuses on that topic nor in content is it one that "extensively discusses human evolution" by realistic percentage or extent. Try looking again at these:

• Over-simplistic to count any "human" as Human evolution -- gives mostly unrelated word hits such as "humanism", "human souls", "nonhuman", side occurances in templates that are not part of article body text, parts of ref titles not included in article text itself, and so on. The ones LOOSLY related I've already mentioned as basically at 8.1 Morality.Humans as animals; and section 4.2 Unfalsifiability at para 4. (on second look, that's para 5.) And the EL to pretty picture isn't related to either of those two.
• Perspective on Tiny count - out of 45 screens of text, 73 with cites, or 21 sections, and roughly 18 to 23 THOUSAND words total depending on if you include refs pages... the 43 'humans' (more like 18 points of human related to human evolution) is just minute. It's just not enough uses of the word to DO 'extensive discussion' on humans, and "extensive discussion" on "human evolution" would have to use the phrase more than once. That's appropriate though because the objections are usually about the evolution of any creature, or abiogenesis of life at all, or the moral effects of evolutionary view -- the which hominid stood up when is just not what these objections are about.
• Lack of extensive Human evolution content - this article is also visibly lacking discussion of the content of Human evolution so it's not "extensive discussion". The topics of Human evolution such as bipedalism, stone tools, Australopithecus, East Africa simply are not here.
• Recheck your objections to my input -- No, when I said "human evolution" only occurs once in text is correct, at the Unfalsifiability section para 4 -- you're apparently miscounting the footnote in the sideimage that describes Huxley text as if it were part of the body content. No, Unfalsifiability para 4 (recounting it's para 5 of 17 there) was mentioned by me as slightly related since it's comparing chromosome counts to chimps implying some relationship is tested, though not explicitly stating what let alone extensively. And no, "Moral implications - Humans as animals" is a mere 4 lines saying that teaching humans are animals would lead to animal behavior, hardly extensive or about human evolution details. Lastly 'Social effects' is variously saying evolution leads to moral relativism or constitutes its own religion or was a cause for the Holocaust -- not about hominids of Human evolution.

Look, this article is the objections and human evolution timeline is not the focus nor significantly involved in this article. An odd EL stuck waaaay down there that is hard to figure out and without an easily seen connection is just not helpful to this article. Cheers Markbassett (talk) 07:12, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

This article has a chart of human evolution already. (a much simpler, non-interactive one). You keep confusing words like "focuses" with "extensively discusses". MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 01:13, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

You know what? Nevermind. I didn't realize until Jytdog removed it that it was the only EL, and having it as the only one would look too POV pushy. Take a note, Mark: With a good reason, some of us will change our minds. Of course, if someone were to put some good EL's in, I'd support bringing this one back. Just not as the only one. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 01:49, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

In fact, please accept my apology for not taking your final comment at face value. I took it as a hyperbolic implication that this particular EL stood out, and I should have interpreted it more literally. I still think the rest of your argument is hyperbole and failure to listen, but that doesn't mean you can't make a good point or two. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 02:00, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

Thermodynamics applies universally

One can apply thermodynamics to open systems. The mathematics may be a bit more complicated, but one doesn't just throw up one's hands when working with an open system. TomS TDotO (talk) 04:49, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

TomS TDotO: Yes, "thermodynamics" can be applied to open systems, but the sentence is not about all of thermodynamics, but, rather, the 2nd law. What is the 2nd law for an open system? I don't know that there is a corresponding adjustment of the law for open systems, though I'm happy to learn about it. Otherwise, I suggest changing the sentence. We can, of course, add a note about the general applicability of thermodynamics. Thanks. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 07:10, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I'm a bit of a physics geek, so this is quite familiar territory for me. The 2nd law is often formulated as "the entropy of a closed system can never decrease," because that is a concise way of putting it that engineers and scientists can easily understand. It can get confusing, however, because the precise definitions of "entropy" and "closed systems" needs to be understood, which in turn requires one to understand the precise definitions of "energy," "work," "open systems" and -of course- "system". I'm not going to get into that, now because I'm sure n0o-one wants to get a physics lecture from some random editor.

Suffice it to say, that with respect to the usage in this article, it is absolutely true that the 2nd law applies only to closed systems, and that none of the following are closed systems: The solar system, the Earth, terrestrial environments, multi-cellular organisms, colonies of single-cellular organisms, individual single-cellular organisms, the individual cells of multi-cellular organisms, the nucleii of individual cells, DNA, and specific proteins. All of those systems are open to outside energy. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 13:26, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

I know that some of the creationists are clever enough to exploit lack of precision in any pro-evolution argument. In the case of saying that the 2nd law applies only to isolated systems, the creationist can point to the uselessness of such a law: As if a steam engine cannot be studied by thermodynamics, because it is not an isolated system. Yes, the statement that "the entropy of a closed system can never decrease" is an OK formulation of the 2nd law. But I liken that to the law of mechanics that "the momentum of a object not subject to a force can never change" - that does not say that momentum applies only in systems with no forces applied: It would be as if one said that mechanics applies only to motion on frictionless surfaces. I am asking that we can be a little careful in our language. Can we say something like a living thing is being supplied by low-entropy energy being supplied from the Sun, or some such language, so the total entropy, when everything is accounted for, is not increasing? I think that something like that is at least as clear to the general reader - indeed, it doesn't need to mention explicitly the new concept of "isolated" or "closed" systems. TomS TDotO (talk) 14:40, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Well, it's not so much that the second law applies only to closed systems. It's just that the statement "The entropy in a system cannot decrease over time," applies only to closed systems. The actual formulation of the 2nd law as is actually useful in physics is more like "You cannot transfer heat from a cold body to a warm body without making a change in the system," or "Heat will always flow only from warmer bodies to colder bodies unless energy is expended," or "Heat cannot spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer body." People often get hung on on laws having 'loopholes' and 'technicalities' and so on, because of the analogizing of physical laws to legal laws, but that's just a problem with the way people think about it. Physical laws are not analogous to legal laws. They're immutable statements of truth, and if someone finds a loophole in the way it's worded, that loophole can closed simply by wording it another way.

Another thing that often gets overlooked is that there actually are cases where the entropy of a closed system will be lower at a given point than it was at a previous point, due to complex internal workings of the system. Most formulations which mention entropy say that the entropy of a closed system tends to increase over time. As long as the overall trend is upwards from the starting point to maximum entropy, over the course of the system's existence, minor fluctuations of entropy within it are possible. Despite it being 150+ year old science, it's actually really complex. The physics we learn in high school, and even in junior college doesn't really give us any insight into how complicated classical thermodynamics and Newtonian physics can actually be. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 15:20, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, totally. My question is whether we can address the creationist appeal to the 2nd law in such a way that it can be understood by the general reader, and be accurate, and not leave obvious loopholes for the clever creationist. I don't think that saying "the 2nd law applies only to closed (or isolated) systems" is the way to go. TomS TDotO (talk) 15:45, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

It's a convenient shorthand, because it directly refutes the specific formulation creationists use. But in my opinion, the section as it currently is does a good job of explaining the terms used, and why the objection is wrong. Keep in mind however, that this is the opinion of a self-admitted physics geek. I'm much more familiar with thermodynamics than the average reader would be. If there's something in there that you or anyone else here feels may not be obvious to the typical reader, I'll happily write up a new draft and we can all tweak it until it's good to go. Not to pat myself on the back too much, but I've been told numerous times that I'm very good at explaining these sorts of things, so hopefully what I come up with would be easier to parse. (Honestly, the way the section is written is not the way I would have written it for the most part. I just think that it still works just fine.) MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 16:38, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Actually, I will tweak one thing in the section. Let me know what you all think. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 16:40, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

TomS TDotO - mmm, well convey what objections are said as best we can, just follow the cites in due WP:WEIGHT of their prominence, and show the cite. At least that conveys there is such an area of objections and from where. After that it seems we have to accept this isn't the easiest of the objections to understand or for people to read, and that there is a lot of confusion. (I just saw literally 3 statements made about earth-sun entropy -- is increasing, is decreasing, remains the same -- used on both sides. And I think I've seen some who have two or more combinations within the same argument, as well as many who are just into Word salad territory. I'll accept this is a topic where physics can verge into philosophy but ... Meh.) Markbassett (talk) 17:34, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

I could not understand a word of what you said here, except that you seem to be under the impression that there was some sort of debate going on in this thread. That is not the case. An editor commented that a statement in the article seemed to be written poorly, a brief discussion ensued in which we all agreed on just about every point, I tweaked the section a bit, and everyone seemed happy, several weeks ago. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 15:07, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

User:MjolnirPants - that was addressed to the TomS post questioning whether the objection based on 2ndlaw of thermodynamics could be conveyed understandably and accurately. My input back is that the obligation only goes as far as conveying what sources said as best able -- that it's difficult to understand anyway is just the way it is. Markbassett (talk) 02:36, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, that's much clearer. I've already tweaked the section, as I mentioned in the comment immediately preceding yours. At least one other editor has also changed some wording around. If you have any suggestions as to how to improve it further, I'm all ears. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 02:58, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Social effects / Objection that evolution is racist

Hmm - was googling for presumption of naturalism and ran across objection that evolution is racist .... Does that seem prominent enough to add ? If so, would it go as a subsection in the Social effects section at Morris ?

It also seems a bit odd the way that section has grown -- to have a series of named authors and then a list of the various ills winds up author A says racist, etcetera; then author B says immoral, Hitler, rascist, etc; then author C says ... That seems to get repetitive and to have to pick which authors to include, and grows in repetition by each author added. Wouldn't it be clearer to have a single bullet list and skip which author says what ?

Cheers Markbassett (talk) 14:45, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

As an objection to the scientific theory of evolution, this seems like a waste of time. This refers to racism among groups of people, I assume, but evolution would happen and has happened even before these groups of people existed. Acknowledging that, I don't see how this "objection" is relevant. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 20:06, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Isambard Kingdom - I came across the one during something else, and searching for others of the theme evolution is racist], it seems a common flavor with some variety -- from the book 'Darwins Plantation' claims that mentioned Darwin was motivated by racism &/or intended to justify racism; that Evolution is inherently racist because it always portrays sub-humans as dark-skinned, or that belief in evolution leads to racism (and eugenics, Hitler, etcetera), or re Darwin promoted racism, or combined claims not only does Evolution endorse and promote racism, but also that Charles Darwin himself was a racist and arguing that the refutation was wrong, or that racism exists because you believe in evolution. Lots circling the 'racism' label, arguing that because evolution is racist, evolution is an evil philosophy, or [Ad hominem] criticizing Darwin, or [Association fallacy|Guilt by association].

But I didn't see this article lay out this sub-theme as a kind of objection. The word "racism" is only under the section Social Effects para5 author, "...Kent Hovind blames communism, socialism, World War I, World War II, racism, the Holocaust, Stalin's war crimes, the Vietnam War, and Pol Pot's Killing Fields on evolution, ...". Seemed kind of unexplained and under it's prominence in objections WP:WEIGHT Markbassett (talk) 12:53, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

• I've heard this objection many times. I'm surprised it isn't already mentioned in the article. I'm all for inclusion, provided a good RS can be found. MjolnirPants Tell me all about it. 20:24, 7 October 2016 (UTC)