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45 Comments
Thanks! I love the imagery of the tree branching throughout the whole video. Do you know what this is from?
Oh yeah, here it is in one minute
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155351
The Southpark clip rocks.
It should be required viewing for anyone studying evolution.
Here’s the Simpson version of Evolution;
Sorry link didn’t take.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/19989/the-simpsons-homer-evolution
Beautiful!
Great graphics and background music. That vid just reminded me why I don’t believe in evolution, though. Lol. So, sorry if that was an attempt to get people to believe it. It seemed like it was just meant to be informative and entertaining, not persuasive, so yeah. But I’m reading The Origin of the Species as of yesterday if that comforts anyone.
It does :)
Also, if you think “evolution is just a theory”, you might also want to read
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_as_theory_and_fact
Niva- you should really check out the talk origins site. It cites all its claims, providing links to the original scientific literature in pubmed:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
This is the cover page, and on it is an outline to various lines of evidence for evolution. If you click on a particular line, you can read the evidence and if you click on the citations, you can see the reference. Hope that is helpful!
I read it. Interesting. I think I’ll have to read it again to get everything out of it because of my massive headache, though. Lol. I’ll get back to this later.
Noone said that would be easy… Good luck with your quest!
;-)
we don’t believe it, we’ve just observed it.
I claim to observe the work of God. And your point is?
That the observations of evolution can be experimented on and repeated by multiple scientists, and are thus verifiable and attributed to the process of evolution. Where as individual instances attributed to god that are observed but cannot be experimented on or repeated, cannot be verified. Of course that is a hard one to answer with out considering what you mean by “work of god”. What would you consider an observable “work of god”?
This sort of observation has one BIG problem: the one defining what observation is to be expected is also the same person interested in making that observation – there is no testable standard. The reason why a result was to be expected is anything. Literally anything possible, and its direct opposite too. Mystery, will, plan, it doesn’t matter because the deck is stacked to confirm whatever result you get. A positive result leads to the same conclusion just as safely as a negative one. With a supernatural standard, anything goes.
In methodologically rigorous science, you get as much or more out of a falsification – which means that stacking the deck is the worst imaginable conduct, because it will be found out, it will mislead, it will potentially harm people and waste resources. Apparently those are of the least concern to the deckstackers. Because they already have a vested interested in preserving the fraud. And millions of people are too afraid that there might really be just a little man behind the curtain.
Well, I don’t know enough about defining “observation”, “theory”, “fact”, or “falsification” to really go there. I’m just going by my own *experience*, -not- *experimentation*. The Bible says not to test God (can’t cite it atm). But I guess that just seems to many people like a foolproof way of saying “If you can’t test God, you can’t confirm He doesn’t exist, so ha. See if you can get around that one.” I don’t see it like that, but maybe that’s just me.
I agree with you in that I don’t think a five minute presentation will convince an unbeliever. Personally, I think it would work well on people who are already open minded about evolution, as it is told as a story with bold statements as opposed to scientific work with citations, which I’m sure they have but don’t fit in a 5 minute slot.
For those skeptic of evolution, maybe a longer version would be needed.
Wow, Nivia Tuvia, I haven’t read The Origin myself…
I fear that it may be a bit outdated and boring… Evolution theory has.. well, veolved a lot since Darwin. =)
I am a bit curious about your statement that you don’t _believe_ in Evolution.
Would you say that you _believe_ in Quantum Physics or General Relativity?
Anyway, you have my uttermost respect for reading something that does not reinforce your beliefs.
I’ll try to read one of those books ‘Christianity for non-believers’.
“I fear that it may be a bit outdated and boring… Evolution theory has.. well, veolved a lot since Darwin.”
Yeah, I had trouble focusing on the introduction cuz it was so… boring. But I did learn about the former evolutionary theories before Darwin’s from the reading. That was kinda interesting.
And I now know that the most widely accepted version of evolution is the “modern evolutionary synthesis,” which includes genes, unlike Darwin’s version (I have to give credit to rodney’s link for that one).
But believing in Quantam Physics and General Relativity? I haven’t even skimmed the surface of those (Though I did watch a documentary about how Einstein developed his own theory of relativity from past theories and discoveries of others, and it was very interesting). I’m not even old enough to vote yet, for Goodness’s sake! Lol. But I’m working on thoroughly covering all areas of science (and history) possible, which, sadly enough, will take the rest of my life because you can only do so much at once. Gah! There’s so much to learn!
But I want to do it because I want to know what people are talking about and be able to see where they’re coming from, and not just go by what I’ve learned from the past. So it’s worth it. I’ve got a looooong reading list… But it’s strange how even most adults I know personally don’t know half as much about evolution etc. as I do… Which is yet another incintive. What good is having knowledge when you don’t share it with others? No good at all.
In the words of Seneca:
Tamdiu discendum est, quamdiu vivas! (most literal translation: we should learn as long as we may live. But it could be interpreted several different ways)
I’ve been studying Latin, too, btw. Lol. Seneca is one of my favorite philosophers to study. He has (or had, rather) an amusingly dry sense of humor.
Nivia Tuvia, I’m really surprised, I thought you where older.
By any means, continue in the path you’ve choosen, people like you makes me proud of being human!
I’ve seen this clip a couple times before, and I love it. Not only is it pretty clear and concise, the animation is beautiful. That and David Attenborough has the best voice for narration [i][b]ever[/b][/i]. I just want him to read me stories all day.
ok … I missed the things below that show which html tags work. Ooops.
I love this video. Great for explaining the phylogenetic tree of life.
This is really great. BBC always has the best stuff.
It’s obviously a piece that’s preaching to the choir and isn’t going to convinced anyone either way.
It gives you the impression that it might at the beginning with the bit about genetics proving Darwin to be correct… but never quite gets there.
Is this a portion of a much larger film? If so, maybe that would explain it..
But that’s not a criticism, necessarily, just an observation.
Great special effects, and of course, great narration.
It’s a gorgeous video. I’ll give it that. But it’s… um… wrong.
*ducks*
When they actually tried to analyse the DNA “tree of life” it’s actually a hopelessly tangled bank. There is so much horizontal transmission that the nice clean “tree” structure only shows up in sexually reproducing animals. Between the plants hybridising, and the bacteria having sex with each other and the retro-virus’s leaping from one domain to another and the incorporation of mitochondria and other organelles into the eukaryotic cell it’s a wonder they could see a tree at all.
http://www.newscientist.com/issue/2692, quickly followed up by http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20126960.100-darwin-was-right.html
And the tree in that vid didn’t “sum up evolution” – it summed up the evolutionary relationships between animals. Completly ignored plants and the iffy groups and gave no mechanism at all. Unhelpful. Pretty, but unhelpful.
That’s a valid criticism. Just so long are you aren’t saying evolution is wrong. :)
Bloody well hope not, I’m doing my Master degree in it! :P
Excellent. You’d be surprised how many fundies try to use some screwy logic based on science they found in google to back up ridiculous claims that the earth is 6000 years old and that people and dinosaurs coexisted.
Case in point:
http://www.creationmuseum.org/about
A simple history that anyone could understand, but wrong, or a difficult one who will bore any viewer? Decisions decisions….
(I’m not saying that what you are explaining is boring for me, or for any person with curiosity about life, but it is for a lot of the population)
That’s more or less why there is yet so many people believing in “creation”
Depends what you think the purpose is … it’s gets across the basic idea without getting over complicated. You’ve got to remember that this programme, Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life, was show pretty much on prime time TV in the UK as part of the Darwin season. This basically means that it’s intended to appeal to a wide audience and as such will take some ‘poetic licence’ when presenting ideas. Think of it like the London Tube map — it’ll tell you how to get from A to B but not the distance from A to B.
@Jabster & Francesc – good point. You do need to pick your material to suit your audience. I spose that were I trying to explain evolution to my 8 year old neice, that video would be suitable. But would it have been so hard to include plants? It’s missing them entirely except for algae (and their status as plants depends who you ask). If you only want it to serve the function of explaining the evolutionary relationships between animals to the widest possible audience, then 10/10. It’s gorgeous, Attenborough is always a wonderful narrator, it’s clear (by that I mean easy to understand and unlikely to confuse) and accurate enough for a layman.
But “summing up evolution in 5 minutes” it is not.
At the same time Francesc, that explanation would clearly be unsatisfying to anyone who didn’t really understand in the first place (see Niva up there). If all laymans evolutionary television stays at this level, no wonder so few people pay any attention. (Although I imagine this is part of the show was not intended to stand alone and other segments of the show may well null and void my criticism. But I don’t watch TV and wouldn’t bother with something at this level if I did.)
No slight on Daniel but the summing up evolution in 5 mins was (I believe) his name for the clip and the entire programme was one hour long.
With ref to you not watching — well you weren’t the target audience :-) Trying to explain evolution in a people friendly way is always going to be difficult as are many concepts in science. I suppose it comes down to what the purpose of the programme was and I pretty sure that it wasn’t meant as a primer for a degree! Take many of the popular science books that are now available; Big Bang by Simon Sing for example, this gives you an interesting story and some of the concepts without going into the real details. As a way of getting the message across it’s far more effective than the ‘hard’ science that sits behind it.
Remember it’s programmes like this that will get your eight year niece interested in the subject to start with and that will stand her in good stead in later life.
But i was expecting to see “how” evolution works -mutation and natural seleccion- not how mammals evolved
Yeah, that’s why I didn’t see much point in it. I want to know HOW it works and WHY and be able to see the supposed evidence with my own eyes, not “this is what happened, look at the pretty colors”.
You do know how to use google don’t you?
The season of programming was more about Darwin the person than evolution as such. I think you’ll need to complain to the BBC about that one.
Korny – the fact that you are doing a Masters in evolution (much respect!) should tell you that a 5 minute vid is always going to be totally inadequate. Given the time constarint and the fact that it was obviously aimed at a non-scientific audience, I think it did the job damned well.
I know *sigh* It’s not the BBC’s fault – they have to cater to the audience. I concede the point! :D I suppose I’m more grouchy at the nature of TV – endlessly repeating the same material, only with better graphics this time, catering to the lowest common demoninator rather than helping people extend themselves, and leaving out the bits that are actually interesting in favour of the bits that everyone can understand. It’s only a money making scheme after all.
There’s some dude (Paleontologist) that says that soon genetics will allow us to make a dinosaur from a chicken by modifying its DNA.
Here’s his website.
http://www.howtobuildadinosaur.com/How_to_Build_a_Dinosaur/Home.html
I’m sure someone made a documentary about this already….
Spielberg made three.
I wonder how many of these christian right fundies who rail against science and wave the American flag all over the place would be pleased to learn that fundie Islam ALSO supports intelligent design:
http://www.hssonline.org/publications/Newsletter2008/NewsletterJanuary2008Creationism.html
Wow, Joe Bob! You and Hussein really do have something in common!
for your viewing pleasure
Sagan said it best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE9dEAx5Sgw
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