[extropy-chat] Reverse Evolution ?

[Pete Bertine]

Ok, this one really needs some serious debunking. 

That article was so full of logical holes and riddled with nonsense that
much better minds than mine had better fire off some emails to "World
Science." (What a over hyped rag!)  In fact I had to check to make sure that
the webpage hadn't been taken over by scientologists before I could actually
believe that a scientist could "go public" with a "Reverse Evolution" claim
of such magnitude. Genetic proof my hoof.

Reading a little deeper shows that *only* 5 people are walking on their
hands and feet and grunting in a poor town in Turkey.  I spent one month in
the mental health ward a few months after 9/11 (I'm bi-polar, I went off my
meds) and let me tell you Dr. Tan, there were 3 people walking on their
hands and feet and grunting and one of them had a very funny looking head. I
bet some of their DNA looked a little funny if you looked real close where
you really wanted to find something wrong. 

Oh, come on now !  The very fact that the 5 Turkish (what would the National
Enquirer call them, "Monster Ape Turkey People"?) people all came from the
same family would lead a New York City psychiatrist to suspect learned
behavior, sexual abuse as children and perhaps some good old fashioned
showmanship.

I suggest a study to see exactly how long these people have been exhibiting
these traits from a social scientist's perspective. Perhaps I was a New
Yorker for too long to not know every street scam in the book and go ahead
call me too much of a skeptic, but when I hear of the father going out to
collect cans and bottles with his teeth to feed his family,  I hear "sucker
scientist" written all over it.

Too often we have been fooled by Clever Hans.  If a horse can learn to count
by reading the involuntary twitches of his trainer, then a family in Turkey
can walk on their hands and grunt if it gets them more bottles to collect
and then more attention and then nice Dr. Tan measuring their brains.  Nice
Dr. Tan thank you for more bottles, ooooooo, a Hershey bar... we behave like
good ape people now. Sucker.      

Thus when Spike said:

> > Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to explain evolutionary
> theory to the layman using the amount of text that would fit on one side
> of
> one sheet of printer paper, using language not out of reach of the average
> eighth grader.  Ready set go.


Then Brandon said:
> This frustrates me. People are not so dumb. 
[PKB] snip
What is missing is not a simple, eighth
> grade explanation of evolution. What is missing is the explanation of the
> complete picture: the world view in absence of a creator; the reasoning
for a moral framework without god given ethics.

[PKB] Then PKB said:

Let's first check the premise really close here and make sure we all aren't
being fooled, like I suspect Dr. Tan is.


BTW...

We absolutely do need a good 1 sheet definition of evolution so I can go
nail it to the door of the Vatican.  Been several hundred years since my
ancestors nailed anything to the door of a Catholic church and I'm ready to
get my hammer. (Spike, it is OK to threaten the Catholic Church with a
hammer on the list, isn't it?)