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Are you a Galileonist?

Another creationist video found its way into my YouTube feed. Professional-looking gentlemen having a professional-sounding discussion about the absurdity of evolution.

Darwin said this, and Darwin said that. Darwin believed this, and good old Darwin didn’t know that. And how wrong he was! And today’s Darwinists still cling on to this dying theory. How ridiculous is that!

The discussion is drenched with scientific-sounding words. There’re plasmids, endoplasm, centromere, codons, recessive allele, messenger RNA, genetic entropy, ….. These guys know their stuff! The viewer, not burdened with a lot of scientific knowledge, is impressed. It is easy to see where this discourse is heading to: Darwinism is dead, and today’s Darwinists are only flogging a dead horse because they can’t see, or don’t want to see the TRUTH. Darwin’s been dead for such a long time, for goodness’ sake, let’s move on!

Indeed, Charles Darwin published his main idea 166 years ago. That’s a very long time on the scientific timeline. He had no clue about any mechanisms which could explain his theory.

Let’s assume we can bring him back to life into the year 2025. Let’s give him a Biology 101 textbook to read. He would not have the foggiest idea what these guys are talking about. He recognizes a cell, and he understands the meaning of inheritance, but what is a ‘DNA copy error’? What the heck is DNA? And what on earth is a recessive allele??

In the end, he would look up and say, “I was right after all, all living things are related to one another.”

Let’s go back further in history. The year is 1633. Galileo has been hauled before the Chief Inquisitor. He has two choices: renouncing his crazy idea that the earth is moving or face the torture chamber. Galileo was 69 at the time (in itself an achievement in the 17th century), and he had no desire fighting it out with the Inquisition. So, he just lied under oath.

We’ll bring him back to life and bring him up to speed with 21st century astronomy. He would have no clue on what’s going on around him. What is a galaxy? What the hell is a Black Hole. Who is this Isaac Newton fella who thinks he knows more about gravity than me?

In the end he would say, “Well, after all, I was right, the earth is moving!”

Shall we call ourselves ‘Galileonists’, to distinguish ourselves from Flat Earthers and other Geocentrists? ‘Galileans’ doesn’t cut it, that term is already reserved for Jupiter’s largest moons. What about ‘Kopernicans’, or ‘Copernicans’? No, that sounds too ancient, even with the latinising capital ‘C’.

What do you think?

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How we Access New Knowledge – Back Then and Now

When I grew up in central Europe in the 1960s and 70s, life was a lot simpler than it is today. No internet, no computers (although we had an IBM 360 mainframe at the University of Vienna, which took up a couple of rooms), not even cell phones. It was a peaceful time. With the two World Wars only in the distant memories of parents and grandparents, our knowledge about the world increased exponentially. Science was riding high. Getting access to this knowledge was more cumbersome than it is today, but it was straightforward.

Say, for example, you wanted to know how new stars are forming. You first had to find your way to a library and look for a book, something like Astronomy 101. Today it would be called Astronomy for Dummies. And that would tell you all you need to know about the process of star formation. Or, you could have invited a professional from a nearby university to give a talk to your group, to your club. After the talk and after having answered all your questions, you would say thank you professor, and that would be that. Back in those days, misinformation and disinformation were foreign words. The phrase ‘alternative facts’ had not yet been invented.

How do we go about looking for new information today? Well, that’s a whole lot easier nowadays. You grab your phone (in case you’re not holding it already) and ask your question. Or you type it in, if you are still from the old school.

Let’s take a question which is slightly more controversial than star formation (at least for some people): climate change. Typing these two words into Google Search, just now, got me 1.77 billion hits. Narrowing the query down to ‘climate change explained’ still gave me an impressive 539 million links, all competing for my attention.

If you are of a curious nature, the internet can provide you with thousands of articles, discussions, comments and even academic papers on the topic of climate change. There are hundreds of informative videos, in case you don’t like reading. A great time to be alive! Is there a problem?

Yes, there is. You will also come across websites which downplay, or simply deny that climate change is happening. To the credit of the internet, it took me quite a while to find such a site. It depends on your preferences. Google looks over your shoulder and quickly learns about what you like to see. This is particularly true for social media.

The challenge today is to sift through the morass of information on offer, and find what is really true.

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