Neil deGrasse Tyson Squashes Creationist Argument Against Science on National TV

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/neil-degrasse-tyson-squashed-creationist-argument-against-science-national-tv



***SNIP

During this week's episode, Tyson discussed the evolution of the eye, something declared for years by creationists as unexplainable by evolution, and thus evidence that life must be intelligently designed. Tyson masterfully explained how the eye evolved and how well scientists understand this evolution.

The "Cosmos" host also touched on how many species have evolved an eye, but did leave out the fact that there are over 40 known independent eye evolutions, something that very clearly discredits any intelligent design.

However, these facts mean nothing to creationists. Not long after "Cosmos" aired, Jay W. Richards, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute (DI), a non-science, religious based foundation that fights to discredit evolution and replace it with faith based creationism, tweeted:

On eye evolution, the #Cosmos editors again failed to do a Google Search[.]

Richards' Twitter missive linked to a Discovery Institute PDF download that supposedly debunks the evolution of the eye claim. Yet the PDF is nothing more than praise for the Christian Right pundit Ann Coulter and a lambasting of Richard Dawkins, DI's public enemy number one.

[malaise]

1. Cosmos is magnificent

The 'eyes' have it!!!

[xchrom]

3. mornin! you ready for spring on thursday?

[malaise]

8. We only have cool and hot here

[xchrom]

9. yes. and i'm damn jealous.

i woke up to ice laden trees.

[malaise]

10. Damn - two days from spring

Don't be jealous - we have to survive the possibility of hurricanes for six months of the year.

[eShirl]

2. lol @ creationist response

basically, it's "Google > science"

On eye evolution, the #Cosmos editors again failed to do a Google Search

[Daemonaquila]

15. It hurts...

That was a rough piece of stupid to wake up to this AM.

[Half-Century Man]

17. The mental equivilate of someone zipping you fly

before you've put things away.

[Daemonaquila]

18. Ow. Too accurate.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. It says something about how fundamentally backwards a lot of Americans are...

that this is even a necessary thing for a scientist to say on national TV. In other developed countries superstitious religious cranks are a decided minority and their views are not taken seriously or treated with any respect.

[thecrow]

5. "...did leave out the fact that there are over 40 known independent eye evolutions..."??

He covered this, both verbally and with pictures.

[Cirque du So-What]

16. Yes, I caught that too

I didn't count the individual evolutions, which were accompanied with depictions of how those eyes responded to visual light, but that segment of the show included a good number of them. Sometimes I wish NDT would just kick a bunch of these specious creationist assertions to the curb and dance the fandango on top of them, but that could alienate people who (unlike myself) avoid confrontation in this realm.

[jeff47]

19. Not really.

They showed lots of different eyes, but did not say that the were independent evolutions of the eye.

An independent evolution would mean a creature without eyes becomes creature with eyes. Not two different creatures with eyes. For example, human eyes and cat eyes came from the same evolution.

With what they showed, one evolution of the eye could have adapted into all those different variations of the eye. And some did - lots of those eyes shown on the show came from the same evolutions. But some of them came from independent evolutions.

[Heidi]

6. Kick!

[longship]

7. Hell, Darwin debunked the eye argument in "On the Origin of Species"

R&K

[Gothmog]

11. NDT was great

NDT did a great job of explaining the evolution go the eye

[PennyK]

12. I got excited when he started to explain this

I knew that this, specifically, was one of the things the "know-nothings" always say proves the validity of intel-design. I've been saying to my husband since last week that so much of this show seems to be specifically aimed at, ironically, trying to open the eyes of those who discount science.
AND I love the show.

[cab67]

13. I have to admit....

...there were a couple of cringe moments for me when details were gotten wrong. The skeleton shown on a desolate landscape following the end-Permian mass extinction was something like Dimetrodon - a group that was long gone by the Late Permian. And in fact, synapsids (the group including mammals and their closest extinct relatives) were still the dominant large land predators and herbivores (or among them, anyway) for quite some time after the extinction event - the dinosaur takeover had more to do with events in the Early and Middle Triassic than it did the end-Permian extinction.

Continental ice caps never made it as far south as Los Angeles, as suggested in the program, either.

That being said, these are minor details that a professional might notice, but which did not detract from the overall message. Evolution really happened. There really was a massive extinction at the end of the Permian that fundamentally altered the plants and animals on the planet, and the "Age of Dinosaurs" followed it. Large continental glaciers really did advance and retreat multiple times over the past 2 or 3 million years, and these events really did play a substantial role in human evolution. And science really has given us the ability to reconstruct the "Tree of Life" in ways not known when Sagan's Cosmos was broadcast.

[Half-Century Man]

14. Failed to do Google Search? Are you fucking kidding me?

In what world do the rantings of a barely simian keyboard fondler, who managed to get "eyes" and "evolution" in their keywords for their mental stain which drips down the internet soiling us all, rank equally with actual information from actual scientists?

Can we sue the DI for tarnishing the word "discovery"? A word which has been used to describe advancements in humanity. Force them to relabel to Dipshit Institute (they can keep their initials)