Nonsense needs to be fought / Stephen J Gould

Professor Gould encourages you to fight it.

[@mrmtn37]

Thank you for this video. My favorite scientist. Reality with logic.

[@drstrangelove09]

He was wrong about "non-overlapping magisteria" and this has caused damage.

[@jeffreyc.mcandrew8911]

A very interesting person.

[@drstrangelove09]

His "non-overlapping magisteria" comment set us back.

[@jesselopes5196]

It's a way of saying that you're never going to destroy religion, so let it have its place, provided it doesn't pretend to offer scientific theories. Rejecting non-overlapping magisteria will set us back (to the 1890s, as Gould points out)

[@drstrangelove09]

@@jesselopes5196 I'm not following... he's saying that science has it's domain of validity and religion has it's domain of validity and science cannot speak to the issues that religion speaks to... this is not true and saying so is a setback

[@jesselopes5196]

​@@drstrangelove09 Science does not address the issues religion does - why the universe began (as opposed to that it began 13.7 bya), what happens after we die (as opposed to that our bodily functions cease), the meaning of moral conduct (as opposed to adaptive behaviors for natural selection), and the meaning of life - all of these unanswerable issues, as Gould points out, border on scientific facts, but are not and should not be addressed by any science (physics and biology not excluded) - so the problem with denying NOMA in this respect is that saying these issues are dealt with by any science is such a palpable untruth that even the dimmest minds recognize the incongruity - this emboldens religion to cross over from these in principle distinct (unanswerable) questions into the domain of well-defined scientific theories (e.g. Creationism) - it also emboldens scientists to cross over from science into religion and put forward ideas concerning, say, the afterlife (Gould references the philosopher Henry Sedgwick, who mistakenly believed one could communicate with the dead, and Alfred Russel Wallace, whose views on evolution were seriously distorted because he let his spiritualist ideas dictate what could in principle be naturally selected). These sorts of crossovers are setbacks and will never cease as long as NOMA is unacknowledged

[@drstrangelove09]

@@jesselopes5196 1. science can address any issue that can be addressed 2. the things that religion claims to address that science cannot currently answer (such as how the universe started) it does not provide a true answer to, for example saying "god did it" is not an answer... you see that, do you not?

[@jesselopes5196]

​@@drstrangelove09 1. correct if by address you mean scientifically address. but there are questions that cannot be scientifically addressed, like moral questions, as Darwin & Gould point out - nature doesn't care about morality (natural law is nonsense, Justices Thomas & Gorsuch to the contrary notwithstanding). So you can't look to nature for moral guidance - that's NOMA 2. We may disagree but science will never answer the question of 'why there should be something rather than nothing' (as opposed to 'how there could be something from nothing' which recent particle-field physics addresses) - this is a metaphysical (not a physical) question that doesn't really have an answer based in nature - so you might say it's not addressable, either currently or in the future - but people will always ask this question, why are we here? what is the meaning of life? - NOMA blocks any answers to this question from infecting science, as they did in the days of Thomas Aquinas, which corrupted science for centuries, as Francis Bacon pointed out

[@pinball1970]

An intellectual giant

[@qwertzuiop1978]

I hope you are being sarcastic

[@Hwillijonl]

This man is full of crap. He is telling stories of his own. Unfounded, perverted stories intended to destroy that which he sees as threatening his own identity.

[@denisdaly1708]

John Henderson well given that you are a racist, I can see how you would say that. As a psychologist, I agree with him.

[@fetusimao7018]

What the fuck are you talking about? What is your point? What is threatening his own identity?

[@peartist2]

I think you need to replace that last sentence's pronouns with "I" and "my"

[@Hwillijonl]

If at this stage in the progress of genetic science anyone still believes that this man Stephen J Gould has anything of significance to say about evolutionary biology you really have a problem understanding genetic science or else have some issues in facing reality.

[@nikolademitri731]

@@Hwillijonl why don’t you clarify what you mean a bit more, please? It’s hard to follow what you mean, or at least what you’re getting at, because you’re speaking in generalizations, and some of them are too broad, so it doesn’t come off as a good faith critique. It’s the same kind of thing that a creationist/fundamentalist does when talking about Gould, Dawkins, etc, but many people critical of Gould aren’t that at all, but have ideological differences with him that they convince themselves are very meaningful scientific differences. I’d like to know if you’re coming from one of those camps, or if you’re someone who actually has a good faith scientific disagreement. Typically when I see said disagreements, it’s over punctuated equilibrium, or his suggestion that maybe natural selection isn’t the *only* driving force of evolution, but you didn’t provide enough information for me to understand if it’s that type of disagreement, another good faith disagreement, OR, if it’s one of the purely ideological critiques as I mentioned above? Thank you.

[@D800Lover]

The Bible does not teach creationism (bunkum), it teaches creation (a fairly simple concept to understand). The 'yom' of Genesis were 'ages' and not days. The first two verses shows the universe and the planet earth as existing even before the first 'yom' starts in verse three. The difference between creationism and creation is BILLIONS of years. The universe is undoubtedly very old indeed and creationism is actually slandering creation because some are intellectually incapable of seeing there is actually a war between these two concepts. Of the two, which is more rational? Not even a nanosecond is required to come to the obvious answer. Creation surrounds us, we do it all the time, everything from houses to house appliances, from cars to planes. We made the world what it is through our acts of creation. Creation is real and fits the real world. *Creationism is an abomination.* .

[@karsten9895]

+Joffrey Yes, it does. Of course, it is not mentioned in the Bible. The Bible is no scientific textbook. But, those of us who believe in the Bible and therefore in creation and also use our brain that God has given us (metaporically) can come to no other conclusion than that evolution obviously is the method of creation, which is an ongoing process. We have to use the present perfect continuous to describe creation.

[@johnbatson8779]

a total BS artist...he is not an evolutionary biologist but a paleontologist who is out of his depth with respect to evolution and/or biology

[@jesselopes5196]

Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium is genuinely a theory of evolutionary biology based on evidence from the fossil record (paleontology) - so you're wrong, sir