Ignorance of basic science and scientific principles runs rampant in a Canadian agency with “science” in its name.
Prof denied grant over evolution
A clash between McGill University and the key federal agency that funds social science research in the country is sparking a scholarly debate in Canada about the theory of evolution.
McGill University says the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council made a “factual error” when it denied Professor Brian Alters a $40,000 grant on the grounds that he’d failed to provide the panel with ample evidence that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution is correct.
Why, why, why! Because it’s all logic and reason now. Science, progress, laws of hydraulics, laws of social dynamics, laws of this, that, and the other. No place for three-legged cyclops in the South Seas. No place for cucumber trees and oceans of wine. No place for me.
I’m waiting to hear back from a bud of mine on the faculty at McGill for the skinny on internal politics — if that’s it. I can only presume some bureaucrat simply didn’t know what was being reviewed or — a definite possibility — this may some sop ordered by the new Premier, Harper, to his role model in the White House.
Though, usually, bodies like this in Canada are less political than here in the States. Anyone here from the Great White North, yet, this morning.
Evolution is a topic of the natural sciences anyway, so what exactly does this have to do with a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
Mike, when did you start being a romantic? Good grief?
Broaden your reading, dude. There is no shortage of scientists with humor and whimsy. Wander through http://www.edge.org some time. There’s stuff in there to make you chuckle.
Why else do you think they list John as their preferred gadfly?
Dude, it’s just a silly quote from “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.” One of my favorite movies.
This is unusual for Canada. We’d typically be more likely to fund both sides of the debate.
Eideard – Stephen Harper is the Prime Minister. A premier is a provincial leader (they just act like Prime Ministers).
Thanks.
I apoligize for the slip, Richard. My kin on PEI rarely recognize anyone above Premier!!
Doesn’t Harper think he deserves some godlike title, anyway?
Mike
That was my first question too. Then I realized that this was study about the acceptance of “Intelligent Design” effect upon the acceptance of Evolution. Purely a study in Sociology trends.
The only possible “qualifier” is that we are not getting all the facts. The vice-president of SSHRC said …she argued that the professor had taken one line in the letter “out of context” and the rejection of his application should not indicate that SSHRC was expressing “doubts about the theory of evolution.”
I don’t question why my faith is attacked, it comes with being a believer, but come on, John, I pegged you as a normal guy. Two posts on the same day dissenting Christian beliefs? Got an ax to grind?
Still, I guess that’s what blogs are for.
Nick, John did not post this, Dave Drews did. He has other people who contribute to this blog.
Intelligent design and Evolution are both correct. Evolution cannot stand on its own, neither can Intelligent design. They depend on eachother. Here’s why. Evolution is based on mistakes. It claims that everything is based on chance which is only partly right. If that is true then we would not be here, we would still be in the state of the Big Bang: ever expanding without ever stopping or forming. That is chance. For evolution to occur as we know it, chance must occasionally STOP. After that stop chance happens until it STOPS and chance happens again from there. Those stops are intelligent design at work. For instance a long, long time ago an electron and a nucleus lived apart. The world at that time was chaotic. That chaos kept accuring UNTIL a chance event happened that WORKED! That chance event was that the electron and the nucleus became a whole, a union that was greater than the sum of its parts. The electron revolved around the nucleus to become (together) an atom. Intelligent design stopped chance at that point in evolution to say that the atom was good. Otherwise the “atom” would have chanced to be itself BUT THEN CHANCED to be not itself. Chance is chance. It keeps going even when the right combination occurs. If you are trying to break into a safe by a brute force method of trying ALL combinations when you finally hit that combination after a few million tries and the steel door opens, do you close it and continue with the rest of the combinations that you KNOW will not work? That is intelligence.
We gotta stop fighting. There will be no progress in humanity until we marry all the parts in the cultural world today. But just like the electron and nucleus we have to lose a little autonomy by binding eachother. But greater things happen afterward. An electron and nucleus didn’t know that by binding they would produce the building block of existence. *Somebody* knew. It is built into the very nothingness of the very first moment before Something went BANG!
As Mike noted, there are 6 of us, so far, who participate as John’s elves. We’re listed [above] at the Masthead.
Not so incidentally, commenters may submit leads to posts they find interesting. Regardless of predominance, facial hair is not requisite.
Unless we can get John to grow a beard.
David above,
You are so misguided. You know so little about the science involved that your comments just make you sound like one of the WOO WOO crowd. Sit down and take 2 homepathy pills.
jim, God is my guide. if I am wrong, don’t tell me–SHOW me.
David, don’t tell me that God is your guide. SHOW ME.
Note that this is the “Social Science” and Humanities Research Council. Not a biologist among them. Note also that in Harper’s Canada that this sort of thing may become more common.