I got into an argument over the weekend with my Mormon sister who calls herself a 'scientist' but has never been in a lab or received a science degree, who got into a late night argument about human origins. She's getting an online PhD in "The Science of Happiness" from a diploma mill.
I asked her if she accepted the theory of evolution as the best explanation for our origins. She said she did not. That she believes humans were created 140,000 years ago. I told her that there are 16 different sub-species of humans, going back 2.5 million years and that we're not even the first species of Homo Sapiens, there was Homo Sapiens Idaltu before us and probably Neanderthal and Denisovans, who were closely related enough to us to produce fertile offspring, meeting the definition of the same species. She told me that our species is no longer called, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, but "Anatomically modern humans".
I looked it up on Wikipedia, where it says, "Anatomically modern humans" is the common name, but the taxonomy of our species is Homo Sapiens Sapiens, according to scientists.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens#Name_and_taxonomy
That's when she claimed she was a scientist so I should listen to her and not other scientists.
She scoffed and claimed that Wikipedia was bullshit, since anybody in the world can go on there and change it to say whatever they want.
I told her that it matched up with the fossil record, that we have fossil remains of all 16 species listed on Wikipedia.

At that point she insisted I calm down, and when I wouldn't just stfu, she got up and left the room and went outside for an hour and left me to argue the point with her husband who also rejects well established scientific consensus on evolution, to promote his own theory, that humans were put here by aliens about 140,000 years ago, which he can prove by, you guessed it, YouTube videos.

lol



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2019 08:57PM by schrodingerscat.

> She's getting an online PhD
> in "The Science of Happiness"
> from a diploma mill.


This is one of the funniest (and saddest, but I refuse to allow that aspect of it to stem my laughter) sentences I've ever read.

Agreed. PhD in Happiness is for schmucks, or chumps, or easy marks.
Please tell me she got a fellowship to do this work.

Your sister is an idiot, despite her impressive academic credentials. Why are you wasting an irreplaceable portion of your finite life arguing with her?

not logged in, NLI Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Your sister is an idiot, despite her impressive
> academic credentials. Why are you wasting an
> irreplaceable portion of your finite life arguing
> with her?

She's not an idiot. She's really well read believe it or not. She is a voracious reader, mostly self help books and books on Quantum Physics.
From what I can tell she reads a lot of self help books recommended by Oprah, like "The Secret", Eckhart Tolle, Jill Bolte Taylor, and is really into the "Law of Attraction". She's pretty new age and is really into a lot of the same things that are in the Movie, "What the Fuck do we Know?"
I think that's where she gets the idea that people are only 140,000 yrs old, and we were put here by aliens.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2019 12:11AM by schrodingerscat.

> She's not an idiot. She's really well read believe
> it or not.


> I think that's where she gets the idea that people
> are only 140,000 yrs old, and we were put here by
> aliens.


Confucius said that education without intelligence is a waste but intelligence without education is dangerous. I think that applies to a lot of very smart people--particularly in the church, meaning in this case that your sister hasn't been educated rigorously enough to see through the 140,000 and alien claims.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2019 12:35AM by Lot's Wife.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
.
>
>
> Confucius said that education without intelligence
> is a waste but intelligence without education is
> dangerous. I think that applies to a lot of very
> smart people--particularly in the church, meaning
> in this case that your sister hasn't been educated
> rigorously enough to see through the 140,000 and
> alien claims.

I think this is more of a group think pathology. Kind of like the rise of flat earthers, and other science denial. One of the biggest arguments we had was while climbing a mountain. She was talking about faith and how powerful it was, that it could move mountains. I said, "so in the 2,000 years since Christ promised that we could move mountains into the sea with faith the size of a mustard seed, how many times has that happened?"
She insisted it was possible because everything was a light show and there was no difference between me and the mountain.
I told her to use her faith to move the mountain we were climbing into the sea.
That infuriated her.
She just stopped talking and refused to climb any further. So I left her behind and went and climbed to the peak with some climber on the trail headed that way.
When I came down she still wasn't speaking to me and we went down the mountain in silence.
She really hates it when the pragmatisr in me calls bullshit on the whole magic thinking attitude.
Although, I did win 2 things at a raffle after saying I never won anything at these damned raffles.

> I think this is more of a group think pathology.

There is nothing better at breaking through "group think" than a good dose of critical thinking.

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > I think this is more of a group think
> pathology.
>
> There is nothing better at breaking through "group
> think" than a good dose of critical thinking.
"I cause CogDis, which will either drive them insane or it will drive them sane. I hope for the latter, which is all I can do after all." Ayan Hirsi Ali
Richard Dawkins offered to nominate her for a Nobel Peace Prize after that lecture.

“I think that's where she gets the idea that people are only 140,000 yrs old, and we were put here by aliens.”

Your sister sounds kinda hot.

>> "At that point she insisted I calm down, and when I wouldn't.........left me to argue the point with her husband."

You really can't find an audience for your stuff can you? You know the phrase "never give up" is complete BS and ridiculous don't you? Well, maybe not.

Going straight for a PhD makes sense. She clearly has the BS down pat.

Try not to become too worked up over her idiocy. As maddening as it seems to you, she's really not worth the spike in blood pressure, etc.

B.S. (self explanatory)
M.S. ( . . . more . . .)
Ph.D. (Piled Higher and Deeper)

I think it illustrates the ommon grouo think pathology formed by youtube groups, 4Chan, 8 Chan, etc.
Vice just did an awesome report on 8Chan.
Its a real cancer on society.

Going to call myself a car and stand in my garage.



HH =)

lord knows you probably have enough gas...

Hahahaha!!!


HH =)

I'm curious where she got that 140,000 year number? My critique is that just because there is "established scientific consensus on evolution" that doesn't mean it's correct. Remember evolution is a world view created by a man named Darwin back in the 1840s. The evidence he gathered was different shapes of beaks and different sizes of wings. He knew nothing of the genetic code, the complexities of cells, of atoms, of DNA, or how to create DNA (we still don't know anything about that). And from a very simple idea with hardly any foundation at all he built up this new idea and got other people and the government to believe it and add to it.

But it's almost 200 years since then and we've certainly come along way since 1840. True Science has discovered incredible things that weren't even imagined back then. The complexity of the simplest cell, How long DNA code strand really is.

Evolution is as likely as room full of monkeys randomly typing and being able to produce the complete works of Shakespeare, and a whole library of information. Can anyone really honestly believe that???

That's how long the code is to run an organism!

I'll leave most of this alone, though leaving it alone does not equate with agreement, but the concept of evolution didn't originate with Darwin. Natural selection, however, was Darwin's work.

Oh, that silly 'government', being fooled so easily by Darwin! I'll never trust them again...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/09/2019 11:12PM by oldpobot.

Evolution occurred in Australia, which is why you have all those snakes. But everywhere else creation was divine and pristine.

"Evolution is as likely as room full of monkeys randomly typing and being able to produce the complete works of Shakespeare, and a whole library of information." ... You've got your christer bullshit story wrong once again.

schrodingerscat Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> She scoffed and claimed that Wikipedia was
> bullshit, since anybody in the world can go on
> there and change it to say whatever they want.


Just tell her that this is a terrific educational opportunity for both of you. She claims to be a scientist (or at least to possess a scientific orientation toward things), so it should be quite an easy and instructive exercise for her to go point by point through the Wikipedia article and provide sound, factually based rebuttals to each item of bullshit that she finds.

Tell her that such exercise will also sharpen her mind for the challenges ahead in her "Science of Happiness" studies.

Then you can have a fun discussion going through her rebuttals and arguments.

If she declines to make the effort, she loses the argument by default. The refusal to apply herself at such an elementary level is tantamount to an admission that she really doesn't have any sound arguments and does not even fully understand the fundamental issues involved in the evolution vs. non-evolutionary creation debate.

She blinded me with science and hit me with technology.

How do I get in on this “science of happiness”?

somehow is closely related to pharmacology...possibly with a greater emphasis on the consuming side than on the licensed dispensing side..

I suppose today Joseph Smith would have quite a few friends.

Peggy Hill said that earning her online PhD was the hardest eighteen hours of her life.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Well your brother in law makes more sense than your sister. I’m far more likely to believe we were put here by aliens than by god. :-)
I just cannot fathom how any scientist can reject evolution. But the mormon church does have scientists as members just as christian churches do. From what I’ve heard from them, and from other mormons who know anything about science, they somehow accept evolution and that the Old Testament can still be true. I wish I’d grilled them on this for more detail. For example, do they really think then that Adam and Eve descended from apes, and that god then put them in the garden, and that god “creating” the world in six days really meant six “creative periods”? - I think my missionary said this to me. And then they don’t think about it too much, like it doesn’t matter.
If god is somehow involved in evolution that actually makes very little sense.
Believing in the OT over science makes zero sense to me. I’ve heard that the Earth is only 6000 years old before, in spite of evidence that it is billions. Mormons I’ve known have also said that asteroids crashed into the Earth and brought a lot of that evidence with them; dinosaurs are aliens, in other words. LOL.

and many are mormon. They were brilliant men (some have passed away). Some of the best men I've ever met, not your typical mormon man at all, but they believed.

Myself, I have typed medical records for 33 years, so like I said, I must be an M.D.

She's just using the word "science" the way some people use the word "God."

Exactly!

Opposite sides of the same coin.

Tell her that a biology professor said the following...

“Evolution by natural selection is the most important scientific discovery of modern times (I am stoically unapologetic about the lack of equivocation in that statement). The evidences for it are staggeringly abundant, detailed, and scientifically undeniable.”

Btw, that’s from BYU biology professor, Steven Peck. ;)

Quote is from here: https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/flunkingsainthood/2010/09/why-mormons-should-embrace-evolution-byu-biology-professor-steven-peck.html#xw4TLDHplXtQOZlv.99

“Evolution by natural selection is the most important scientific discovery of modern times (I am stoically unapologetic about the lack of equivocation in that statement). The evidences for it are staggeringly abundant, detailed, and scientifically undeniable.”

COMMENT: This is a ridiculous statement, however popular it is among biologists seeking to rhetorically overstate the importance of their own chosen profession. Most physicists would laugh at such a statement, and rightfully so. (Unless they did not want to be ridiculed by biologists!)

Darwinian "natural selection" as a scientific theory is vacuous; it does not explain anything. A scientific theory requires the postulation of natural laws in one of two ways: (1) By taking the state of a system (say a population of organisms) at some particular time (T1) and applying such laws, such as to *predict* the state of the system at some later time. (T2). Darwinism cannot do that--even in principle. (2) By taking the state of a system at T2 and by applying the natural laws of the theory *explaining* the systems' current state by establishing what state the system was in at T1. Darwinism cannot do that either.

In short, Darwinism is an idea, not a scientific theory. It basically states that variation in a population creates survival and reproduction advantages within a given environment such that the "adaptive" traits (or relevant genetic components) within the population will proliferate. That's it! There are no well-defined laws; no mechanism, and very little explanatory power in any particular example. Moreover, the minute you get into the details of biochemistry you realize that the actual mechanisms of evolution are highly complex and differentiated.

What all this means is that "The Theory of Evolution" is little more that Darwinian flag-waving offered as a litmus test to be used against religious thinking.

So, "evolution" (with a small "e") is most certainly true; traits and genomes within a population certainly evolve over time, given environmental conditions and other factors. However, Evolution (with a capital "E") as standing for some *theory*, be it Darwinism, Neo-Darwinism, the "Modern Synthesis" or whatever, is either false or vacuous.

Think of the idea of a "Black Box" where you have input into the box and some output, and the output depends upon what is going on within the box. A scientific theory asks "what is going on in this box such as to explain what is coming out. For any given input and output Darwinism tells us nothing about what is going on within the box. Biochemistry, on the other hand, tells us everything because we understand the relevant physical theories that explain the mechanisms of biochemistry, and by applying those mechanisms to the input, we understand the output. Are their broader theories at play? Possibly, but if so, they must be supported by additional laws on some scientific level that add to the explanation in the ways I just explained. "Survival of the fittest," is not a law, it is an observation; a platitude.

Now, someone might ask, "If what you just said is correct, why do so many prominent biologists, and other scientists, revere Darwin so much, and insist that (E)volution is some profound theory, rather than just an important idea? That is a question for social scientists to consider, but it does tell you a lot about how "paradigms" in science take root and get entrenched well beyond their scientific merit. Part of the reason for Darwin's over-stated legacy is that the simple idea of Darwinian selection has been applied rhetorically or speculatively in virtually all areas of scientific inquiry--except physics, where natural laws, causation and mechanism matter.

(For more on this, see Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini, *What Darwin Got Wrong* (2010) and the reactions this book generated in the biological community.)

There is no point talking logically to TBMs. They've been taught to think a certain way with the image of holding on to the iron rod should anyone challenge their beliefs. So no matter how logical and fact/evidence base your argument is, they will not listen. They need to prove how obedient and faithful they are by holding on to that rod of ignorance and stubborness.

I used to be that crazy TBM although I always believed in evolution. Maybe because the Mormon church didn't get ahold of my brain until I was 12 years old. Prior to that I was fascinated by that Life book called "Early Man" my family had, showing a little monkey evolving into homo sapiens. I couldn't un-see that image. To my young and unscientific brain it made more sense than Adam being formed out of the dirt and Eve from his rib. Now that's ridiculous.

heartbroken Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> There is no point talking logically to TBMs.
> They've been taught to think a certain way with
> the image of holding on to the iron rod should
> anyone challenge their beliefs. So no matter how
> logical and fact/evidence base your argument is,
> they will not listen. They need to prove how
> obedient and faithful they are by holding on to
> that rod of ignorance and stubborness.
>
> I used to be that crazy TBM although I always
> believed in evolution. Maybe because the Mormon
> church didn't get ahold of my brain until I was 12
> years old. Prior to that I was fascinated by that
> Life book called "Early Man" my family had,
> showing a little monkey evolving into homo
> sapiens. I couldn't un-see that image. To my young
> and unscientific brain it made more sense than
> Adam being formed out of the dirt and Eve from his
> rib. Now that's ridiculous.

I can totally relate.
We grew up with a humanist (never Mo) Mom who was/is more feminist than Gloria Steinem and very well educated, studied archeology and took me to University lecture and field digs up until I was 5 and started Kindergarten.
I remember vividly the lectures on evolution, and our relationship to Chimpanzees and Bonobos.
My sister was at the same lectures and rejects all of it now as, Fake News.
Every time she hears some very basic down to Earth physical reality, she dismisses it as "Fake News" total bullshit.
Funny thing is, I was waaaay more Mormon than her, Mission, Temple Marriage, 4 kids, really followed the whole program, even though I knew Evolution was real, I just treated creationism as a metaphor, a nice story to make our creation less messy.
I wouldn't call her a TBM. She's been inactive for 30yrs, and kinda freelances religion now.
Shes a free spirit.
Pretty hippie, except has an MBA,is a CPA and owns 7 businesses.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2019 08:28PM by schrodingerscat.