271

Impressed
Posted on June 15, 2012 by David M Willis

271 thoughts on “Impressed”

  1. Bekah

    I cannot see this conversation going anywhere pleasant.

    1. Plasma Mongoose

      …and we have to wait ’til Monday to see it happen as well.

      1. Bekah

        Naw, you just have to scroll down a little ways and you see all kinds of unpleasantness.

    2. Jim

      If they’d talk about that rack Joyce is sporting, it would be pleasant! (especially the blushing)

      1. Bekah

        Yes, let’s talk about Joyce’s rack.

        I posit that ladies’ bosoms are rad. Do you agree?

        1. Mrelegos

          Why, as a matter of fact, I do! Who would have guessed it?

        2. TheBenenator

          Victorian-era clothing for everyone!

        3. Mrelegos

          Bring me two fancy costumes and two frosty beers!

        4. Andiemus

          I do! Awkward zone, defeated!

  2. Scot

    Evolution: not nearly as impressive as Sal’s bike

    1. Yotomoe

      it is the way pokemon do it.

      1. Ziaheart

        Remember, children. When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it’s not metamorphosis. It’s EVOLUTION! 8D

        1. BugBerry

          pokemon gotta fight to evolve, and so do we.

  3. Mkvenner

    It shows like a giant mole Joyce.

  4. narmenduke

    Joyce, I feel the same way about the Bible. Except replace “books” with “everyone around me.”

  5. Wack'd

    I’m not impressed with evolution either. I mean, it’s just minimal mutations every few thousand generations that just happen to work alright. Nothing special.

    1. iSaidCandleja-

      Lamarckian evolution is much more impressive. Too bad reproductive isolation kicks in so quickly, preventing the rise of Galasso’s super army.

    2. vlademir1

      Meh, the mechanisms of genetic change are more than just mutation. Crossover, for example, can have effects that produce more stable genetic shifts in the long term by shielding minor mutations until they add up to some significant shift.

    3. Thomas Wrobel

      Theres been recent evidence that genetic fragments can cross the species barrier too:
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer

      Fascinating stuff, evolution is a elegant thing in its fundamentals, but very very complex in practice.

    4. Animal

      No, it’s not; evolution is the change in allele frequencies in a population over time.

      Over spans of generations those changes can become cumulative, and with geographic or cultural isolation can lead to speciation.

      There just isn’t any debate about this. It was decided way over a hundred years ago.

      1. Jim

        Nothing about Evolution could be more clearly explained than watching Bruce Banner evolve in a few seconds. Case closed, evidentiary hearing unnecessary.

        1. Alechsa

          Your icon makes it all the better.

    5. pan_dim_onium

      I say it’s all aliens

  6. Plasma Mongoose

    She promised Ethan that she will come back as soon as possible?

    1. Kernanator

      “Yeah, I promise. To wait like a good girl until you come to for me… I’ll wait…like a good girl… I’ll wait….forever.”

      Bonus points if you know what game it’s from!

      1. Plasma Mongoose

        It’s not from a Justin Bieber song, is it?

        1. Kernanator

          Hell no.

          I said it’s from a game, as in a video game.

        2. Plasma Mongoose

          Sorry, I was thinking game as in game-hunting.

        3. Azukar

          Sounds like something Justin Beiber would sing, mind you.

      2. Shade

        BioShock?

        1. Kernanator

          Ever17.

      3. Gneiss

        It sounds vaguely like the one from Final Fantasy 8, but that one’s different, more like “”I’ll be here…”
        “Why…?”
        “I’ll be ‘waiting’ here…”
        “For what?”
        “I’ll be waiting… for you, so… if you come here… you’ll find me. I promise.”

  7. Brasca1

    I’m not impressed about evolution either. It’s actually quite dull when you think about organisms evolving over billions of years to the state we are in, but I find it more plausible than most of what’s explained in the Bible.

    1. MentalMister

      If life has taught me anything so far, it’s that everything dull is fascinating to someone. Evolution and general social structures are quite fascinating to me, though I don’t know how many people would be awed by the fact that we use two digits starting at 10 because we have 10 digits on our two hands. An odd conclusion I know, but it comes from learning how to count higher than two with your hands. Sorry for rambling, but I think that helps my point.

      Oh… and that there’s porn of anything if you look hard enough, but I really don’t look that hard.

      1. Brasca1

        I just find the argument that it wasn’t impressive to be a poor one. It’s like she prefers the Bible because reading Genesis is exciting while the Origin of Species is a text book. If that’s the case then all someone has to do is right an impressive origin story and then start a religion around it. I can only imagine how much more powerful Scientologists would be if Hubbard was a better writer or what might be if Lovecraft was interested in starting a cult around him. It would make religious conflict a helluva lot more interesting.

        1. John Harmon

          Yeah you’re pretty much on the money. That’s how the weak minded are swayed into religion. Lots of flashing colors and promises of good things.

        2. insomniac

          Religion isn’t the sole providence of the weak-minded. It also doesn’t contradict the theory or fact of evolution, unless you choose to be insanely literal with an allegorical and self-contradictory creation myth.

        3. David

          I’d say strong-minded people are also swayed into religion. Anybody can have a blind spot, like how rabidly anti-religious Bill Maher believes dumb things about vaccines. Sometimes folks’ blind spot is religion, sometimes it’s something else. I don’t think it’s related directly to intelligence. It’s not a litmus test.

        4. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

          Agreed. Take out the Christianity with Joyce, and none of
          the rest, she’ll be just as she is now, just with a different
          slant. Atheist Joyce or Credit Card Carrying Communist Joyce wouldn’t be that much different than Bubble-Protestant Joyce, I assure you, especially since the sinner/believer is responsible for the sin/belief and not the other way around.

        5. SonicBlueRanger

          I want to say as a Christian I believe in God because if there isn’t one than everything is pointless and I just can’t believe that.

          Maybe I’m wrong I don’t know but I’m just going to go on believeing what I believe and you keep going on believeing what you believe.

        6. vsophi

          lol, way to make a sweeping statement about a whole group of people. I assure you, you don’t have to be weak-minded to be religious, and there are also non-religious weak minds.

        7. Jedaï

          Though I think you have to be weak-minded not to believe
          in the concept of evolution (whatever the particulars).
          To be religious is not a sign of stupidity, believing everything
          the organs of an official church tells you without reflexion is
          though. You can believe in the christian God without believing an election
          can make the Pope infallible.

        8. Jelli

          I got swayed by the casserole dishes and the ability to help my community through the homeless shelter my church operates.

          I wouldn’t mind more flashing colors though. Maybe put some strobes behind the stained glass.

  8. Kurai Seraphim

    Sarah’s checking in because the last two guys Joyce was closed to ended up with glass in their faces or being punched repeatedly.

    1. WhiteEyedCat

      Ha ha, true, poor innocent boys must be protected from Joyce.

  9. Faeyas

    I really liked Hank Green’s lesson on Evolution in Crashcourse Biology. I think it made evolution seem more interesting and impressive.

    1. Khrene Cleaver

      Thanks for the recommendation! This guy is amusing!

  10. Charles RB

    THIS will not end well.

  11. jaimehlers

    The thing that I don’t get is the idea that because the Bible offers a creation story, that it is automatically validated in the minds of people who believe in that religion, especially when it does so little to actually explain anything.

    Evolution may be boring, as other people put it, but it explains things a lot better than any religion’s creation story possibly can.

    1. iSaidCandleja-

      You’re arguements really only apply to people who are seeking explanations. Intellectual curiosity may not be as common as you think.

      For instance, my grandma was convinced the fax machine didn’t work because the document was not physically transported away. After explain that’s not how it works, she was more confused than before. The reason she was confused was because she already “understood” exactly how it worked but I was telling her something completely foreign and thus non-sensical.

      1. Thomas Wrobel

        Good analogy.
        See:
        “if we came from monkeys, why are we still here?”

        Not only to people think they have one answer already, they often completely missunderstand the other side too.

        That said, this doesnt apply to all, just a lot. Theres quite a few open-minded Inteligent Designists out there that more or less just dont believe that the timescales were big enough for natural evolution too result in such complex forms. Unfortuntely these ones are drowned out by young-earth creationists abusing the term to hide their own more regid beliefs.

        1. LiamKav

          “Theres quite a few open-minded Inteligent Designists out there that more or less just dont believe that the timescales were big enough for natural evolution too result in such complex forms.”

          They are still basing science by starting with a theory and trying t to prove it. In this case, that ID is real. That isn’t how science works.

  12. Kafloobop

    Not impressed by……. whaaaat? What does that even mean? Is she implying that she only believes in impressive things? Or maybe…what!? This just confounds me. There isn’t even the pretend logic fundies usually use, that was just putting words into sentences for no real reason.

    Can someone please explain to me what on earth she’s trying to imply with that statement?

    1. Kyle

      Maybe she means “impressed” as in “made an impression”, “impressionable young children”?

    2. moonracer

      Because apparently things written in the Bible are more impressive than things written in science texts and so therefore more true. Just like how Doctor McNinja is more impressive than my family doctor so whenever I go in for a check up I tell my doctor I have Paul Bunyan’s Disease and ask for some beard removing lotion.

    3. shoeboxjeddy

      Basically, she took evolution as something that had to “prove itself” to her rather than being humble and accepting she was ignorant about the subject from the start (like in every other subject and class). This is why it’s kind of hard to teach fundies, I doubt they’re sitting there in English class going, “But how can you PROVE that i comes before e except after c?”

      1. Shadlyn Wolfe

        Yeah, as an adult I’m doubly glad that my mother raised me that the Bible was the word of God *transmitted through man* and that she rejected the Bible as the absolute word of god because of the atrocities it advocated. It was a sane voice among some of of the people we went to church with.

        It means that while I’m not Christian, I have a framework that allows me to see Christianity as a potentially valuable religion and interact with people on that framework. I can look at it piecemeal and see that there is good and bad in it. I can understand where they are coming from, sometimes.

        It’s the people who are raised all or nothing that seem to be messed up most of the time – either as crazy fundies or as Christianity-hating atheists/etc.

        Everything is stupid if you look at it as a binary. Except, sometimes, math.

        1. fishsicles

          Computer science is nice if you look at it as binary, but honestly hexadecimal is so much nicer nowadays.

      2. Jim

        That’s actually a sound perspective to view it from. Mind if I borrow it, since I’m near UGA – Athens, and can provoke a few fights with it later tonight?

        You should see what happens when you mate that up with NASCAR and call it ‘toilet bowl racing’!!! 😀

      3. Shade

        Actually, I before E except after C is less of a rule and more of a guideline. “Their” or “Theif” for example are clear exceptions. I don’t know why they teach that.

        1. thomas0comer

          That’s one of the reasons I hate how English takes from multiple languages. In German, and other languages, the pronunciation a vowel pairing like that is always determined by the second vowel- weich is pronounced with an i sound, for example.

        2. Dara

          “Theif” is a misspelling. The word “thief” actually does follow the “I before E, except after C” thing.

          Now, “weird” and “ancient,” on the other hand….

      4. billytea

        I before e is horribly religiously fraught. I mean, it’s i before e except after c, and in the case of deities and atheists, who apparently get to make up their own rules.

  13. Dierna

    Does this mean she’s a creationist and believes there were Dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark?

    1. Wizard

      Nah, the dinosaurs obviously missed the ark. That’s why they’re extinct.

      1. WhiteEyedCat

        When I was in preschool we were told that the reason there are no unicorns is because Noah left without them and they drowned. That was the day I decided that I didn’t believe in God anymore.

    2. David

      She does believe dinosaurs were on the Ark, yes.

      And at her age, so did I.

      1. DanielleM

        I admire your openness.

        That being said…wow.

      2. Andiemus

        *whistles. Explains how you made Joyce such an authentic character.

      3. Plasma Mongoose

        Well that theory works well with the one that claims that dinosaurs were hunted to extinction by overzealous medieval knights.

        1. Vincent

          To be fair, humanity did hunt a bunch of giant animals to extinction.

        2. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

          With fire.

        3. Kryss LaBryn

          Naw, it was over-zealous time travellers. They all knew that the asteroid was coming anyways so they figured, have at ‘er.

          Ends up there wasn’t an asteroid after all. Whoops… XD

        4. Bill M.

          Asteroid… giant ship sent there by the Cybermen… same difference, the dinos are still dead.

      4. Animal

        Don’t feel bad. I have two brothers-in-law that are in their late forties and still do.

      5. Raen

        …well, I’ll just go burn the first book of Roomies!, then.

      6. L

        How did that work? Was that the way it was explained to you or was it synchretism you came up with to reconcile both teachings?

        1. David

          I had maybe thirty books as a child that talked about fitting dinosaurs into the Biblical narrative. Which I readily believed, because, dude, dinosaurs on the Ark is an awesome idea. I mean, if I had the choice between an Ark and an Ark with dinosaurs on it, I know which one I choose.

        2. L

          What about an Ark with giant transforming robots in it?

        3. David

          I’d never like that.

        4. L

          I guess I’ll get rid of the aprocryphal “Book of energon” then.

      7. Sagara S.

        I went to school with a boy who was frighteningly smart, but refused to believe in dinosaurs.
        Not, “believed they missed the ark”, not “they fell off the ark”, not “god smote them”, but honest to deity-of-choice “dinosaurs didn’t exist ever, scientists put the bones in the ground to lie to the masses”.

    3. Merl

      Dinosaur eggs are small. Sadly for our Jurassic Park dreams they are also tasty, especially after long sea voyages.

    4. Bill M.

      Well, science tells us that chickens are modern-day descendants of dinosaurs, and I believe chickens were on the ark…

  14. gangler

    Okay, so you’re an extensively tested theory.

    ♪ That don’t impress-a me much.
    So you’ve got the facts but have you got the touch.
    Now don’t get me wrong now I think you’re all right, but that won’t keep me warm on a long, cold, lonely night♪

    1. Sagara S.

      Awesome song 😀

  15. Wonder Wig

    Professor Oak said evolution was real. How else would you explain how a Magikarp becomes a Gyarados?

    1. Regalli

      I always thought that was less the large-scale evolution and more stages of life.

      But the Pokedex DID tell me that the species used to be less useless! Apparently it just sacrificed its ability to hit things, or… y’know, swim in strong currents or even move around at all so that it could live EVERYWHERE.

      The conclusion we can take from this is that when it comes to Magikarp, evolution hates us. Because even when your useless fish evolves into a dragon of doom and destruction, you have to keep the doom and destruction from turning on you. Which it will. Eventually. Gyarados only care about violence.

      1. Yotomoe

        The mew population dropped signifigantly for some reason and scientists don’t know why.
        Not to mention incongruities with pokemon appearing in places that they shouldn’t have due to plain regional differences involving climate and the spread of the species. Pokemon don’t evolve logically.

  16. moonracer

    Ugh. I’m torn here. On one hand Joyce is an great character who adds conflict and whatnot to the story but on the other hand every time she opens her mouth I like her less and less. She needs to be there for the story to be interesting and I try to like her I really do, but I just can’t do it. If this were real life I could just not hang around her and that would be the end of it. But I can’t! Because I want to see what happens with with all the other characters and they hang out with Joyce! The only other time I had this problem was with Alois from Black Butler. But then he died, twice, and the situation resolved itself. I don’t see that happening here though.

    1. L

      I find it helps to remember that we were all dumber than rocks during our early-to-late teens, and most of us were blissfully unaware of it. It’s only noticeable how much of a jerk/dumbass you were as you look back.

      1. Kernanator

        Damn straight. I’m only 19 and I cringe at how stupid and assholish I was a mere 5 years ago.

        1. Plasma Mongoose

          and you get to repeat that again in 5 years time, there are very few people who wouldn’t slap their younger selves on certain issues if they had the chance, believe you me.

        2. gangler

          If you don’t it really just means you’re no less stupid and assholish than you were five years ago.

        3. Andiemus

          Lets see I was an emotional wreck at 16 so yeah I’d slap the fuck out of myself.

        4. thomas0comer

          You are welcome in advance:
          http://xkcd.com/907/

        5. Historyman68

          I cringe at things I did five minutes ago.

        6. David

          I also cringe at things I did five minutes ago. Like your mom.

          a ha ha ha ha ha

        7. Roborat

          Yea, I saw that one coming, but I am very surprised that it was Willis that did it.

        8. Mrelegos

          I hope you got a nickel for it.

        9. Mal

          I hope you apologized afterwards, if it only took five minutes.

        10. Andiemus

          Read again, all that implies is that he was mid-proccess five minutes ago. Could have taken a week, really.

    2. Andiemus

      Well, you can’t have dr horrible without captain hammer.

  17. DanielleM

    Oh god I’m having flashbacks to the very uncomfortable lunch date where I had to defend my belief in evolution to my oldest (and homeschooled) friend. The subject came out of nowhere and it was not fun. Basically her opinion was because there were no fossils depicting all of the possible stages of human development evolution was impossible…or something. Honestly I wasn’t trying to get into any kind of debate with her. What I have heard of evolution makes the most sense to me and being agnostic I don’t have her religious hang ups but it’s not like I feel prepared enough or educated enough on the whole subject of evolution to participate in some kind of out of the blue debate on it so…yeah not fun.

    1. Vincent

      The thing is, you can check if hereditary traits and evolution works yourself, you just need a bunch of stuff and patience.

      For inheriting traits, there’s photo albums and family history, including medical, just to get an idea how it works.

      It’s faster to do experiments on stuff that has a short life cycle, like fruit flies.

      The problem is, this takes time and, not being a biology teacher, I’m not altogether sure what, if any, good experiments there are to check this for yourself.

    2. Thomas Wrobel

      The fossil argument is annoying, because no mater how many inbetween fossils you show, they can always demand another one in-between.

      And it gets progressively harder, of course, as statisticaly we know that most species (by a largin margin) leave without any trace at all. Fossils are the exceptions, not the norm.

      1. Gneiss

        Especially when you’re talking about fossils of land animals. We have tons of marine fossils because it’s FAR easier to form fossilization conditions underwater than it is on land, so any mammal fossil is really rare. Of course we’re not gonna have a fossil of every species that ever lived, we have only a tiny fraction of that.

        I once got into a debate about evolution with my brother (he’s a Philosophy major, I’ll leave it at that) and his argument was that he didn’t believe humans could come from animals because we’re so different. Arguments included that we’re the only animals that destroy their environment (I brought up beavers), the only animals that kill for fun (I brought up polecats), and my favorite, we make plastic. Yeah, I don’t know how that was supposed to make sense.

        1. Jim

          Yes, it’s true. With the discovery of polymerization catalysts, humans EVOLVED to turn ethylene and propylene gas into polyethylene & polypropylene. All in just a few years.

          In fact, the sole reactor fossil is still active, in Houston (Deer Park), Texas, that was jointly run by Phillips Petroleum & Koppers.

          The FTC demanded that an identical one be made, and that each company own their own to prevent a monopoly over this “evolution of mankind!” – and the original sits amidst the Total-Fina complex, a tiny little thing just used for special batch testing, so to not have to take the billion pound reactors offline.

          Tell your brother we humans also make STEEL, and that evolution took a lot longer than the one from flaring flue gas and making something from it, to move from gold/bronze/copper etc., to high iron ores (no longer around) to turning iron into steel.

          The people who know the least are always the ones that do the most talking… I find it so great a relief to avoid TV and limit my social life to a few column/forums like this and $250/hr hookers.

        2. insomniac

          The whole ‘only humans destroy our environment’ thing is such a load of shit, but it’s one you hear a lot.

          There is no ‘natural balance’ in the environment. Every animal tries to do the best for itself at the expense of anyone else. The difference is that humans are highly-intelligent tool users, so we’re several orders of magnitude BETTER AT IT than other species, and it’s inflicting much more severe damage.

          Dolphins kill for fun all the time. It’s just that most predators will eat what they kill, because food is hard to come by without agriculture. Most animals aren’t going to pass up the chance to eat after they kill something.

        3. Gneiss

          That’s why I brought up polecats, because they’re one of the few animals that will kill and then not eat it, apparently killing just for the pleasure of it.

        4. Kryss LaBryn

          Cats, cats, bees (honey). 😉

          And, yeah, cats will totally kill for fun. Seen ’em do it.

        5. Tunasammich

          Animals kill for fun all the time, and not just a couple of species. WE just always get this “noble animals only kill what they need” picture from documentaries and it’s just not accurate. I will say in whatever the Ocean documentary is David Attenbourough narrates, they do show a pack of Orcas kill a baby blue whale for fun and not eat it.

          Destruction of the environment is a bit subjective too. I mean, potentially the largest extinction event this planet has ever seen was caused by the evolution of plants and the expulsion of oxygen into the atmosphere which acted as a poison on the anaerobic organisms which dominated. They were just passively living but hey, humans didn’t realize the effects of pollution when they started doing it.

  18. Kernanator

    Awwwwkwaaaarrrrd.

  19. Yotomoe

    Joyce shouldn’t snap on anyone just for being very insistant on believing what they were taught from a book

    1. Andiemus

      Fist bump!

  20. Uniqueantique

    This is perfectly Joyce. Why the surprize.

    1. begbert2

      This isn’t surprise. It’s pain we’re expressing.

  21. ALostProphet

    Did Joyce’s parents teach her to be homophobic? I don’t think we’ve seen anything out of her worse than “I don’t want to be a lesbian”.

    I totally get why you wouldn’t include that though, that’s a pretty good way for a character to lose sympathy fast,

    1. sun tzu

      We did see her show relief when getting confirmation that Walky wasn’t gay. She also said about the possibility of BilleXSal that it was “gross”. So, yeah, almost certainly homophobic.

      1. begbert2

        Homophobia is relative – there’s nothing at *all* wrong about wanting a guy you like to be straight (presuming you’re female), and to Joyce imagining *any* sex is likely to squick her out a little. Plus there’s a difference between aversion and activism; I don’t think the torches will really come out unless/until we hear her express certain sentiments about whether they should be allowed to marry.

        1. Jim

          Squick?

        2. insomniac

          A sort of combination of ‘squirm,’ ‘squeamish,’ and ‘ick.’ A sort of uncomfortable vaguely disgusted reaction to something.

        3. Kryss LaBryn

          Yeeaah… you don’t want to know where it apparently came from (see “History” under the link). *Sideeyes*

          It’s a handy term for expressing involuntary revulsion without implying disaproval, though.

        4. Regalli

          *Looks it up* Well, that’s fascinating… and horrifying.

        5. Heather

          Oh Joyce IS homophobic, there’s just various degrees certainly, but it isn’t relative. You’re bigoted or not. And Joyce is homophobic. She simply isn’t however, the type to gloat over say gay kids killing themselves and grinning as she thinks of them burning in hell for their sin.

          She’s more the type to find it squicky as said before and also feel she has to ‘save’ them perhaps and innocently if horribly introduce the idea of mentally damaging ‘gay therapy’ perhaps not realising how damaging they can be at all. Joyce is the utterly ignorant yet I guess well meaning type of homophobe. She wants to ‘save’ them probably. Or thinks they are fundamentally flawed in some way at least when in fact her viewpoint is.

          Joyce still contributes to the overall problem of a homophobic society in her own way (thus helping the more extreme homophobes to go forward), but she isn’t hateful per say herself percisely. Just condescending and can harm people in her ignorance and lack of awareness of her own ignorance.

          Still, Joyce is clearly a homophobe. Just because you don’t kill them or are gleeful at the idea of driving them to suicide doesn’t change that. Joyce is clearly not as awful as such awful people, but still fundamentally flawed to act or think that way. If a gay person was emotionally stable/fine because they are generally ‘happy’ or at least secure/feel they and their loved ones are safe- ot that Joyce is simply not the fish they want to fry they might just get irritated or roll their eyes at her, though for someone else- she could do real damage whether directly or indirectly.

        6. begbert2

          While delectably accurate from a semantic point of view, that’s a very self-destructive approach you’re taking to the subject there.

          Take me. I am mildly homophobic, in the sense that I find the idea of homosexual attraction and sex vaguely ‘squicky’, at an emotional response level. From an intellectual level I know full well that there is nothing wrong with it in any way, and I oppose any effort to diminish, marginalize, or limit the rights of gays. I’m quite sure my mild negative reaction is purely the result of unfamiliarity – if I’ve ever met a gay person I didn’t know about it. In other words I, like Joyce, am not used to diversity.

          Does that make me prejudiced? Yeah, a little bit. Does that make me a bigot? Hell no. Unless you want me to start acting like a bigot. I can do that, you know. It that’s the label you want to slap me with, you give me no reason to like you or support your cause. And if you’re going to label me like that anyway…

      2. DudeMyDadOwnsADealership

        Well, she DID confess she’s not used to diversity…

    2. Regalli

      Well, apparently no character’s orientation was changed, and Mrs. Brown DID say that Joyce’s five brothers had all failed to give her grandkids…

  22. Nexev

    To be fair given her schooling i doubt Joyce’s books were much better then Mr Garrison’s explanation.

  23. StClair

    That is a very good answer from Ethan, IMO. He doesn’t dismiss the alternatives or insult Joyce for believing otherwise, he simply states the verifiable facts.

    1. Andiemus

      Obviously not all of them, since evolution is a verifiable fact.

      1. iSaidCandleja-

        Nah, if it was verifiable it would be reproducable, but I’ve yet to be welcomed to Jurassic Park.

        1. Berenzen

          It is reproducible? We observe it all the time with viruses, mosquitoes, Pretty well everything having to with humans meddling, trying to get rid of something. That’s what a ‘resistance’ to pesticides and such is- you kill off everyone without the gene that resists it, then when the survivors reproduce, their offspring have a much higher chance of resisting the toxin. They’ve evolved, they are not a new species, but an upgraded (evolved) version of the previous generation. Evolution doesn’t just mean that one species suddenly becomes another. It’s a massive, gradual process that is typically sped up after a massive disaster to the population.

        2. Bekah

          Don’t.

          iSaidCandleja- has made it obvious that Jurassic Park and evolution are, in his/her mind, somehow related, despite one being a theory that explains how and why species change over time and the other being science fiction about cloning. Your sound, reasoned arguments will be completely ineffective. Responding to silliness with logic does not correct silliness. It only invites more silliness. These arguments invariably devolve into “Jesus vs Darwin, Cage Match of the Millenium” and it’s just painful to watch.

          You can let someone be wrong on the internet. It’s easy. You just don’t respond to them. You walk away and carry on with you life. Doing so tends to, miraculously, make it a more pleasant place for everyone.

        3. vlademir1

          A big part of the issue is that creationists who argue against evolution don’t argue against species adaptation to changing environmental stimuli, but they do argue against speciesization, so they don’t see your reproducible data as evidence of evolution.

        4. Bekah

          No. A big part of the issue is that people try to use logic to argue with people who don’t understand why logic works. They use facts to argue with people who don’t know what differentiates fact and opinion.

          I like being able to comment on Dumbing of Age. I hate seeing arguments that can’t be won by either side, because they won’t even meet on the same battlefield.

        5. begbert2

          Yeah, the big problem with people who reject evolution is that they (or at least >99% of them) simply don’t understand what it is. They don’t need debate, they need a desire to learn the truth and a good book. One that doesn’t try to argue with them and simply states the facts more calmly and patiently than any human could.

          When they finish with that, they won’t disbelieve in evolution any more, since it’s like disbelieving in Japan (for people who’ve never been there personally).

        6. Chexwarrior

          I was lucky to have a good biology teacher in highschool. He was never antagonistic to religion when we studied evolution, and presented evolution as the “best explanation science has come up with given the data” admitting that parts of the theory of evolution have changed in the face of new data because thats what science is about. He even shied away from the term “evidence” in favor of “data” because “evidence” carries connotations of a courtroom and two sides battling to prove themselves right and the other wrong. Presented as such I had no problem reconciling my relegious belief to belief in evolution; after all it is far more impressive that God could make a self adapting system than a fixed system.I was lucky to have a good biology

        7. iSaidCandleja-

          The biggest problem with people who reject evolution, young Earth creationist in particular, isn’t that they need a desire to learn the truth. It is that they are convinced that there is nothing left to learn and don’t perceive new information as contradictory.

          The biggest problem with discussion like this on the internet is that it is still really, really difficult to convey sarcasm in text. Jurassic Park is an absurd story to mention when talking about evolution; Prometheus makes much more sense because of the black goop 🙂

        8. insomniac

          That’s based on a fundamental misconception, though, thinking that ‘species’ is an intrinsic and discrete aspect of a thing, rather than a useful but arbitrary descriptor of relatively similar organisms.

          The argument that ‘natural species can make changes over time, but it can’t change things from one species to another’ is based on the faulty assumption that there’s more differentiating species than an accumulation of these qualities.

          Every living organism is completely and entirely unique, a combination of its unique biology and circumstances that has never existed before and will never exist again. This is true. All life is also the same elements of water adulterated with carbon, arranged slightly differently. This is also true. Neither of these perspectives are particularly useful for a biologist, so we have things like ‘species’ to give a workable model for study.

        9. Mrelegos

          Species is a discrete variable though, despite there being variations within a species. (mathematical terms aren’t exactly the best fit) The definition of what constitutes a species is the fact that its members DNA can reproduce and produce fertile offspring. After all, Lions and Tigers can breed, producing Ligers and Tions (depending on sex of parents) but said offspring are infertile. Hence, Lions and Tigers are separate species.

        10. insomniac

          The ‘fertile offspring’ metric is… vaguely useful, in a general ‘rule of thumb’ sort of way, but it’s either a vast oversimplification or an outright lie, depending on your perspective.

          Coyotes and wolves are entirely capable of fertile reproduction, for example, but they don’t (usually) because wolves eat coyotes instead. They’re different breeding groups and different sorts of animals, they’re classified as different species. Nearly all birds of prey, I think, could theoretically produce viable offspring. Then you have the ring species, where species A interbreeds with species B, B interbreeds with C, but C can’t interbreed with A.

          Then we get into the species that don’t have a sort of sexual reproduction we can observe. Species that reproduce asexually. Species of plants, especially, where things can get all sorts of weird. Not to mention that most things haven’t been tested for compatibility, aside from things that don’t ‘breed’ in the standard sense, and of course all the species that have gone extinct (far and away the majority of species of life that have existed). All these cases are categorized without the ‘viable offspring’ metric.

          TL,DR: ‘viable offspring’ is much simpler than taxonomy really is.

        11. thomas0comer

          To go into further detail:
          Animals that can and will produce viable offspring are a species. There are types of birds, for example, that are genetically similar but have different mating behaviors. If one type of bird was compatible with another but they never mated because of differing behaviors, they would be different species.

        12. Andiemus

          You can verify something without reproducing it if you see it in the environment. Why do you think doctors don’t just throw penicillin at every minor infection?

        13. insomniac

          Yeah, by the ‘must be reproducible’ metric, astronomy isn’t a science. ‘We’ve never reproduced a star in laboratory conditions!’

      2. Gundi

        To be fair though, most people don’t know why or pay attention to why it’s a verifiable fact. Ethan’s reason for believing in evolution is no different than Joyce’s reason for believing in creationism: they were both told that those respective viewpoints were true from authorities they respected.

        It’s sort of like how you shouldn’t get into arguments about evolution unless you’re pretty darned well-informed on the subject. Otherwise you’d just be a hypocrite.

        1. Vincent

          What’s really weird is that the scientific method is an important principle in most natural sciences teaching, but when it comes to evolution it’s usually taught as if it was just something that was fact, like history.

          I guess you can understand why, as doing experiments on inheriting traits and evolution might be feasible, but really time consuming, just like checking up on all historical facts yourself. Hard to plan and make room for it, really.

        2. LiamKav

          But… evolution IS fact. We don’t have physics classes where we have to argue with half the class who insist that thermodynaics are only a theory.

        3. insomniac

          I believe in Intelligent Falling. I reject the theory of “gravity,” and believe that falling is caused by angels pushing things toward the ground. I feel that schools need to teach the controversy.

        4. thomas0comer

          Wrong sir! I say that there are angels who blow a magical fluid into everything, thus inflating both the planet and everything on it like balloons. The expansion of the planet pushes against us, thus causing us to stick on it. The angels also blow this fluid into empty space, thus causing that to expand as well. And the angels can only be seen by the righteous (or those who forgot to take their medication).

        5. Vincent

          Our different views here are that while you think it should be taught as fact (which I can understand), I think it should be taught via empirical methods, as it would effectively stop ideas about *arguing* about something you could check yourself.

          I mean, people could argue until their faces turned blue that mixing acids and bases would create a really strong dissolving fluid, but anyone who’s actually taken chemistry and tested this themselves wouldn’t agree.

          Also evolution is technically a scientific theory (not the colloquial meaning of the word), which means it _could_ be disproven if sufficient findings running counter to it was found, though most likely the theory would merely end up slightly revised. There has, in fact, been some revisions (e g the discovery of genes), though Darwin got a lot right from the beginning.

        6. insomniac

          People have done experiments on evolution. A lot of them! It’s probably better sourced and verified than a lot of what you’ll learn in history.

        7. Raen

          I don’t really believe you. Evolution is taught as fact, “like history,” yes – but so is every other science! Teachers go over the scientific method in general, true, but in every subject, even into the first two years of college depending on subject, emphasis is on *what* scientists have learned, not *how*. The students are expected to remember some experiments, like Michelson-Morley, but isn’t that true in evolutionary biology as well? (Darwin’s finches, Lenski’s nylon-eating bacteria, the Miller-Urey experiment, peppered moths, etc.) Do you expect students to be taught exactly how every principle and hypothesis in biology – or physics, or chemistry – is derived?

        8. Vincent

          Well, I live in Sweden, so our teaching methods may vary, but you’re doing a reductio ad absurdum there.

          Over here, a lot of stuff ends up summarized, text books are used, but you do experiments on a lot of the basic and most important stuff. The scientific method is as important to teach as all the advances – even more, perhaps, since books will still be around, but knowing somewhat how scientists arrive at a conclusion and theoretically being able to check it yourself both builds trust in the sciences and the ability to view statements from a critical point of view.

          Not that that always works out, but a lot of kids certainly remember experiments better than reading about them, so typically you combine at least those two in teaching along with lecturing.

        9. insomniac

          How do you recommend biology teachers experiment on evolution in a high-school level class?

        10. David

          Pair up, fuck, see if offspring has any beneficial mutations.

        11. Vincent

          Biology not being what I teach (I do Physics), I’m not really sure, and off-hand the only stuff I can come up with (say, breeding fruit flies or the like and checking differences) would be time consuming and have to be parallell to regular education.

          It’s annoying, because we can apparently do experiments where we casually extract DNA from a kiwi fruit for a class. You’d think there’d be some efficient way to do it. :/

  24. Woodchucked

    I’ve never had a religious hang-up about evolution, honestly. I think Joyce comes from a situation where evolution is treated like a hostile attitude, and attacks the theory because she believes it threatens her beliefs. If faith can’t reconcile with truth, or even theoretical observation, then that faith is weak.

  25. Blur

    See, that’s why I always liked my family. Religious, but open to the idea of evolution. They never let it be a “one or the other” subject.

    1. Thomas Wrobel

      It always struck me that if there is a God, then it would be a bit of a silly god NOT to use evolution.
      God would set thee “rules” up and watch it play out – probably while maintaining a billion other worlds around the universe.

      1. LiamKav

        Exactly. If you believe in a God, and that God made up all the laws of the universe, then why would he need to “cheat”? He’s just set things up so that what He wanted to happen would happen within the rules of the universe. Otherwise he’d be that guy who, while playing Monopoly, suddenly declares that community chest cards don’t count for some reason just because he’s losing.

        1. Ristar

          I’ve been saying this for years!

        2. Alex Stritar

          That the comunity chest cards don’t count?

        3. L

          …Would god be the race car or the top hat?

        4. Regalli

          Nah, the thimble. It’s more useful.

    2. theagreementcorner

      Same here! My parents raised me as a christian, but also told me that gays deserved equal rights, all people were equal, and that evolution could be true.

      1. Vincent

        There’s been a lot of different christian movements. I seem to recall the “levellers” or something like that having a view similar to your parents (who seem pretty cool, btw).

  26. Thomas Wrobel

    One thing that helps a little when discussing with someone who says they “don’t believe in evolution” is to ask them exactly what they mean by that.

    Often they have decided they don’t believe in the overall thing without decided at exactly what part its wrong, and it can be illuminating too see their breakdown.
    Young-earth creationists are the easiest of course, they will simply state the timescales. But everyone else is more interesting as they often havnt really made up their mind.

    The wonderfull thing with evolution, see, is its actualy quite hard to come up with scanarios were it WOULDNT happen. (of course, it might not always end with humans though)

  27. AJBulldis

    I’m not impressed by evolution either. Aside from the fact that the evidence doesn’t point to billions of minute changes over billions of years leading to an ever increasing array of species with even a fraction of the strength that its backers claim, there is the way that so many of its adherents just sort of accept it by default because the alternative simply cannot be allowed.

    I guess I could be considered a mindless zealot on the matter, but I have asked people, including actual scientists, to explain to me what the strong arguments for evolution are and I’m still not, well, impressed. Nor am I just some sheltered homeschool child; I grew up agnostic and LOVED evolution and read books about it all the time.

    1. Gneiss

      Except that we have verifiable proof that it occurs. We’ve SEEN it happen. What do you think antibiotic resistance is, for example? We’ve done experiments with a certain fish species and seen the color of the population change drastically over several generations depending on how many predators are in the area. Granted, those are short term, but we dont really have hundreds of thousands of years of free time available to study long term evolution, and we have the fossil record for that.

      Please explain what evidence doesn’t point to speciation and evolution.

      1. AJBulldis

        But that’s just the thing; we don’t don’t hundreds of thousands of years of free time to see just how drastic these changes can become, but we still have scientists saying conclusively that because fish can change color or bacteria can become resistant to an antibiotic that a species of terrestrial mammal eventually evolved into whales, or that plants just suddenly started flowering.

        1. David

          Claiming that many smaller changes over time don’t pile up into a cumulative larger change is willful ignorance. It’s like saying, well, okay, I believe in the existence of 2, but the idea of 9 is just ridiculous.

          There is no difference between smaller change and larger change. Larger change is just lots of smaller change.

          And of course plants didn’t “just start flowering.” Nothing just started doing anything. A flower is the result of many positive mutations over time, and early and intermediate versions of flowers are well-documented in the fossil record. A whole flower is not necessary to genetically happen all at once to be beneficial to a plant. Much like the eye, which started out as sensors on early animals that were merely good at detecting light, if vaguely. It was only over successive generations that these sensors developed into better versions of themselves.

          Nothing that complex just “springs out of nowhere,” like you imply happened with flowers. Suggesting so is a red herring and betrays a lack of understanding of evolution.

    2. begbert2

      It is soooo tempting to dive feet first into this, though honestly if the fossil record doesn’t do it for you, there’s not much further to go from there. (Well, aside from pointing at pesticide resistance and stuff, but for some reason people think that’s different.)

      The think I am curious about is, if one discards evolution, what takes its place? Evolution is pretty big, when it comes to the “explaining things” thing. What makes bugs resist each new round of pesticides? Regularly scheduled acts of god? What?

      1. AJBulldis

        Well, as Raen mentioned below, crazy people like myself tend to distinguish between the small and observable changes that can happen in a few to several generations, either due to mutation or natural selection, and the significant changes that cannot be observed but are insisted as happening as well. Conflating an observable and proven phenomenon like natural selection with an impossible to validate hypothosis like monkeys evolving from some manner of small rat-like mammal, or whatever the prevailing idea currently is, is one problem I have with evolution.

        1. begbert2

          Willis addressed this just above -there a continuum and differences in scale do not imply differences in method- but since I like hearing myself talk, how about this: animal husbandry. Specifically: dog breeding.

          Great Dane. Greyhound. Bulldog. Dachshund. Poodle. Chiwawa. Common ancestor. Most of their differentiation was introduced within mankind’s recorded history.

          Now admittedly this is an example of evolving something larger than a monkey (a wolflike animal) into a small, ratlike animal, but still: Hard undeniable proof it’s possible in both concept and reality. (Time until denial: three, two, one…)

        2. Raen

          WHY do you distinguish between them? Small changes happen in a short time – why SHOULDN’T large changes happen in a long time? Intermediates have been found between any number of combinations of extant species – forget how many there “should” be, why should even ONE exist but for common descent? Why does genetics tell the same story we’d already found (in rough detail) through geography, comparative morphology, embryology (NB: the recapitulation fallacy is not what you think it is, and those diagrams in your textbook were not what you’ll say they were), and fossils? What is it exactly that gradual change, by whatever means, can’t do, and by what means do we examine what does? What evidence is there that any form of life has EVER popped into existence by divine intervention, or what evidence in ANY science that whatever godhead there is works in such brutish ways?

          “Principium cuius hinc nobis exordia sumet,
          nullam rem e nihilo gigni divinitus umquam.
          quippe ita formido mortalis continet omnis,
          quod multa in terris fieri caeloque tuentur,
          quorum operum causas nulla ratione videre
          possunt ac fieri divino numine rentur.
          quas ob res ubi viderimus nil posse creari
          de nihilo, tum quod sequimur iam rectius inde
          perspiciemus, et unde queat res quaeque creari
          et quo quaeque modo fiant opera sine divom.”

        3. HiEv

          The fact is, speciation is an observable and proven phenomenon. Please read:
          TalkOrigins: Observed Instances of Speciation
          (Note: That was last updated in 1995. We have created/found many more examples since then, but this shows that the evidence has been out there for quite a while now.)

    3. insomniac

      We see it happen. Everything about biology demonstrates that it’s true–anatomy, physiology, genetics, taxonomy, and the fossil record. Evolution is verifiable and observable. The only arguments against it come from trying to draw artificial distinctions by pretending that “species” is an objective category instead of a useful but ultimately arbitrary categorization.

      What do you think the arguments against evolution are?

    4. MentalMister

      I probably won’t convince you, but I’m a very emotional person, and I think of religion as being a very emotional thing, so I want to at least try.

      You and I are different. We could have kids, and they would be different. If you have more kids than I do, then the ideas and genes you pass on to your children are more likely to be sustained. Your children could be very successful in a number of ways, and if they find a mate who has similar ideas and/or genes to you, the children they would have would be more likely to turn out more like you than like my children. The family that can survive and be numerous the most will slowly become the majority of the population.

      Think about every living thing as the child of at least one other living thing – even bacteria has “children,” though that probably isn’t the technical term.

      If you ask, “what were the parents of the first living thing(s)?” then you should get a chemistry book, because biology is just applied chemistry.

      1. thomas0comer

        …which is just applied physics. [[It’s nice to be on top. http://xkcd.com/435/%5D%5D

        1. thomas0comer

          …I haven’t the slightest clue as to how the hyperlinked text works.

    5. Raen

      What do you mean by evolution? The classic semi-dodge is to point out that evolution happens all around us, at which time the (frankly, valid) response is that this is “microevolution.” One response to this is to attempt to find the barrier between “microevolution” and “macroevolution, and I have yet to hear one that does not fall into three categories: begging the question (micro = what I believe in, macro = what I don’t), defining macroevolution as something that does happen (speciation), or defining it as something that should not happen (sideways change between clades). But this is something of a red herring.

      When someone says that they do not believe in evolution, what they mean is invariably that they do not accept the hypothesis of common descent, or as they call it, “molecules to man evolution.” The evidence for this hypothesis is in the fact that from the fossil record, from geography, morphology, and microbes, we can construct trees that appear to agree. Even if there were not fossils, geology itself, and helioseismology – by which we’ve got the age of the solar system down to around a 2-3% margin of error – would be sufficient to demonstrate “deep time.” However, the line is quite clear at least back to the Cambrian, and precisely since an abiogenesis event seems so improbable, it’s reasonable to extrapolate further back. After all, the Cambrian explosion no better suits any creation myth than that does.

      “The alternative” is forgoing the blasphemous search for a natural explanation, but there is a very good reason this is not allowed. In all things, natural explanations are best sought, or we would still be seeing lightning as sent down by the hand of God, and chemical reactions as the work of Lilith, and you wouldn’t have a computer in front of you. To accept a direct supernatural cause is to give up that search, and we get nowhere in understanding. So no, it cannot be allowed, so we try to build on what mechanisms are observed. New mechanisms may be discovered, and have been discovered, but when no sufficient mechanism is known, the proper response is to search for new ones, not cut off the search.

    6. Thomas Wrobel

      “. Aside from the fact that the evidence doesn’t point to billions of minute changes over billions of years leading to an ever increasing array of species with even a fraction of the strength that its backers claim”

      err…yes, yes it does.
      See bone structures, similar across species and many quite clearly having bits left over (tail bones etc). See DNA, and the vaste amounts we have in common with other animals. See modern day mutations in both animals and humans – webbed feat, 6 figures, double muscle mass.

      Mutations clearly happen and its pretty obvious that the most fit for the environment will survive the most.

    7. thomas0comer

      I agree with you about one thing- “the alternative simply cannot be allowed.”
      Ignoring the detailed, and more importantly logical, arguments put forth by everybody else, I believe in evolution because for it to not occur requires something to go severely against logic, and against my understanding of everything. Therefore, the alternative would either be total chaos on the part of reality (assuming my understanding of how things work is even slightly true) or total insanity on my part (assuming I am totally wrong about my understanding of logic, which I would define as insanity).

  28. LiamKav

    “there is the way that so many of its adherents just sort of accept it by default because the alternative simply cannot be allowed.”

    What is the alternative? I mean, you’ve spoken to ACTUAL SCIENTISTS so you obviously are going to be correct, but I’m curious as to what other options there are apart from evolution?

    1. Shade

      The only alternative I’m aware of has no evidence, so even if these people were somehow smarter then all the scientists who have been working on evolution and managed to disprove evolution, it wouldn’t make the alternative anymore valid.

      1. Shivore

        If you think alternatives to evolution have no evidence, then have I got an eye-opener for you: http://evolutionfacts.com/Handbook%20TOC.htm

        1. Gneiss

          Thanks for the laugh, that’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen. I checked out the “why the earth can’t be millions of years old” one, and it says things like “how can there be star clusters when the universe is expanding? Clearly the universe can’t be that old”. And his comments on fossil strata is hilarious wrong (he has the basic facts right, and then makes absurd connections with them. Man, I gotta show this to my friends, they’ll get a kick out of it.

        2. insomniac

          That is a really amazing combination of complete nonsense and outright lies. If you talk about stars “evolving from gas,” (and I am not even making that up,) it’s a pretty clear indication that you don’t know anything about astronomy or biology.

        3. LiamKav

          My eyes are idead open. Mainly from laughter. I mean, just to pick one part:
          “How can total randomness select only that which is better, and move only in advantageous directions? Random occurrences never work that way. Yet in the never-never land of evolutionary theory, they are said to do so.”

          Now, I’m not a scientist, but I think the argument would be that the changes are random, but beneficial ones would lead to the species doing better, and therefore outlasting the non-beneficial ones. If a mutation causes a predator to be able to run faster, it is more likely to be passed on. If a mutation causes it to sing Miley Cyrus as it approaches it’s prey, then the animal is less likely to survive.

          Of course, that thing also implies that Darwinism is somehow responsible for every evil man has committed since the 20th century.

        4. Thomas Wrobel

          ” Darwinism is somehow responsible for every evil man has committed since the 20th century.”

          Sadly, this exists:
          http://tr1.harunyahya.com/functions/thumb.php?image=http://207.44.240.34/files/book/pictures/THE_DISASTERS_DARWINISM_BROUGHT_TO_HUMANITY.jpg&width=320

          Some reason some people think that “is” is the same as “should be”.
          Because the idea of evolution on a society level is horrible in the extreme
          they have too argue against it in general.

        5. thomas0comer

          I justify society by thinking that everybody else is just a living, breathing, resource-using receptacle for genes, and that once I am dead somehow those genes might eventually form my superior.

        6. Gneiss

          Right, I’m not sure why people have such a hard time grasping that. I guess people don’t want to hear that it’s all just random chance. An animal happens to get a mutation, and that mutation can be fatal, or it could be beneficial, or it could have no effect. It’s just the luck of the draw. But people seem to be unable to accept that it’s completely random.

        7. Compulsive Collector

          And to think I had wrongly accepted fact, logic, and reason all these years. Thanks for opening my eyes with your link to an obviously unbiased page on the interwebs.

        8. Shade

          Do the words peer reviewed mean anything to you?

  29. Mikehatesyou

    Waaah Joyce doesn’t believe in evolution! This means I can’t like her! Waah! It is like she basis all her beliefs on FAITH instead of SCIENCE!! What kind of Christian would do that!?

    Or maybe I can just accept that it doesn’t matter if she believes in evolution or not, or if she believes we were created by a God or by a space ape. But I dunno… I’m not sure I can overlook someone having different views than me… especially not if they are going to talk about them like they are as valid as my own views and beliefs.

    1. begbert2

      Some people find The Stupid to be very personally grating, particularly if they’ve seen it do things like try to spread into their local schools and spread itself like a pus-spurting disease.

      So don’t take it personally. It’s an aversion to pus.

    2. insomniac

      Creationism is not as valid as evolutionary theory. “Intelligent design” is based on a combination of gross ignorance and malicious lies.

      I do agree that Joyce shouldn’t be blamed. She just believes what she’s been told by people she trusts. But I hope you can understand why people might have a vehement negative reaction.

      1. Mikehatesyou

        Or maybe Joyce believes what she does because even after learning about both sides, she still decided to stick with her faith?

        And sure, I understand why have such vitriol words for people like Joyce , but does that make it okay? It is ridiculous for someone to scoff at someone’s for having a closed mind, then sit right there and do the same thing.

        People – on any side of a subject – should just let each other be. Stop thinking they are the only ones who are or can be right, and just stop insulting each others beliefs. Everyone feels like they are having their viewpoints attacked so they attack back, then they wonder why the fight escalates. It leads to stupid things like people believing they are open minded when in truth, they are only open minded to ideas already similar to their own.

        Everyone just needs to chill out, let each other be, and be a little more loving to one another. But they won’t – they’ll blame it on the other side.

        And that is why I hate them all.

        1. L

          Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, not their own facts. People aren’t scoffing at Joyce preferring vainilla over chocolate, they’re scoffing at her for rejecting a well tested scientific theory in favor of a literal interpretation of a religious text written about 2000 years ago. If she put two and two together and came up with five, we’d be scoffing at her for poor math skills, and I’m guessing you wouldn’t be talking about everyone being entitled to their own arithmetic beliefs now would you?

        2. begbert2

          Come now, the text that she’s basing her ignorant rejection of evolution on is 2500 years old at least, minimum.

          Well, that one and a lot of other supplementary writings in the 200-5 year range. Were you averaging?

  30. artemi71

    I believe myself to be a scientifically inclined person, but also a decent Christian. My problem with evolution vs creationism is not the process that brought about monkeys and humans, as I think we are kind of arguing the smaller point here. No one is asking the real question.

    My question is how it all got started. Frankly, the Big Bang is a poorman’s creation story. Option A is that you had a big super atom that somehow had everything inside of it that exploded and turned into everything. But no one ever tries to explain where that super atom came from, it was apparently just there. Option B is that all this stuff we have comes from some other spill over dimension, which is mathematically possibly, but that idea doesn’t bother to try explain where THAT dimension got IT’S matter from.

    God is also said to appear from nothing to make everything. Sound familiar to the above? Of course, religion doesn’t tell me where GOD came from, as he just kind of… shows up. That’s not a good explanation to me, either. Fundamentally, science and religion seem… equally bad when trying to explain where all this stuff comes from.

    1. eerilychildish

      The main difference between the two is in how they go about arriving at their conclusions.
      Science: We don’t know for sure, but we’re constantly looking for more information. The Big Bang is the theory that best fits what data we’ve collected, but even it has to assume a start point for time and space in the Universe beyond which we have no way to measure anything. As we collect more data, we may have to update or even throw out the theory, but for now, enables us to make a lot of reliable predictions about a lot of things, so we’re happy with it atm.
      Religion: A benevolent, all-powerful, and omnipresent God created everything. We know this because we have defined God as a benevolent, all-powerful, and omnipresent being who created everything. The only evidence that we need, or will ever need, is our definition of God, and maybe a book that some dudes wrote centuries ago that tells us all about God. As we gather more data, wait, who are we kidding, we need no data, we decided on the right answer years ago.
      Or, more succinctly
      Science is constantly moving toward the ultimate truth of the Universe, may not get there, and even if it does, may not realize it.
      Religion has already decided what the ultimate truth of the Universe is, and will ignore any data that suggests that their beliefs may be wrong.

    2. begbert2

      Permit me to vehemently reiterate that evolution and the big bang have nothing whatsoever to do with one another.

      Ahem: THEY’RE UNRELATED! THEY’RE UNRELATED! AAAAUUGH!!! (runs around in circles waving arms above head)

      Anyway, with that out of the system, the reason people argue for the big bang isn’t because they picked something at random to replace God with; it’s because they can basically look around and see it. So while it’s fine to be annoyed that we don’t know what caused it, you shouldn’t take that lack of a known cause as a reason to doubt it happened. If you return to the smoking ruin of your house, the fire inspectors saying “we haven’t determined what started the fire” doesn’t mean you can move back in; it just means the insurance is going to accuse you of arson.

      All that said, I prefer any of the following explanations:

      1) Nonexistence farted.

      2) All of observable reality is a simulation being run on a (technically) extradimensional being’s supercomputer. To be more specific it’s Conway’s Game of Life, and the being is a nebbish teenager named Fred who spends most of his time, er, doing what teenagers do when they’re alone.

      3) The big bang was accidentally caused by the first time traveler traveling backwards (he miscalculated the destination). In addition to causing a paradox-explosion at the point of arrival, it also caused (will cause) one at his time of departure, destroying the universe. Oops. The time traveler will leave from Boston in 4515 and his name will be Bobby Bootstrap.

      1. MentalMister

        What if the universe is alive, and the “Big Bang” was the conception of our universe?
        http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/203/685/conspiracy-keanu.jpg

      2. eerilychildish

        Also, I’m aware that the Big Bang has nothing to do with evolution, but he mentioned the Big Bang, which provided a great opportunity to explain the difference between the way in which science and religion approach things.

    3. insomniac

      “Frankly, the Big Bang is a poorman’s creation story. Option A is that you had a big super atom that somehow had everything inside of it that exploded and turned into everything. But no one ever tries to explain where that super atom came from, it was apparently just there.”

      That’s not… that’s not even vaguely remotely like anything conceptually related to the Big Bang theory.

      Here’s the thing. The universe is constantly expanding. Everything is getting bigger all the time. Everything is expanding and moving away from everything else. The universe is getting bigger. Scientists are trying to figure out if it will keep getting bigger forever or if it will stop and begin to contract and get smaller.

      Keep backtracking it far enough, and you get to a universe the size of an atom. And even smaller. It was not a “super-atom,” or anything like that. It was the universe. It was just very, very small. Science has working models for how the universe functioned at a variety of sizes. It also can look at the spectral remnants of the first few moments of universal expansion. (It’s cosmic background microwave radiation. It came from everywhere at once, so it’s everywhere at all times coming from every direction.)

      Now, where did the universe come from? We don’t know! Cause and effect may well be properties of the universe and meaningless ‘outside’ of it. It’s entirely possible that talking about “what happened before the big bang” is functionally equivalent to asking “what’s north of the north pole,” a literally meaningless question. Could be some kind of deity. Could be ‘natural’ forces (whatever that means on a greater-than-universal scale). Could be an accident. People are trying to work it out, or at least come up with a workable model that might explain it.

      Whatever the answer, though, the big bang has absolutely nothing to do with evolution.

    4. LiamKav

      I agree with all the above statements.

      It reminded me of that moment a few months ago when scientists thought that they had observed…something (I want to say neutrinos) travelling faster than the speed of light. Certain religious types were saying:

      “Ah, see! Scientists said this was impossible, and yet now it might be true! We should not listen to scientists, who are now probably going to lie and cover this up.”

      Scientists meanwhile were saying:

      “Holy shit! This is amazing! First, we need to see if we can replicate this experiment, but if we can it means that lots of what we think we understand about physics is wrong! We can learn so much!”

      Basically, creationism works by trying to make things prove it correct. Science works by trying to prove things wrong and then changing your thinking when those things present themselves. Evolution has not been disproven. Not by creationist scientists who make basic mistakes about what a “closed system” is, and not by a magic book.

      1. eerilychildish

        The awesome thing about that neutrino thing (which later ended up being a minor equipment malfunction if I remember right) is that the problem wasn’t that the neutrinos seemed to be travelling faster than light, because the theory of relativity allows for the possibility of things faster than light. The issue was that neutrinos which had previously not traveled faster than light appeared to be doing so, which meant that they would have had to accelerate past the light barrier, which, according to relativity, would require an infinite amount of energy.

      2. eerilychildish

        I forgot, the other theory when we thought the neutrinos might have been traveling FTL was time travel, and strangely, the neutrinos travelling backward in time would be easier to reconcile with relativity than would those same neutrinos accelerating past the light barrier, which reminds me of one of my favorite terrible jokes:
        The bartender says “You’ll have to leave, we don’t serve subatomic particles here”
        A FTL neutrino walks into a bar

        1. L

          Meanwhile a couple of other subatomic particles invite him to a bar crawl with them. The electron asks him “Are you sure this guy’s cool?” and the proton replies “I’m positive”

    5. Thomas Wrobel

      You are perfectly correct: we do not have any idea, ultimately, how the universe came to be.

      The big import thing is science doesn’t claim too – the BBT isnt accepted as a explanation too everything even amongst those scientists that support it fully.
      Likewise hyperdimensional membrains. Most of this stuff is looking for a relatively simple set of rules or conditions that would one day result in what we see.

      The import thing is the questions dont stop 🙂

      With “god did it” they do.

  31. Fellstrike

    Didn’t read to far into it but unfortunately the evidence presented seemed mostly to be just small bits that do not fit in evolution not supporting something else. Also the facts were presented through cherry picking info. For esample the bit on how life can’t coke from nothing left out all the expierments that have shown the opposite.

    1. Kryss LaBryn

      Haven’t looked at it yet myself (will do in a bit) but I wanted to point out that there are no “small bits that do not fit in evolution”. As soon as you have one single piece that just doesn’t fit, then the model is incorrect. That’s why evolution is such a solid theory: through a century of archaeology, biology, and even genetics, every single piece has fit.

      It’s one of the reasons I get so crazy when people say “it’s just a theory…” *grin*

      1. Fellstrike

        Ah, but there are incorrect and un-reproducable experiments that happen from time to time that don’t fit. (and are of course thrown out.) Such as when Carbon Dating produces an incorrect number.

        I was trying to be polite while declaring it bunk. And also typing on a phone so I didn’t want to be long winded. Basically they mostly say but Carbon-Dating can be wrong, so the earth is young, and also Lewis Pasture once said stuff that later we found out isn’t exactly true, but we omit that last part.

        1. insomniac

          The arguments against carbon dating also usually ignore the fact that fossils and other rocks aren’t aged with carbon dating.

          Not least because THEY DON’T HAVE CARBON IN THEM ARGH

  32. Jim

    Is there a university with hot looking babe professors that teach “Creation Science” that I could meet up with, nod my head a lot, and later, introduce them to a Big Bang?

    Perhaps Oral Roberts University? (with emphasis on oral?)

  33. whoaaperson

    ugh… there goes Joyce with the talking again.

    What I don’t get with creationists is why God creating the universe/world/humanity has to be completely separate from evolution. Hypothetically, if there is a God, couldn’t evolution be the way it creates?

    Anyway, I apologize if someone up above has already made this point, but I don’t have time at the moment to read them all.

    Also, Joyce’s next question: “You don’t believe that the Earth goes around the Sun do you Ethan? My book taught me all kinds of FACTS but that doesn’t mean I’m impressed by them or anything.”

    Man, I have never had so much hate for a fictional character before. This is unhealthy. Thanks a lot for writing convincing, realistic characters Willis… (there is sarcasm within this sarcasm; if the previous sentence were spoken it would be in a sarcastic tone, but I would actually be thanking him. It is confusing. reverse-meta-sarcasm)

    1. David

      God could be behind Evolution, but it would contradict a literal reading of the Bible, which is what Joyce believes in.

      1. insomniac

        Of course, it contradicts a literal reading of Genesis, which is either two creation stories (one after the other), or the creation happened twice.

        1. begbert2

          Two mutually contradictory creation stories, regarding the order that things happened.

          Some days I think it would be interesting to live life as a biblical literalist. What must it feel like to have your brain going into screaming rebellion every other second?

        2. eerilychildish

          This guy did it for a year, just to see if it was possible in the modern world. Also, I’m aware that the below is just text, I figure it’ll take you less time to copy/paste into your browser than it will take me to remember how to make it a link.
          http://www.amazon.com/The-Year-Living-Biblically-Literally/dp/0743291476

        3. David

          Pffft. You can get the two creation stories to work out with each other if you try enough.

          A bigger mental exercise for me when I was a kid was trying to reconcile the two different Judas deaths. In one book, he hangs himself in a field. In another, he explodes his intestines all over a field. HEY GUESS WHAT I’ve decided both happened, in the most amazingly gross hanging ever.

        4. HiEv

          Don’t forget how Judas also both tosses the infamous thirty pieces of silver into the temple (Matthew 27:5) and also buys a field with it (Acts 1:18).

          Better yet, how technically Judas is blameless for betraying Jesus because he was possessed by Satan at the time (Luke 22:3-4). Not to mention that without this Jesus wouldn’t have been crucified, which supposedly was God’s plan all along.

          So Judas is the “bad guy” for doing something he didn’t do of his own free will, which was fated to happen, and which caused something good to result.

          Think about it too much and your head will explode.

    2. begbert2

      Don’t have hate. Have pity. (And instinctive lip-curling disgust, which is also totally okay.)

      Also take solace in the fact that Joyce will doubtlessly grow and develop into a person with an acquaintance with objective reality. (And a love of sex.) In the prior comic that only took several years of in-universe time, so in this comic that would be, um, carry the two…

      1. Sagara S.

        To play Devil’s Advocate, does she need to? I find that (discounting the giant mechanical monkey and such circumstances and the DramaTag) Mr. Willis’s comics have remarkably real-people-like characters. How many people do you know that have changed a long held personal belief just because someone defeated them in a debate? Rather, they usually find other people that DO agree with them.
        Joyce could verra well just continue to be herself and discount those around her. Would she be a bad person? No, of course not. Would she be depressingly accurate? Maybe.
        But why does her character’s ‘salvation’ hinge on her becoming ‘normal’ in a manner consistent with the current mainstream human culture?
        We rag on overly religious people, but surely they view us with the same contempt, lip curl of disdaine, and hope that they become ‘someone reasonable’. Life is about focal length, point of view, and the alcohol content of our drinks.
        (please don’t think I was attacking your comment, I just find it funny that we’re all condeming her for being “silly and naive” when who knows what humanity will think about evolution, stranglets, and the higgs boson in 300 years)

        1. insomniac

          Religion is not inconsistent with evolution. Nobody is sneering at religion here (well, Jack Harmon is). But the reason that people get upset about creationism isn’t that it’s abnormal. (In fact, it is depressingly common.)

          Is it possible that the understanding of the Higgs Bosun in 300 years will be racidically different from or theories? Absolutely. Is it possible that new evidence will lend support to intelligent design claims? Maybe, in the same sense that it’s possible the earth could spontaneously start rotating the other way around.

    3. Hotsauce

      The problem is that you would only conclude that god directed evolution if you presupposed the existence of a god. The fact that “god did it” is indistinguishable from random chance makes “it happened by random chance” to be the much more likely conclusion. “God did it” puts the cart before the horse.

  34. bang

    woo hoo!

  35. Solegitrr

    All this wonderful Creation vs Evolution discourse going on in the comments and the only thing I can do is look at that last panel and wonder “Did Joyce’s boobs randomly get bigger?” FML

    1. L

      Dammit now that you mentioned that I can’t stop seeing her left breast as way bigger than her right one.

    2. Plasma Mongoose

      Jugs’ sweater pups do seem to swell up occassionly.

  36. Lis

    Ethan your plan is working great. Keep it up.

  37. Shay

    I don’t think Joyce meant impressed like many of you are thinking. I think she meant it like one does when one says something about “impressionable youth” and the like. Comments?

  38. LiC

    Whenever I think about the debate between Creationism and Evolution, I always like to remember Stan Marsh’s quote from South Park: “Can’t evolution be the answer to how and not the answer to why?”

  39. Mikehatesyou

    Getting upset over this evolution vs creation argument is silly. Does it matter who wins? Just because someone wins an argument does not mean they are right.

    For example: I win all my arguments, and rarely am I ever right.

    1. Gneiss

      But…but people are wrong on the internet! MUST CORRECT THEM!

      Seriously though, I think what bugs me is that in certain arguments, people will just ignore the facts. If you’re gonna stick to your ideals, fine, but at least try to understand your opposing side before you shut it down, a lot of dissenters don’t even understand how evolution works at all, and they don’t want to even try. I don’t care if they believe in evolution or creationism, as long as they have all of the facts.

    2. insomniac

      It does matter, because creationism is gaining a ridiculous amount of traction in the national discourse. Because of this, creationism and everything it represents–pride in ignorance, deliberate lies to people who trust you, the rejection of empirical observation and fact in favor of ideology–is becoming a powerful force in American politics, government, and schools.

      It is toxic. It is based on nothing but malicious lies, and the unfortunate ignorance of people repeating the lies started by the malicious liars. It needs to be removed from the public discourse and returned to its proper place in the extremist fringe, and it should never be allowed to pass unchallenged.

      1. lord of dance

        creationism isnt “gaining” anything. its been around far longer than evolution and has been happily taught for thousand of years. what is happening is that we now have a massive 24 hour news cycle that needs thing to talk about, a government with too much time on its hands, and a relatively recent militaristic separation of church and state movement that’s pushed the creationism v evolution topic to the forefront.

        1. insomniac

          It’s been gaining over the last several years. It wasn’t until recently that biology classes needed to dignify creationism with acknowledgement. Can you imagine the political shitstorm that would have happened if Fantasia had come out last year?

        2. lord of dance

          the modern theory of evolution as proposed by darwin is literally 153 years old. the teachings of the bible, or more specifically the torah, have been around for almost 6000 years if the jewish calender has any validity. creationists have always been there and will likely always be there. no one cared before now because they always had better things to worry about. the only reason that it seems like its gaining traction is because a few loud creationist types got a hair up their butts and started talking on the news. then politicians are happy to take up the issue because it distracts the 24 hour media from noticing that dead hooker in his closet or the suspicious growth of their bank account. there is no exceptional growth in creationists there’s just more people talking about it

        3. David

          I’m pretty sure polls show American belief in creationism has held pretty steady at or around 45% for the past half-century.

        4. Sagara S.

          and I’m normally rather proud to be American….

  40. eerilychildish

    I personally prefer the Norris theory of the beginning of the Universe
    In the beginning, there was nothing, then Chuck Norris kicked nothing upside the head and said “Get a job, hippie!”, and so began the Universe.

    1. eerilychildish

      I forgot part 2 of the Norris theory
      There is no such thing as evolution, there is just a list of animals Chuck Norris has allowed to live after beating them so hard it changes their DNA.

  41. Jererry

    Their evolution argument has been spawned by a cartoon from the 80s. I don’t believe in giant, sentient robots from space, but that wouldn’t stop me watching. It’s called a fictional universe. Even evolution can happen there, amazingly enough.

    1. Rust

      Joyce doesn’t seem like she grasps the whole “Fiction” thing. You know, kind of like the people who protested “The Last Temptation of Christ” (A human look at the man and his ministry, throwing one last – and very logical – temptation in at the end but not meant to be taken as anything other then a movie that respects its source material) without ever seeing it, yet mindless praising the psuedo-snuff film put out by Mel Gibson that focuses not on the ministry or resurrection, but the death and manages – in this Christian’s opinion – to completely miss the point.

      1. Rust

        As for my own views between Creationism and Evolution – I’d fall under the category of “Intelligent Design”. I fully believe in the scientific view of the creation of the world and life, I just don’t think that was coincidence.

        1. Fellstrike

          psssst…..Intelligent Design is the theory that states some being created everything as it currently is. So you aren’t supporting that one I don’t think. As that is not the scientific view of the creation of things.

        2. Shade

          Not even a theory, hypothesis at best.

        3. Bekah

          It’s a hypotetheory, which is neither a hypothesis nor a theory, and yet, at the same time, it’s both. It asks the question, then comes up with an answer that seems plausible, then is satisfied with that answer, and limits itself from full investigation by accepting that answer as a working theory.

        4. L

          Evolution isn’t coincidence.

        5. lord of dance

          evolution is a coincidence. while natural selection is a complex algorithm based on superior survivability it doesn’t change the fact that the mutations that allow for natural selection are entirely random and therefore modern life is based on a string of coincidences

        6. L

          Selected coincidences are not coincidences in any meaninful sense of the term though.

        7. lord of dance

          agree to disagree. i think that a coincidence that leads to a selection is still a coincidence

        8. L

          Maybe we both understand different things by “random” and “coincidence”.

        9. lord of dance

          besides that, they don’t select the coincidence, the select whether or not the result of the coincidence helps or hurts the population

        10. insomniac

          What you’re describing is “theistic evolution,” I think, in the usual discourse. It could also jest be called “evolution,” because scientific theories don’t make any judgments about whether God does or does not set events in motion with a desired outcome.

          “Intelligent design” is specifically an anti-evolution claim. It’s creationism trying to pass as science by using words that sound like they’re scientific. It’s cargo cult science, using scientific terminology as a ritual to try to get credibility.

        11. Shade

          Oh while I’m thinking about it. The idea that life is intelligently designed is laughable, oh it’s great from a natural perspective. But if someone designed us, they made a lot of flaws and I would like to have a word with them.

        12. David

          For example, it’s not particularly brilliant to have food go down the same pipe that your air does. We can choke to death because our bodies were created through a process of trial-and-error. An intelligent designer probably would have avoided that.

        13. L

          I would have gone with “waste disposal/reproductive systems are too closely linked” or “Cancer”, or even “improper emotional responses” but I guess that works too XD

        14. David

          And there’s also poor giraffes. In fish, what later became the laryngeal nerve ran from the brain around the heart and to the gills. But as some fish evolved into animals and our innards relocated around the insides of our bodies due to trial-and-error, this nerve was caught doing laps around the body that it didn’t need to. And in the giraffe, that damn nerve has to travel 15 feet. It’s incredibly wasteful, and only happens because that’s how evolution happened to stomp them in the nuts. If God designed the giraffe from scratch, he coulda just made a straight line instead of making a maze out of it.

        15. Shade

          Exactly, from a natural perspective it’s really quite amazing.

          From a design perspective it’s objectively poor craftmanship, littered with some good ideas poorly executed.

        16. lord of dance

          but see its that kind of thing that, though i do believe in evolution, makes me wonder. EVERY animal, except maybe fish with their gills i dont know how they work, has that same set up. if it was such an issue or such a bad design you’d think at least ONE animal would evolve down a different track

        17. thomas0comer

          lord of dance- Evolution is like a bad contractor. It knows things are inefficient, but it doesn’t fix them because nobody else has provided better alternatives yet, and nobody’s making evolution change it.

        18. Shade

          Turtles can breathe through their butt? As well as dragonfly nymphs and sea cucumbers.

          Honestly though, the main reason it hasn’t been evolved past would probably be the ones that prove it’s an ineffective method choke to death, and they’re not about to pass on their genes. Basically, it’s good enough from an evolutionary perspective since we don’t choke to death constantly everytime we eat and if species with this method are not dying off, then they’re successful.

  42. lightsabermario

    Guys, guys, guys. You are all misunderstanding Sarah. In her last line, she is not saying she was talking to Ethan. No, she was talking to HIM. H.I.M. His Infernal Majesty. She was asking how the Devil is surviving against Joyce’s onslaught. My guess is that she wants to offer a helping hand.

    1. begbert2

      Oh yeah, Him! He was on powerpuff girls. Now that is a show that Joyce should watch with Ethan – Gay subtext Satan! Totally not uncomfortable.

      And hanging around Joyce long enough to hear her in theist mode would put me in a mind to help Big Red too. (Presuming I could convince myself it existed, anyway.)

      1. Sagara S.

        …………
        22 years old and I never realized until just now that HIM was gay….
        oh my god was I a dense little kid…..

        At least I realized The Grumble (Graumble? from Ahh! Real Monsters) was a cross-dresser/gay

        (just clarifying, there’s nothing wrong with being gay! 😀 no fan girl of Star Trek could ever be homophobic)

        1. Raen

          I hate how it’s okay to make all the gay innuendo you like as long as it’s presented as a punchline, on a villain or a loser… one whiff of anything positive, though, and the moral guardians will break out their skeletal warriors.

  43. wakeangel2001

    whenever I make an argument, I think about how it would sound if it were flipped around on me “I learned all that bible and god stuff too, that doesn’t mean I’m impressed by it.” Yeah…that falls apart pretty quick doesn’t it? You need to have something to back up your argument other than “my mommy/teacher told me.” In the case of evolution, I can go down to a local construction site or quarry (or anywhere where the topsoil was removed) and find a rock with a fossil in it, or you know…point at a freaking Nautilus at the local aquarium…

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