Measuring religion

[zorkan]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7136682.stm

Did Darwin plagiarize Wallace?
Both were Englishmen who exchanged letters.
We'll never know for sure.

Anyone reading Dawkins will probably not realise he was basing so much of his work others.
Like Bill Hamilton, George Williams, George Price..

Another example. Crick and Watson taking credit for the discovery of DNA, when really it was Rosalind Franklin.

I see the above article uses "Christianophobia".
I'd heard of Islamophobia.
How about Hinduphobia, Buddhaphobia, Pastafarianophobia?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster#:~:text=The%20Flying%20Spaghetti%20Monster%20(FSM,schools%20in%20the%20United%20States.

[Tank]

"Did Darwin plagiarize Wallace?
Both were Englishmen who exchanged letters.
We'll never know for sure."

You might. I'm sure there was no plagiarism. I think the giveaway was that the first paper presented on natural selection was jointly presented by them to the Royal Society. The other point of observation is the letters between them where Wallace asks Darwin for help to underpin his own ideas. Wallace knew what he had seen but Darwin had done the research that could hold support the idea.

"Another example. Crick and Watson taking credit for the discovery of DNA, when really it was Rosalind Franklin."

So because some people a thieves we all are? False analogy.

[billy rubin]

darwin was reading malthus, got sick and had a fever, and the the theory of natural selection appeared to him/

wallace was also reading malthus, also got sick and had a fever, and the theory of natural selection also appeared to him./

^^^strange coincidence. when wallace wrote to darwin about the theory darwin is said to have freaked out and withdrew. it was others who persueaded him to do a joint presentation for the royal society.

so the story goes.

have you heard about the guy who stole a bunch of wallace's pricelss original bird specimens from the americas and new guinea and cut them up to sell for fishing lures that he sold on th einternet? some feathers have been recovered but the specimens themselves have been destroyed.

[Icarus]

darwin was reading malthus, got sick and had a fever, and the the theory of natural selection appeared to him/

wallace was also reading malthus, also got sick and had a fever, and the theory of natural selection also appeared to him./

^^^strange coincidence. when wallace wrote to darwin about the theory darwin is said to have freaked out and withdrew. it was others who persueaded him to do a joint presentation for the royal society.

so the story goes.

have you heard about the guy who stole a bunch of wallace's pricelss original bird specimens from the americas and new guinea and cut them up to sell for fishing lures that he sold on th einternet? some feathers have been recovered but the specimens themselves have been destroyed.

No, I have never heard of that one. Fishing lures???  Sure enough there are some fly tiers out there who truly believe in magic lures. I strongly suspect that the trout or other fish do not give a rats ass about the origin of the feathers.

[billy rubin]

its a weird subcult of flytiers who require the feathers of rare and extinct birds.

wallaces stuff was irreplacwable, and this shit tore them apart to sell to rich hobbyists

[zorkan]

Apart from being evolutionary biologists, what do Darwin, Wallace and Dawkins have in common?

They have never been knighted by their country.
That's because they have challenged Christian authority.

By contrast, naturalist David Attenborough, who is a fan of all three has been twice knighted.

 

[Asmodean]

Charles Darwin and Russel Wallace were not evolutionary biologists though. Their fields of study gave rise to evolutionary biology.

Back in ye-olden days I suppose they were considered "naturalists" or "explorers" or something equally-broad.

[zorkan]

By your logic Einstein was just a patent clerk.

An opinion I'll express is that religion is merely a cover for something more sinister.
The idea of one god, the almighty, attracts so much attention that people are drawn into thinking there's a trap door to a better place after death.
In its wake comes control over women and children.
Whether this was deliberate or not I'm not sure.

[Asmodean]

By your logic Einstein was just a patent clerk.

By the same token as Charles Darwin was just a geologist. (I very rarely deal in "just a-s" - Einstein was a patent clerk too.)

Einstein was a physicist, but that does not mean that he was, say, a quantum physicist. His body of work gave rise to much of that particular field of study, to be sure, but a progenitor needs not be the first of a kind. Remember, ancient fish were our ancestors - does that make them human?

[zorkan]

Charles Darwin the geologist?
More like a naturalist who was influenced by Charles Lyell and others.
https://evolution.berkeley.edu/the-history-of-evolutionary-thought/1800s/uniformitarianism-charles-lyell/
Darwin died not knowing his On the Origin of Species was correct.
Not enough tine for evolution by n/s if the world only a few million years old.

I argued about the age of the earth on the worthy christian forum before I was thrown off.
They all believe the world is not as old as science has revealed.
They argue the bible is correct to imply it was only ushered in 6,000 years ago. Excuse the pun.
How do you argue with people like this?
I failed, but why should I be surprised. If science contradicts their holy book then science is wrong.

[billy rubin]

darwin fits the bill as a geologist for his work on coral atolls and for his stratigraphic correlations in south america. the distinctions between fields of science are more recent than his time.

palaeontology is the link between biology and geology. you can cross from one to the other pretty easily

[billy rubin]

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/great-feather-heist-180968408/

this sort of thing is one of those crimes that nobody takes seriously, and so the punishment and deterrence are slight.

speaking as a systematist, if it were up to me i would cut all of this guys fingers off and make him eat them.

[hermes2015]

....

Another example. Crick and Watson taking credit for the discovery of DNA, when really it was Rosalind Franklin.

....

Rosalind Franklin didn't discover DNA, she elucidated its structure. DNA was discovered about 100 years before her work.

[zorkan]

I realised after I posted that I should have said Franklin discovered the structure of the DNA molecule by X ray crystallography.
The story goes that as soon as she saw the image she knew it was a double helix.

Darwin the geologist?
Okay, I'll go with that. Both naturalist and geologist.
He found fossil fish on mountains.

Interesting that fossils were once considerd to be planted by god as a test of faith.
They also proved to the faithful the flood actually happened.
In reality the rivers of Mesopotamia did flood, and that's how the legend started.
Possibly some guy did build an ark to load domestic animals.

[billy rubin]

his theory of the geologic origin of tropical atolls stood for 100 years, and has only just now been revisited because of a greater understanding of marine transgression and regression

interesting man. reading on the origin of species is strrange, like watching motion picture previews of a film youve already seen, because darwin anticipates the highlights of the next 150 years of evolutionary biology in offhand remarks and brief speculations.