Misconceptions About the Natural World

[chirp]

Geographic

 

What is the only mountain range in the US that stretches West to East? (or East to West)

[Bogen]

My neighbor is a hard-working 72 year old portugese shoemaker, who repairs my mountaineering boots from time to time. On the subject of mountains, he mentioned that he was particularly strong at altitude. As an example, he mentioned that he was not even breathing hard when he visited Macchu Picchu at 39,000 feet. I attempted to correct him, but he insisted that the tour guide said they were at 39,000 feet. I said "Hey, Everest is the tallest mountain in the world, and it's only 29,000 feet." He responded, "Well, that's mountains, this is a city, not a mountain."

[chirp]

[foraker]

the Uinta Range in Utah.

[foraker]

all those creationist goobers fall into this category i think

[Trundle]

"I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details." - Albert Einstein

 

Goober?

[foraker]

if you can't see the difference between albert einstein and what he might mean and what your average doofus christian believes, then i can't help you, goober.

[Trundle]

it's just a quote, bro... you seem to be the one with the broad generalizations.

 

If you think that "all" creationists are "goobers"(?), that believe the same thing, and it can be summarily dismissed, then you are disagreeing with some of the most respected intellects in history and I can't help you.

 

Nor am I looking to.

[Kitergal]

Which rivers actually have a portion of them that runs uphill? Yes...there are at least two in the world that do this. One I believe is fairly local!!

[TBay]

What is the only mountain range in the US that stretches West to East? (or East to West)

 

geographic misconception-

 

there's two east-west ranges in the US.

 

1. foraker's answer (unitahs)

 

2.

 

next time when taking in views from atop Castle Rock at the city o' rocks note the mountain range to the south.

 

this would be the Raft River Range. an ~60 mile east-west trending range which resulted from the combination of the Sevier Oreogenic Thrust Belt and Basin-N-Range extensions (synorogenic crustal activity) in the Albion-GrouseCreek-RaftRiver core complex...

[catbirdseat]

Which rivers actually have a portion of them that runs uphill? Yes...there are at least two in the world that do this. One I believe is fairly local!!

The Columbia River flows upstream for periods of time when the tide is acting on it, but that is a special case and only affects the portion nearest the ocean.

[Stuart]

the catholic church thinking the theory of evolution is scientifically flawed.

 

Don't think so. Just the Creationists over here...

 

"In a major statement of the Roman Catholic Church's position on the theory of evolution, Pope John Paul II has proclaimed that the theory is 'more than just a hypothesis' and that evolution is compatible with Christian faith." [Chicago Tribune, Friday, 10/25/96,

[dkemp]

Alaska's Brooks Range runs east-west forming a continental devide. Rivers on the north side of the devide definitely run north to Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean). Rivers on the south side flow south then west via Yukon River to Bering Sea (Pacific Ocean).

 

geo map of AK

 

Boy do I feel like Cliff Claven.

[Dechristo]

if the universe is infinite, then its center is everywhere, so the condition is true

 

 

I'm down with that.

 

Now, if you'll just agree that my center-o-d-universe is more important than yours...

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Alaska's Brooks Range runs east-west forming a continental devide. Rivers on the north side of the devide definitely run north to Beaufort Sea (Arctic Ocean). Rivers on the south side flow south then west via Yukon River to Bering Sea (Pacific Ocean).

 

geo map of AK

 

Boy do I feel like Cliff Claven.

 

why go there? just take the Nile as an example (see my above post). Any "educator" that has failed to study the cradles of civilization (centered around the rivers Nile, Tigris and Euphrates, etc) has no business teaching anything, IMNSHO.

[Dechristo]

if you can't see the difference between albert einstein and what he might mean and what your average doofus christian believes, then i can't help you, goober.

 

You're thinking like the average doofus non-christian.

 

There are real problems with all theories that deal with the profusion of life forms on this planet and THE initial life form.

 

Irreducible Complexity

Transitional Forms

Amino acid and protein function without DNA instruction

 

There's a lot of questions... don't hang your hat on just one answer.

[DirtyHarry]

Everyone knows the world was created by a Giant Squid during a five-day midget porn orgie. Duh?

[catbirdseat]

I don't buy the Creationists idea that life is too complex to explain via natural phenomena. That's just a big cop out. It is like saying because something is difficult, why try, you won't succeed? Just because every question hasn't been answered doesn't mean that an entire theory should be tossed out. A theory stands as long as it is the best TESTABLE theory around. Creationist "theory" isn't a theory because there is nothing about it that is subject to scientific inquiry.

[Trundle]

It's a catch 22 CBS, you are doing exactly what you say the Creationists are doing wrong.

Throwing out the "creationist theory" because you can't (read: don't have the ability at this point) test it out is the same as a throwing out all of the theory of evolution because it can't be scientifically reproduced.

As you said, "a cop-out".

 

Also, you may want to understand the english definitions of the word theory. Creationist theory is just that.

[Jim]

Scientific America April 1 Editorial:

 

There's no easy way to admit this. For years, helpful letter writers told us to stick to science. They pointed out that science and politics don't mix. They said we should be more balanced in our presentation of such issues as creationism, missile defense and global warming. We resisted their advice and pretended not to be stung by the accusations that the magazine should be renamed Unscientific American, or Scientific Unamerican, or even Unscientific Unamerican. But spring is in the air, and all of nature is turning over a new leaf, so there's no better time to say: you were right, and we were wrong.

 

In retrospect, this magazine's coverage of socalled evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it.

 

Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

 

Moreover, we shamefully mistreated the Intelligent Design (ID) theorists by lumping them in with creationists. Creationists believe that God designed all life, and that's a somewhat religious idea. But ID theorists think that at unspecified times some unnamed superpowerful entity designed life, or maybe just some species, or maybe just some of the stuff in cells. That's what makes ID a superior scientific theory: it doesn't get bogged down in details.

 

Good journalism values balance above all else. We owe it to our readers to present everybody's ideas equally and not to ignore or discredit theories simply because they lack scientifically credible arguments or facts. Nor should we succumb to the easy mistake of thinking that scientists understand their fields better than, say, U.S. senators or best-selling novelists do. Indeed, if politicians or special-interest groups say things that seem untrue or misleading, our duty as journalists is to quote them without comment or contradiction. To do otherwise would be elitist and therefore wrong. In that spirit, we will end the practice of expressing our own views in this space: an editorial page is no place for opinions.

 

Get ready for a new Scientific American. No more discussions of how science should inform policy. If the government commits blindly to building an anti-ICBM defense system that can't work as promised, that will waste tens of billions of taxpayers' dollars and imperil national security, you won't hear about it from us. If studies suggest that the administration's antipollution measures would actually increase the dangerous particulates that people breathe during the next two decades, that's not our concern. No more discussions of how policies affect science either - so what if the budget for the National Science Foundation is slashed? This magazine will be dedicated purely to science, fair and balanced science, and not just the science that scientists say is science. And it will start on April Fools' Day.

[slothrop]

I don't buy the Creationists idea that life is too complex to explain via natural phenomena. That's just a big cop out. It is like saying because something is difficult, why try, you won't succeed?

 

Life is a big computer program, like the telephone switching system. It works, and we can observe that it works, but no one person can comprehend the whole thing. Only smaller parts make sense to anyone. If you study enough of it, or analyze it into layers and modules of varying complexity, then you can grasp bigger parts of it (though you lose some details in the process). Somehow, it was created, from all the countless individual modules and their increasingly unpredictable interactions.

 

Someone saying "God created the world in seven days" just means that they don't understand the details and don't care to, or they just like having a clever allegorical shorthand for life. It's like Life for Dummies, useful but inaccurate.

[Bogen]

Creationism relies on the existance of miracles.

The scientific method depends upon the non-existance of miracles.

 

Creationism is not a theory, it's a belief.

 

Evolution of complex systems is difficult, even for many well-educated people to grasp. (see above reference to that well-known goober, Einstein)

Faced with statements about

Irreducible Complexity

Transitional Forms

Amino acid and protein function without DNA instruction

 

its best just to smile and nod. You'll never communicate on a meaningful level with people like that.

[Dru]

if the universe is infinite, then its center is everywhere, so the condition is true

 

 

I'm down with that.

 

Now, if you'll just agree that my center-o-d-universe is more important than yours...

 

all i can say is that snogrrl bakes good cookies

[catbirdseat]

It's a catch 22 CBS, you are doing exactly what you say the Creationists are doing wrong.

Throwing out the "creationist theory" because you can't (read: don't have the ability at this point) test it out is the same as a throwing out all of the theory of evolution because it can't be scientifically reproduced.

As you said, "a cop-out".

 

Also, you may want to understand the english definitions of the word theory. Creationist theory is just that.

By teaching Creationism or its more palatable cousin Intelligent Design in schools, we are cutting off a large pool of potential scientists. Some of the kids with religious tendencies (and simple minds) will embrace ID and will be lost to the world as potenial researchers and science and our understanding of nature and the world will suffer.

 

Creationism and ID only have old texts and imagination as their laboratory. Science has the world itself. The story of "creation" is out there buried in the earth and our very cells, just waiting to be told to the scientist clever enough to seek out and interpret what he finds.

[rbw1966]

Which rivers actually have a portion of them that runs uphill? Yes...there are at least two in the world that do this. One I believe is fairly local!!

The Columbia River flows upstream for periods of time when the tide is acting on it, but that is a special case and only affects the portion nearest the ocean.

 

I guess that depends on what you mean by "the portion nearest the ocean." I know the tides affect the Columbia as far west as Portland. The Willamette is actually affected at times as well because it flows into the Columbia.