Stephen Fry: Quite Interesting

[jack]

Amongst other things, yesterday cuddly sunflower introduced me to QI, Stephen Fry's quiz program. Not quite the same as the one in the St. Trinian's film, more like Have I Got News For You. It was indeed ever so funny :)

However, a couple of things bothered me.

Woodpecker Tongues

The woodpecker's tongue is nearly as long as it is. The obvious question is, "How does it fit in the mouth, then?" Is answered with the obvious but surprisingly apparently true answer that "Its wrapped round the brain, duh."

This fact is often touted in evolutionist/creationist debates although I'm not sure on what side. Should the argument be that "Wrapping your tongue round your brain is stupid, no-one could have thought that up, not a billion years!" or "Wrapping your tongue round your brain is stupid, that could never have happened by chance, not in a billion years!" :)

(The actual case appears to be slightly complicated. I didn't really care, I just thought it was funny,though its a bit interesting.

The creationist argument is that this is an example of a creature which can't have evolved because any intermediate forms would have tongue wrapped halfway round the brain, clearly useless. The evolutionist rebuttal is that wrapped round is a poor description, a better one is that the muscles behind the tongue lengthened, eventually going all the way round, and you can actually observe this change as a single woodpecker grows to maturity. However, I didn't bother analysing the argument in detail. I expect the second explanation is correct, and it sounded plausible at first glance, but I haven't actually checked.)

Comments

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

If you want to know what they really believe about the Woodpecker,

Not really, no :) That is, I got the basic argument, but couldn't bring myself to wade into the morbid detritus of people yelling about it.

Looking at that, oh dear. That is impressively dumb :( It's not even about the tongue, which seemed like a potentially relevant argument, just wrong if you don't check the anatomy properly.

But he seems to be saying "The woodpecker's hardened head and fast drilling can't have evolved in exactly two steps, since one without the other would be useless/deadly." It doesn't even seem to have occurred to him it might have happened gradually, that either a slightly harder head or beak might have helped rooting in trees just a little, despite that seeming the simplest sort of change conceivable.

He says he's a fundamentalist convert the other way? I know there are people who convert to religion from personal experiences, and insights, and philosophical observations, and emotions, and observations, and bibles, but I hadn't thought from that sort of specific evidence. That, if you're used to assuming species are constant, then the idea of them changing by evolution does sound pretty wacky. But did he really used to understand evolution, and then look at a woodpecker and say "Wow, that's really a counterexample! I don't believe it any more!"? I came up with a credible theory in 0.3 seconds and I don't know anything about it at all.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

It's a fairly common tactic for creationists (or evangelical evangelists) to claim they had strong atheist beliefs, but were converted. There is never any evidence of this (blog posts / books / papers / posts in appropriate communities / etc). I'm pretty sure that when they say this it's a lie, or they don't really understand what they're saying.

He says he's a fundamentalist convert
Ack!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Damn, I'd stayed sufficiently clear to be unaware of that :( What a shame. (I guess its most charitably parsed as "I heard this happened, but never actually understood how myself", although even that might be a stretch in many cases.)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I mean... they could be telling the truth, but there never seems to be any evidence of it. It's often the case that when they say they used to be an atheist they mean when they were a child or a teenager.

People do convert of course, but I've never seen any evidence of a conversion from one 'extreme' to the other by a famous creationist or evangelist (despite almost all of them claiming that they have).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course.

People do convert of course, but I've never seen any evidence of a conversion from one 'extreme' to the other by a famous creationist or evangelist (despite almost all of them claiming that they have).

Well, I know people do convert, in lots of directions, and afterwards often become very articulate about it, and some of them must be famous.

What seemed so strange in this case is that he gave the impression that he had been an atheist, and more specifically (and probably falsely) a passionate atheist and more specifically (and probably falsely) knowledgeable about evolution.

I can totally see someone knowledgeable about evolution converting to a religion and deciding for an alternative explanation of that evidence (eg. God planted it, God caused evolution to occur), or even turning and attacking that evidence. But it seems strange they should immediately forget and attack a weak parody of what they used to understand.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Well, I know people do convert, in lots of directions, and afterwards often become very articulate about it, and some of them must be famous.
Do they? Do people often convert from a strong atheist position to a strong theist position?

I know of famous people who have gone from strong theist to strong atheist, but not the other way around.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Hm, actually, I don't know for sure -- I know people convert to strong theism, and guessed some of them came from strong atheist[1] but can't think of any examples.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Null pointer exception in Hulme.Rob.Brain.FootnoteHandlerFactory.SpecialCases.CartestianDaemon

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Whoops. Sorry. Again :) I was going to say, whatever strong theist/atheist mean in this context. I think you know what I mean/I know what you mean, but wanted to make to put a disclaimer so anyone reading who *doesn't* doesn't go further without asking for clarificaiton.

[d37373.livejournal.com]

I used to be a strong agnostic/weak atheist and am now a theist of some sort - I haven't worked out what subtype yet. It can happen, but in my case it's not something I am confident enough about to attempt to convert other people.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Oh, sorry, I admit that was *my* phrasing. That converts are often more serious, and he's obviously serious about his religion *now* and sounded like he had been serious about his evolution before (though that latter probably isn't exactly true).

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I will add that I find it quite annoying that atheists are now being labelled as 'fundamental atheists' when fundamentalism is a term invented by Christians (in 1910) to refer positively to Christians who hold certain 'core' beliefs.

It doesn't seem right to me for them to now turn around and use it in a negative sense to attack atheists!

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Ah! I hadn't heard it used pejoratively so much, but have heard it elsewhere (you or atreic were saying something like this elsewhere?) by people like us genuinely trying to encapsulate a set of concepts.

That article is a very good description of why it isn't quite right, that I think no-one would have a problem with, but I know people I know use it anyway, trusting the recipient to understand what they actually mean.

I definitely owe these things a post, of many more thousands of words than I can fit here.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I'd love to read and comment on such a post :P

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

Thanks, I do hope to get to it. (Feel free to do so yourself, if you like, you may happen to be able to cover everything I was going to say.)

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I have bigger fish to fry. The target of my next major post is Yahweh himself.

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I'm just imagining what sort of metaphor frying God incarnated as a fish would be :)

It seems optimistic you can settle matters on Yahwah...

[gareth-rees.livejournal.com]

It doesn't seem right to me for them to now turn around and use it in a negative sense to attack atheists!

The irony is of course that the word has gained that negative sense over time entirely through the good efforts of the fundamentalist Christians themselves.

The Chambers Dictionary (2003) gives two meanings for fundamentalism: (1) "a belief in the literal truth of the Bible, against evolution, etc." (2) "adherence to strictly orthodox religions or (figuratively) other, e.g. political, doctrines".

I think that there's clearly a third meaning (probably too recent for Chambers to recognize), something like (3) stubborn dogmatism.