Atheists Have a Problem With What??

[le_bebna_kamni]

Two gold stars to the first person who can figure out the *huge* underlying assumption that is just wrong here, and explain why it's wrong with modern day examples. No, I'm not talking about the first sentence that says all animals reproduce sexually. I'm not even talking about the bad conflation of evolution with atheism. I'm talking about the blatant science mistake that obviously comes from believing the second creation story in Genesis, and which forms the entire basis for the article.

Pulling the Plug on Atheism: The Atheist's Problem With Females

Comments

[matt-arnold.livejournal.com]

They keep saying "coincidentally" as if natural selection were a random or accidental process. Often Creationists assume there are only two categories: "intentional" and "random accident". There is at least one more: "inevitable".

Evolution has both random variation and inevitable natural selection.

Randomness does not rule over natural selection; it feeds an endless stream of minor variations into a genetic code. The majority are failures, of course, which natural selection roots out. We have no reason to act surprised about which ones are left. This process is like a ball falling down the stairs: it's not a miraculous coincidence when the ball ends on lower than it began.

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

I don't really need the gold stars. I think PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins have both tried to correct Ray Comfort on this already, and after not comprehending it (or pretending not to), he nodded and changed his example from dogs to elephants or something, as if the sexually reproducing common ancestors were different in the two cases.

[le-bebna-kamni.livejournal.com]

The "randomness" misconception and the "different parents" fallacy are both common in creationism -- so common I'm not sure it's worth talking about except when expressing general frustration -- but not the huge underlying assumption that I'm referring to. In fact, the failure of several people (including forums I've seen discussing this article) to mention the really big blooper may be a symptom of a large majority of us growing up knowing (at least in passing) the story in the second chapter of Genesis and on some level internalizing it.

Think about the article title for hints...

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

Most hypocritical title EVAR! Where are all the women, which God made in Her image because they're, like, the default real people and stuff, gonna find sperm?

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

So yeah, I don't know what the deal is. I guess we can call this "the creationist's problem with females."

Dawkins totally abandoned the "male by default" convention like 30 or 40 years ago. But Ray is still having trouble.

More punctuation would've meade this clearer:

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

Where are all the women - which God made in Her image because they're, like, the default real people and stuff - gonna find sperm?

Re: More punctuation would've meade this clearer:

[le-bebna-kamni.livejournal.com]

Awesome...you get a gold star! :)

But for two gold stars you need a modern science example that supports why male isn't the default. None of this silly "Goddess made in her image" mythology, even if it is true. ;P

I'll post my own later if no one posts the ones I'm thinking of.

Re: More punctuation would've meade this clearer:

[mothwentbad.livejournal.com]

Oh. Like... ants? Or does them being sterile most of the time not count?

There's the anglerfish, I think. Or some other fish who carries around a little tiny male that has withered away to a portable sperm factory.

[smithee-awards.livejournal.com]

Ummm...
*raises hand*
Seems to me that a flat worm male, when you cut it in half, can make 2 flatworms without any female flatworm present and last I checked, flatworms were animals.

Maybe they mean higher animals. Poor, poor Platyhelminthes.

[le-bebna-kamni.livejournal.com]

While that is certainly an example of males generating new members of the species without a female present, the big underlying assumption I was referring to was the idea that *males* are the default, and that females somehow evolved later. This is an assumption that most likely stems directly from the second chapter of Genesis, where Eve was created after God realized after creation was over that Adam was all by himself.

On the contrary, biological examples seem to show that females are the preferred default, and that males are the "evolutionary afterthought" (so to speak). There's the human embryo, which will grow into a female unless the correct androgens are introduced during gestation (if this process is blocked, or if there is only one sex chromosome for any reason, the fetus will be phenotypically female).

There are also several examples of species where otherwise sexually reproducing females have eggs that will still grow into individuals if not fertilized (surprisingly, turkeys are on this list). There are even a handful of species who are moving or have moved back to asexual reproduction by minimizing or completely eliminating the males. The fish (or group of fishes) that mothwentbad mentioned above is a member of Ceratioidei fish (http://www.seattlepi.com/local/233874_fishsex25.html), where the tiny male essentially fuses physically with the gigantic female and doesn't separate from then on.

The example I was thinking of was the whiptail lizard (http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/expeditions/treasure_fossil/Treasures/Unisexual_Whiptail_Lizards/lizards.html?50) which only consists of females. Attempts to cross breed them with related species to produce males only results in sterile individuals.

So class, how did you all enjoy today's field trip? ;P