reconjsh
I think it matters where we came from for 2 reasons:
1) The pursuit of understanding where we came from is an excercise for your mind and our collective intelligence as a species. For this single point, the pursuit is more important than the conclusion. The more delve, the more we may perhaps discover about ourselves and life itself beyond simply "where we started".
2) The final conclusion/truth of "where we came from" can have a significant impact on our society regarding the importance of life on Earth and how people on the opposite side of the truth live. If there is a God, I'm guessing alot of atheists would like to know. If there isn't, alot of religiouis folks would probably rethink some of the things they do as well.

Well, yeah, there's that, but that's more of jumping off into a different direction. You could make inferences from evolution, if you could solidify enough of a lineage. But then you'd have to go elsewhere and apply that context to the paleontological record, where you can start to observe how early hominids lived and make some fairly good suppositions about how social structure, morality, and language came to be. And that's fascinating stuff, and of course humans are curious and want to know.

I suppose, to the average person, all of that is part and parcel of evolution, whereas I tend to stay within the context of how scientists talk about it. And by sticking to that context, I refer to evolution as not only something that we'd like to know but stuff that we SHOULD know. Understanding genetics is becoming increasingly important to the field of healtcare. The ability to predict a diversification is very important, especially in relation to dangerous microbes.

And this sort of thing is completely lost on creationists, like the ones in these videos. They don't see it as that. They think it's a cultural war, and so they unwittingly attempt to sabotage good science over what I consider to be one of the lesser important implications of evolution.

I mean, I'm as curious as anyone, but I don't really have a preference as to where we came from. I stick up for the hominid origin of man, not because I want to be related to Lucy, but because I think that the science it comes from is good and beneficial to our survival.

Neilsama

reconjsh
I think it matters where we came from for 2 reasons:
1) The pursuit of understanding where we came from is an excercise for your mind and our collective intelligence as a species. For this single point, the pursuit is more important than the conclusion. The more delve, the more we may perhaps discover about ourselves and life itself beyond simply "where we started".
2) The final conclusion/truth of "where we came from" can have a significant impact on our society regarding the importance of life on Earth and how people on the opposite side of the truth live. If there is a God, I'm guessing alot of atheists would like to know. If there isn't, alot of religiouis folks would probably rethink some of the things they do as well.

Well, yeah, there's that, but that's more of jumping off into a different direction. You could make inferences from evolution, if you could solidify enough of a lineage. But then you'd have to go elsewhere and apply that context to the paleontological record, where you can start to observe how early hominids lived and make some fairly good suppositions about how social structure, morality, and language came to be. And that's fascinating stuff, and of course humans are curious and want to know.

I suppose, to the average person, all of that is part and parcel of evolution, whereas I tend to stay within the context of how scientists talk about it. And by sticking to that context, I refer to evolution as not only something that we'd like to know but stuff that we SHOULD know. Understanding genetics is becoming increasingly important to the field of healtcare. The ability to predict a diversification is very important, especially in relation to dangerous microbes.

And this sort of thing is completely lost on creationists, like the ones in these videos. They don't see it as that. They think it's a cultural war, and so they unwittingly attempt to sabotage good science over what I consider to be one of the lesser important implications of evolution.

I mean, I'm as curious as anyone, but I don't really have a preference as to where we came from. I stick up for the hominid origin of man, not because I want to be related to Lucy, but because I think that the science it comes from is good and beneficial to our survival.

I couldn't agree more.

The average human just doesn't care about where we came from... they are on one side or the other without any real thought or research and just enjoy their ignorance. This applies to almost everything too. People just don't care about being stupid and uninformed. Plenty of individuals care... but people as a whole don't.

As for these creationists... I can see their angle. Like neil said, it's a culture war for them... and they're just prying on the ignorance of their own ranks by mascarading creationism as science. Some of what they do is science... or at least based on science... but STARTING with conclusion and working backwards is never good science. But they probably already know this... they're just counting on "strength in numbers" swaying policy... and I bet it'll work.

First off, Americans are certainly neither the pushiest nor the most radical. So, I'll assume you didn't mean that.

Do you want me to list the number of countries where the US has unseated democratically elected leaders and replaced them with our patsy's? Sure, we may not seem radical to ourselves in some ways, but in the same way that we see Iran as radical many other countries see us as radical. Also we want us and our allies to be the only countries with power in the world.

And secondly, coming up with crazy crap like this is a product of freedom and liberty. People should be so lucky to live in a country where they can pretty much say whatever they want.

I'm all right with creationists saying it, but I'm not all right with them trying to spread their unfounded babble into schools.

Iraqies, for example, can get tattooes for the first time now without the fear of they and their whole families getting shot and decapitated - maybe not in that order.

But they're still likely to get shot and decapitated by death squads caused by the response to the war. Also Iraq is moving closer to the United State's enemy, Iran, because of what we did there.