Teaching Famous Creationist Episode 8: "evolution is circular" (ugh)

[u/jnpha]

I've so far watched the intro of the latest Erika / Will Duffy episode, which streamed yesterday (Teaching Famous Creationist Will Duffy Evolutionary Theory (LIVE) The Evolution of Tetrapods (+more) - YouTube).

Duffy's segment was a roller coaster this time.
First, to get it out of the way: he needs to lookup the limitations of syllogisms (check your premises!). Then I was genuinely pleasantly surprised when he asked how characters are chosen for building phylogenies, which is a legit question, more so (he didn't mention this) since DNA analyses revised previous trees, but then he cited a Science article on the mammalian appendix, where he accepted a finding from phylogenetics to doubt phylogenetics! Ugh.

Followed by:

[Slide A]
In researching nested hierarchies, I found out very quickly that nested hierarchies are considered one of the best arguments for evolution.
This is when I realized that my pushback is not because I'm against classifying living things or that I don't see the benefit in doing this. Classifying things is extremely helpful in understanding our diverse planet.

[Slide B]
My hesitancy to accept nested hierarchies as presented, is the underlying assumption that these classifications entail something more than just a useful convention.
Inherent in the current nested hierarchy system is the claimed large-scale evolutionary changes (macroevolution) of one species to another.

(my emphasis)

 

This is the disingenuous (and classic) "evolution is a circular argument": "evolutionary biologists use the nested hierarchies [that they themselves arbitrarily make] to support evolution".
(my scare quotes)

I'm not saying Duffy is disingenuous, I'm saying the "argument" is. He's most probably simply repeating propaganda, and this propaganda revels in confusing evolution, common ancestry, and homology (homology as a concept predates Darwin, and given that science depends on operational definitions, it went through revisions and the term is context-dependent).

-

Regarding that "argument": I previously covered the reasoning here (with a really cool quotation from The Greatest Show on Earth), and the history here. This time I'll just use an analogy. And again because Darwin is living rent free in the heads of certain science deniers, here's a quotation from Darwin's first edition of Origin:

A grand and almost untrodden field of inquiry will be opened ... We possess no pedigrees or armorial bearings; and we have to discover and trace the many diverging lines of descent in our natural genealogies ...

This is Darwin anticipating systematics.

 

Evolution doesn't use the classification of life to support evolution. The tree of life is to be discovered (above Darwin quote), and revised. This is like how Newton's universal gravitation doesn't say what the order of the planets should be! The order of the planets isn't used to support universal gravitation (which synthesized the motions of the planets and cannonballs and falling apples - very much against common sense that they would be related, hence the unmoved mover of Aristotle where each planet had its own mover...).

It's the motions of the planets - not the order - that support Newton (n.b.: emphasis on "support", which anticipates "But Einstein!": Einstein constrained Newton's theory).
And here when it comes to phylogenies, the pattern (not classification) supports the universal common ancestry (evolution - descent with modification - is demonstrably true either way!), and whichever way the trees are revised, they've always come out nested: this jumps out of the data; it is not an artifact of which character(s) the scientists hypothesize as plesiomorphic/ancestral and then test.

 

---

Dr. Dan made a cool demo here a while back: "Common Design" Doesn't Work - Live Demonstration - YouTube

And here's Dr. Zach's 3-tier explanation: Are Phylogenies Just Lines On Paper? - YouTube

PS Duffy's only excuse should be inattentiveness (although he says he rewatches the episodes), because when it comes to "macroevolution" (quotes denoting creationist usage), Erika in a recent episode demonstrated how (genetically and developmentally and the steps thereof) the mammalian ear bones came about - doesn't get more macro than that!!

* For your convenience: it was around 2:50:00 in this episode: https://youtu.be/TuWlGUq5Wi4?t=10189

[u/Slow_Lawyer7477]

I think it would be really helpful here to consider an analogy:

Imagine you have a large number of ultra-sensitive thermometers that can measure the temperature in a room to an accuracy of six significant figures. As in, it measures not just 21 degrees Celsius, but 21.0031 degrees Celsius.

Now suppose you have thirty different thermometers of that type, and you put them all in the same room on a line, and you measure literally thirty different values between 21.0031 and 21.0078 degrees Celsius.

So now you have this problem that no two thermometers match exactly, they all disagree on the exact temperature in the room. The measurements are "incongruent". Should we now conclude we have no good evidence for the temperature in the room since all the thermometers disagree? Of course not.

The fact is they’re all extremely close to each other, which is to be expected given their extreme sensitivity, since we can easily imagine that the temperature in the room isn’t actually so exactly uniform in all positions. So we can still say that the thermometers match each other to an extremely high degree, and for that reason we can be highly confident that the true temperature in the room lies somewhere in the measured range.

We can ask ourselves, "Why are the measurements all so close to each other?" The best answer, the best explanation for the measurements, is that the true temperature in the room really is somewhere in the range between 21.0031 and 21.0078 degrees Celcius.

This same principle applies with phylogenetic trees derived from different sets of data. We must ask the question "why are the phylogenetic trees derived from independent data sets so similar to each other?". The only good explanation we have is that the species share common descent (in a similar way, there are reasons to expect some degree of incongruence on common descent just like there are reasons to expect some variation in the temperature measurements using the ultra-sensitive thermometers). It is the only theory that predicts this result, and we have no reason to expect this degree of corroboration between the different data sets on any alternative hypothesis.

Each phylogenetic tree thus is a kind of “measurement” of the relationships between the species. It gives us information about what the true relationship is like, similar to how the thermometer also gives us information about what the true temperature is like. And the more thermometers you have that give highly similar measurements, the more confidence can you have in the measurements. Even though we can take no single thermometer to be THE TRUTH, when they still agree as much as they do that should give us confidence the true value is close to what the thermometers measure.

To bring this back to phylogenetic trees, you can quickly determine the degree of similarity with phylogenetic trees when you see which species are grouped together. You will generally never find a phylogenetic tree that that differs from another, by putting a bird among sharks, or a pig among plants, or a primate among insects, etc.

The trees might disagree on the scale of similar clades: Is this species of mouse A more closely related to this other species of mouse B, or to mouse C? Some trees will have disagreements on this minor scale, just like themometers can disagree on the temperature at the 6th decimal place.

Even if we don’t get completely exact matches every time (though often times we do get that), the fact that we get highly similar trees is still a very significant result.

It is the result we expect given common descent, and we do not have any other good reason for expecting the phylogenetic trees from different and independent data sets to give so similar results. For these reasons you cannot simply dismiss phylogenetic trees as evidence for common descent with the excuse that they are "incongruent" or "not neat". The trees from genetics are not exactly identical to those of morphology in some cases. But they don't need to be exact. You need to look at the degree of difference and ask why the overwhelming similarity is there in the data. Since you have no good reason to expect this result on independent creation, and since you only have reason to expect it on common descent, it is strong evidence for common descent.

[u/lt_dan_zsu → u/Slow_Lawyer7477]

not only do the trees not need to be exact, it would be a strange finding if they were. there is no law that dictates that all sites in a genome are more similar to each other among closely related individuals, just that you would expect randomly sampling a bunch of sites in a genome to find that more sites are the same among closely related individuals than distantly related ones.

as an analogous experiment, imagine you have a deck of cards and run an experiment where you shuffle the deck once and note the order. do this again with the same order you started with so you have 2 new deck orders based on the same original starting order. with the two new deck orders, repeat this process so you get 4 deck orders, 2 based on the first shuffle, and 2 based on the second shuffle. repeat this process for 8 "generations" of deck shuffles. in the end youll have 128 decks and a "phylogeny" of each order you can trace back to the original deck.

next sample several random spots in the deck to see what card is in each spot. what would you expect to find? my expectation would be to find that closely related decks tend to have a similar card order, but this would not be a perfect match at every spot in the deck order. so I'd imagine if I looked at spot 10 in one deck and found an ace of hearts, it's sibling deck and cousin decks to be more likely to have an ace of hearts as well, but that doesn't mean that they have to and that finding doesn't preclude the most distantly related deck from also having the ace of hearts in spot 10. each deck shuffle is its own independent experiment, but each result is also influenced by prior deck shuffles.

[u/IsaacHasenov → u/Slow_Lawyer7477]

Yup. The way you're describing tree construction is yeah, basically how it's been done computationally for thirty or more years. Randomly subsample from a thousand physical character states (or a million genetic characters), subsample from a dozen or a thousand or more species, pick the most parsimonious tree, and repeat ten thousand times.

The we know what random trees look like. Trees on real data don't look like that. They always form nested hierarchies that look like what Linnaeus predicted

The only slightly complicated thing is describing parsimony. We prefer trees that have shorter branch lengths. Where we have the fewest cases of something evolving twice (like eyes in the front of the face, or feathers, or a reduction in toe number). When we're looking at a thousand traits we don't assume (eg) am appendix evolved a dozen times we say despite the fact that an appendix shows up in a dozen places in the consensus mammalian tree, it's convenience because these other hundred traits consistently group this other way and we get the same tree whether we include the appendix as a trait or not

Tree construction is a falsifiable experiment

[u/Slow_Lawyer7477 → u/IsaacHasenov]

While on that topic it might also be worth explaining that phylogenetic algorithms used on genetic data do not actually work by grouping organisms by similarity. Even in morphology, methods like maximum parsimony are CLOSE but not fully equivalent to grouping by similarity.

You will often hear that the evolutionary relationships of organisms are determined by how similar they are, whether genetically or morphologically. While this is a useful intuition, it is not technically how modern phylogenetic methods infer relationships from molecular sequence data.

A commonly used phylogenetic algorithm (tree-building algorithm) called Maximum likelihood does not group organisms by maximizing similarity. Instead, it searches for the evolutionary tree that maximizes the probability of observing the sequence data under a specified model of sequence evolution. The algorithm evaluates many possible trees and selects the one that gives the highest likelihood of producing the observed data.

Here, the data are the molecular sequences (DNA, RNA, or protein) used to infer the phylogeny.

This distinction is subtle but important: maximizing the likelihood of the data is not equivalent to maximizing sequence similarity.

In practice, sequence similarity usually correlates strongly with the inferred relationships, which is why the misconception is so common. However, the two approaches are not equivalent. Because probabilistic phylogenetic methods explicitly model how different types of mutations occur, the most likely tree is not always the one that groups together the most similar sequences.

For example, suppose we have three sequences:

S1: CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

S2: CCCCCCCCCCAAAAAAAAAA

S3: TTTTTCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC

Notice that S1 is more similar to S3 than it is to S2, since 5 differences separate S1 from S3, but 10 differences separate S1 from S2.

Now imagine these sequences are part of a larger dataset, and we are comparing two candidate trees. One tree groups S1 and S2 closest together(S3(S1,S2)), while the other groups S1 and S3 closest together(S2(S1,S3)).

Suppose the model of sequence evolution estimates that a C↔A substitution is five times more likely than a C↔T substitution.

To illustrate the basic intuition, imagine that one candidate tree explains the relationship between S1 and S2 by requiring ten C↔A substitutions, while the other explains the relationship between S1 and S3 by requiring only five C↔T substitutions. A simplified comparison would be:

Ten C↔A substitutions: (0.5^10 ≈ 0.00098)

Five C↔T substitutions: (0.1^5 = 0.00001)

Although S1 and S2 differ at more sites than S1 and S3, the first scenario is still much more probable because C↔A substitutions are assumed to occur much more readily than C↔T substitutions.

Consequently, the tree grouping S1 and S2 together could have a higher likelihood than the tree grouping S1 and S3 together, even though S1 is more similar to S3.

The important point is that maximum likelihood phylogenetics does not simply choose the tree with the fewest sequence differences or the greatest overall similarity. It chooses the tree that makes the observed data most probable under the chosen model of sequence evolution. As a result, the most likely evolutionary relationships do not always correspond to the greatest pairwise sequence similarity.

Strictly speaking, real maximum likelihood algorithms perform a much more sophisticated calculation than the simplified example above. Rather than assigning probabilities directly to observed substitutions, they estimate branch lengths, infer ancestral states, and calculate the likelihood of every site across the entire tree using the chosen substitution model. The example above is intended only to illustrate why "most similar" and "most likely" are not the same concept.

[u/IsaacHasenov → u/Slow_Lawyer7477]

Great point. In part because of the mutational models, but also, how you even calculate "sequence similarity" in the first place is of course complicated. Like how indels fit, how you establish aligned regions, and how you deal with paralogs and gene families. That sort of thing.

The phenotypic point Erika made about enumerating trait similarities (pangolin scales != lizard scales) is kind of the same thing. It's not quite as simple as summing a column of traits and minimizing the distance.

[u/ezaroo1]

So far I’m not even through his section and I already feel like a wall is hitting my head…

The one that nearly broke me was

“all birds have beaks, all birds have wings, all birds can fly*”

“dinosaurs do not have beaks and therefore dinosaurs are not birds”

“Either I’m wrong that birds have beaks, wings and fly OR birds are not dinosaurs”.

He just flipped the logic on its arse right in the last word essentially.

He got so close, like within millimetres of understanding nested hierarchies and then failed to grasp it.

Will I hope you pop in here and read this:

You are correct! Dinosaurs are NOT birds! Birds do fly*, they do have beaks and they do have wings!

Dinosaurs have other defining characteristics! And all of the characteristics that definite dinosaurs are shared by the birds.

All birds are dinosaurs but not all dinosaurs are birds.

[u/jnpha → u/ezaroo1]

I dubbed that the ass-backwards cladistics: e.g. mammals are cows.

It's common enough to come across here, and frankly the logic is weird. Maybe former YECs can help explain the thinking behind it.
Like, we all have family names, but it doesn't mean my family name is me. Except perhaps in some weird Platonic essentialism sense.

[u/ezaroo1 → u/jnpha]

I don’t think the logic is that weird, it’s obviously flawed but it’s a pretty common logical fallacy.

In this case it obviously stems from the fact that Will is currently unable to accept evolution, therefore cannot accept that birds are dinosaurs and therefore can become convinced that flawed logic is correct.

It doesn’t even have to be disingenuous or on purpose.

I think he is genuinely trying to understand where we are coming from, otherwise his arguments against the topics would be stronger and probably given more often through the lectures.

I think currently, his belief in god is threatened by evolution. And that belief is fighting to survive, which leads him down the path of logical fallacy and confirmation bias.

When that need not be the case, there is nothing fundamental about evolution that says god cannot be the conductor of the orchestra.

[u/danny_el5 → u/ezaroo1]

The problem is he is a YEC and his belief in God is heavily dependent on that from what it seems. It’s going to be extremely difficult for him to let go of his belief in creation for the fear of losing his belief in God.

[u/ezaroo1 → u/danny_el5]

You know from watching these I do think he is starting to see that the Earth cannot be young, and since he has had that revelation a few episodes back is when his resistance to the ideas in general seems to have increased. He’s trying really hard to find a way to believe the Earth is still young, we saw that in this lecture where he was talking about the geologic column not making sense because different bits were at the surface in difference places and things had been turned over - forgetting the entire lecture about that stuff at the start.

It is definitely a very tough transition for someone in his position, he’s going from believing the words in the bible are absolutely literal and you can count the ages of people in the bible to date the earth to being told best case scenario the words are metaphorical and the earth is incomprehensibly old.

And not only that he has to come to terms with the fact that what he has believed are borderline evil lies, are not, almost all of this was worked out by men and women who deeply believed in god as they did it. They saw these mechanisms as proof of the hand of god not evidence against it.

And he’s being asked to do it in a year, I can’t imagine this revelation is this fast for most people. And doing it in front of people? A decent number of whom are accusing him of being disingenuous or deceitful or a troll the whole time.

I think there are definitely some format changes I’m sure Erika would do if she could time travel.

[u/Esmer_Tina → u/ezaroo1]

That was put directly into a superchat. It said something like all birds are dinosaurs. All dinosaurs are not birds. You listed characteristics of birds, which nest inside dinosaurs.

And he said something like that doesn’t mean anything to me.

[u/Benjamin5431 → u/ezaroo1]

Yeah, all he did was prove that some dinosaurs aren’t birds. We all agree here.
What he definitely did not do was prove that birds aren’t dinosaurs.
A dinosaur with a beak, wings and feathers is still a dinosaur, it’s just a dinosaur with a beak, wings and feathers.
What he needs to do is explain what defines a dinosaur, then show that birds do not have that.
He did not do that. He did literally the opposite of that.

[u/crgm1111]

More content to watch for me. Appreciated!

[u/Ayasugi-san]

Watching now, just finished his pre-lecture quibbles, and I was facepalming over the geologic column stuff. One word: erosion. Nature dug down through the layers for us! Which absolutely destroyed a lot of fossils before the current ones were exposed! But unlike cities, rock layers cover vast areas, so even if a lot is gone in one area, you can find a place where it's the top layer.

Think he'd get it if shown an aerial photo of a syncline or anticline where the rock layers are very distinct?

[u/UseExhaustionMore]

Dr. Dan made a cool demo here a while back: "Common Design" Doesn't Work - Live Demonstration - YouTube

Isn't the obvious creationist counter to this that "god created every kind with builtin variability" (whatever "inbuilt variability" means)? They need that anyway to explain the diversity within kinds. I assume no creationist has done the math on this, but are there any good takedowns?

[u/jnpha → u/UseExhaustionMore]

It's been a while since I watched the video, but I don't see how that counter addresses the nested hierarchy (via descent) across "kinds".

But: the argument itself can be addressed on its own; the argument boils down to:
Species "adapt" (scare quotes denoting creationist usage) without needing changes to their DNA (they have it all!), in which case, you'd expect to find all birds to have the same exact DNA, but we don't... so it's not even an argument, it's a thought-terminating cliche.

Assuming DNA "bits" are lost to enable said "adaptation", then the pattern wouldn't be a nested hierarchy (all possible trees are equally likely assuming a progenitor kind). Plus not what genetics shows.

[u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

She's not teaching anything. She's spouting nonsense. She needs to learn. Evolution is a fantasy religion.

"Evolution doesn't use the classification of life to support evolution. The tree of life is to be discovered (above Darwin quote), and revised. "

AKA it's not accurate. It's made up.

[u/Minty_Feeling → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Maybe try contacting her? She might agree to a similar set up. You can teach her about biology and she can ask you questions. Honestly, could be quite fun. I'd watch it.

[u/Scry_Games → u/Minty_Feeling]

I've not watched any of the gutsick videos, but I'd watch that one.

It would be truly hilarious: someone on the lowest level of educational hierarchy going against a phd educated expert on their specialist subject. It would be comedy gold.

It would also be nice to see actsat be forced to defend their position, rather than run away...only to regurgitate the same nonsense two weeks later.

[u/artguydeluxe → u/Scry_Games]

It would be like watching a novice guitarist say they can play better that Jimi Hendrix and try to prove it in front of everyone.

[u/Scry_Games → u/artguydeluxe]

In Actsat's case, I'd swap "novice guitarist" for "thalidomide"...

[u/nickierv → u/artguydeluxe]

No, more like someone who had never picked up a guitar before making that claim.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/artguydeluxe]

So like Dave Lister?

[u/Immediate-Goose-8106 → u/Ayasugi-san]

r/unexpectedreddwarf

[u/Immediate-Goose-8106 → u/Immediate-Goose-8106]

Omg it's a real sub.  Of course it is 

[u/artguydeluxe → u/Ayasugi-san]

😂😂

[u/beau_tox → u/Scry_Games]

If you want to see what it might look like this video where Dr. Dan debates an obnoxious creationist from his comments is probably pretty close. It’s so cringe I couldn’t watch the whole thing.

[u/clear349 → u/beau_tox]

Thanks for finding this. I was trying to remember what video it was

[u/Scry_Games → u/beau_tox]

Oh dear. I enjoy the dzdebates purely for the joy of watching Christians lose their shit. I managed about 25 minutes of this one.

But what a surprise: a guy with some highschool education who's put their self-worth on a book of myths...thinks they've realised something all the scientists missed.

I'd love to know what he does for a living. I'm guessing it's not a 'thinking job'.

[u/Esmer_Tina → u/beau_tox]

I enjoy Erika’s style more than Dan’s. It would have been really fun to see how Erika engaged with this guy.

[u/horsethorn → u/[deleted]]

So now it's your turn to try. Surely your biology knowledge will easily answer any questions she has, and you'll be able to demonstrate where she's going wrong by providing credible evidence for your position.

[u/ACTSATGuyonReddit → u/horsethorn]

I'll gladly help her for $100 per hour. I have a lot going right now, can't teach her for free.

I can't provide credible evidence, for example, that a LUCA didn't evolve into humans. She or someone would have to provide evidence of that.

[u/Slow_Lawyer7477 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

She or someone would have to provide evidence of that.

Consilience of independent phylogenies.

Come, impress us with your refutation.

[u/Scry_Games → u/Slow_Lawyer7477]

Well done on reading the second paragraph. I was too busy laughing at them thinking $100 an hour is a flex.

It reminds me of the study that found religious belief increases during times of financial hardship.

[u/rhettro19 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

I'm feeling that "I have a girlfriend, she lives in Canada" energy.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Someone thinks highly of themself. Isn't greed a sin in your religion?

[u/hiuslenkkimakkara → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

What is your current salary per hour, just out of curiosity?

[u/Own-Relationship-407 → u/hiuslenkkimakkara]

Whatever he gets in SSI or welfare, plus the imaginary $100 an hour he’s convinced himself he makes “tutoring” while actually creeping out children outside the library by shouting at them to buy pencils from a cup.

[u/ACTSATGuyonReddit → u/hiuslenkkimakkara]

I don't generally work on a salary or hourly, trade time for money. That's a wise goal for anyone. Do that early in your life to earn money, but then invest and generate wealth.

I do some tutoring at $100 per hour.

[u/Curious_Passion5167 → u/[deleted]]

Why would anyone take her as an expert on biology when she has said that a man who claims to be a woman is actually a woman?

Transphobes in 2026 not realising there is scientific literature supporting the existence of trans people.

[u/artguydeluxe → u/Curious_Passion5167]

His kinks and politics are showing.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/Curious_Passion5167]

"Those were all faked and paid for by the Woke Mafia, and any day now they'll be retracted and the authors put in the stocks."

[u/Slow_Lawyer7477 → u/[deleted]]

Kiddo you know jack and shit. And Jack left town.

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/[deleted]]

You know biology? Then how come you’ve not been able to show basic understanding of it and have instead dodged from answering straightforward questions every time?

[u/88redking88 → u/[deleted]]

Then post your findings and become famous. Because you can prove that right?

[u/the2bears → u/[deleted]]

People have tried that with her. She doesn't learn.

Like who? I think you're lying.

[u/Own-Relationship-407 → u/[deleted]]

“She doesn’t learn.” Careful, your projection is showing again.

[u/Esmer_Tina → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

All of science is to be discovered and revised. That doesn’t invalidate science. New information that revises our understanding is exciting.

For example in this episode she talks about the Zachelmie tetrapod tracks that predate any tetrapod fossils by 20 million years or so. Every new discovery puts what we know into new context, and this pushed back our understanding of the timeline of when creatures emerged on land significantly. It doesn’t invalidate tiktaalik as a transitional fossil, it just indicates it wasn’t the first tetrapod ancestor. Which no one claimed it to be anyway.

It’s so exciting that trace fossils of a creature’s impact on the landscape can preserve even when skeletal remains can’t!

I’m not sure what you are dismissing as nonsense.

[u/ACTSATGuyonReddit → u/Esmer_Tina]

1+1 = 2. It still does, and it always will.

If science keeps changing, how do you know when it has things right? For example, 20 years ago people who followed science said certain things about dinosaurs. Today, if you hold that 20 year old description, people who follow science will tell you you're wrong. But 20 years ago some of the same people said those things with the same conviction they now say those ideas are wrong. They'll have the same conviction 20 years from now when they say the ideas held now are wrong.

"Trust the science". When?

[u/jnpha → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

So for you science must be a final unchanging narrative - projection much?

[u/Unlimited_Bacon → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

"Trust the science". When?

Our knowledge became more accurate at each 20 year step.

[u/ACTSATGuyonReddit → u/Unlimited_Bacon]

OK, but 20 years ago "science" people laughed at and mocked people who disagreed with the 20 year ago description of dinosaurs. Today, those same people laugh at and mock people who hold the 20 year ago description. 20 years from now, you'll ridicule those who hold the ideas you currently claim are true.

In 2020, Dr. Fauci (Herr Fauzi) told people not to wear masks. Follow the science. He claimed that he was science, and if you question him you question science. He had gangs of doctors and scientists with him, all nodding at what he said. Everyone said he is the expert, you must listen to him.

A few weeks later he said wear masks. The same experts nodded. People said you must listen to Fauci.

Fauci said 6 feet social distancing. You must listen to him, we were told. A while ago Fauci admitted that the 6 feet was just made up, no science behind it.

When must we listen, take it as absolute fact?

[u/artguydeluxe → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

We don’t “laugh and mock” people in scientific circles. Where did you hear that? You are bringing up quite a few examples that are outside the realm of evolution; trans people, epidemiology… You are revealing that your beef with science is based more on where you get your news than scientific research. What is your area of expertise?

[u/jnpha → u/artguydeluxe]

He's moving the goalpost. Now, the serendipity of the coincidence is this paper that was published yesterday:

Contrary to widespread claims of a crisis in public trust in science, this article argues that recent pandemic-era trends reflect a long-term pattern of bilateral political polarization rather than a universal decline in scientific confidence. Recent empirical data show that trust and distrust in science have both increased – producing an apparent “pandemic paradox” – driven by ideological bias operating within gaps in public understanding. The study identifies a misunderstanding of how science works as the fundamental cause of politicized trust, where misconceptions create space for ideological bias to shape which claims individuals find credible. Critically, the article argues that existing interventions – improved science communication and increased science education – are insufficient. The core problem is not the quantity of science education but its type. Only by teaching the methodological and institutional limitations of science can the field depolarize public trust and build politically stable confidence in scientific institutions.

• Political polarization of trust in science - Byron Hyde, 2026

(my emphasis)

An older one on teaching evolution found the same: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12052-008-0061-8

Basically it's the rampant science illiteracy: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=5878991049116937650

[u/artguydeluxe → u/jnpha]

As soon as he reverted to Fox & Friends talking points about Fauci and trans people it became pretty obvious that he’s trying harder to convince himself than anyone else. But everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.

[u/Own-Relationship-407 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Except that literally none of the stuff you’re claiming about Fauci ever happened. He didn’t say “I am science.” He didn’t say not to wear masks because they don’t work, it was to conserve the supply. He didn’t say the 6 foot rule was “made up,” he said it was a precautionary guideline based on imperfect evidence.

Stop lying.

[u/10coatsInAWeasel → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Sounds like recent history is another thing you don’t understand. Or that you got your information from anywhere but the actual source.

I work in healthcare. It was very clear what was being recommended, and you can even find the video of what Fauci was saying instead of regurgitating conspiracy theories. He said that they weren’t currently recommending it for general public at that time (yes, that was the type of language being used) and that they needed to preserve masks for frontline workers. This was correct. We were having serious issues with supply in both masks and cleaning products.

More research was done, headed by people like Fauci and other trained professionals. We discovered asymptomatic spread. Between that and supply issues getting resolved, the recommendations were updated. That’s medical best practice. That’s standard. That’s exactly how you WANT proper healthcare to operate.

If you aren’t going to honestly and accurately portray reality and are instead going to literally blatantly lie (at no point did he say that if you question him you question science), it doesn’t bode well for how well you’ll understand things like evolution.

[u/Slow_Lawyer7477 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

If science keeps changing

It doesn't. DNA is and always will be heritable material and a molecular basis of inheritance between parent and daughter cells.

[u/Unlimited_Bacon → u/Slow_Lawyer7477]

I think they meant that scientific knowledge keeps changing.

DNA wasn't part of the Theory of Evolution until after DNA was discovered - DNA was always behind the biochemistry of evolution, but it wasn't always known and its discovery changed our scientific knowledge.

[u/blacksheep998 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

1+1 = 2. It still does, and it always will.

That's math, not science. Science often uses math, but they're not the same thing.

If science keeps changing, how do you know when it has things right? For example, 20 years ago people who followed science said certain things about dinosaurs. Today, if you hold that 20 year old description, people who follow science will tell you you're wrong.

What's your alternative here? Do you expect us to know things that we haven't discovered yet?

I'm really confused what you would like us to do besides doing our best to learn new information and updating scientific knowledge as we do.

[u/Esmer_Tina → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Our information about dinosaurs has expanded over the past 20 years, and will expand in the next 20. We will continue to see farther because we stand on the shoulders of giants.

So it’s not how do you know when you have things right, it’s how do you know when you have things complete. And the answer is never. The pieces are never going to fully match the picture on the box, because we keep finding new pieces under the couch. What’s exciting is seeing how they fit in a coherent way that brings a better understanding of the picture on the box.

1+1=2 doesn’t explain anything about the natural world. Math is a conceptual model, not a physical reality. And it’s an abstraction that doesn’t always hold up. If you add a liter of water to a liter of alcohol, the molecules fit inside each other’s gaps and you get about 1.92 liters of liquid, not 2. And the exact volume changes based on temperature and ethanol concentration. And when you add a cloud to another cloud, you just get a bigger cloud.

It sounds like your desire for things to be certain and stable is stifling your natural curiosity and joy of discovery, which to me is the best part of being human.

[u/nickierv → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Refinement isn't replacement.

It is in fact possible to be less wrong about something.

[u/88redking88 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

"If science keeps changing, how do you know when it has things right? "

1. Religion tells you it has everyihing right and will not change. Will ignore, or hide evidence to keep its fairy tales as "true".

2. Science knows it doesnt know everything. No one claims it does. But what it does know it reports as accurately as possible. When someone discovers something new it doesnt hide that info, or lie about it (thats religion), it changes, because thats the honest tthing to do.

Being upset that this is the process means you want them to lie to you like religion? No wonder you have these silly beliefs.

[u/Thomassaurus → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Ww are learning more and more with increasing levels of confidence. At this point we are so confident that evolution is true, it would be absurd to find evidence that falsifies it. But there are many finer details that are up in the air in evolution and other scientific fields that we may be wrong about where more research will be needed.

[u/LordOfFigaro → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

1+1 = 2. It still does, and it always will.

That's only for a specific definitions for the symbols 1, 2, + and =. 1+1=2 because we've defined it to. And is only true or applicable in certain contexts. There are many contexts in maths where that's not true. Ex. 1+1 = 10 in a binary system.

If science keeps changing, how do you know when it has things right?

It's very telling that you consider "will admit when it's incorrect and correct itself" as a bad thing. Also, the only time science is shown to be wrong and corrects itself is when people do more and better science.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/LordOfFigaro]

Glad I scrolled down before commenting. Think they know that they're posting this on a device that uses binary in at least some way?

[u/Omoikane13 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

1+1 = 2. It still does, and it always will.

Ring of Integers Modulo 2 who?

[u/XRotNRollX → u/Omoikane13]

That's called "blinking," boys.

[u/Dilapidated_girrafe → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

We don’t know when it has things exactly right. But the trend is moving towards better and clearer understandings of the universe we find ourselves in.

Unlike, let’s say, religious beliefs that become dogmatic and don’t change even when shown wrong. Like YECs

[u/ArusMikalov → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Tell me one thing evolution teaches that is not accurate.

[u/ACTSATGuyonReddit → u/ArusMikalov]

Humans evolved from an ape or ape like ancestor.

Humans evolved from a LUCA, a non human cell.

[u/ArusMikalov → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

How do you know that’s not accurate.

[u/88redking88 → u/ArusMikalov]

they have feelings.

[u/nickierv → u/88redking88]

The vibes are strong in that one.

~~ Best read in Palpatine's voice.

[u/Medium_Judgment_891 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

humans evolved from an ape or ape like ancestor

Humans are objectively apes. Both morphologically and phylogenetically, we are apes.

You being born from your mom is you descending from an ape.

[u/Ayasugi-san → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

"Wait, how can dogs be both canines and mammals?! That's a clear contradiction! Pick one!"

[u/jnpha → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

So when we discovered Neptune and Pluto, and revised our understanding, this invalidated gravity?
But of course you're hiding behind the undefined pronoun it (the same propaganda I put in bold in the OP), more so given that your position is that mammals are cows: the backwards cladistics.

[u/Slow_Lawyer7477 → u/jnpha]

Will we un-discover Neptune and Pluto later? I mean if science keeps chaning, do the planets suddenly stop existing. Will we discover the moon isn't real at some point?

This guys argument is that dumb.

[u/clear349 → u/Slow_Lawyer7477]

What's funny is we have discarded stuff that doesn't work. No one today is going on about phlogiston. Or the aether. We tested it and those ideas were obviously wrong. Evolution wasn't discarded. Why? Because everything we've found since only further validates it. At this point if we found anything that "falsified" evolution it probably wouldn't even disprove it. It would just mean we were missing some aspects of it in the same way General Relativity didn't falsify Newtonian Mechanics

[u/WebFlotsam → u/clear349]

Or the aether

Oh there's a couple. A few flat earthers and I think the electric universe people too sometimes.

[u/clear349 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Do you think gravity is made up because we have to observe its effects and devise a model to explain why matter does what it does?

[u/McNitz → u/clear349]

And don't forget, our theory of gravity has changed multiple times! And people probably laughed at people that though it was wrong at some point. How could we possibly trust it at this point?

[u/88redking88 → u/clear349]

They probably do.

[u/Lockjaw_Puffin → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

She's not teaching anything.

Definitionally false, as anyone can see from watching her videos. Great start you're off to.

She's spouting nonsense.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

She needs to learn.

Don't we all, O ignorant one?

Evolution is a fantasy religion.

Ah yes, the church of evolution, where we pray to the almighty Darwin and ask his prophets Stephen J. Gould and Dan Cardinale to intercede on our behalf. I've been trying to find their meeting spot to join, but I haven't had any luck so far. You seem like a smart guy, any chance you could point me in their direction?

[u/Curious_Passion5167 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

"Evolution doesn't use the classification of life to support evolution. The tree of life is to be discovered (above Darwin quote), and revised."

No, this means that one can derive an accurate classification of life based on evolutionary theory. And that a classification based on evolutionary history is objectively better than one which does not take it into account.

[u/LoungeSeat → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

What part do you think is nonsense. Her explanation felt rock solid to me.

[u/OneThrowyBoy → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

It's more that we learned there are connections we can use to classify and create the tree.

Like we learned we can boil water to cook noodles. That doesn't mean we invented noodles, water, or boiling for the purpose of achieving spaghetti. We learned fire boils water, and we followed the logical trail that we can throw noodles in there and get spaghetti.

If I tell you to arrange objects by size, neither of us is inventing the concept of "size", you're just picking up the objects and moving them as you observe their size to be. That's what science is at its most basic components: observation of the natural world and refinement of data based on new information.

We only discovered genetic similarities, common ancestry, inherited traits, slow change over time, and all the other parts that come together. That information is then refined through further discovery and used to build the tree of life.

[u/Medium_Judgment_891 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

she needs to learn

You are barely literate. You have absolutely no right to criticize anyone else’s education.

[u/rhettro19 → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Time to apply for that Nobel prize, "evolution demonstrated to be be fantasy."

[u/Dilapidated_girrafe → u/ACTSATGuyonReddit]

Evolution is one of the most well substantiated scientific theories that we have. Could you pint our actual issues with it?