The Herald of My Youth. The New News Publication From the Highlight of My Youth. Volume One, Issue One. 23 March 2012. EVEN NON-CHRISTIANS BELIEVE IN CARBON DATING. Science reveals the only missing link, Faith.
Caption for illustration: Left to Right: Australopithecus, Homo habilis, Homo erectus, Jesus Christ, Homo sapien.
A recent study co-authored by
David Haury Ph.D, Associate Professor of Education at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio suggests that people tend to accept or reject the Theory of Evolution based on gut-feelings, instead of knowledge.
“The whole idea behind acceptance of evolution has been the assumption that if people understood it, if they really knew it, they would see the logic and accept it,” stated Haury. To test this belief, Haury conducted a study using “one hundred and twenty four pre-service biology teachers at different stages in a standard teacher preparation program[1]” in Korea where education system is very standardized. During this study, test subjects were asked questions to determine whether or not they believed in the Theory of Evolution. They also asked the subjects questions to identify how extensive their knowledge of Evolutionary Science was (e.g., questions pertaining to processes of the Theory of Natural Selection). After answering each question, subjects were also instructed to write down what their heart said about their answers; what was their gut feeling about the correctness of their answer?
Researchers of this study found that the test subjects’ intuition played a large role in whether or not they believed in the Theory of Evolution. The amount of actual knowledge the subject had did not affect how likely they were to accept Evolutionary Ideas, but the amount of Faith did.
WHY DO THINGS LOOK SMALLER WHEN FARTHER AWAY?
Part I, Distance
Sometime in your travels you will have noticed that as things run from you, they appear to shrink in size. Perhaps as children, you and a friend played a classic game of tag through the reeds and tule grass. You’re it and the chase has really started to get exciting. You’re about to tag them when you trip and fall. You let out a shriek as your friend appears to shrink into the distance. You might reach out towards them, and find that their image can fit into the palm of your hand. But it is only an image!
“What is happening Is this real?” you ask yourself as you read this newspaper.
The game of tag is still on. Your friend is out of shape and can’t run anymore. They appear bigger again, their size has increasing dramatically as you close in on them. They become proportionately bigger as you come ever closer. When you are close enough you cannot, will not see anything other than them.
The explanation for this phenomena is easy to understand. In fact it is too easy. You might feel ashamed to ask such a simple question but it’s natural to be curious about our bodies as we grow older and a desire to explore our parts is natural.
Part II, Closeness
You’ve reached your friend and called a truce on the game. Gazing into their eyes (also known as the “window to the soul”), you can see their white sclera and energetic red veins on either side of their deep, stormy ocean-hued irises, surrounding their dilated pupils. See how the pupils look like a black spot? In fact it’s a hole into the eye, the size of which is controlled by the contractions of the sphincter we call the iris. Light is received into the pupil, and is received by photoreceptors (e.g., rods and cones) which are specialized neurons found in the retina. The human retina contains hundreds of rods and cones which allow us to experience light and color.
As you gently touch your cornea against theirs notice that no light enters their eye that has not touched your face just moments before. A few hours ago the whole world was before them, and now you are all they can see.
And that’s why things at a distance appear smaller.
Caption for illustration: Fun Fact: Crying turns into sobbing for women in 65% of cases, compared to just 6% for men[2].
Caption for illustration: Big Eddy appears larger than Kenneth because he is closer to the viewer.
WEATHER: It looks like it's probably sunny outside.
1. http://www.livescience.com/18051-belief-evolution-gut-feeling.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crying#Frequency_of_crying
