Here are two things I believe are true that most well-educated people think are untrue. Among those who think one of these is true, a large percentage think the other is false.
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Most people (who accept evolution) claim there's a definitive evolutionary tree for all species.
I believe there is no single, definitive tree, but rather, several trees. Depending on which feature or gene sequence you're studying, and what method you use to construct a tree, you'll get slightly different trees. Sometimes this is just statistical noise, but other times it's due to different traits actually having different lineages, as a result of events like recombination (say, when a virus injects a fragment of DNA into another creature's genome) or horizontal gene transfer [0]. If you build a phylogenetic tree that covers whole genomes for multiple species, it will typically end up being a phylogenetic network [1] rather than a simple tree.
I also believe the original language text of the Bible has been very reliably preserved since antiquity. There's a surprising amount of crossover between the subject of textual criticism [2] and phylogenetics -- comparing manuscript variants (between millions of pages across several centuries) is not that different from comparing DNA mutations. There are very few parts of the Biblical text that are seriously disputed by the legitimately well-informed.
Doesn't the position you take on [2] depend very heavily on how you define "original"?
I was under the impression that there was very little dissent between believers and critically-minded scholars alike over either:
(i) the texts that compose the New Testament (in particular) of the Bible have been well-preserved and accurately replicated with very few claims of interpolation or revision
(ii) The Synoptic Gospels were heavily influenced by at least one common source document which appears to be totally lost.
Comments
Here are two things I believe are true that most well-educated people think are untrue. Among those who think one of these is true, a large percentage think the other is false.
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Most people (who accept evolution) claim there's a definitive evolutionary tree for all species.
I believe there is no single, definitive tree, but rather, several trees. Depending on which feature or gene sequence you're studying, and what method you use to construct a tree, you'll get slightly different trees. Sometimes this is just statistical noise, but other times it's due to different traits actually having different lineages, as a result of events like recombination (say, when a virus injects a fragment of DNA into another creature's genome) or horizontal gene transfer [0]. If you build a phylogenetic tree that covers whole genomes for multiple species, it will typically end up being a phylogenetic network [1] rather than a simple tree.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phylogenetic_network
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I also believe the original language text of the Bible has been very reliably preserved since antiquity. There's a surprising amount of crossover between the subject of textual criticism [2] and phylogenetics -- comparing manuscript variants (between millions of pages across several centuries) is not that different from comparing DNA mutations. There are very few parts of the Biblical text that are seriously disputed by the legitimately well-informed.
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_Criticism
Doesn't the position you take on [2] depend very heavily on how you define "original"?
I was under the impression that there was very little dissent between believers and critically-minded scholars alike over either: (i) the texts that compose the New Testament (in particular) of the Bible have been well-preserved and accurately replicated with very few claims of interpolation or revision (ii) The Synoptic Gospels were heavily influenced by at least one common source document which appears to be totally lost.