Posted on 06/17/2004 8:46:09 PM PDT by Zender500
In her June 1 Viewpoints column, Lisa Peters expressed her frustration with evolution not being discussed enough in schools. I couldn't agree more. As a high school teacher, I would love to see elementary, middle and high school students do any of the following:
• Let's discuss the difference between evidence and interpretations of evidence — e.g., the evidence of common features (limbs or DNA).
Evolution explains that common features are caused by a common origin. But other scientists believe that common features may be the result of a common design, with the same effective design used repeatedly. Wheels appear on everything from trikes, bikes and motorcycles to cars, vans and buses. Let's discuss if that means that bikes randomly evolved over eons of time into motorcycles.
• Let's discuss with students the three distinct shades of meaning of the term "evolution" — 1: simply "change itself"; or 2: "variation within a species" (moth populations changing dominant color but still being simply moths); or 3: "the unbroken line of development from molecules to humans." Let's discuss how both creationists and evolutionists agree with the first two meanings but disagree only about the theorized, unobserved definition 3 of molecules-to-humans development. Let's discuss Peters' misleading claim that disagreement with definition 3 is equivalent to rejecting definition 1 regarding simple change per se. Let's discuss what this is: unclear terminology at best, bait-and-switch at worst.
• Let's have students discuss what committed evolutionists admit: that evolution is not so much a conclusion from evidence as it is an assumption of how the evidence should be interpreted. Evolutionist Richard Lewontin admitted his bias of explaining all things only by existing natural processes of chance interactions of matter, energy and time.
• Let's have students discuss the Pennsylvania State professor who found that his own biology colleagues admitted that they would not have done their own biology research any differently even if they had believed that evolution was wrong.
• Let's have students discuss Peters' claim that "we share 98 percent of our genes … with chimpanzees." Let's put Peters' claim alongside the statement of evolutionist William Fix that "[Similar] organs are now known to be produced by totally different gene complexes in the different species. The concept of homology [similarity] in terms of similar genes handed on from a common ancestor has broken down."
Then let's examine the sentences "Many scientists have questions about evolution" and "Any scientists have questions about evolution?" which are about 97 percent similar yet have dramatically different meanings and functions. Does similarity require that one evolved from the other?
• Let's have students discuss how the common decision of evolutionists to prevent scientific evidence from suggesting intelligent design is not a scientific decision. It is a philosophical decision — and an inconsistent one at that, as certain branches of science (like archaeology) allow the conclusion that a stone was shaped into an arrowhead by the deliberate actions of an intelligent agent, rather than by the chance interactions of water and sand.
• Let's discuss with students the mathematical problems regarding the astronomically high improbability of atoms coming together by chance to make even a single protein molecule.
• Let's have students discuss excellent science books such as "Icons of Evolution," in which scientists admit that numerous common images of evolution — including Darwin's finches, four-winged fruit flies, Haeckel's embryos and peppered moths — are either fraudulent or irrelevant as evolutionary evidence.
Peters claims, "Elementary teachers … don't know much about evolution." But quite a few elementary teachers — and parents — I know are informed enough about evolution to find it wanting, for scientific reasons. Many teachers are scientifically skeptical of the "just-so" evolutionary stories that human features are "inherited from the earliest fish."
Many teachers recognize that when Peters makes this claim, she has crossed over from the observable, repeatable science of fossils and anatomy to the speculative belief system of evolutionary inferences.
Knowledge is power. Students and teachers should acquire more than just the selected knowledge that evolutionists want to limit students to. Then more students will find out what creationists, many laypeople and most evolutionists already know — that molecules-to-humans evolution is a theory in crisis. Let's have students discuss all these issues, because this crisis is not going to go away, regardless of Peters' stories.
Bob Hazen lives in St. Paul and teaches math at Mounds View High School.
Even the Ancient Greeks knew the answer to that one:
Xeno's slave: "But master, according to your own philosophy, I was fated to steal from you!"
Xeno: "Yes. And I to beat you."
Naturalism does not demand determinism; Lewis was wrong about that. In fact, the natural universe is conclusively known not to be deterministic. But even if the universe were deterministic, it wouldn't mean that we don't make moral choices. It would just mean that those moral choices are part of the deterministic chain.
The slave's theft may have been inevitable, but it's still a consequence of the slave's dishonesty. That doesn't absolve the slave of dishonesty, quite the opposite: the slave's dishonesty was an indispensible part of that causal chain.
By beating the slave into more honest behavior, Xeno didn't think he was changing the future. He thought he was implementing the future as it was bound to be. Note that his actions are the same either way.
Lewontin "admitted" no such thing. And he's getting pretty fed up with creationists lying about what he has said or written.
"Modern expressions of creationism and especially so-called scientific creationism are making extensive use of the tactic of selective quotation in order to make it appear that numerous biologists doubt the reality of evolution. The creationists take advantage of the fact that evolutionary biology is a living science containing disagreements about certain details of the evolutionary process by taking quotations about such details out of context in an attempt to support the creationists' antievolutionary stand. Sometimes they simply take biologists' descriptions of creationism and then ascribe these views to the biologists themselves! These patently dishonest practices of misquotation give us a right to question even the sincerity of creationists."And:[...]
"But the point of my article, Adaptation, in Scientific American, from which these snippets were lifted, was precisely that the perfection of organisms is often illusory and that any attempt to describe organisms as perfectly adapted is destined for serious contradictions. Moreover, the appearance of careful and artful design was taken in the nineteenth century before Darwin as the chief evidence of a Supreme Designer. The past tense of my article (It was the marvelous fit of organisms to the environment [...] that was the chief evidence of a 'Supreme Designer') has been conveniently dropped by creationist Parker in his attempt to pass of his ancient doctrine as modern science." [Creation/Evolution, autumn 1981, p. 35]
After the main lecture I approached Gary Parker and asked him about his alleged misquotation, in a 1980 Impact article, of a statement Richard Lewontin made in a 1978 Scientific American article on "Adaptation." He said that he didn't really misquote Lewontin -- at least that that was not his intention when he wrote the Impact article. Lewontin subsequently complained in print, several times, about this.And:-- from An account of the 1993 Internation Creation Conference
"Parker’s selective editing, repeated later by the Witnesses in their tract, can only be viewed as a deliberate attempt to distort Lewontin’s meaning and make him say what creationists would like to hear him say."Lewontin hardly thinks that conclusions from the evidence is just a matter of "assumption", as the following quote from him makes quite clear:-- from Creationist Misquotes
It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a fact, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution. It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun.This sort of "bearing false witness" by misquotation is so common among creationists that multiple web sites have been built in an attempt to track all the many creationist misquotes, made-up quotes, and quotes taken grossly out of context. See for example:The controversies about evolution lie in the realm of the relative importance of various forces in molding evolution.
- R. C. Lewontin "Evolution/Creation Debate: A Time for Truth" Bioscience 31, 559 (1981) reprinted in Evolution versus Creationism, op cit.
Quotations and Misquotations: Why What Antievolutionists Quote is Not Valid Evidence Against EvolutionCreationist Arguments: Misquotes
The Quote Mine Project: Or, Lies, Damned Lies and Quote Mines
The only major "doubters" are the creationists.
The best evidence for evolution is the evolutionists, for they are clearly the progeny of monkeys. *rolleyes*
It isn't improbable at all, at least on planet earth. It happens all of the time - ergo the biosphere. This guy commits an unforgiveable fallacy of probability theory - the difference between a prior assumptions and a postiori assumptions. If your a priori assumptions demonstrate that an event cannot occur that does occur, your assumptions are wrong.
Improbable placemarker.
He's right though. And pursuit of the truth is its own reward.
True.
There are many philosophical problems with materialistic evolution. Here are a couple.
Evolutionists argue that body organs/systems have evolved to aid the organism in survival. So they argue that legs evolved to help us move, eyes evolved to aid us in seeing, etc. Therefore, when evolutionists develop difficulties in walking or seeing, they see orthopedists or ophthalmologists who they expect to help them return to a state of health.
But what is a state of health in an evolutionary universe? How can it be defined if our bodies are constantly evolving? How is it possible to say, under a materialist evolutionary rubric, that doctors should restore the proper operation of the body? What is "proper operation" in an evolutionary universe? What is deformity? What is defect? What is illness?
Similarly, the same people who would laugh at an ophthalmologist who specialized in blindfolding people or an orthopedist who tied his clients' legs together, approve of the use of poisons that impair or destroy the proper operation of the reproductive system.
(Sighs) Here we go again. Yes, yes, the TOE is a secret plot by atheists and communists to spread free love, Trotskyism, socialized medicine and flouridation of the water on an unsuspecting American populace.
I do not share your faith in the extent of human knowledge. We observe randomness. This randomness does not necessarily imply choice. It may only imply that we do not know the causal factors of certain phenomena.
But even if the universe were deterministic, it wouldn't mean that we don't make moral choices. It would just mean that those moral choices are part of the deterministic chain.
If they are part of a deterministic chain, then they aren't choices. This is silly reasoning.
The slave's theft may have been inevitable, but it's still a consequence of the slave's dishonesty. That doesn't absolve the slave of dishonesty, quite the opposite: the slave's dishonesty was an indispensible part of that causal chain.
It certainly does dissolve the slave of dishonesty. The slave had no choice but to be dishonest, because something in the causal chain before the dishonesty forced him to be.
By beating the slave into more honest behavior, Xeno didn't think he was changing the future. He thought he was implementing the future as it was bound to be. Note that his actions are the same either way.
Pointing out a very simple example where someone's actions are the same regardless of his belief in fatalism does not illustrate that people's actions will necessarily be the same regardless of what they believe. You cannot argue from a single example to a general rule like that. We have no idea what Xeno would have done had he not believed in fatalism.
In fact, if you believe that people's beliefs affect their choices, then there can be no general rule.
Funny, Adam Sedgwick spent most of his career trying to impose a Genesis literal interpretation on the geologic column. He gave it up in 1831, by which time he was the outgoing long-time President of the Geological Society. Too much was known that just didn't work with that model.
OK, we're not talking here about whether there was one big flood all over the world, but whether evolution happens. But geology documents something called "faunal succession," which is nothing but the forensic trail of evolution.
Your geologist is probably admitting that you can devise an old-Earth creationism in which acts of creation are "detected" (arbitrarily inserted) here and there wherever gaps in the data remain at any given time. This can be made to work with most or all of the geological record but, as he says, there are other evidences for evolution besides geology. His statement is not any sort of evidence against evolution.
That is untrue. There are biologists who debate the importance of random mutation and natural selection as the major force driving evolution. For example, one competing idea is that catastrophic occurrences, such as an asteroid or comet hitting the earth ~65 million years ago lead to far more evolutionary change than the more gradual process outlined by Darwin. There is no doubt among biologists however that evolution is true, just debate over the predominant mechanisms for evolution.
Scientific theories are morally neutral. Our understanding of how gravity works in no way justifies pushing someone out of a window. Similarly, if certain people have historically bastardized the TOE for racist purposes, that in no way indicts the theory.
Hey, I'm still trying to get a creationist to explain how a sloth crawled all the way from S. America, then swam across the ocean, got into an ark, and then somehow made it all the way home after the floods wiped out all the plant life. (substitute any other animal of the world for sloth, same illogic).
No, after studying their "answers," it becomes impossible to believe what they're saying.
There are lots of creation scientist web sites.
Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
This thread provides the "both-sides/equal-time/anti-evolution/creation/intelligent-design" group with an excellent opportunity to silence those who contend that evolution alone should be taught in science classrooms. It also provides an excellent opportunity to lend practical (as opposed to rhetorical) support to those fighting in the school-board trenches for the chance to present in science classrooms "both sides" of the evolution issue.
While a full outline of a sciene curriculum presenting both sides of the evolution issue is a bit daunting (although ultimately necessary), perhaps you folks could hammer out an outline for just day one of such a science class. A kind of synopsis of the material that would be presented to the students for and against evolution. It would be a start (and one greatly appreciated, I'm sure, by the folks battling on the front lines).
Our bodies are not constantly evolving. You won't develop wings during your lifetime, but your descendants might, some day (that's pretty unlikely, of course).
How is it possible to say, under a materialist evolutionary rubric, that doctors should restore the proper operation of the body? What is "proper operation" in an evolutionary universe? What is deformity? What is defect? What is illness?
These questions, whether valid or not, have nothing to do with the TOE.
Similarly, the same people who would laugh at an ophthalmologist who specialized in blindfolding people or an orthopedist who tied his clients' legs together, approve of the use of poisons that impair or destroy the proper operation of the reproductive system
For many, if not most people, having a reproductive system that is able, at all times, to bear children, is not a positive thing. Again, however, this is an issue that has nothing to do with the TOE.
The koala "bear" might be fun. It is only naturally found in Australia, and only eats eucalyptus leaves. It's also pretty defenseless against large predators if caught out on the open ground.
Picture a man of 5000 years ago coming across a Gateway 2000 covered in cobwebs and dust. The technology would be so far above his pay grade so to speak, that recognizing it as manufactured would be impossible - it would be a scary curiosity. No different than ourselves. Evolution theory exists because people don't want to believe they were made by a superior being to whom they are also responsible for their lives. That would mean that they are also responsible to live a certain way - and that cannot be tolerated amongst those intellectually superior people who, in their own wisdom, know better than God..
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