Posted on 11/29/2004 6:52:41 AM PST by PatrickHenry
In a poll released last week, two-thirds of Americans said they wanted to see creationism taught to public-school science pupils alongside evolution. Thirty-seven percent said they wanted to see creationism taught instead of evolution.
So why shouldn't majority rule? That's democracy, right?
Wrong. Science isn't a matter of votes -- or beliefs. It's a system of verifiable facts, an approach that must be preserved and fought for if American pupils are going to get the kind of education they need to complete in an increasingly global techno-economy.
Unfortunately, the debate over evolution and creationism is back, with a spiffy new look and a mass of plausible-sounding talking points, traveling under the seemingly secular name of "intelligent design."
This "theory" doesn't spend much time pondering which intelligence did the designing. Instead, it backwards-engineers its way into a complicated rationale, capitalizing on a few biological oddities to "prove" life could not have evolved by natural selection.
On the strength of this redesigned premise -- what Wired Magazine dubbed "creationism in a lab coat" -- school districts across the country are being bombarded by activists seeking to have their version given equal footing with established evolutionary theory in biology textbooks. School boards in Ohio, Georgia and most recently Dover, Pa., have all succumbed.
There's no problem with letting pupils know that debate exists over the origin of man, along with other animal and plant life. But peddling junk science in the name of "furthering the discussion" won't help their search for knowledge. Instead, pupils should be given a framework for understanding the gaps in evidence and credibility between the two camps.
A lot of the confusion springs from use of the word "theory" itself. Used in science, it signifies a maxim that is believed to be true, but has not been directly observed. Since evolution takes place over millions of years, it would be inaccurate to say that man has directly observed it -- but it is reasonable to say that evolution is thoroughly supported by a vast weight of scientific evidence and research.
That's not to say it's irrefutable. Some day, scientists may find enough evidence to mount a credible challenge to evolutionary theory -- in fact, some of Charles Darwin's original suppositions have been successfully challenged.
But that day has not come. As a theory, intelligent design is not ready to steal, or even share, the spotlight, and it's unfair to burden children with pseudoscience to further an agenda that is more political than academic.
Predicting that certain objects sharing similar characterics will be found is science? Hardly. For evolution theory to hold water it must predict and observe the process whereby those creatures derived from one another. Please do not mistake the observation of data with the process whereby the data emerged.
That is an excellent rule of thumb. Science can get a lot done without conjecture in certain directions and degrees, and yet it must rely upon conjecture to press ahead.
Why not? Especially when the technology didn't exist at the time to understand the why's. Now we are finally getting there with genetic manipulation. Of course, when scientists show that changing genes from A->B results in significant morphological changes, the creationists just scream ID, which is extremely specious on their part, don't you think?
Actually, making predictions and finding out if these predictions are true is the very essence of science. I suggest you do some reading about what makes an idea scientific before you start arguing these issues. You do not get to make up your own definition of science, you know.
I'd be interested to learn, based upon evolution theory's knowledge of the past, what predictions they have regarding the future stages of development for homo erectus. How should we look a million years from now? What tests are we preparing and how are we observing and interpreting the data? Are such tests falsifiable? Who will be here to observe and verify those predictions a million years from now? Surely if we can extrapolate back into history "millions" of years" we ought to be able to test and predict the next million or so.
The predictions of science involve process in addition to interpretation of the status quo. If science is going to make a predicition, then, to do its job right, it needs to explain and observe the process. Evolution by very definition is a process, and so far evolutionists have fallen flat on their faces when it comes to demonstrating it in the laboratory.
The people whose sole schtick is being dumb as two bricks get to make up anything they want. Repeatedly. Forever.
By prediction it is not necessarily meant that it must be a prediction of the future. In fact, this is very rarely the case. Scientific predictions are statements about what will be found if a certain observation is made. For example evolution predicts that if you examine the fossil record extensively enough, you will find creatures which share characteristics of mammals and reptiles. As far as predicting what man will look like one million years from now (I assume you meant homo sapiens, since homo erectus is extinct), I am pretty sure it can't be done with current scientific knowledge. We don't know what environmental changes will occur over the next million years. We don't know if there is sufficient variability currently in the human gene pool or if suffienct variability will arise to deal with any changes that might occur. It is possible that we will be much as we are today if there is little change in the environment (or if we deal with changes via technology rather than by natural selection.) It is possible that humans will be extinct in a million years. Nobody has ever said that the path taken by evolution is predictable in advance.
Well it makes sense. I mean, if intelligent beings manipulate the gene pool, how is intelligence going to be eliminated from the process and result? Has science yet predicted morphological changes between species and watched it happen without guidance?
"The "Genesis kind" is generally equivalent to what is now called "species. The variation is due to flaws in our humanly devised classification system.
There are more different types of dogs than any other species in the world—yet scientists recognize them all to be in the same "species." There often can be wide variations within a species, because the DNA permits it. In some species, a narrow number of possible subspecies are possible. The cheetah has such narrowed DNA that it can only produce cheetahs—and no varieties of subspecies.
Plant and animal breeding can produce new subspecies, but they are never quite as hardy as the basic species."
Not exactly a brilliant prediciton. Hell, I can predict I'll find the same living creatures with the same similarities and differences if I care to stroll about the planet a bit today. Haven't seen a dinosaur yet, but as far as I know mankind is spread fairly thin on the planet. There might be one out there. (I always check under my bed at night, just in case.)
It's the process at issue. Not the status quo.
If two entities can interbreed, are they the same species?
If two entities cannot interbreed, are they different species?
Really, you can believe what you want to believe. But it's not real science. Tell me how natural selection is a creative [ ooh, the word!] force. Accidental mutations do not explain upward complexity.
I'm tired of trying to show the blinkered unwelcome facts. Thanks for now.....
So evolution boasts of consistent, natural process for millions of years, then pulls the rug out from under all history that may follow. Man, you can call that science if you want to, but I won't.
Yes, if you go to the talk origins web page, there are references to roughtly 50 different known speciation events that were caused by environmental changes.
I don't think enough is known about the genetic content of each living being to accurately predict what any outcome of any of the species currently living on planet earth will be. Even if we did know what the genetic content of each creature is, we already know that changes in a species environment helps determine which mutations survive in the new environment. We can't even determine when the environment is going to do in a week, let alone what we can say any part of the Earth will be like in 100 years, or 10,000 years(which I would guess is the average timescale of a speciation event). So to extrapolate on that scale is nearly impossible because the processes that the Earth acts on, and is acted on are extremely chaotic (one might say stochastic in the more destructive environmental changing events). So while current schools of thought are predictive on past events, our knowledge in other fields is prohibitive when you want to use the to predict the future.
It's not evolution's fault that man doesn't understand the Earth well enough to know when the next major climactic change will occur (which is where most of the major speciation events seem to occur). Blame the astronomers and geologists.
Yes, and what they produce should be able to continue reproducing.
and
No, not necessarily.
There is no need to actually observe the process in order for it to be science. Has anyone actually observed the emission of an alpha particle from the nucleus of a U-238 atom? We can't even see the nucleus of the U-238 atom, so how would we know that the alpha particle is emitted from the nucleus? Heck, how do we know the U-238 atom even has a nucleus? In general, all of science is based on indirect observations. All measurements are indirect observations. Even something as simple as measuring the length of an object with a ruler is an indirect observation which relies on all kinds of assumptions (namely that the length of the ruler is constant at all times, that length measurements are transitive, and that the very notion of length is well defined, light travels in straight lines and there are no "lensing" effects occurring in the space between our eyes and the object, etc.) To directly observe the length of an object, you would have to count the atoms along the length of the object. Of course that assumes that there is no inherent uncertainty in the length of an atom (which there is) and that atoms actually exist. What science actually does is formulate a hypothesis based on some observations. This hypothesis then is checked to see if it is consistent with all known observations. This requires that there must be some way that it could possibly be found to be inconsistent with observations. Once it is found to be consistent with all known data, it becomes known as a theory (or a law, depending on what kind of statement it makes). It then makes predictions as to what kinds of things should be observed that haven't yet been observed. Scientists then look for these observations. Usually, there are also predictions about things that should never be observed. If things that have been predicted are found to be wrong, then the theory is modified. At some point, there may be a competing hypothesis offered. This competing hypothesis must also be consistent with known observations. It must also make predictions concerning as yet unobserved phenomena, but either these predictions must be different from the predictions made by the current theory or the new theory must be simpler than the old one. (BTW, simplicity is the reason the heliocentric theory came to be accepted. It is possible to use the old geocentric theory to predict the observed position of all of the planets, it just requires an increasing number of smaller and smaller "epicycles" or circles that the planets move in, in addition to the circle around the earth.) An additional requirement of any new theory is that it should fit in to the framework of other theories (besides the one it attempts to replace) or provide a good reason to believe that an established theory that it contradicts is also false. The modern theory of evolution meets all these requirements, and is therefore a scientific theory. There is no requirement for direct observation of the process of evolution. The earth travelling around the sun is likewise a process. Nobody has ever directly observed this process either. Does that render the heliocentric theory of the solar system unscientific? Creationism or ID do not meet any of these requirements. I still await the day when some ID proponent will tell me what observation would lead them to conclude that ID is not right. What would be convincing evidence that there was never any non-human intelligent being who intervened in the development of the diversity of life that is observed today? In previous posts, I have met this challenge WRT evolution. Do the same WRT ID or creationism and I will no longer object to these ideas being taught as science. Since God is omnipotent, this is impossible for creationism. For ID, all I have ever heard is that we don't know what the capabilities of the designer are so we can't conclude that X is evidence that ID is untrue (where X is any observation at all that you want to bring up.)
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