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.
So are you in agreement with people who say profoundly retarded individuals are not really human?
Festival of ignorance placemarker.
Whereas, we should trust someone who thinks the fossils all happened at once, contrary to what any 10 year old can observe in a trip down the grand canyon wall, as our arbiter of sanity?
So since you are saying that the best swimmers rose to the top and that the fossils of these creatures are found in the shallowest rock layers, why aren't these rock layers full of nothing but fish fossils? Surely fish must swim better than any other creatures, right? Or weren't the fish killed in the flood (contrary to what the Bible says)?
Furthermore, according to your "theory" all of the large creatures should be found in the upper rock layers and all of the smaller ones in the lower rock layers. We have found ape-like fossils in relatively shallow layers and various dinosaur fossils in lower layers. Aren't dinosaurs larger than apes?
A science which, by its very nature, attempts to discover the past, and to explain the mechanisms which were involved, is not necessarily going to predict the future.
For example, we know American history. But history is not about predicting the future. We can't predict what this place will be like in 100 years, because we don't know what challenges will come up, or how people will react. We may be more of the same, or we may be conquered by the Arabs, or we may all be dead from disease. That doesn't in any way invalidate American history as a genuine field of study.
Predictions in an historical field relate to the kinds of evidence that are likely to turn up, if our current understandings are correct. And that's how it is with evolution.
These threads are difficult (and I am inexperienced), it is hard to know how folks will interpret what you write.
No I don't think someone who is profoundly retarded is any less human. We differ from animals because we are created in God's image, we can know right from wrong, observe beauty, etc. This is unique to our "species," those of us lacking in some of these areas are not less than human. Is there a better way to distinguish us from the chimps as I was asked to do?
One of them thinks ahead and ponders reasonable possibilities. The other makes declarations out of the imagination. One operates with principles that have a solid basis in fact, the other operates with interpretations that have a less than factual basis in the mind. Stories by nature cannot be put to the test.
I refuse to even see the dots placemarker
We may safely assume the Law of Gravity was present and active, yes. But I believe there other other laws of physics active at the time. Present physics demostrate fairly well that even Michael Moore would float after immersion in water for an extended period of time. I definitely know you have only some notion of how the fossil record came into being because neither you nor anyone else was there to observe it.
That's a good one, what mechanism do you propose for this--flash fossilization?
Actually I was thinking more along the lines of flash flooding like the kind that has been documented by human voice and hand over generations since the time of recorded history. A much more reliable source than the imagination, to be sure.
There is no functional difference between story-telling and theories derived by inductive reasoning . . .
The heck there isn't. My definition of story telling the creation of fiction, thus having departed from objective truth. Really. Who wants to put faith in a story and call it science. Never mind. It happens in high places all the time.
What does "see" mean? What does "dot" mean?
</troll mode>
On the contrary. Present experience in viewing the status quo testifies that the larger and smaller things can be juxtaposed WRT the law of gravity depending on the environment. As far as I know the world has never demonstrated bigger things always to be higher and smaller things lower. It's not as though the Law of Gravity has been the only operative factor in history.
And where did the Law of Gravity come from anyway? Do you think if we all put our intelligent heads together we could come up with something as nifty and set it rolling throughout the rest of history?
Anyway, given an aquatic phenomenon of catastrophic magnitude there would probably be anomalies. No surprise there. Do you know of any such phenomenon that has been documented by human voice and hand throughout recorded human history? The fossil record agrees quite well with the proposition of a great flood. Why would anyone fabricate such a story out of whole cloth?
I deny that dots exist placemarker
No. I figure the aquatic critters would more likely be found at the bottom, but not necessarily. Creatures made to inhabit the lower parts of the earth are more likely to be found there. But with forty days and forty nights of torrential rain unlike the earth has ever seen or will ever see again what should one expect? Normalcy WRT to the laws of physics, but irregularity in the manner and degree of their application. The result? Both overall consistency and irregularities, just like the fossil record.
In attempting to understand what we're looking at, if it is a given that the fossil record was formed largely under aquatic conditions, one should take into account more factors than size and weight. Abilities to cope with the environment, for example. Stratigraphy as effected by currents. Furthermore, there is more to density than overall size and weight. But, as a general rule, smaller things, when acted upon solely by gravity, have a tendency to sift downard between large objects, just like filling a jar of marbles with sand. Thus I would expect to find a preponderance of tiny, amoeba-type fossils in the lower strata.
The largest dinosaurs were far bigger than elephants, much less apes, but there were many smaller dinos, some of them quite petite. All the dinosaurs of all sizes fall within a certain range in the geologic column, layers which correspond to a time range of 230 to 65 million years ago.
Below them are trilobites, many of which are no bigger or denser than modern pillbugs. The pillbugs are up here and still alive, the trilobites are down there and long gone, and in between are the dinosaurs of all sizes, also long gone. The uppermost trilobites are always far below the lowermost dinosaurs. Never an overlap. The dinosaurs never overlap with humans, apes, elephants ...
The only kind of "sort" in the column is from a few, simple ancient forms toward (overall) increasing complexity and diversity. There was long a trend toward increasing size as well but that seems to have passed a peak.
js1138, first I want to thank you for your polite manner in discussing these issues!
I didn't come into this thread to prove anything to anyone. I stated in an earlier post that this debate involves an unhittable ball and an unmissable baseball bat. Those who have faith in evolution and those who do not can argue back and forth here day after day and change nothing. Neither side can prove its case, so it's an unending fight.
I've been at FreeRepublic for over two years and have never participated in one of these evolution-creation debates before, for the very reason that they'll never go anywhere. However, i did finally chime in on this one because it does concern me that proponents of evolution treat those who don't accept it as if we were, well, houseboys.
I would propose that when a theory is as tentative as the theory of evolution is, that perhaps it might be offered up a little less arrogantly. In a previous post to you I linked a little article that contained this sentence near the end:
#####That raises the question, are we likewise in the dark as to how higher organisms evolved?#####
The reason I bring this up is that I see sentences such as that quite often, not in creationist literature but in the writings of evolutionists themselves.
Now, you'll note that such writings never question whether or not evolution occurs. They assume that it does. But might they be assuming a little too much?
The theory of evolution came along at a very politically opportune time. It was an era in which an influential segment of the intellectual class was working overtime to drive God, religion (particularly Christianity), and faith from the public sphere. Socialism, with its view that the world was a work of evolutionary progress, culminating eventually in the Marxist utopia, was gaining ground. And yes, Darwin's emphasis on natural selection caught the favorable eye of conservative free enterprise proponents.
But might I suggest that the leftist and secularist forces of the day set to work to enshrine evolution, not just as a theory, but as a fact? Certainly over the years we've seen evolutionists from Julian Huxley to Stephen Jay Gould who had separate lives as secularist ideologues.
I'm somewhat reminded of the SwiftVet's debate. Kerry's defenders claimed that all the guys on Kerry's boat supported him. When it was noted that Mr. Gardner did not, they'd shrug and write him off as the nutty exception.
But, of course, the guys on Kerry's boat were his buddies. They were the ones who had a personal interest in wanting to protect him.
Could a defense system such as this have arisen to defend the theory of evolution? Possibly. If evolutionists are as faithfully committed to their cause as creationists are to theirs, then we might rightly expect there was a weeding out of critics of evolution from the scientific disciplines. As time passed, the tenure track, secularist control of the media, and just ridicule and ostracization drove nearly anyone who suggested that evolution might not be right from the relevant disciplines. Just look at the ridicule the mainstream media heap upon anyone who dares to question evolution, and imagine what it must be like for a young grad student who has some problems accepting the theory.
Think this couldn't happen? Just look at what's happened in the field of psychology with regards to homosexuality. Rare and daring is the psychologist today who would say homosexuality is abnormal. Rare is the Psych 101 textbook that would label homosexuality as anything other than just as normal as heterosexuality. Brave are the rare souls in that field who are offering conversion therapy, a process by which homosexuals are helped to abandon their deviancy. The mainstream psychological community shouts them down and there have even been demands for outlawing such therapy.
So over time, everyone on evolution's boat supports evolution. If they don't, then they're the odd nut case like Mr. Gardner on Kerry's boat. Everyone closest to the situation...the scientists who were taught by evolutionist professors from evolutionist textbooks and who wouldn't have gotten tenure if they weren't evolutionists and who would be sneered at if they questioned whether or not evolution occurred....all of them say evolution is on firm ground, right? It's a politically self-fulfilling prophecy.
So it's okay to say that maybe everything we've thought about how evolution works is wrong, as long as we quickly assert that evolution must have worked some other way. But we can never say that maybe evolution simply isn't right. We can never say that. Never.
And might I add that it isn't conservatism that benefits from the evolutionist worldview. It isn't conservatism that has politically enshrined the theory.
You asked if I can differentiate between DNAs use in determining parentage in humans and its relatedness across species. No, I can't, because DNA is the building block of life. Does this fact in and of itself fit in with evolution? Yes, because evolution would expect all life forms to have the same building block as a template. But lots of things fit the theory of evolution. Lots of things also fit the theory of intelligent design. What's inconsistent about DNA being what it is, and intelligent design? Neither ID nor evolution can be proven. Both have evidence to support them, but that's it. Beyond that it's faith.
You also asked about human experience and limits to variation. You noted correctly that speed limits of the past have been broken, inferring that breeding limits might someday be broken. Perhaps they will, but we don't know that. Maybe we'll breed fruit flies for 10,000 years and end up with fruit flies. Maybe we'll end up with a honeybee. We just don't know because we're in theoretical territory.
My request is that those of us who think we'll end up with fruit flies no matter how long we breed them not be ridiculed as religious fanatics!
You would also expect smaller animals, like mice, to be in the lower strata. Such is not found in the fossil record. Indeed, the record pans out the way evolution says it should, not in the manner a Flood would.
Symantics. Prosecutors and defenders in criminal cases tell stories about what happened. These stories are put to the test. People go to jail and even die as a result of juries accepting one story or another.
Foensics is a science, and evolution is based on forensic evidence. It will never be proven true, but it has more supporting evidence than any criminal case has ever had.
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