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.
Not in the sense being discussed here. Sample statistics reflect population statistics with errors depending on the size of the sample, not the size of the population. In blackjack, the probability of getting an Ace (from afresh shoe) is 1/13, no matter how many decks are in the shoe.
Or do you believe the geologic record to be more or less homogenous after sampling the tiniest fraction?
You keep coming back to demanding some "fraction" of the Earth's crust that we have sampled. Let's look at that.
I think it depends on how much induction you're willing to do. Your trend is rather clearly toward zero induction, so let's assume zero is allowed.
You have a cake. It's got icing on it. Someone says that under the icing it's a layer cake. You say it's a solid cake. The guy cuts it in two right down the middle. "See?" he says, "It's a layer cake."
"That proves nothing," you say. "The internal volume is solid cake. All you've done is expose an unrepresentative bit of surface area."
"But it wasn't surface area until I cut it!" the guy says.
You aren't impressed. "It's still unrepresentative, and the entire volume is far from sampled."
Now the guy explains how you're being unreasonable: How many cuts does it take before he's sampled a significant percentage of the internal volume of the cake? No matter how much surface he exposes, the sum of the internal volumes of the pieces of cake is the same as the internal volume of the original cake. Thus, he will never, no matter how often he cuts, make any inroad upon sampling a non-zero percent of the volume unless you're willing to make some assumptions about continuity between nearby samples which look the same. But, thus far, you are unwilling to infer anything about the internals from the exposed surfaces.
But you reply, "You just admitted you've sampled zero percent and you fault me for not assuming anything?"
Before man ever dug a ditch on the Earth, rivers had made deep gorges in mountain after mountain, thousands of them all around the Earth. Tides and geologic uplift had created great coastal cliffs. Man has added deep roadcuts by the thousands. Geologists and oilmen have dug deep cores by thousands and thousands more, including in the oceans.
Geology has noted meaningful patterns of information in the preceding. Some sediments in Arizona correlate to some sediments in Colorado. Some sediments in West Virginia correlate sediments in New York State. The Burgess Shales in Canada have fossils like at least one major deposit in China. Geology has lavished 200 years of time and effort in the analysis the sediments, their extent, content, and probable formation, even as it gathers more and more raw data. Thus we have this thing called the geologic column, observed and studied for 200 years.
But that's geology. By contrast, Chugabrewism says it's all a pipe dream, that beyond the exposed surfaces lies something different. Chugabrewism says the geologic column would go away if we only would sample a real percentage of it.
If Chugabrewism ever replaces geology, lazy kids will be able to do their homework very quickly.
So what? All you have shown is that the modern theory of evolution is not exactly the same as Darwin's theory. No scientist would have an argument with this.
I think that would be a fairly convincing argument against creationism. I say that, because I've seen no evidence that God, since resting from His work of creation, intervenes in the natural affairs of this world with high drama such as you describe.
You are right in proposing that an omnipotent God provides an easy out when certain facts tend to counter faith. But the proposition of God's creating water for the flood and then taking it away rings more like evolution theories: An ad hoc, unobserved process to justify a desired result.
Natural selection is not arbitrary. If you really had any biology knowledge at all you would know that.
Are you going to keep making real Christians look stupid?
Here you go:
[T]he standard geologic column was devised before 1860 by catastrophists who were creationists. Adam Sedgewick, Roderick Murchison, William Coneybeare, and others affirmed that the earth was formed largely by catastrophic processes, and that the earth and life were created. These men stood for careful empirical science and were not compelled to believe evolutionary speculation or side with uniformitarian theory. Although most would be called "progressive creationists" in today's terminology, they would not be pleased to see all the evolutionary baggage that has been loaded onto their classification of strata.Steven A. Austin, Ph.D.
I predict a random word generator reply.
Steven Austin, Bwaaahaaahaaaaaaa
Brew: covering ears "nanananananananana" ;-)
Sure it is. It sides with evolutionists whenever it is convenient. If you care to enumerate the principles by which natural selection operates, I will be happy to watch as you list processes that are both for and against the propagation of life, and that cannot be devised until history has run its course. Natural selection is only a process assumed by interpretation of the past. It can no more predict the next stages of life than I can predict your next fatuous, verbal barb.
You are confusing sample size with population size. The sampling error depends on the sample size, but not the population size (for large populations). In the example you gave, the sample size you use certainly matters. In your example, it makes no difference though, whether you are using a 52 card deck or a 52000 card deck, your conclusions are the same.
That is the point, though. You can't falsify any idea which includes an omnipotent being. The omnipotent being can, by definition, make the observable data anything He wants it to be.
OK, let's look at how that works in the case of sickle cell. In a population where many individuals carry a single copy of the sickle cell gene, assuming they live in an area where malaria is common, more individuals are able to survive and reproduce.
Those individuals with two copies of the gene may not live to reproduce, but the gene is nevertheless selected, because it benefits the population.
Other, perhaps better, examples have been presented.
"How, exactly, is this different from using their tax dollars to teach gay tolerance, or principles of Islam, or any of the dozens of silly things the liberals want taught?"
Hey, on those examples, I agree with you.
Nor can you falsify an arbitrary process that is formulated solely on the basis of the past.
You mean he was distressed by the geologic column he came up with? You asked who came up with the idea, and I provided an answer. Was Adam Sedgwick one of the original proponents of the geologic column or not?
Fine. What is the population size in terms of the volume of geologic data? What is the sample size to date? Let's get those figures, and then we can work out the probabilities.
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