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.
You are requesting observations of the unobservable while supporting a theory full of unobservables. It's called a "double standard."
Yes. Exactly. You are apparently ignorant of the fact that no one in recorded history has ever observed a transition from one species to another (although recorded history does note one who observed humanity in its perfect condition).
Francis Bacon couldn't have done squat. For example, he had no electricity -- not to mention no idea even what electricity is. As such, there's no way he'd have been able to see the computer do much more than sit there. He'd have found himself staring at an odd set of objects, perhaps connected together by the odd flexible doohickeys. He'd have noted that they were covered by strange materials the likes of which he had never seen. He had no way of knowing that pushing the buttons with oddly-placed letters caused things to happen on the softish flat, dark-colored thing, and so on.... He may very well have dismissed it as some sort of odd religious artifact. It would have been highly unlikely indeed that he'd have been able to discern that this hunk of stuff would do math, help him write, and give him light to read by at night.
This is conjecture.
It is. OTOH, we know that it's probably a good conjecture, based on the past history of technology, not to mention the underlying science. I will admit, however, that we're familiar enough with technology now, to perhaps be less surprised by what will be invented in the future.
More than that, it may be provably wrong. Mathematics, for example, has explored not just the algebra we use in high-school, but the set of all possible algebras. It has looked at the behaviors on N-dimensional spaces, not just the 3 or 4 dimensional spaces we live in.
Given that algebraicists are still hard at work, I'd say that there's still plenty of algebra left to be invented. Certainly the depths of algebra have not been fully plumbed, and that is obviously even more true for mathematics in general. I don't see what that has to do with a discussion of evidence for design, however.
Moreover, I don't buy the idea that we can't distinguish with a high degree of certainty between a bug and a feature without the source code or a knowledge of the mental processes of the programmer.
I'm not so confident as you are. I've seen plenty of examples where an apparent "bug" turned out to be a central feature of a software design I did not understand (especially when the documentation is poor, or non-existent). I find that I make the mistake more often as the software I'm looking at becomes more complex. And it's even more difficult to change the software without causing some other, unexpected behavior. Why? Because the subtleties of the design are lost on me.
I'm setting the bar too high? So? What's wrong with the concept of a fruit fly turning into a fish over thousands and thousands of generations? Isn't that exactly what millions of other animals are supposed to have done on their own?
I readily admit that my understanding of reality is woefully small. Meanwhile, many creationists here see fit to claim to know exactly how the universe came into existence, how the planet formed and how life came to be as it is, going so far as outright dismissing scientific explanations that they clearly do not understand.
I defer to a Higher Authority! :-)
P.S. My prior post was posted with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek. Just polling to see how similar our values are.
It might doom the idea of common descent, but not necessarily that of evolution in general. Or it might simply push the time for a common descendant back to some hypothesized earlier stratum.
The real weakness of the ideas that "it ALL happened this way" (be it via evolution or creation) is that both sides ignore obvious facts that inhabit the middle ground where both approaches can work in tandem. We can observe the effects of genetics on inherited traits. We can likewise demonstrate that intelligent designers can and do have the capability to affect genetic outcomes.
Interestingly, it is the so-called "scientific" types who (as on this thread) tend to have the most dogmatic attachment to their "ALL".
Have you actually tried this experiment?
Nobody can make you see things you don't want to see.
I've always thought one of the primary tenets of real science follows the line "Seeing is believing." I haven't seen an ape beget a human, and neither you nor any scientist will very likely make me. Historic comparisons of genetic material do not a scientific experiment make.
It's not a matter of my personal feelings or beliefs. It is a matter of fact based on my short life in this world. But . . . I'd like to keep an open mind. If you can show me, please do. By that time, however, the resurrection of the dead will have taken place, and your understanding of the bigger picture will have changed somewhat.
Show you what?
An ape begetting a human. Heck. You don't even have to show me one in the present day. Just show me some scientific record of such a phenomenon. As long as you confine yourself to recorded history I can believe it.
If not, call me when they do.
Thanks.
Marlowe
Why do you want to see that?
Bless your heart. I am into those birthing videos.
Sorry but I have zero intention of making my beliefs line up with others simply because they say they believe in ID. Just like with the evolutionists, there may be lots of dissenting views and variations as to the details - or are you telling me that the evolution pushers DO get their story straight? My Bible says in several places that the creation was 'very good' - since this was in a pre-fallen world, that would mean perfect in my books. Where others get the idea (or evidence to support an idea) that it was less than perfect is not something I can comment on. Who's thoughts on this are you specifically referring to?
Can you show observations for this, or is your argument simply "can't you just see that I'm right?" (which, by the way, is not an argument).
Nope, can't do it. That world doesn't exist any more and since I wasn't there, I couldn't bring back any pieces to show anyone. The Bible says that after being handed this perfect creation, Adam and Eve sinned and were tossed out of the Garden of Eden. It then goes on to recount how over the next 1600 years or so, mankind got worse and worse until God said he would send a flood to wipe it out (except for Noah and his family on the ark). This is why you see lots and lots of dead things buried all over the earth (the only way a fossil is formed is to take something alive and bury it very rapidly). So no evidence remains of this 'perfect' world. However, there is tons and tons of evidence of a very different world that existed between the time of the 'perfect' world and the time of the flood and it was obviously very different from ours - but at what level of degradation creation had suffered by that point is an unknown. This past weekend I had the opportunity to meet a fellow named John Mackay from Creation Research. He does digs all around the world - some of the fossils he has unearthed are absolutely stunning in their detail. Interesting thing is that many of the ones he showed are exact replicas of plants and animals that exist today - the big exception is that they are usually much much larger - a dragonfly with a wingspan of a metre, a horsetail plant which would have been over 10 metres high and so on.
By the way, you don't have to be so condescending as to explain what an argument is to me. Now, what is your one biggest single proof of evolution - take your best shot at the one thing you absolutely know to be true.
Okay - to each his own. But what exactly will that prove?
That, contrary to the rest of recorded history, species have melded into one another (for better or for worse).
Define "ape". And "human", for that matter.
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