Posted on 07/27/2006 3:00:03 PM PDT by BrandtMichaels
What are Darwinists so afraid of?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: July 27, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Jonathan Witt © 2006
As a doctoral student at the University of Kansas in the '90s, I found that my professors came in all stripes, and that lazy ideas didn't get off easy. If some professor wanted to preach the virtues of communism after it had failed miserably in the Soviet Union, he was free to do so, but students were also free to hear from other professors who critically analyzed that position.
Conversely, students who believed capitalism and democracy were the great engines of human progress had to grapple with the best arguments against that view, meaning that in the end, they were better able to defend their beliefs.
Such a free marketplace of ideas is crucial to a solid education, and it's what the current Kansas science standards promote. These standards, like those adopted in other states and supported by a three-to-one margin among U.S. voters, don't call for teaching intelligent design. They call for schools to equip students to critically analyze modern evolutionary theory by teaching the evidence both for and against it.
The standards are good for students and good for science.
Some want to protect Darwinism from the competitive marketplace by overturning the critical-analysis standards. My hope is that these efforts will merely lead students to ask, What's the evidence they don't want us to see?
Under the new standards, they'll get an answer. For starters, many high-school biology textbooks have presented Haeckel's 19th century embryo drawings, the four-winged fruit fly, peppered moths hidden on tree trunks and the evolving beak of the Galapagos finch as knockdown evidence for Darwinian evolution. What they don't tell students is that these icons of evolution have been discredited, not by Christian fundamentalists but by mainstream evolutionists.
We now know that 1) Haeckel faked his embryo drawings; 2) Anatomically mutant fruit flies are always dysfunctional; 3) Peppered moths don't rest on tree trunks (the photographs were staged); and 4) the finch beaks returned to normal after the rains returned – no net evolution occurred. Like many species, the average size fluctuates within a given range.
This is microevolution, the age-old observation of change within species. Macroevolution refers to the evolution of fundamentally new body plans and anatomical parts. Biology textbooks use instances of microevolution such as the Galapagos finches to paper over the fact that biologists have never observed, or even described in theoretical terms, a detailed, continually functional pathway to fundamentally new forms like mammals, wings and bats. This is significant because modern Darwinism claims that all life evolved from a common ancestor by a series of tiny, useful genetic mutations.
Textbooks also trumpet a few "missing links" discovered between groups. What they don't mention is that Darwin's theory requires untold millions of missing links, evolving one tiny step at a time. Yes, the fossil record is incomplete, but even mainstream evolutionists have asked, why is it selectively incomplete in just those places where the need for evidence is most crucial?
Opponents of the new science standards don't want Kansas high-school students grappling with that question. They argue that such problems aren't worth bothering with because Darwinism is supported by "overwhelming evidence." But if the evidence is overwhelming, why shield the theory from informed critical analysis? Why the campaign to mischaracterize the current standards and replace them with a plan to spoon-feed students Darwinian pabulum strained of uncooperative evidence?
The truly confident Darwinist should be eager to tell students, "Hey, notice these crucial unsolved problems in modern evolutionary theory. Maybe one day you'll be one of the scientists who discovers a solution."
Confidence is as confidence does.
No, it wasn't. I'll quote directly from a textbook, as I clearly didn't explain it well enough:
"In the 1920s, Russian chemist A. I. Oparin and British scientist J. B. S. Haldane independently postulated that Earth's early atmosphere had been a reducing (electron-adding) environment, in which organic compounds would have formed from simple molecules. The energy for this organic synthesis could have come from lightning and intense UV radiation. Haldane suggested that the early oceans were a solution of organic molecules, a "primitive soup" from which life arose. In 1953, Stanley Miller and Harold Urey, of the University of Chicago, tested the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis by creating laboratory conditions comparable to those that scientists at the time thought existed on early Earth. Their apparatus yielded a variety of amino acids found in organisms today, along with other organic compounds. Many laboratories have since repeated the experiment using different recipes for the atmosphere. Organic compounds were also produced in some of these modified models."(Campbell & Reese)
(Synthesis of Organic Compounds on Early Earth), Biology, 7th Edition, Campbell & Reese, 2005, pp 513-514, Pearson Education Inc.
By your standards, chemical evolution (abiogenesis) can not be science if in fact your standard for judging science is falsifiability.
That is not a standard for judging science, it is one of many standards for testing a theory. Abiogenesis is not unfalsifiable because "you would have had to witness every chemical reaction since t=0+". That is a totally absurd statement.
For Abiogenesis to be fully accepted, scientists are going to have to show experimentally how it could have occurred. There have been a number of experiments demonstrating abiotic synthesis of amino acids, cell walls, polymers, etc. However, there are a lot of pieces to a life form, and there still isn't enough to validate the theory.
I may be incorrect on classifying it as a theory instead of a hypothesis. I'll look into it some more.
That is over-broad. One can search for knowledge in many misdirected ways that are not science. Consulting the I Ching is a search for knowledge, but few would call it science.
The demarcation problem, as it is called, is not an easy one. Popper himself essentially gave up on it. He said that definitions are simple shorthand for lists of things. Then he ignored that and tried to define science. By his own argument, he should have said science is {biology, chemistry, physics}. Science is not {theology,astrology, history}.
I am not defending this. I think that we can do better than a list.
No, it's a fact.
Try this.
WyattEarp to Virgil Earp: "Life came from non life."
Virgil to Wyatt: "Well gee Wyatt, it's a big universe, 15 billion years is a long time, time travel is not yet a reality and there just aren't that many illegals I can hire to beam back and watch every chemical reaction for me to contradict your claim."
Wyatt to Virgil: "That's absurd."
Virgil to Wyatt: "Let's go ask Doc."
That was a testable and falsifiable theory.
"Jim Jones is not going back centuries and is hardly irrelevent."
Jim Jones is irrelevant because he was not an orthodox Christian. If you can prove he was, please enlighten us.
The Salem witch trials were centuries ago. In addition, I think they were not ecclesiastical proceedings at all, but works of the secular government. They were the result of mass hysteria, malicious gossip, mental illness, or even alkaloid poisoning, if I remember some of the hypotheses rightly.
Incidentally, Johannes Keppler's mother was tried for witchcraft. The motives of her accusers were very worldly and material. Somehow it didn't keep pioneer astronomer Kepper from being a committed Christian.
Sure, all kinds of depredations have occurred under cover of religion, and every other human institution. The idea that man is inherently depraved and sinful is fundamental Christian doctrine, so every human activity becomes corrupt to some degree.
You're wrong in thinking that I wish to debunk evolution through guilt by association. The issue to me is: When, how, and to whom should this theory be taught? I share the fear of the fundamentalists, who see the Judeo-Christian foundations of our culture and political system under relentless attack, excluded from schools by court fiat, while a doctrine linked logically with a materialistic view is taught to kids so young they have little real grasp of basic science at all. Those on these evo threads who seem totally obsessed with demanding that evolution be taught as gospel don't seem to care that most people don't live and die by scientific theories. Most will never become scientists, and don't really need to know evolution. They do live by ideas, however. All many kids will remember is: I'm just another animal, descended from apelike precursors. All that stuff from the Founding Fathers about divinely ordained rights must be bunk. That's why the left has no problems with teaching evolution, and many conservatives do.
There is a lot of difference between Hitler's abuse of Christianity, which he despised and knew to be his natural opponent, and his use of evolution, which fits right in with his world view of struggle of the fit against the "inferior." The Marxists, of course, didn't make any pretense at all of allegiance to Christianity. They thought religion was all phony (as do many posters in these crevo threads).
It isn't rigorously scientific and logical, but there is an association between Judeo-Christian religious faith and conservative belief on the one hand, and militant atheism and the totalitarian Left on the other. You just can't deny that. When dealing with something as complex as human culture, you have to use empirical associations from history. Rigorous logic and debating games won't cut it, because humans are far from being logical much of the time. Conservatives study human nature, and act accordingly. They don't act on the basis of abstract utopian dogma.
Those here who are obsessed (and that's the only word for it) with the "need" for teaching evolution, and who disregard all other factors, need to study history and the writings of conservative intellectuals, not just evolution dogma. You can't run away from all the social and intellectual consequences of your teaching, saying "I didn't mean that" or "Look, I only wanted to 'save' science from the 'Luddites.'" If you put an intellectual weapon in the hands of the Left, you can be sure that it will be used.
Well, this view is still outside of mainstream Christianity...most of those creationists on these evo threads, when questioned about the two different creation stories, will say that they are not at all different, but rather one is more descriptive than the other, or one explains the other, or any notion of other explanations...you are the very first one to say that the accounts of creation are two completely different events, and that thought is very much outside of mainstream Christianity...I am not saying who I believe is right or wrong, I am just saying that your version is completely different from what we are told on these threads, by the other creationists...
Please also tell me about this 8th day of creation that Murray has talked about...I dont find that anywhere...
I know you did not write Genesis, I know you read it...but millions of mainstream Christians, some of them on these threads, read Genesis, and come away with a view completely different from yours and Murrays...
People reading the very same books of the Bible, the very same chapters and verses, and coming away with completely different interpretations...
Please again, tell me where in the Bible, I find mention made of this 8th day of creation...
Try this.
There is good evidence that the Earth solidified from molten rock 4.7 billion years ago (you may not agree, but stipulate it).
Life is incompatible with molten rock.
Therefore life either arose on earth, or came to earth from elsewhere.
We have no evidence of life elsewhere.
Therefore the best working model is that life arose on earth. To claim it arose elsewhere simply adds to the problem.
Jim Jones was an ordained minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The fact that he was fruit loop has nothing to do with his religion. If ideas lead to political action, then his Christianity led to Marxism and murder. (Perhaps ideas don't lead to actions, but I will leave that up to you.)
http://religiousmovements.lib.virginia.edu/nrms/Jonestwn.html
Can you recall any Christian sect which has not been deemed non-orthodox by some other Christian sect?
Nothing here about "fixity of species" at all. Sorry. And referring to Jews as subhuman could just as well mean that they are some relic of prehuman evolution (not that he says that--it's all crackpot stuff anyway).
What we really see here is a master demagogue using phrases which he knows will resonate in terms of the culture of his audience-- taking religious-sounding phrases out of context and warping them into something totally opposed to their original meaning. In fact, orthodox Christians would say this is exactly how Satan works, not by frontal attack, but by confusing people with rhetorical tricks (not unlike some of the posters here).
Certainly there is nothing here suggesting that Hitler was a Christian. Quite the contrary, in fact.
This stuff does sound a lot like Calypso Louie or Ahmedinejad, by the way.
Darwin made it possible for us to give a sensible answer to the curious child whose question heads this chapter. ['Why are people?'] We no longer have to resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems; Is there meaning to life? What are we for? What is Man?The argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes.
Ah, I think I know how Murray arrives at the 8th day of creation, tell me if this is how you understand his teaching...
God created in 6 days...on the sixth day, Murray states that God created men and women, many people of varying races...
Then on the 7th day God rested...
And then, on the next day(what Murray considers the 8th day, but which I assume mainstream Christian religions see as the 1st day of the next week), God created the second Adam...
Is this where Murray gets the 8 days of creation?...
And there are those we are responding to; fundamentalists who believe evolution is "evilution" and evolutionists are "evol doers." In their efforts to stiffle the teaching of evolution (for religious, not scientific, reasons), they attack science broadly and deeply. They attack the very core of the scientific method. The end result of this will be a distrust of all science.
So, you advocate not teaching evolution because the students will probably never need it. How many other fields do you want to drop?
Geology? It teaches an old earth.
Paleontology? It finds old fossils, including hominids.
Genetics? DNA is a powerful tool for researching evolution.
Math? Yuk, who needs math anyway.
How many other scientific fields would have to be dropped to keep particular religious believers happy?
You wonder why some of us are focused on these threads. Now you know a good part of it.
Jim Jones veered far away from any orthodox Christian position and became a Marxist and a completely typical malignant cult leader. That's hardly a unique evolution. Judas was one of the original "disciples of Christ" too. And Stalin trained as a seminarian. People go bad. Big deal.
The issue is: what ideas lead people astray. Jim Jones went bad when he moved away from Christianity, not when he followed it (if he in fact ever really did).
There are apparently "ordained" ministers of various denominations who were atheists way back in their seminary days. They're just fakes, that's all.
entirely too typical of the benchmark of creationist posters here on FR.
I don't know this, but I suspect that he is trying to get around the contradictory timelines in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. Both chapters have different orders of creation. This would seem to indicate that they are two different, yet similar, stories of creation. Kind of like the author(s) had two different stories, and didn't know which one to include, so they were both included. By saying that everything was created, and then created again, those contradictions (and the implications thereof) can be obviated.
Checking out for a while. Might not be back in until tomorrow.
Ah, you are saying that Dawkins said that evolution means we no longer have to believe in God. That is very different from saying that the theory of evolution demonstrates there is no God. Your original statement was very misleading.
Mmmm, haggis.
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