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.
Denton isn't out of date; he was always wrong. Yes, the gaps are filling in. Naysaying zealots find ways not to see or understand.
I'm going to save some typing and put inline from that link some of my exchange with an earlier clone of you.
Now, almost all of the data you have been reviewing were unknown in Darwin's day. For all the evidence that they did have, there were a lot of holes. Darwin et al. fearlessly predicted based upon the already-outlined tree of life that certain kinds of "intermediates" would be found. Precambrian life of any sort, legged whales, legged sirenians, ape-human intermediates, etc. Other intermediates, amphibian-bird mixes for instance, violate the presumed evolutionary scenario and are not predicted.This prediction is a certain kind of inference. Creationists who believed that God on certain days created certain "kinds" scoffed then and denied that such an inference from the then-available data was valid at all. They began to mockingly ask for "the missing link," which is exactly how you, who bill yourself as a scientist, opened the discussion.
The history since then has filled in gap after gap in the areas where evolution says the intermediates have to have existed. The people who will not make certain inferences because God will burn them in Hell for so doing still will not make them. Nevertheless, the ground under their feet has shrunk to nothing compared to the situation in 1859.
No. Organisms that reproduce only once every few years tend to have greater genetic variation from parent to offspring, which means that it will evolve faster.
"... Stops populations at some level (genus, family, whatever) from getting more and more different?" Grrr!
I don't agree. See below.
If mutation and natural selection is the mechanism, you would expect to see the same mutations in different species.
Actually, I wouldn't expect to see the same mutations, even between individuals within a single species. Were I to keep seeing the same mutations over many unrelated individuals, then I would begin looking for some commmon mechanism that was causing those mutations to occur.
The idea of natural selection is that it "rewards" certain mutations, and "punishes" others. Many, perhaps most, mutations would be "indifferent." Both the "good" and indifferent traits would tend to be carried forward. But the underlying mutations are assumed to occur randomly.
This is an over-simplistic description of natural selection, as it tends to focus on single mutations in isolation. That is not how nature really works. The mutations themselves are random and isolated, and in most cases I suspect that a particular mutation is indifferent, or maybe even "bad," except when accompanied by other, complementary mutations. It is the set of mutations, working together, that would confer a survival advantage.
Another danger in the usual top-level description of natural selection is that we tend to focus on end results, and thus too much on "what happens next," even though the mutations, being random, are selected-for in the here-and-now, and CANNOT have any view of what future mutations might bring.
In practice, we take an end result (e.g., a flying animal), and then begin constructing a likely chain of mutations that could have produced the characteristics of the flying beasty. Which is to say: we design (or perhaps more accurately, reverse engineer) a process of natural selection that could have produced the animal we see flying outside. But of course, what can be reverse-engineered, could also have been engineered in the first place. So again, there is nothing in the idea of mutation/selection that necessarily precludes the presence of an intelligent designer in the loop. Selective breeding and genetic engineering are obvious example that this can and does occur.
If you observed completely different mutations in different species, then mutation and natural selection is falsified.
Wrong, for a couple of reasons. First, that statement requires us to assume that identical environments (if such could be found) always select for the same mutations, in the same order, and in the same way. And from that, you have to assume that there is only one possible "solution," to which natural selection is always driven. The mere presence of those "different species" (some of which are very different, indeed) is enough to show that neither assumption is true, much less required.
I'm not at all surprised when I see the results of extremely different sets of mutations -- insects vs. mammals, for example.
(Note the converse is not true, ie. if you observe the same mutations in different species it is not necessarily the case that mutation and natural selection must be true. It does lend support to that model, however.)
You're correct: there is no logical requirement for similar end effects to have arisen from "the same" mutations.
On a logical note, you don't seem to have constructed a true converse here. Your original statement was ["different mutations" -> "natural selection is false."] The converse of that is ["natural selection is false" -> "different mutations."]
You've constructed more of a contrapositive (a->b == ~b->~a) and, because the original statement is not logically sound, you find yourself in a position of ambiguity when you form its contrapositive. Thus it's no surprise that you came up with "it's not necessarily the case" for the latter, because it's also "not necessarily the case" for your original premise.
Alright: since you can't actually point to an example and say "well, it's been tried, but it didn't work", then I'll point you toward examples of this actually having been done: Look at all of the breeds of dogs that have been created by man by selective breeding, where a specific desirable trait (similar to the ability to get food in every deeper water) has been breed into a dog.
"Alright: since you can't actually point to an example and say "well, it's been tried, but it didn't work", then I'll point you toward examples of this actually having been done: Look at all of the breeds of dogs that have been created by man by selective breeding, where a specific desirable trait (similar to the ability to get food in every deeper water) has been breed into a dog."
Sorry cannot resist....
Got to love how you credit 'man' to creation of a 'breed' and totally ignore who created the DOG!
Truth will out.
Thank you for pointing out that John Calvert is a flimflam man and ID is Biblical Creationism Concealed
To use the same analogy, in evolutionary terms every creature alive has won the Powerball drawing, not only once millions of times. Each little incremental change was beneficial. The odds of one mutation being beneficial are astronomical, yet it supposedly happened millions of times in the same line for billions of creatures.
This is really prevalent - creationists argue about what Darwin wrote or said rather than focusing on what the modern theory of evolution actually is.
I think this is due to creationists considering Darwin's Origin of Species a religious text that evolutionists follow just by faith the same way that creationists follow the bible just by faith. Rather than addressing science, they try to pit Darwin the man against God.
The domestic dog was created by man.
Breed me a dog that changes into something that isn't dog like. Breed me a dog until not only is it unrecognizable as such. Breed me dog that flies. Breed me a dog with gills that can breathe underwater. I'm surprised nobody has done these yet. A flying dog would make it much easier to hunt ducks. The point being that dog breeds are primarily cosmetic differences in size and shape within the same kind, not major leaps in function.
Thanks for you analysis, but I never said that science was a threat to God--I am a scientist!
I understand your point of view, and I agree with most of it. And you are correct inthat "Origin of Species" does not specifically contradict God or Genesis. But "Decent of Man" does in my view. It makes the claim that humans evolved from apes over a long period of time--with slow and gradual change. That my friend contradicts Genesis--and I don't want to hear this "your some dumb hick who takes Genesis literally" talk that liberals use.
Also, I am glad that you and many others on this forum believe that God could have used any means to create the universe, but there are volumes of books (in the science section of the bookstore or library) that use evolution to try and disprove God. Books like "The Blind Watchmaker" and many others use Darwinism to express their atheism. And guess what, these writers are scientists--biologist in most cases.
There are several experts out there in several different fields of hard-science who have major issues with macro-evolution. Give one of them a read and you will see that this is not just a bunch of "Fundamentalist" rather, it is real scientist with real problems with a broken theory.
Here is a list of a few good writers on the subject:
1. Jonathan Wells--Dr. of Molecular and cell biology from Berkely--focus on vertebrate embryology and evolution. His books are titled "Charles Hodge's Critique of Darwinism" and "Icons of Evolution" this one came out in 200 and is an excellent book.
2. Stephen C. Meyer--this guy has written a ton of books "Darwinism, Design, and Public Education," "Science Faith and Intelligent Design," and "Four Views; The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intellegent Creator."
Then there are tons of guys in cosmology and other fields of science, but I guess we are mostly talking about biology here, I will stick to that. but if you would like a list of more scientists, feel free to ask.
Also, a good book, that is easy to read is Lee Strobel's "Case for a Creator." Lee is a journalist who goes around and interviews many of the top scientists who are skeptical of Darwinism. He asks the tought questions, and in most cases, gets a satisfactory answer. This one is a good entertaining and educational book.
Competing is the key word. I knew somebody would try to make the case you made, but that argument is invalid to me. Very few--if any--people believe theories other than a form of ID or Darwinism. Students should hear what the top scientists in the field are studying--that would be ID and Darwinism--not some garbage about aliens.
So, Judeo-Christian values were created in America and can exist nowhere else on the planet?
Are you sure you haven't a trace of Pride* there?
(* J-C Deadly Sin #1)
I think we can even tell one flavor of neutrino from another. (Muon from tau, etc.) The resolution of the "missing solar neutrino" controversy was that some of the neutrinos morph from one flavor to another in transit and for a long time we were only detecting the one kind.
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