Churches urged to back evolution

British Broadcasting Corporation ^ | 20 February 2006 | Paul Rincon

[ToryHeartland]

Churches urged to back evolution By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter, St Louis

US scientists have called on mainstream religious communities to help them fight policies that undermine the teaching of evolution.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) hit out at the "intelligent design" movement at its annual meeting in Missouri.

Teaching the idea threatens scientific literacy among schoolchildren, it said.

Its proponents argue life on Earth is too complex to have evolved on its own.

As the name suggests, intelligent design is a concept invoking the hand of a designer in nature.

It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other Gilbert Omenn AAAS president

There have been several attempts across the US by anti-evolutionists to get intelligent design taught in school science lessons.

At the meeting in St Louis, the AAAS issued a statement strongly condemning the moves.

"Such veiled attempts to wedge religion - actually just one kind of religion - into science classrooms is a disservice to students, parents, teachers and tax payers," said AAAS president Gilbert Omenn.

"It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other.

"They can and do co-exist in the context of most people's lives. Just not in science classrooms, lest we confuse our children."

'Who's kidding whom?'

Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, which campaigns to keep evolution in public schools, said those in mainstream religious communities needed to "step up to the plate" in order to prevent the issue being viewed as a battle between science and religion.

Some have already heeded the warning.

"The intelligent design movement belittles evolution. It makes God a designer - an engineer," said George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory.

"Intelligent design concentrates on a designer who they do not really identify - but who's kidding whom?"

Last year, a federal judge ruled in favour of 11 parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, who argued that Darwinian evolution must be taught as fact.

Dover school administrators had pushed for intelligent design to be inserted into science teaching. But the judge ruled this violated the constitution, which sets out a clear separation between religion and state.

Despite the ruling, more challenges are on the way.

Fourteen US states are considering bills that scientists say would restrict the teaching of evolution.

These include a legislative bill in Missouri which seeks to ensure that only science which can be proven by experiment is taught in schools.

I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design Teacher Mark Gihring "The new strategy is to teach intelligent design without calling it intelligent design," biologist Kenneth Miller, of Brown University in Rhode Island, told the BBC News website.

Dr Miller, an expert witness in the Dover School case, added: "The advocates of intelligent design and creationism have tried to repackage their criticisms, saying they want to teach the evidence for evolution and the evidence against evolution."

However, Mark Gihring, a teacher from Missouri sympathetic to intelligent design, told the BBC: "I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design.

"[Intelligent design] ultimately takes us back to why we're here and the value of life... if an individual doesn't have a reason for being, they might carry themselves in a way that is ultimately destructive for society."

Economic risk

The decentralised US education system ensures that intelligent design will remain an issue in the classroom regardless of the decision in the Dover case.

"I think as a legal strategy, intelligent design is dead. That does not mean intelligent design as a social movement is dead," said Ms Scott.

"This is an idea that has real legs and it's going to be around for a long time. It will, however, evolve."

Among the most high-profile champions of intelligent design is US President George W Bush, who has said schools should make students aware of the concept.

But Mr Omenn warned that teaching intelligent design will deprive students of a proper education, ultimately harming the US economy.

"At a time when fewer US students are heading into science, baby boomer scientists are retiring in growing numbers and international students are returning home to work, America can ill afford the time and tax-payer dollars debating the facts of evolution," he said. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4731360.stm

Published: 2006/02/20 10:54:16 GMT

© BBC MMVI

[js1138]

Science obviously embodies assumptions, but the question is whether working science requires formal philosophy, and the answer is no.

No more than engineering, gardening or motorcycle maintenance requires formal philosophy.

Science is empirical, which means it is driven by findings rather than by formal deduction. There are, of course, people who follow along behind and tidy things up, but the process of discovery is pretty messy.

[gobucks]

"Science obviously embodies assumptions, but the question is whether working science requires formal philosophy, and the answer is no."

Ok. I see. Maybe YOU can help with a helpful link which elaborates a bit more on that 'no'? And, maybe also a link which discusses why so many irrational folks out there, maybe like me, are susceptible to believing the answer is indeed yes. I mean, I have asked this before, if 'science' was so robust, why do so few embrace its central themes, despite the fire hose of data thrown at them?

[js1138]

if 'science' was so robust, why do so few embrace its central themes...

As Barbie might say, the central themes in science involve math, and math is hard.

How many people are capable of clearly defining relativity? quantum theory?

I have been participating in these threads for several years and have yet to see an evolution critic who could give a clear summary of how evolution works.

Else why would we be continuously be bombarded with demands for examples of individuals creatures giving birth to offspring of a new species.

This is just pure, gut wrenching ignorance of the subject being debated.

[donh]

?Que? I think I might risk misunderstanding what you mean here; which assumptions to which do you mean?

Than I think you butted into the conversation without knowing what it was about. Trace backwards to the point in this conversation to where you responded to what I was saying to someone else about philosophical naturalism.

[donh]

Right. Ok. Science is Independent of any underlying philosopical basis.

Natural inquiry was around before Thales invented philosophy, and will still be around after the last philosopher retires from his cushy appointment to state-run and paid-for institutions of higher learning. Such folk naturally think philosophy "underlies" things. Folks who work for a living should be more skeptical.

Got it, trust it, I'm there. It just stands alone, sort of like Kant's first imperative. It is just 'there'. Like the sky being blue....

Quite so, other than for that Kant business about the ding un zich. The sky will continue to be blue, and chairs will maintain their ineffable chairlike essence, and curious people will continue to look into natural phenomenon, even in the absence of philosophers--as incredible as that may seem at first glance.

[Senator Bedfellow]

It's a curious sort of philosophy that insists on holding reality hostage to itself. "I am unable to construct a coherent philosophy that satisfactorily accounts for X; therefore, X does not exist." As though the universe is somehow accountable to the philosopher.

[Thatcherite]

I'm really getting bored of this thread now.

I guess you find it boring to be asked to back up your claims. In "I'm a devout Christian" world presumably it's enough just to have an emotional feeling that your beliefs are true. No need for any evidence.

So, for the rest of us who like some evidence when extraordinary allegations are made, when are you going to produce some backup about early evolutionary theorists leaping at evolutionary theory because they liked its sexual and moral implications? Or did you just make that claim up?

I am speaking to the implications, my dear friend, and this is something which evolutionists routinely ignore. Teach a kid that they have evolved from apes, and you are surprised when they go shooting at school.

And, even if this new fabricated claim of yours were true, it would have exactly what to do with whether evolution is true or false? Your argument is the worst kind of special pleading against an idea because you dislike its perceived emotional implications. This is a conservative forum, where we decide by reason, not emotion.

[Hacksaw]

Only by those incapable of examing the quoted text and the full context, and deciding whether the former reflects the latter. I guess that would be you, then?

Guess again.

[Thatcherite]

You are so much more polite now. I really appreciate it.

I'm still trying for abrasive rudeness. Obviously the temperate politeness of the majority of creationist posters here has rubbed off on me.

Btw, I would suggest you at least link to the items you are referring to.

You already supplied the link, two posts ago, to TH. I guess all that mind-blowing Christian sex has affected your memory.

You do realize that a post made over 'a year ago' CLEARLY has made quite the impression upon you....

That post is the most unintentionally funny post-hoc rationalisation I've ever seen. I still smile at the Joycean stream of non-sequiturs every time I think about it. You've given me a great deal of pleasure, as well as your wife.

I think that bodes very very well for you ... still.

The enjoyment I get from dissecting the assorted non-arguments against evolution in these threads is about the only reason I stick around here. That and to show the lurkers that not every internet conservative has lost their marbles.

[donh]

I deny that evolution has a philosophical (or any other kind of) stance. Science, evolutionary or otherwise, is not the same thing as philosophical naturalism: whether darwinian evolutionary theory has meaning or not is outside of science's capacity to inquire.

I am speaking to the implications

Nearly every scientist, and every official body that represents scientists would DENY that science holds to a position of philosophical naturalism, many would argue that such an attitude would be antithetical to a scientific viewpoint: it articulates an assumption inherently un-bolstered by critically vetted data. Science does not imply philosophical naturalism, any more than criminal forensics implies that every human is a criminal.

[donh]

Teach a kid that they have evolved from apes, and you are surprised when they go shooting at school. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.”

Avowed deep religeous conviction is denser in prison populations than it is in the general population. Perhaps we should ask the anabaptists, the gnostics, cathars, witches, templers or islamic occupiers of the holy lands what they think of the theory that christians represent a higher order of ethical restraint. Hard to see why I should bother to behave decently when I can just seek salvation thru christ once I've grown tired of sinning.

Aside from being balderdish, this has little to do with whether evolutionary theory is true or not.

I'm really getting bored of this thread now.

I'm not surprised.

[Elsie]

Hard to see why I should bother to behave decently when I can just seek salvation thru christ once I've grown tired of sinning.

Indeed...

[CarolinaGuitarman]

I didn't expect you to actually have anything to back up your claim. Thanks for living up to your reputation! :)

[donh]

Hard to see why I should bother to behave decently when I can just seek salvation thru christ once I've grown tired of sinning.

Indeed...

This response re-enforces my impression that you don't generally understand these arguments well enough to contribute to them meaningfully. Kindly address further inquiries to someone else--I don't wish to provide you with further excuses to enundate threads with reams of pointless biblical quotes.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

I'm going to regret this, as I am sure this will be called spam, but here is a refutation of those quotes:

1) "There are only two possibilities as to how life arose; one is spontaneous generation arising to evolution..."
Dr. George Wald

and

""Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing.""

Also George Wald.

The first quote is a fabrication. The second is out of context. To see what Wald actually said, read
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-4.html#quote57
quote #57

2) "Evolution [is] a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible."

(Professor D.M.S. Watson)

From 1929. From a nobody. And, out of context. He was saying that the alternatives to evolution had been discarded because they were found faulty, not that they had been rejected a priori.
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie031.html

3) Dr. Nils Heribert-Nilsson's quote. I can't find anything on him, other than that he's a creationist.

4) Dr. Newton Tahmisian, Atomic Energy Commission. Enough said.

5) John Polkinghorne is a theistic evolutionist. While the quote is correct, he did not have a problem with evolution.

6) The Charles Townes quote:
Here is a better understanding of this member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science:

"Townes said that things are not so clear-cut. Even processes that appear random, he said, can have an underlying logic.

“The idea that calling something ‘random’ means that it’s without direction is a mistake,” Townes said. “In a gas, for example, random interaction among particles ensures uniform distribution and temperature. In other words, an unplanned process produces an orderly outcome.”

“Evolution,” Townes said, “is like that. It’s a random process that produces spectacular things.”

I can't find the rest of this online. It goes without saying that Raup is not saying evolution is wrong. He is arguing for PE. He is also wrong about Darwin, who understood that evolution could work in spurts.

8) "The pathetic thing about it is that many scientists are trying to prove the doctrine of evolution, which no science can do."

Written in 1925. By a physicist who had no training in biology.

9) Dr. Richard Bliss is a big time creationist, not an acceptor of evolution. Why is he on a list of evolutionists?

10) Dr. William Fix. Same thing; he is in no way an evolutionist. What he does believe in is something called "psychogenesis—that is, that there are psychic powers that have been shaping humanity". A real nutjob. I believe he also has no formal training in biology. Not sure if the *Dr.* is accurate.
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/book_browsing/

11) "In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection---quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection tautology"

Dr. Arthur Koestler is a neo-lamarckian; he doesn't represent anything about the ToE as it has been for over 100 years.

12) "The only competing explanation for the order we all see in the biological world is the notion of special creation"

Not sure this is even Patterson. I get multiple people as the author when I google this. Usually a sign of a made-up qoute.

13) Dr. Wolfgang Smith. A mathematician specializing in aerodynamics. Also, not at all an evolutionist. This list sure is getting padded with creationists. :)

14) Dr. Hubert P. Yockey. Information theorist and non-biologist.

15) "Darwin's evolutionary explanation of the origins of man has been transformed into a modern myth, to the detriment of scientific and social progress.....The secular myths of evolution have had a damaging effect on scientific research, leading to distortion, to needless controversy, and to gross misuse of science....I mean the stories, the narratives about change over time. How the dinosaurs became extinct, how the mammals evolved, where man came from. These seem to me to be little more than story-telling"

Nice use of elipses. Where's this from? How many pages separate the cut pieces?

16) "The probability of life originating from accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary resulting from an explosion in a printing shop"

The musings of a man who died before the modern work in abiogensis was even started. BTW, this has nothing to do with evolution anyway.

Edwin Grant Conklin (1863-1952)

17) Dr. Pierre-Paul Grasse was an evolutionist, but a neo-lamarkian. Your quote is from a crank who is pushing ideas disproved 100 years ago. Nice going!

18) Dr. Alfred Rehwinkel, a theologian. Not a scientist, or an evolutionist. More creationist padding.

19) Dean H. Kenyon, a biophysicist creationist. More padding. I thought this list was supposed to be from evolutionists.

20) ""I suppose the reason we leaped at the origin of species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores."

A complete fabrication. Julian Huxley never said this.

21) "Evolution is unproved and improvable, we believe it because the only alternative is special creation, which is unthinkabl"

Attributed to Sir Arthur Keith, it's a fabrication.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-4.html#quote81

22) "If I knew of any Evolutionary transitional's, fossil or living, I would certainly have included them in my book, 'Evolution'"

Patterson quote mined, yet again. Grossly out of context. He did, in fact, know of transitionals.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/patterson.html

23) "To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree possible."

Except, right afterwords he describes why evolution solves the problem. Classic quote mine showing how creationists will try to even show that Darwin didn't accept Darwin. Creationists should be ashamed.

24) Professor Enoch. Creationist. More padding.

25) "It remains true, as every paleontologist knows, that most new species, genera, and families, and that nearly all categories above the level of families, appear in the record suddenly and are not led up to by known, gradual completely continuous transitional sequences." (Dr. George Gaylord Simpson of Harvard)

Out of context quote.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-2.html#quote20

25) "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

Perfectly good point by Darwin. No such demonstration has happened.

26) "I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know."

Perfectly good quote by Gould, showing why evolution is falsifiable. Why is this supposed to be a problem for evolutionists?

27) Dr. R. Kirk, "The Rediscovery of Creation," . Another creationist padding this list of evolutionists.

28) Dr. I.L. Cohen, another creationist, non-biologist. Has also written about the *Secret of Stonehenge*.

29) "If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile."

Disgusting use of Hitler as an evolutionary scientist. Of course, it also excludes the many quotes from this book where Hitler calls the Aryan Race the most perfect special creation of God. He was a creationist in that respect. Pathetic that you included this.

30) "The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shown by mans attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than the woman. Whether deep thought, reason, or imagination or merely the use of the senses and hands.....We may also infer.....The average mental power in man must be above that of woman."

Yes, Darwin was a typical Victorian man. So?

32) "No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man.....it is simply incredible to think that.....he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites."

Lovely creationist use of ellipses. Here's what the recently deceased Henry Morris thought about race(he didn't have the excuse of being a 19th century Victorian. I know of no major thinker in the 19th century who argued for the equality of the races in ability):

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/racism.html

33) "Recapitulation provided a convenient focus for the persuasive racism of white scientists; they looked to the activities of their own children for comparison with normal adult behavior in lower races."

Of course, as Gould and modern science in general has rejected the recapitulation theories he is talking about, this quote is moot.

34.) "Evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups."

(Dr. Duane Gish, Biochemist.) Why is he on this list? Shameless, yet again.

35) "The Darwinian theory of descent has not a single fact to confirm it in the realm of nature. It is not the result of scientific research but purely the product of the imagination."

(Albert Fleishman, professor of zoology & comparative anatomy at Erlangen University) He was last main holdout against evolution, and died in 1942. He was always a creationist. Yet MORE padding.

36) "We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It is time we cry, "The emperor has no clothes."

(Dr. Hsu, geologist at the Geological Institute in Zurich.)

Yet more *misspeaking* from the creationists. He was attacking social darwinism, not evolution.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part4.html#quote4.6

37) "The great cosmologic myth of the twentieth century."

(Dr. Michael Denton, molecular biochemist, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.)
Actually, he has come to accept most aspects of evolution. Bad choice for the creationists (He was never a YEC'er anyway)

38) "9/10 of the talk of evolution is sheer nonsense not founded on observation and wholly unsupported by fact. This Museum is full of proof of the utter falsity of their view."

(Dr. Ethredge, British Museum of Science.)

Sorry, Dr. Ethredge was really Robert Etheridge, Jr., who was Assistant Keeper of Geology in this Museum from 1881 to 1891. I have seent his quote also attributed to Dr Niles Etheredge, which is a (deliberate?) mix-up with the present day scientist Niles Eldredge. Robert Etheridge, Jr. was a creationist nobody.
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/lie029.html

39) "The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based upon faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion....The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but irrational."

(Dr. Louis T. More, professor of paleontology at Princeton University)

"Evolution is faith, a religion."

(Dr. Louist T. More, professor of paleontology at Princeton University)

Sorry, he was a phsyicist at the University of Cincinnati. And he was writing in 1925. Again, more padding.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/quotes/mine/part1-4.html#quote61

40) "Darwin's theory of evolution is the last of the great nineteenth-century mystery religions. And as we speak it is now following Freudians and Marxism into the Nether regions, and I'm quite sure that Freud, Marx and Darwin are commiserating one with the other in the dark dungeon where discarded gods gather."

(Dr. David Berlinski) from the Discovery institute. More padding with creationists.

Ok, there's 40 quotes that are *veracity-challenged*. I didn;t do them all; some I couldn't find anything on, other than re-quoting at creationist websites. I am sure you will go through this and point out where I am wrong, in detail.

[Thatcherite]

DLR in post #2158 of this thread:

As for the Huxley business, I suppose by pinging that one thread, I stand guilty of endorsing the whole thing again, but I’ve discussed the errors of it in the past, and I cannot verify those exact quotes by Huxley.

DLR in the post I reply to here:

I’m sorry; I’m not sure who gave you the mistaken idea that I am on any “hook” of yours at all. And as far as I know, there has not been any confrontation on the Huxley quote prior to this engagement.

DLR, I've commented on the extreme nature of your memory problems before. You should seek help, and avoid posting on internet discussion forums like FR that are the province of reasoning adults.

[Thatcherite]

Awesome takedown. Mine was rather easier. ;)

[garbanzo]

"[Intelligent design] ultimately takes us back to why we're here and the value of life... if an individual doesn't have a reason for being, they might carry themselves in a way that is ultimately destructive for society."

I would say the whole debate boils down to this one piece of honesty. It's a political debate about social morality disguised as a debate over science.

[Thatcherite]

2300!