Posted on 03/17/2013 12:11:01 PM PDT by eagleye85
Intelligent design is just another form of creationism, creationism is profoundly unscientific, and such unscientific views do not belong in public classrooms. This, in a nutshell, is the argument of activist Zack Kopplin, a student at Rice University who began his battle against a Louisiana academic freedom law (the Louisiana Science Education Act) while in high school. He is the 2012 winner of the “Troublemaker of the Year Award.”
“Well, this law allows supplemental materials into our school biology classrooms to ‘critique controversial theories like evolution and climate change,’” said Kopplin in a March interview on the Bill Moyers show. “Now, evolution and climate change aren’t scientifically controversial, but they are controversial to Louisiana legislators, and, basically, everyone who looked at this law knew it was just a back door to sneak creationism into public school science classes,” he continues (emphasis added).
As discussed in a previous blog entry, the media likes to condemn as right-wing and fundamentalist the crowd that prefers creationism to evolution. Through the course of an article by the UK’s The Guardian we learn that such laws as those proposed in Colorado, Missouri, Montana, and Oklahoma are the product of a religious lobby, further the creationist agenda, and would be a feather in the caps of these two interest groups if these laws were to pass. Readers also learn that these states could be boycotted for their creationist educational laws. Kopplin, of course, is cited in the article for his opposition to the Louisiana law mentioned above. “It can be embarrassing to be from a state which has become a laughing stock in this area,” asserted Kopplin to the UK Guardian this January.
This month the media celebrates Kopplin’s “anti-creationism” activism with a full interview on the Bill Moyers show and an interview for the Washington Post. “Today’s fundamentalists, with political support from the Right-wing, are more aggressive than ever in crusading to challenge evolution with the dogma of creationism,” asserted Moyers in his introduction. “But they didn’t reckon on Zack Kopplin.”
“Going to college is tough enough without leading a campaign to stop creationism from being taught in school as an alternative to evolution, but that’s what Zach Kopplin, 19, has been doing for several years,” praises Valerie Strauss in her March 17 article.
“Evolution is, of course, the central principle around which all of the biological sciences revolve, and creationism is not a scientific alternative,” writes Strauss. “But religious fundamentalists continue to push for creationism to be taught in schools,” she continues (emphasis added.)
In the interview with Moyers, Kopplin rejects several forms of creationism, saying that “Intelligent design specifically rejects evolution, especially on a large scale.”
“Creationists like to break it up into micro/macro evolution. That’s not a legitimate thing,” he asserts. As for creationism, “Essentially, it’s a denial of evolution mainly based off a literal interpretation of Genesis.” Kopplin’s latest vendetta? Voucher programs. ““And so it’s become pretty clear: if you create a voucher program, you’re just going to be funding creationism through the back door,” he said to Moyers. You can real the CATO Institute’s Neal McCluskey’s response to Kopplin here.
“No, potentially serious, negative, unintended consequences could accompany freezing people out of religiously based education,” writes McCluskey. “For instance, traditional Christian morality calls for married, two-parent families, and one of the few things in social science that one would call pretty firmly established is that coming from such a family gives a child a significant leg up. Religious people also tend to have much greater stocks of social capital than the nonreligious, also generally a plus.”
“In light of those things, would it be worth undermining religion because you think creationism is nonsense?”
The one article did say “Tail clips taken for DNA analysis confirmed that the Pod Mrcaru lizards were genetically identical to the source population on Pod Kopiste.” I did at least acknowlege that the other article seemed to say something that was not as strong. With the information I have seen, the best you can do is “we don't know.”
“Evolution would say that the information for the structure was newly generated.”
I'd be interested to see this new information. Until we have it, there is no evolution here, it's variation within kind. Do you have a proposed mechanism for this to happen in 36 years? My theory does. You have to assume these lizards just happened to hit the random mutation jackpot and develop a completely new structure in that short time, something that your theory says should take millions of years. The structure also happens to be very similar to one which occurs in other similar lizards (rare though it may be) but you claim it re-evolved fresh here in these lizards.
Sorry, but if you don't have new genetic information, it doesn't strengthen your theory, it strains it.
“If creationist/intelligent design researchers want to dispute that, it's easy...”
This sounds like a valid line of inquiry for either side. In addition to the genetic study, it would be interesting to take lizards from the original island and subject them to a similar diet and environment to see if similar changes would occur.
“Somehow, they never take up that challenge.”
Creationists are shut out from the public university system, not because of faulty science, but because they lack the required ideology. (The same goes for the peer reviewed periodicals.) Both sides have an interest here. Your side has better access to money. Besides, unless you have the new information to show us, you don't have scientific evidence. All you have is an observation filtered and sorted according to your religious dogma (that really fits better in the creation framework.)
I have no such dictionary. What I do have are many volumes of reference books written by evolutionists who help me understand their theory.
For example, since I have a personal experience regarding reference to George Gaylord Simpson (he was the Harvard comparative zoologist/paleontologist who was replaced by Steven J.Gould) -"Although many details remain to be worked out, it is already evident that all the objective phenomena of the history of life can be explained by purely naturalistic or, in a proper sense of the sometimes abused word, materialistic factors. They are readily explicable on the basis of differential reproduction in populations (the main factor in the modern conception of natural selection) and of the mainly random interplay of the known processes of heredity...Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind."
Dr. James Trefil's summary of the evolution of life in his book he says the following:
Evolution of life on earth proceeded in two stages: chemical and biological. Life on earth must have developed from inorganic materials - what eles was there for it to come from? The first stage in the development of life, therefore was the production of a reproducing cell from materials at hand on the early earth...Once a living, reproducing system was present, the process of natural selection took over to produce the wide varieties of life that exists today.
William Provine said the following:
The all-purpose defense that Darwinists invoke what I called in my earlier address "Dobhansky's rules. the rules of positivistic science. That is they say that science is just one knowledge game among many, and the theists suffer no great loss if they have to go and play in another game called "religion". The problem is that the games do not have equivalent status. The science game has government support and theists and non-theists alike, are are to be taught that "evolution is a fact" existence of God who takes a role in cration, is false. If "evolution" has strong anti-theistic alike implications, the theists in the political community are entitled to ask whether what Darwinsits promulgate as "evolution" is really true.
Now, I can read and understand English. I have similar quotes from leaders in evolution such as Richard Dawkings, Hubert Yockey, Richard Lewontin, Steven J. Gould, all Darwinsts, evolutionist, metaphysical naturalistic, atheists....please do not ask me to type them at this hour. I know you have read those quotes on this type of thread in the past.
That said, I am fully aware there are those who declare they are theistic evolutionists, or agnotic evolutionists, or atheistic evolutionists. Their writings seem to indicate they are all physicalists. I am, likewise aware, that there are those Darwinsits who declare themselves to be soft physialists or hard physicalists. But their writings seem to dismiss, excepting gratuitous references, to a transcendent God, outside of the universe, not part of the universe, but separate and distinct from the universe.
I think asking for a dictionary definition is to avoid the point which I was making to Stormer. But if you wish to do that, I understand. Now, it is 12:00 midnight, and I have to get some rest. I have to pen and work about 150 Angus cows/calves tomorrow morning. If you wish I will read your remarks tomorrow afternoon/evening.
Where in either theory is there anything that precludes the other?
ID speculates about the origin of life. Evolution speculates about how it behaves in response to environmental changes.
I can find nothing in the theory of evolution that says in cannot be by design, and nothing in the theory of intelligent design that says it cannot have been designed to evolve.
The entire debate appears to be an exercise in abusing and misrepresenting both theories as proxies over differences of opinion about something else.
In such a nasty environment who is safeer than those who loyally back the industrial standard? Consider Michael Mann and his debunked hockey stick...he is still employed and a hero to the AGW crowd. Not because he does good science, but because he B.S's for the politically correct side. Look at those who hid evidence and intimidated publishers in the AGW industry. Is it so different than the Geocentrists who persecuted Galeleo? The term "sophist" has become derogatory term for good reason, while the term "scholar" still holds honor. Scholarly industries have always been in danger of falling into that trap.
You may hate the fact. You may deny the fact. But those outside the industry can sometimes see more clearly than those in it. I don't say it to sound smarter or win an argument, I say it because it is blatantly obvious to those who have looked at the evolution industry from the outside--such as the much despised Ben Stein's documentary demonstrated, those who tow the line are safe. Those who dare to question the line are taken down not because of flaws...but because they are a threat.
Yeah, it would be nice if people would distinguish between naturalism, abiogensis, common origin on one hand, and young-earth creationism, creationism, and intelligent design on the other...and not conflate them so often.
But the kid in the article does seem to want to conflate everything into the good-progressive-smart-evolution-progress-science-naturalism bucket and the old-fashion-witch-burning-backward-flat-earth-creationist-dummy bucket.
There are plenty of counter parts on the other side of the debate as well. Sigh.
In my view, the scientific questions are not as important as the cosmology and theology, but I will agree that the distinctions should be made about which are meant when talking about them.
Then I think the proper answer to him is to point that out, and leave it at that. He's presented a flawed argument that starts from an bad premise. Trying to engage his argument by adopting his premise isn't going to help one bit.
Hmmm, well there is more that needs to be said than pointing out his conflation of of ideas, but it might be a place to start. It is not as though the issue of naturalism vs super-naturalism is orthogonal to abiogenisis or common origin. All naturalist cosmologies pretty much have to adopt both, where young earth super-natural cosmologies must reject both. Only people who favor a super-natural cosmologies of an old universe can be approach them without some bias.
I appreciate your lengthy reply, and I apologize for not having the time to reply at similar length. I admit that I'm confused by the statement you quote--I don't know how something with a whole new gut structure can be "genetically identical" to something without that structure. It seems to me clear that at some level--maybe something other than DNA, but I'm not expert enough to guess what--the very existence of the new structure demands different information, whether it's new or had always been there but never expressed.
It still seems to me that the development of a physical feature that was simply not present before is evidence for evolution, and that the burden is on creationists to find the information for that feature in the source population. As for the question of money, I'm not sure I buy it: creationists managed to raise $27 million for a museum, and the Institute for Creation Research takes in almost $9 million a year. They could spend some of it on outfitting a nice lab.
I'm one of those. From that perspective, the abuses of semantics and logic that go on in these debates is an abject failure of intellectual ethics and reason.
Well on issue of the cosmos it seems it has to be pretty old based on what is known in astrophysics, so I feel in only reasonable to think the universe is likely very old. My understanding is also that it is very big, is expanding very fast, and has expanded since its creation a very long time ago. However, as I understand it, it is not infinitely big...just very very very big. It has some fantastically large yet finite number of particles in it, and that is it. Thus it seems it must not be a closed system, but one that was created somehow a very long time ago. The source of its creation might be something that was not itself created...being self existant....or it might not be. While I have trouble envisioning that something can be self existant in such a way, I find the fact that there must be something that is self existant as inescapable. Thus if whatever created this universe is itself not self existant, there must be an earlier cause of that thing which is. Going back through an infinite chain of transient effects as Hume proposed seemed to me to be a possibile alternative to such a transcendent self existant cause for a while, but that was before I took the time to really run through the concept with mathematical rigor. Ultimately I find that naturalism simply can not be true on grounds put forward by the greater philosophical minds of the ages, and neither do I think it likely that the universe could be young...unless God made it to look young. Thus I feel compelled by the ability God gave me to reason that He indeed is absolutely for real, but that the universe is not all that young as a literal reading of the first Genesis narrative would indicate.
Thus I am in the same camp as you on cosmology.
As far as common origin is concerned, it seems plausible, and I used to think it very likely...but lately I have had that position shaken a bit. I am a layman though, and still learning and trying to form a better opinion on the matter--as a hobby from time to time, not really in a hurry.
As far as abiogenisis is concerned, it does not strike me as plausible.
HHTVL and I were having a respectful discussion on specific scientific topics. I’m sure you resort to ridicule because you don’t have any actual answers. It’s a common tactic. Perhaps you could step your game up and attack some straw men in your next post.
As far as the funding goes, it’s not debatable. The money for the museum is a drop in the ocean compared to the government money spent on research from an evolutionary perspective. How many natural history museums are there in the U.S.? How many of them receive government funding?
“religious dogma based on nothing”
If your theory says something should take millions of years and it takes 36, the scientific deduction is “there might be a problem with our explanation of this.” If you’re really holding on to a religious dogma, the reaction is “this is great evidence for our theory.”
“the very existence of the new structure demands different information, whether it’s new or had always been there but never expressed.”
It could have been something that was latent but triggered by diet. It also could have been something that existed in a few of the transplanted lizards, but it proved so advantageous that their decendants became dominant in the new location. Both are jsut speculation, but either seems more likely that a random mutation causing the development of a new structure similar to an existing structure in other lizards in only 36 years.
I suppose this remark is a poke at me. OK. But how do we deal with the conflict of opinion? Do we take a poll? Do we say, because my preacher says so, or because my comparative anatomy or embryology teacher said so? Do we determine which is politically correct? Do we argue our points based upon a utilitarian view that psycologically placates the most people? Or is the best way to attempt to resolve these divergences of opinion by reason, logic, rational thought, applications of First Principles, application of the Principle of Uniformity, the laws of logic, and attempt to obtain a dispositive understanding of truth? If ones logic is inappropriately applied the argument will not stand and can be defeated by the one with opposing views.
Your statement references abuses of semantics and logic.....is, in itself, a tautology. It is to say, 'some on this thread use semantics and logic in an abusive manner',....because.....it is an abuse of semantics and logic. Here you do not advance your arguments position. The same can be said of your statement, '...is an abject failure of intellectual ethics and reason', could be stated.......is an abject failure of intellectual ethics and reason....because....it is an abject failure. This does not advance your position. It offers your opinion based upon....your opinion.
So, not wanting to abuse semantics and logic, and not wanting to offer opinion which an abject failure of intellectual ethics and reason, what do you propose we do to communicate on these matters? What laws of thought do you propose we proceed with to discuss these matters? If we can't use the laws of logic and reason do we make them off-limits and make declarations of convention? It seems to me the laws of logic are universal standards of rationality. But if those laws of logic are outlawed we are left with opinion. So, on opinion I say Andy Bear wins, and on conventional statement you say tacticalogic wins the debate. And nothing is learned on either party's discourse.
Really.....what to you propose. If I start out with specificity of an argument and say,..."Tremarctos floridanus is not extant in the region of McFaddin Beach, Texas today, but was indigenous to the area, and one of the major carnivores during the last Pleistocene Epoch." This would mean nothing to a discussion on North American ursids. It might be meaningful to comparative Pleistocene vertebrate anatomists. But it is not helpful in discussions regarding evolution. Or you might postulate how glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase functions in the citric acid cycle (Krebs), what a deficiency in that enzyme means in mammalian physiology. But it does not further a discussion on the subject at hand. So how are you and I supposed to discuss the validity of this young student's attempt to alter state laws regarding mandatory teaching of a theory which has generated so many questions? I propose logic, reason, and rational thought. How do you think we should proceed to discuss and better understand this controversial topic?
Well, we can just let everyone have their own definitions of the terms, and complain about everyone else’s “tautology” if they don’t agree to that definition. That should work out just fine......
I just want to point out that I preceded this with "it seems to me clear that at some level." I'm not making that statement about information as a bald claim--I don't have the expertise to do that.
It could have been something that was latent but triggered by diet. It also could have been something that existed in a few of the transplanted lizards, but it proved so advantageous that their decendants became dominant in the new location. Both are jsut speculation, but either seems more likely that a random mutation causing the development of a new structure similar to an existing structure in other lizards in only 36 years.
The only thing I'd add to that is a "to me" after "either seems" in the last sentence. That scenario does raise the question of why these lizards had that latent information for all those years when they didn't need it, and where it came from in the first place.
I should also mention that it's not necessarily a new, never-before-seen mutation. It's quite possible that the mutation that led to the new structure occurred in the original population frequently, but because it never conferred a survival advantage, it didn't get "fixed."
So, should we abandon the lizards and exclaim “ God Did it!” or should we continue to study them? I know my answer.
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