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.
If given one atom of a radioactive material, you can't predict with certainty whether or not it will decay in the next one million years either. Does that make quantum mechanics unscientific?
Do you really believe that consistent natural processes necessarily lead to predictable results?
As you claim that failure to interbreed doesn't indicate a species barrier, how do you show that people and chimps are not of the same kind?
So, again, what distinguishes one species or kind from another?
Even though we can't predict with certainty what will happen to man as a result of evolution, we can predict that the natural processes which have taken place to cause the changes of the past will continue to take place into the future. You can look back and find out what the weather was like on this day last year in your home town, but can you predict what the weather will be like on this date next year? Does this inability render meteorology unscientific?
I should add that the heliocentric theory also allows the derivation of laws that a heliocentric theory cannot. The equal-area in equal time law and the law that the farther from the center of rotation, the slower the movement. Both fail in the geocentric system.
True. This also brings up another characteristic of a scientific theory, namely fecundity. Good theories typically help science to understand other phenomena.
The mantra for the day. After all the other bait-and-switch subject changes, you just did it again. I suppose sometime soon you'll just start back over with "Where is half a wing?"
Anyway, this too is wrong.
Behe's colossal mistake is that, in rejecting these possibilities, he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become-because of later changes-essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required.Darwin v. Intelligent Design (Again)...
I wish I could claim credit for this Darwinian model of irreducible complexity, but I'm afraid I've been scooped by eighty years. This scenario was first hinted at by the geneticist H. J. Muller in 1918 and worked out in some detail in 1939.6 Indeed, Muller gives reasons for thinking that genes which at first improved function will routinely become essential parts of a pathway. So the gradual evolution of irreducibly complex systems is not only possible, it's expected. For those who aren't biologists, let me assure you that I haven't dug up the half-baked lucubrations of some obscure amateur. Muller, awarded the Nobel Prize in 1946, was a giant in evolution and genetics.
Muller's idea is now very well established, as shown by a list of recent papers referring to Gene Duplication, which is how semi-redundant just-helpful features tend to arise in the first place. A glance down the titles should put some flesh on the rather abstract version of events from the extract above.
Behe, either by cribbing or independent development, took Muller's problem (which Muller called "irreversibility"), called it "irreducible complexity," then lost or never found in the first place Muller's solution.
(In ID, the tough problem is desired and the answer is wished away. That's why I don't think ID will ever teach us much.)
Again, Behe should have known who Muller was but there's no proof.
I'm tired of trying to show the blinkered unwelcome facts. Thanks for now.....
You're exploding my irony meter. You have only made one unsupported and wrong assertion after another. I have refuted them one after another.
Both disciplines provide varying degrees of knowledge, but cannot be compared to evolution theory because the latter relies upon unobserved and unobservable phenomena to tell a story. Quantum mechanics has a present process to observe, and from it sets forth an understanding, or belief about that process. Evolution theory does no such thing. It is merely conjecture based upon, in most cases, the strata quo.
Your theory fails the sanity check.
Not necessarily, no. Usually, yes.
Ichneumon, it's fine with me if you wish you express your opinions and offer your evidence, either here or in the educational system.
However, to act as if evolution's a done deal is ridiculous. If your side had anything in its arsenal even remotely close to settling this issue in your favor, it would have been presented a long time ago. It isn't as if your side isn't trying to crush the opposition, the way a political ideology, rather than people offering a scientific theory, would. In fact, you have political forces on your side (the ACLU for one) whose specialty is bludgeoning the opposition into silence.
Present your views if you wish. I've even suggested that it's possible the evolutionary view is correct, though I don't believe that to be the case. I'm sure you can offer me volumes of evidence for your theory. It's been around now for a century and a half, if not longer, and lots of scientists have chimed in on it.
If this was a done deal, your side would have dropped the big one a long time ago. Why would you even bother debating those of us who have doubts about evolution? I don't bother debating anyone who doubts that the earth orbits the sun. First, the evidence that the earth orbits to sun is sufficiently strong that few people deny it. Second, the few people who do deny it aren't worth debating.
So are we worth debating, or not?
FC: Not necessarily, no. Usually, yes.
Perhaps you'd care to distinguish between predictable and non-predictable processes, and tell us why we should be able to predict the direction of evolution.
I see. And when was the last time you set up and ran the processes that laid down the geologic record?
Your question was: "If two entities cannot interbreed, are they different species?"
I was only allowing that there can be other reasons that two entities (of the same species) could be unable to interbreed. Sorry didn't intend getting involved in semantics, just being cautious.
People are different from chimps and all other animals because we have a soul. I don't even want to think about what kind of experiments are going on to breed humans and animals. Ewwww!
Excellent analysis! You're thinking, and on an issue like this, that's how we have to deal with the evidence the past has left us.
You may well be right that there's a saturation point where extinctions start occurring. It's a good argument for those on your side to use.
And given the current state of our knowledge of the distant past, it's arguments that we must put forth.
The big one was dropped by Tom Watson, probably about when you were still wetting your diapers. There is no big controversy about this inside the scientific establishment. And there likely never will be. The independently derived confirming evidence is too outrageously good and outrageously plentiful and outrageously vetted with good opportunities for disconfirmation that failed. It is irrelevant to scientific concerns that a coterie of religeously motived non-scientists with an ax to grind and a new, more sophisticated camoflage technique have managed to stampede a few school boards. This is two different battlefields entirely, but I understand perfectly why you'd like to suggest that they are merged.
Are you referring to JAMES Watson of Crick & Watson fame?
So what is your test to separate chimps from dogs? You still haven't given a definition of kind. Postulating a "soul" is no better unless you can distinguish entities with a soul from those without.
I should also have added, that if we're so irrelevant, why are you debating us? Why aren't you putting your superior brain power to use on researching, say, black holes now that evolution is a settled deal?
Or have you come up with a theory that explains everything we need to know about black holes as well?
I see. And when was the last time you set up and ran the processes that laid down the geologic record?
Ok, you tell he how the law of gravity helps smaller, lighter things fall with more alacrity than bigger, heavier things, and then lays neatly on top of those smaller lighter things.
When was the last time you baked up a heavy element in a supernova? When was the last time you felt the North American continent drift? When was the last time you observed light reducing in wavelength after traveling for billions of years? Sciences operates on induction, which, common to many creationist arguments, you appear to hold in contempt. Induction is fallable, but that doesn't make inductive scientific reasoning automatically discardable, at the convenience of your argument; get over it, or give up science.
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