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.
Well, I love to tell ya, if the fossil record is the "cornerstone" of evolution theory it is every bit as much evidence that the laws of nature have operated consistently throughout history just as God established them.
Well, what about the fossil record indicates anything less than design?
Well, you do have a general understanding of the theory, which puts you way ahead of most of the anti-evos who show up here. Actually, you are pretty much like someone in Darwin's own day, who read his book, understood it, but wasn't persuaded by the quantity of evidence which then existed. Or perhaps, from religious concerns, prefered to believe that the then-existing evidence wasn't persuasive. A common situation.
I suggest, if you truly have the interest, that you let yourself be acquainted with what's piled up in the last 150 years. It's really impressive. Each new year finds more evidence to support the theory. Anyway, keep mulling it over.
Crop circle memorial placemarker.
On shorter time scales (i.e. what we've been able to observe in the past hundred or so years), we've seen populations speciate (i.e. become unable to mate with each other) and mutations which have resulted in significantly different individuals. We've also seen many of the microbes which cause disease evolve resistances to our antibiotics and adapt to infect new host species. Arguably, computer programs using evolution-based algorithms have proven to be an effective means of developing robotic and electronic systems, sometimes generating systems where humans have been unable to understand how they work.
In the long term, from the fossil record we have been able to construct a "tree of life," based on when different species were known to have been alive. This has been made confirmed by cross-referencing data from comparative embryology and comparative genetics -- species with less distant common ancestors have more in common in terms of their embryonic development and genetic composition. Really, the genetic evidence is darned hard to dismiss.
And let's face it, evolution **IS** the socialist left's pet theory of how we as humans got to where we are.
I'm not so sure about that. Except for when they're whining about creationists, the socialists I've known absolutely -hate- evolution. Its findings regarding competitiveness as an innate part of human nature tends to fly in the face of their communist utopias.
Use your own definition of design. I don't care. How does the fossil record show anything contrary to the laws of nature?
So you believe horses and zebras are unrelated then, the product of separate creation events? What about camels and llamas?
I havent played the paper/pen game in ages. The "Baldur's Gate" PC game series is pretty good, still play it from time to time.
If you met Australopithicus dressed in a suit waiting for the train, you would'nt exactly go up to him and say "Hey dude!".
Yes, I fully realize that. That was what I was getting to in my original article. Many people here have tried to argue with me that Darwinism is not being taught in a way that defeats any need for God. I have had to sit through many classes and listen to that garbage--I know what it is being taught. And I am sure it is like that at schools across the country.
I have stood up to the garbage and I have done my research; quit suprisingly many professors don't know what to do when challenged.
I will say this however, in defense of the Forestry program. UGA has one of the top 3 Forestry programs year in and year out. The professors in the school are mostly good people and none of them have shoved macro-evolution down our throats. When I was refering to the liberal professors, I was meaning the ones in many basic biology classes, not the forestry school professors.
What is your son majoring in?
This is a very interesting question. Allow me to engage in a thought experiment...
DISCLAIMER: What I've written below is just a thought experiment, and I have no idea if it's supported by scientific evidence. I'm betting there's been computer simulations of such phenomena, but those are admittedly not always the best way to confirm a hypothesis. Just allow me to muse for a moment.
Imagine a diverse environment which contains a number of organisms, which belong to a number of different species. According to evolutionary theory (I think), if there are a lot of different environmental niches and only a few species, over time you'll tend to see the emergence of new species to fill the different niches -- if a new species is better adapted to a niche than the already-existing species, it'll prosper and potentially lead to even more species. In this way, the number of species tends to increase. There's some complications because organisms themselves can create new niches (e.g. parasites), but that's the general idea.
However, this can only go so far. An environment can only support a finite number of species. For one, if there's absurdly many species that means that there's only a few organisms belonging to each species, which tends to make the species very vulnerable to extinction. Additionally, if an organism is adapted to an incredibly specific niche it can be screwed over if anything happens to that niche. So, this tends to put a limit on the maximum number of species.
However, there are a number of ways in which we can have extinction. One way is that a new species emerges which takes over the niche of another species -- this tends to break even in the total number of species. Another way is that there's some sort of mass extinction event, like an ice age. In this case, we see all of the species which aren't able to adapt to the new conditions die off. The surviving species produce more species to fit the emptied niches, until a limit is reached as described above.
If one were to graph the number of species in an environment over time, I imagine that you'd see something like a sigmoidal curve, with the number of species increasing until it reaches a particular equilibrium value (where the rate of increase is balanced by the limit of available niches and small-scale extinction). Periodically you'd see mass extinction events, which would correspond to a sharp drop in the graph. However, after such a drop you'd see it climb back up to the equilibrium point.
Now that I look back at my musing, species are a lot like companies in a free-market economy in many ways, in how they adapt to different niches. I wonder if there's any plots available of the number of companies in existence in a country at a given time, also showing things like depressions/recessions and the following bounce-back.
WHAT?!
Big bang as catalyst for our universal existence...Yes.
ID...maybe. (who could ever prove it in our material existence?)
Creationism as anything more that a desperate ill-thought
trick for self-substantiation...No way.
Creationism is not scientific at all. It can only be believed
through faith. Evolution is verified with open eyes to the
reality all around us. You may not think you condescended
from monkeys but I’m not ashamed to say that apes are in
the branches of my family tree.
Microevolution is exactly the same process as macroevolution. Speciation is macroevolution, the accumulation of alleles caused by microevolution until there are enough differences to designate a species (divergence).
My son is in law school now. He also got his BA and MHR at U.SC.
Apes are preferable to mother in laws.
"I’m not ashamed to say that apes are in
the branches of my family tree."
LOL, so you are the missing link and proud of it. Do you sit in a chair and type with the keyboard on the floor?
Repost #195:In a nutshell, Creation is more in line with the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics than evolution. Something does not come from nothing and the organized tends toward disorganization.
The expanding universe shows it had a beginning and requires an outside source. "Chance" is unlikely, our planets and the life on it requires very specific conditions. There was a plan. There is adaptaion but not evolution. Genetic code does not allow reproduction outside of a species. Homology can show similarities but not relation.
And angels personally assemble each snowflake, I'm sure.
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