Tough Assignment: Teaching Evolution To Fundamentalists

Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette ^ | 03 December 2004 | SHARON BEGLEY

[Dimensio]

Mark Twain never read Chick's tracts.

[FBD]

thanks for that quote.

[FBD]

Thanks for the replies;
I've read that around 40 % of scientists and mathematicians believe in God as a deity and creator; who takes an active interest in our lives. I post this not to try to convince anyone that there is a God,(that is a matter of faith) or to dispute evolution. I'm merely trying to point out that all scientists are not in agreement on many issues, including how the earth was formed.

To start ridiculing each other based on a difference in beliefs, be it deist or atheist is counterproductive.
Regards

---

Some quotes by prominent scientists and mathematicians:

Fred Hoyle (British astrophysicist): "A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question." (2)

George Ellis (British astrophysicist): "Amazing fine tuning occurs in the laws that make this [complexity] possible. Realization of the complexity of what is accomplished makes it very difficult not to use the word 'miraculous' without taking a stand as to the ontological status of the word." (3)

Paul Davies (British astrophysicist): "There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all....It seems as though somebody has fine-tuned natures numbers to make the Universe....The impression of design is overwhelming". (4)

Paul Davies: "The laws [of physics] ... seem to be the product of exceedingly ingenious design... The universe must have a purpose". (5)

Alan Sandage (winner of the Crawford prize in astronomy): "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence, why there is something instead of nothing." (6)

John O'Keefe (astronomer at NASA): "We are, by astronomical standards, a pampered, cosseted, cherished group of creatures.. .. If the Universe had not been made with the most exacting precision we could never have come into existence. It is my view that these circumstances indicate the universe was created for man to live in." (7)

George Greenstein (astronomer): "As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency - or, rather, Agency - must be involved. Is it possible that suddenly, without intending to, we have stumbled upon scientific proof of the existence of a Supreme Being? Was it God who stepped in and so providentially crafted the cosmos for our benefit?" (8)

Arthur Eddington (astrophysicist): "The idea of a universal mind or Logos would be, I think, a fairly plausible inference from the present state of scientific theory." (9)

Arno Penzias (Nobel prize in physics): "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say 'supernatural') plan." (10)

Roger Penrose (mathematician and author): "I would say the universe has a purpose. It's not there just somehow by chance." (11)

Tony Rothman (physicist): "When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the strange coincidences of nature, it's very tempting to take the leap of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit it." (12)

Vera Kistiakowsky (MIT physicist): "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." (13)

Robert Jastrow (self-proclaimed agnostic): "For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries." (14)

Stephen Hawking (British astrophysicist): "Then we shall… be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then we would know the mind of God." (15)

Frank Tipler (Professor of Mathematical Physics): "When I began my career as a cosmologist some twenty years ago, I was a convinced atheist. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that one day I would be writing a book purporting to show that the central claims of Judeo-Christian theology are in fact true, that these claims are straightforward deductions of the laws of physics as we now understand them. I have been forced into these conclusions by the inexorable logic of my own special branch of physics." (16)

Alexander Polyakov (Soviet mathematician): "We know that nature is described by the best of all possible mathematics because God created it."(17)

Ed Harrison (cosmologist): "Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God – the design argument of Paley – updated and refurbished. The fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of universes or design that requires only one.... Many scientists, when they admit their views, incline toward the teleological or design argument." (18)

Edward Milne (British cosmologist): "As to the cause of the Universe, in context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him [God]." (19)

Barry Parker (cosmologist): "Who created these laws? There is no question but that a God will always be needed." (20)

Drs. Zehavi, and Dekel (cosmologists): "This type of universe, however, seems to require a degree of fine tuning of the initial conditions that is in apparent conflict with 'common wisdom'." (21)

Arthur L. Schawlow (Professor of Physics at Stanford University, 1981 Nobel Prize in physics): "It seems to me that when confronted with the marvels of life and the universe, one must ask why and not just how. The only possible answers are religious. . . . I find a need for God in the universe and in my own life." (22)

Henry "Fritz" Schaefer (Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia): "The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it.' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." (23)

Wernher von Braun (Pioneer rocket engineer) "I find it as difficult to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science." (24)

Carl Woese (microbiologist from the University of Illinois) "Life in Universe - rare or unique? I walk both sides of that street. One day I can say that given the 100 billion stars in our galaxy and the 100 billion or more galaxies, there have to be some planets that formed and evolved in ways very, very like the Earth has, and so would contain microbial life at least. There are other days when I say that the anthropic principal, which makes this universe a special one out of an uncountably large number of universes, may not apply only to that aspect of nature we define in the realm of physics, but may extend to chemistry and biology. In that case life on Earth could be entirely unique." (25)

[jennyp]

Thanks, too bad ovrtaxt didn't respond. They said that they didn't believe in evolution because of all the things they knew about it. I was just wondering how much, in fact, they DID know.

[Ichneumon]

But here's a big problem I have with it- no empirical evidence.

Sure there is.

Never has it been demonstrated that an isolated population will mutate into a different species that can no longer breed with the larger population.

Sure it has (2), (3), (4), (5), (6), etc. etc. etc.

Sure, organisms adapt and change behaviors and characteristics, but on a cellular level, the proliferation of species is not explained by mutation.

You don't say... (2), (3), (4), etc.

Even a demonstration of how this works with simple life forms would suffice.

Here you go. (2), (3), (4), etc. etc.

With all the gene splicing that's coming along, I would think that evolutionists could produce results in the lab that support their position.

You mean like this, for example? HARNESSING THE POWER OF EVOLUTION TO CREATE NANOSCALE BIOSENSORS. Or how about: Directed evolution of a fucosidase from a galactosidase by DNA shuffling and screening. Or maybe: Outrunning Nature: Directed Evolution of Superior Biocatalysts. And so on.

Contrary to the claims of anti-evolutionists, evolution *works*.

[Ichneumon]

I think it fair to say that neither of us will convince the other to change our beliefs.

Not at all -- if you can provide sufficient evidence that my view is wrong or that yours is correct, I'll happily change my beliefs.

I do find it somewhat amusing that many here probably have decried how liberals immediately call conservaitves stupid and ignorant because we don`t share their social or political views and yet given the chance do the same.

What "social or political views" do you think are being discussed here? My post to you concerned your errors of *fact*, not social or political preferences.

Now I am a big boy and you can call me names all day long,it really does`nt matter to me and I don`t intend to reciprocate.

I didn't call you any names at all.

This is unfortunate because I suspect we probably agree on more things than we disagree on.

Probably so.

It is also obvious that I have offended you and for that I apologize.

You haven't offended me at all.

I do feel that the apparent need to lash out at me personally and attempt vilify me validates my point that there is a religious aspect to evolution.

How have I allegedly "vilified" you? And the closest I came to "lashing out at you personally" was to point out that you said a number of things which were mistaken, and I asked you if you wanted to reconsider your belief that you knew what you were talking about (on this subject, of course). I then asked you to put one of your beliefs to the test.

How in the heck does that qualify as "a religious aspect to evolution"?

Even if I had been much more aggressive in my reply, how would that demonstrate any "religious aspect" in my position? Is it really your contention that the only reason someone might get obnoxious is if they're doing so from a "religious" motivation? Are you sure you want to go there?

While it's true that science itself is usually (although not always) best performed dispassionately, that hardly means that someone defending a scientific position from attack is required to be inhumanly calm while doing so. Scientists are human too, and are just as likely as anyone else to get annoyed (or even downright p***ed off) when confronted with unfair attacks.

For example, let's turn the tables for a moment -- consider that no matter how calm and confident a theist might be in his faith, if someone barges into a theological discussion and smugly says something like, "you guys are idiots for not realizing that Adam couldn't have loaded Christ and the apostles onto his Ark...", we'd certainly understand if the theist was tempted to respond along the lines of, "listen, a**hole..."

I won`t pretend to know all details of PE but in general it theorizes that at certain times for unknown reasons evolution essentially ran amok.

No, sorry, it doesn't "theorize that". Honestly, even leaving the details aside, you shouldn't "pretend to know even the generalities of PE".

The reasons for fluctuations in the pace of evolution are hardly "unknown". They include population sizes, founder effects, genetic drift, extinctions, fortuitous genetic breakthroughs, varying selection pressures, and so on.

And even during periods of more rapid change evolution is not "running amok".

This results in a rapid evolutionary jump in species.

"Rapid" being a relative term, of course. It still doesn't happen overnight. We're still talking about hundreds of years, at the *very* least -- more often thousands.

This is to explain the lack of transitional species

Hardly, since there is no "lack of transitional species".

and why fossils of species suddenly appear in the rock strata.

No, that's most often caused by a species evolving in a limited geographic area (few biological events of any sort occur over entire regions of the planet), and then later its descendants spread further afield. In the lands migrated into, the new species will appear (in the fossil record) to have "suddenly appeared" there. In the same way, humans "suddenly appeared" in Australia tens of thousands of years ago, not because they were created there from scratch, but because that's when they spread to that continent from their afro-asian origins.

It is not an implausible theory but is still a theory.

Are you aware of how well supported a paradigm needs to be in science before it's considered "a theory"?

One final word.When I was in school dinosaurs were taught to be slow moving cold blooded reptiles.I suppose this was by comparing bone structure,tooth shape,etc and they compared to what we could observe in modern life.

Mostly the latter.

Now because of other similarities it is believed that birds evolved from dinosaurs. One problem was that birds are warm blooded so at least in part for this, dinosaurs are now believed to be perhaps warm blooded faster moving animals.

The cold-blooded view was held because of comparisons to other (still-living) reptiles, and before much other evidence was available on which to base a conclusion. But as evidence accumulated (and it has accumulated with exponential speed), it became apparent that the initial presumptions were mistaken, and today the issue of warm-blooded dinosaurs (at least some of them -- they're a very diverse family) is very well supported by many independent lines of evidence.

Science is always refining its knowledge and continually homing in closer and closer to the "right answers", in all their detailed complexity. I don't think anyone needs to apologize for that. I have no idea which is correct

As with most of science, the more recent views are more complete and accurate.

but my point is 30 years ago disagreement on the established scientific position was rejected as stupid or uneducated.

No, actually, it wasn't. Perhaps you'd care to try to support your assertion.

Fresh ideas and views are always welcome in science, just as long as they've not already been falsified by the evidence. Unfortunately for creationists, they're frequently trying to bring up attacks on evolution which have already been falsified -- some of which were falsified back in the EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, for pete's sake. So perhaps you'll begin to understand our exasperation whenever yet another person drops in eager to tell us "where we're wrong", using stuff that is *itself* flat wrong, and which was old the *first* forty or fifty times we heard it...

Now that scientific opinion has or is shifting from the earlier position any one disagreeing is once again declared stupid or uneducated.

Again, no, they're not.

I again won`t pretend to know all the evidence for the newer hypothesis but to some extent it seems to be to meld evolutionary theory.

Huh?

I simply don`t understand why on this issue any challenge to whatever the current thinking may be is rejected out of hand if it does not come from the position that evolution is an established fact beyond any question.

Look, feel free to challenge "current thinking" coming from some other position. There are no "dogma purity tests". But it *would* be nice if every once in a while the hordes who keep popping by to "disprove" evolution (or identify "holes" in it) knew what in the hell they were talking about. The number of people who *think* they understand enough about evolutionary biology to competently critique it, vastly exceeds the number of people who actually *do*. It's like watching a bunch of first-graders attempting to challenge the foundations of quantum physics. (And while I'm exaggerating there for effect, it's unfortunately not by much...)

I've got nothing with people asking questions, even challenging ones, as long as they're aware that they don't already have all the answers and might be able to learn something about the subject. But the arrogance of most anti-evolutionists is breathtaking. They seem to think they already have all the answers. They make sweeping, absolutist (but ironically incorrect) statements like, "Evolution cannot nor has been demonstrated by any means what so ever." Oh, wait, that was you, wasn't it?

Or they make insulting implications about the alleged unsavory motivations of people who believe in evolution, like, "Evolution is the religion of those who would elevate man above God." Oh, wait, that was you again, wasn't it?

I don`t know that this is a appropriate definition of science.

If it was actually practiced the way you think, you'd have a point, but since it isn't, you don't.

I don`t begrudge you or any others their opinions.

Nah, you just imply that we're stupid enough to believe something that "cannot nor has been demonstrated by any means what so ever", and that we do so because we want to "elevate man above God"... Gee, thanks.

I don`t care what you think of me personally.

I *know* what you think of *us* personally.

I do think we all deserve to be courteous to each other.

Then why don't you start?

[Ichneumon]

Nice try, but evolution - like the global warming scare, is not science, but a fraud perpetrated on us by virtually the same cast of characters.

LOL! Okay, this should be fun -- please present your evidence for your assertion(s).

Please support your claims that:

1. Evolution is not a science.

2. Evolution is a fraud.

3. Evolution is "perpetrated on us by virtually the same cast of characters" as "the global warming scare".

We'll wait.

[Ichneumon]

This stuff is just jibberjabber. It's laughable nonsense. The "DNA evidence" is a joke. It's like phrenology - some people had "scientic" jibberjabber to support that, too.

Ooookay...

(and then we wonder why some people come to the conclusion that conservatives are scientifically illiterate?)

Just for giggles, though, 185JHP, feel free to explain what exactly about the DNA evidence is a "joke" and "jibberjabber". (Note: It would help if you could demonstrate that you actually *understand* some of the many kinds of DNA analysis sufficiently well to have an informed opinion about whether they might actually be "jibberjabber" or not...)

[Just mythoughts]

[E's better hurry up cause that hour glass of "GOD's" time is nigh on to empty.]

"(Wow! Thanks for the warning. I was gonna go out and buy a couple of case of dog food for my dobies, but if time's that short, I guess I'll just spend the dough on some Viagra and go out with a flourish.)"

"In the appendix of James Randi's book, "The Mask of Nostrodamus", there's a *looong*, hilarious list of all the times and places that the end of the world was confidently and publicly predicted to be "real soon now" -- usually with specific dates predicted. The list of *hundreds* of "the end is night" predictions spanned over several thousand years. Needless to say, unless I missed something the world failed to end at the appointed times."


Ah, but note I did not appoint a TIME I said in "GOD's" TIME, we are told we would not know the day, but the season.

The king of Babylon has not yet played his latest role.

[Ichneumon]

You could share the DNA because we all were created by God, who started with some common DNA.

Actually, the key evidence is not simply that we "share" some DNA, but the exact *nature* of the matches and mismatches in all their detail.

The details of DNA comparisons are extremely indicative of an evolutionary origin, not a design origin. Or as a Freeper once said, not without justification, "if DNA is the result of design, the designer must have been drunk." There are a lot of features in DNA which no sane designer would have put in there, but which make perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint. For just one example, there are genetic "scars" of ancient retroviral infections, shared across "kinds" which were allegedly separately created.

The DNA in each organism on Earth is a massive "book", which contains megabytes to gigabytes of information telling its biological story, including ancestral changes. Now that DNA sequencing has become routine on an industrial scale in the past few years, the amount of detail being learned from DNA has reached the proportions of a Niagara Falls of new knowledge about evolution.

[Ichneumon]

Proof posiive that bright men can make incredibly dumbass statements. Einstein has both feet planted firmly in the air on that statement.

Really? In what way, exactly?

[Just mythoughts]

[When were the souls created.... note God said "Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness. Who is the US and the OUR????]


"I'd say it's an example of the "royal we"."

"The reason behind the pluralis majestatis is the idea that a monarch or other high official always speaks for his/her people."

Interesting thought there now isn't it.

This does not answer the question of "when were the souls created"? The E crowd never addresses this either they are completely obsessed with their flesh.

[Ichneumon]

Gravity can be intuitively understood (or experienced!) from everyday life... Think falling down a flight of stairs, or dropping your pencil.

Evolutionary theory cannot be so easily demonstrated.

True, but neither can atomic theory, yet we don't have folks running around denouncing it on nearly every science thread or forming local chapters of the "Anti-Atomic League".

Nor does that invalidate the statement that evolution is "as valid or demonstrable as the fact of gravity" -- it is. Both can be validated and demonstrated to anyone who cares to pay attention for a bit with an open mind. Likewise for atomic theory, and so on.

For that matter, gravity isn't all that trivial to demonstrate either. Sure, you can show that "things fall down", but that doesn't necessarily prove *gravity* (remember the old joke, "there's no gravity, the Earth sucks"). Establishing *gravity* is not so simple. Recall that it took Isaac Newton to make the realization that a universal force proportional to mass and inversely proportional to the square of the distance was at work on both falling apples, *and* celestial bodies, and that it took Galileo to realize that contrary to intuition (and discounting air resistance) heavy objects fell just as fast as lighter ones (and why). Parabolic ballistic arcs are a direct result of gravity, and yet the great Aristotle believed that a thrown object travels in a straight line to the top of its trajectory, then loses all momentum and plummets straight down.

Actually demonstrating gravity, its properties, its universality, and its consequences is not something that can be done in a few minutes, or is immediately obvious from day-to-day experiences with falling objects (or falling people). And yet it *can* be validted and demonstrated given enough time. And so can evolution.

For that matter, the driving forces of evolution are *far* better understood than the root cause of gravity. Physicists are still pretty much 100% in the dark about whence gravity springs, or how it exerts its force, or how fast it is propagated, etc.

[Ichneumon]

Gravity can be intuitively understood (or experienced!) from everyday life...

...and yet a lot of people still get it wrong. ;-)

As a followup to my previous post, I'd like to post this very relevant link I just discovered: Naive Theories of Motion. Apparently even college students are often unclear on the elementary behavior of objects in motion and under the effects of gravity...

[Ichneumon]

This does not answer the question of "when were the souls created"?

Define "soul" as you are using it in this question, and I'll take a stab at it.

The E crowd never addresses this either

Sure we do.

they are completely obsessed with their flesh.

Do you actually believe this nonsense?

Clue: If I were "completely obsessed with my flesh", why would I spend time posting on these threads, for example?

[Ichneumon]

[E's better hurry up cause that hour glass of "GOD's" time is nigh on to empty.]

Ah, but note I did not appoint a TIME I said in "GOD's" TIME, we are told we would not know the day, but the season.

Oh, come now. You said more than that, you said that the "hour glass ... is nigh on to empty". You were clearly saying that the time was getting close, not just that it would happen in "GOD's TIME", whenever that might be...

[Havoc]

"It pains me to suggest that my religious brothers are telling falsehoods" when they say evolutionary theory is "in crisis" and claim that there is widespread skepticism about it among scientists. "Such statements are blatantly untrue," he argues; "evolution has stood the test of time and considerable scrutiny."

This is pure bunk. Evolution has not withstood the test of time as he says and doesn't hold up under scrutiny.. that's for starters. As soon as you start poking at it, the theories many holes become apparent. Given the theory is written on crepe paper to begin with, poking holes has pretty serious consequences.

[Just mythoughts]

[This does not answer the question of "when were the souls created"?]

"Define "soul" as you are using it in this question, and I'll take a stab at it."


Hebrew word nephesh -soul- life as used "breath of life".

[The E crowd never addresses this either]

"Sure we do."

[they are completely obsessed with their flesh.]

"Do you actually believe this nonsense?"

"Clue: If I were "completely obsessed with my flesh", why would I spend time posting on these threads, for example?"

I have yet to read one offering by an self identified E describing the E's theory of the soul.

[Havoc]

As a Catholic, I don't feel obliged to believe that God created the universe 6,000 years ago.

As a Christian, I do feel obliged. And for some fairly obvious reasons. This is the differnece between Christianity and those who model themselves after it - including many protestant sects. Those who are just playing religion, have no grounding, no understanding of authority for their beliefs and thusly don't understand or care about the impact of undermining said authority. The only authority to them is their clergy and feelings - that is cultic - not Christian. And it's a most dangerous ground to be standing on.

[Havoc]

I have no problem whatsoever with evolution. The Bible tells the "why" and science the "how."

Then you know nothing of the Biblical account. Evolution literally labels the Scripture a lie on its face. There is no reconciling the two.

Scripture says Death came to the world because of the sin of man. Evolution contradicts that on it's face. Therein is the entire basis for the Old and new covenants. And that's only one point where evolution contradicts scripture; but, in one swoop, it's destroyed the need for a sacrificial system for the Children of Israel and subsequently for a Savior for all of us. You are decieved, ignorant of scripture, or a liar. I don't know which; but, I'd recommend remedying it. Grace & Peace