Ayatollahs in the classroom [Evolution and Creationism]

Berkshire Eagle (Mass.) ^ | 22 January 2005 | Staff

[PatrickHenry]

A movement to drag the teaching of science in the United States back into the Dark Ages continues to gain momentum. So far, it's a handful of judges -- "activist judges" in the view of their critics -- who are preventing the spread of Saudi-style religious dogma into more and more of America's public-school classrooms.

The ruling this month in Georgia by Federal District Judge Clarence Cooper ordering the Cobb County School Board to remove stickers it had inserted in biology textbooks questioning Darwin's theory of evolution is being appealed by the suburban Atlanta district. Similar legal battles pitting evolution against biblical creationism are erupting across the country. Judges are conscientiously observing the constitutionally required separation of church and state, and specifically a 1987 Supreme Court ruling forbidding the teaching of creationism, a religious belief, in public schools. But seekers of scientific truth have to be unnerved by a November 2004 CBS News poll in which nearly two-thirds of Americans favored teaching creationism, the notion that God created heaven and earth in six days, alongside evolution in schools.

If this style of "science" ever took hold in U.S. schools, it is safe to say that as a nation we could well be headed for Third World status, along with everything that dire label implies. Much of the Arab world is stuck in a miasma of imam-enforced repression and non-thought. Could it happen here? Our Constitution protects creativity and dissent, but no civilization has lasted forever, and our current national leaders seem happy with the present trends.

It is the creationists, of course, who forecast doom if U.S. schools follow a secularist path. Science, however, by its nature, relies on evidence, and all the fossil and other evidence points toward an evolved human species over millions of years on a planet tens of millions of years old [ooops!] in a universe over two billion years in existence [ooops again!].

Some creationists are promoting an idea they call "intelligent design" as an alternative to Darwinism, eliminating the randomness and survival-of-the-fittest of Darwinian thought. But, again, no evidence exists to support any theory of evolution except Charles Darwin's. Science classes can only teach the scientific method or they become meaningless.

Many creationists say that teaching Darwin is tantamount to teaching atheism, but most science teachers, believers as well as non-believers, scoff at that. The Rev. Warren Eschbach, a professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pa., believes that "science is figuring out what God has already done" and the book of Genesis was never "meant to be a science textbook for the 21st century." Rev. Eschbach is the father of Robert Eschbach, one of the science teachers in Dover, Pa., who refused to teach a school-board-mandated statement to biology students criticizing the theory of evolution and promoting intelligent design. Last week, the school district gathered students together and the statement was read to them by an assistant superintendent.

Similar pro-creationist initiatives are underway in Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina. And a newly elected creationist majority on the state board of education in Kansas plans to rewrite the entire state's science curriculum this spring. This means the state's public-school science teachers will have to choose between being scientists or ayatollahs -- or perhaps abandoning their students and fleeing Kansas, like academic truth-seekers in China in the 1980s or Tehran today.

[spunkets]

Recessive is used here also.

[VadeRetro]

I think that Southack, on any other kind of thread, would be calling the NAS a bunch of pink pantied, kiche munching commie libs. He was desperate to find a way out of the corner. I have to say I admire his google skills. I have not found a single other instance of the word recessive used in reference to bacteria.

I was being sarcastic, of course. Silly game, trying to use science articles to prove that science actually disproves what science tells us. Morton's Demon, the ultimate in selective filtering technology, has to put in some serious overtime.

[JohnnyM]

"please cite"

Gen 1:27 God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

This was part of the creation account of the sixth day.

JM

[js1138]

Recessive is used here also.

OK, I'm learning, but I still haven't seen a use of the word recessive that supports Southack's argument that the trait was already present.

[PatrickHenry]

Silly game, trying to use science articles to prove that science actually disproves what science tells us.

Similar to using bogus Darwin quotes to discredit Darwin's theory.

[Right Wing Professor]

! And remember kiddies, Darwinian racist theology was the guiding principle behind Nazism and its euthanasia policies, and is also the primary principle of Communism's "new man" theology.

Really.

Funny, the man most responsible for Nazi-ism said different.

"My feelings as a Christian point me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To-day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people."

-Adolf Hitler, in a speech on 12 April 1922

Nazis and Communists also often used the tactics of accusing their political opponents of mental illness, drunkeness or drug use.

Yet Germany and Russia contained plenty of real nutcases. So does Free Republic.

[VadeRetro]

Yet Germany and Russia contained plenty of real nutcases. So does Free Republic.

They laughed at Einstein.
They laughed at Galileo.
But they also laughed at Bozo.

[nasamn777]

So in conclusion, the Ayatollahs in the Classroom are the lefties bent on propagating Neo-Darwinian evolution at the expense of science. These Hitlers distort the evidence, put up straw men, blacklist creditable scientists, and seek to monopolize academia by brute force. It is time to challenge these folks and put science back into the classroom.

[Thatcherite]

I'll hold my hand up and say something that you will hardly ever hear a creationist say on these boards, "I was wrong"

When I said that no amount of handwaving could explain away the simple geometrical arguments for SN1987A I wasn't anticipating how clever and inventive your handwaving could be.

The "curvature of space" argument is not applicable (too small an effect over a mere 187kLY to significantly change the geometry), but only because of other knowledge that is not as simply explained as the simple geometry.

Likewise we can see that earths velocity relative to SN1987A has not been sufficient to shrink 187kyears that the light has been in transit to 6kyears subjective on earth but we can only demonstrate this by recourse to more complicated arguments than the simple geometrical one.

Further, if this were an argument about the distance to SN1987A rather than whether it can be handwaved away then I would require you to substantiate your suggestions about how it could be closer with math and evidence, but that is not really what the discussion is about.

So congratulations. I was wrong.

However, as I am sure you are aware, astronomical confidence in a gigantic, ancient universe rests on rather more than just SN1987A, in fact the distance to the Magellanic Clouds had already been measured at ~180kLY by around 1940 using a different technique; and we can see other objects that appear to be up to ~100,000x further away. Astronomers use some 30 different techniques that I am aware of to measure the distance of distant objects and these techniques give correlating answers so confidence is high. Further we can see that the universe consists of something like 10^22 suns IIRC (unless those distant things that look like galaxies and occasionally have stars go supernova in them aren't galaxies really) and there simply isn't room for them all to be within ~6000LY.

If you are interested in the logic and assumptions behind methods of dating the earth you may find this web-page interesting.

[Thatcherite]

Oops, typed the URL wrong somehow, sorry. Here is a page about methods for dating the earth.

[JohnnyM]

"Evidently you've never spent time in the wilderness where mists abound."

Genesis 9
12 God said, "This is the sign of the covenant which I am making between Me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all successive generations;
13 I set My bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a sign of a covenant between Me and the earth.
14 It shall come about, when I bring a cloud over the earth, that the bow will be seen in the cloud,
15 and I will remember My covenant, which is between Me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and never again shall the water become a flood to destroy all flesh.
16 When the bow is in the cloud, then I will look upon it, to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.
17 And God said to Noah, "This is the sign of the covenant which I have established between Me and all flesh that is on the earth."

Three times God mentions a bow in the clouds. That is distinctly different than something happening in a mist close to the ground.

As to the DOD thing, are you referring to the Garden of Eden and the Angel that was gaurding it? I would imagine that it was destroyed in the Flood. There is no need to guard the entrance to Eden if it no longer exists.

JM

[nasamn777]

Further we can see that the universe consists of something like 10^22 suns IIRC (unless those distant things that look like galaxies and occasionally have stars go supernova in them aren't galaxies really) and there simply isn't room for them all to be within ~6000LY.

Who is to say that our current value of "c" is the same as at the beginning? Could it be that C(to) = 1e10 * C(t2005)

[Thatcherite]

Who is to say that our current value of "c" is the same as at the beginning? Could it be that C(to) = 1e10 * C(t2005)

No, there is no evidence for your proposition, and substantial evidence against it.

[nasamn777]

Perhaps you could provide some evidence against this proposition.

Here is a possible equation for the speed of light:

c(t) = 2.9979e18*e^(-4.60517e-4 * t) [m/s]

where t is in years

[Thatcherite]

Without studying your proposition in detail it looks like some kind of exponential decay function.

Such a function comes against considerable problems (ie it is falsified) with distant objects of known distance and duration (like the spin of a pulsar or the decay of isotopes), since we do not see the time for those events lengthening as they should do were the light travelling from them to have slowed down on its journey. Instead the perceived time for those events lengthens by the very much smaller amount predicted by the red-shift of the expanding 14 billion yo universe and mainstream einsteinian theory. Also you cannot just alter c without having all kinds of other effects. c does not exist in isolation. We cannot see any such effects when we look into the past.

Here is a fuller exposition of the problems for the argument that light slowed down on its journey if you are interested. Basically the premise doesn't hold up against critical examination. The only predictions it makes are falsified.

[unlearner]

I think, in principle, it is the job of parents, not the government, to educate children. This issue is no different.

Personally, I think it is good for children to at least have a basic exposure to the ideas of evolution. This is not because I agree with them, but because so many people do. This means that the theory has cultural significance.

But the big picture that a lot of conservatives are missing is that there are people with a political agenda who would like to use this or any other tool at their disposal to assault the religious and moral values of children in the schools.

If someone believes in evolution (as an origination of species and man particularly), then we can agree to disagree. But there is a larger issue of principle here. Who gets to control the children's education?

[nasamn777]

I think it is premature to write it off. Cosmologists use concepts such as dark matter and dark energy to explain the universe. These concepts are introduced because the known theories are incomplete. Perhaps with further investigation Creationists will be able to explain it. Even if the Creationists are wrong, it forces scientists to think outside the box enabling science to develop -- which is a good thing.

[unlearner]

That is very generous of you.

The math necessary to calculate relative time of astral bodies defies the comprehension of most mortals (myself included).

The fact that time elapses at different rates relative to things like velocity and space curvature leads me to believe there is room for reasonable doubt as to the veracity of the assumption that the earth is ancient. This might appear to defy logic on the surface, but so does general relativity.

Further, without a widely accepted unified field theory (that has held up in light of experimentation) I hold that other factors could POSSIBLY have a significant bearing on our calculation of time and distance in the universe.

I read recently how that astronomers were baffled at what, as I recall, was a galaxy of a determined size and distance that CONTAINED a solar system that was much further away than the galaxy in which it resided. Possibly this was due to a miscalculation. But it also underscores the fact that we do not fully understand some of the most basic forces of our universe.

Due to collaborative efforts and cumulative learning, an unprecedented amount of information is at our disposal. It is overwhelming. Learning today is akin to drinking out of a fire hydrant. The consequence of this I think is an overestimation of our knowledge.

It is like a child who supposes that after learning to read and do basic math equations they have knowledge superior to most grownups. Or maybe it is as if a time traveler deposited some simple artifact like a digital calculator in the sixteenth century. And then, a scientist of that day proceeded to remove the battery. He might discover that upon removing and restoring the battery, the calculator would cease or begin working. He might wrongly conclude that it is the battery that makes the calculator work. We would laugh, but he might be quite proud of himself for his cleverness in figuring this out.

We do not know enough about our universe to draw ABSOLUTE conclusions. It might be fair to say that observation leads us to conclude that the universe appears to be ancient or the earth appears to be ancient.

But many people feel we should go beyond this and say that the issue is beyond reconsidering. It is a fact. Well it is a "fact" as long as certain axioms that are presupposed continue to withstand further scrutiny.

I do not think it is disingenuous to hold that a biblical young earth contradicting a scientifically (observed) ancient one implies that the Bible must be wrong or that God was somehow fooling us. I hear that argument often that this view means God somehow tricked us into thinking the earth and universe are ancient by making it appear so. The same argument could have been made centuries ago in favor of a flat earth. Why would God trick us into making the earth appear flat if indeed it is not? Perhaps the same thing applies to our perception of the age of the universe. (Notwithstanding that some who held the flat earth position were claiming this to be Biblical. And those who are arguing for an ancient universe and earth are not doing so based on the Bible.)

I guess I am saying that keeping an open mind is the most scientific thing someone can do. Science must defer to faith when it comes to the rationale of the premise or axioms upon which its theories are based.

For example, most scientific theories assume that the laws of nature work the same in all places at all times. They have not changed. Now, this is in fact impossible to prove. However, it is also a reasonable premise. It is possible that some day a unified field theory will explain how the number of dimensions, laws of gravity and electromagnetism, and other fundamentals derive from a single principle. We might then discover that, at earlier stages in the universe, matter took on a quite different form than now and the laws we rely on did not apply.

I will bookmark your link and explore it when I have more time. Thanks for sending it. I am truly interested in learning more about the dating techniques. Perhaps later we can discuss them further.

[unlearner]

"Bottom line, you violated the rules of debating AND stated a false assumption."

If my assumptions are false, then you are free to challenge them. It is important to clarify what both parties assume. If possible, it is best if both sides can agree to a certain premise, even if for no other purpose than to test its validity.

You do not have to believe the Bible literally or figuratively. You may not like how I or others interpret it. But it is unreasonable to insist that others must be bound by your way of interpreting it.

The Bible contains many things that are hard to understand. It also contains some things that are very simple. If someone wants to understand the Bible it is best to understand the simple things first.

The starting point is understanding how that Jesus is central to all of the meaning of the Bible. It is all about Him.

The gospel contains the simplest and most essential message of what God wants mankind to know. It proclaims that Jesus dies for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day. It includes God's command that all men, everywhere, repent and believe this message.

After a person takes this first step, they will be equipped to understand the Bible better.

[unlearner]

Pointing out the FACT that not everyone agrees with evolutionary theory will help and not hurt the children learning about origins of life. Pointing out the FACT that many people believe life was designed rather than came about randomly is not cramming anyone's ideas "down the throat of schools".

It is simply opinion. If you do not think it should be debated, why are you debating it now? Do you think we need an educational Tali-ban to beat or stone any dissenters of evolution?

I was under the impression that keeping an open mind was the most scientific thing someone could do.