Posted on 04/22/2005 4:21:47 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Evolution found a home Thursday in the oldest church in Kansas during a forum about the controversy over science instruction for public school students.
"There is no conflict between evolution and the Christian faith," said the Rev. Peter Luckey, the senior pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church, 925 Vt.
Luckey was preaching to the choir during a five-hour forum that featured scientists, teachers and politicians who argued in favor of teaching students evolution because it is the foundation of science, knowledge of which will be needed to compete for jobs in the growing bioscience industry.
About 75 people attended the forum at Plymouth, which was founded in 1854 and was the first established church in the Kansas Territory. Attempts to inject intelligent design -- the notion that there is a master planner for all life -- into science class should be rejected, they said.
"Intelligent design is nothing but creationism in a cheap tuxedo," said Leonard Krishtalka, director of the Kansas University Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center.
‘Think critically'
The forum was another round in the debate that has thrust Kansas on the national stage.
With control of the State Board of Education in conservative hands [AAARRGGHHH!!], state officials again will consider science standards that will guide teachers.
A committee of scientists has drafted standards that include evolution teaching, but a minority report, led by proponents of intelligent design, wants criticism of evolution included. A State Board of Education committee, comprising three conservative [AARRGHH!!] board members, plans six days of hearings that will revolve around that debate.
The speakers at Thursday's forum were adamant that evolution instruction not be reduced, watered down or dumbed down.
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' science adviser, Lee Allison, said when the state approved a $500 million bioscience initiative, it included a provision to recruit top scholars who met the standards of the National Academy of Sciences, which supports evolution without equivocation.
"The state really has taken a position on this in a broad, bipartisan way," Allison said.
Charles Decedue, executive director of the Higuchi Biosciences Center, said teaching evolution was critical because bioscience companies want to locate in places where the work force has received a solid education in chemistry, physics and biology.
"They want people who can think critically," he said.
‘Hayseed state'
Andrew Stangl, a Kansas University sophomore, said his high school science teachers in his hometown of Andover refused to teach evolution.
He bought books and taught himself. He said fear of teaching evolution would hurt the United States in the long term. "I don't want to see other countries pass us by. We are going to economically suffer as a result," he said.
In 1999, Kansas made international news, much of it negative, when a conservative [AARRGGHH!!] board de-emphasized evolution. The 2000 election returned moderates to power, and evolution was reinstated. But with conservatives [AARRGGHH!!] back in control, international criticism was starting again, several panelists said.
Rachel Robson, a doctoral candidate at KU Medical Center, said one of her friends was applying for a job with a Japanese company, and the company officials made fun of Kansas and questioned whether good scientists could come from there.
Thursday's forum attracted national attention from National Public Radio and NBC.
Krishtalka said even though the battle over evolution was going on in several states, "Kansas will be tarred and feathered by the media as the hayseed state."
Carol and Tom Banks, of Prairie Village, attended the forum, saying they were getting tired of conservatives [AARRGGHH!!] controlling the political agenda.
"If intelligent design were taught, that would be teaching religion in public schools," Carol Banks said.
But Jerry Manweiler, a physicist from Lawrence, said he supported teaching intelligent design. "It's important to know the theory of evolution, but it's also important to understand the nature of God," he said. Manweiler said he was put off by the forum speakers' "lack of humility."
Don Covington, vice president of networking for Intelligent Design Network Inc., said he disagreed with the speakers.
"They want their kids to know how to think, but you can't develop critical thinking skills when you tell them to memorize Darwin," he said.
• May 5-7: Science standards hearings in auditorium of Memorial building, 120 S.W. 10th St., Topeka. Time to be determined later.
• May 12-14: Science standards hearings, time and location to be determined later.
And then you said: This is a baseless assertion, and almost certainly false. Let's just say that every time it has been put to the test it has failed. Perhaps you could cite an example to the contrary.
Okay, but this will be more an analogy than the "example" you are looking for. For you are looking for something that you can prove, the underlying assumption being, I gather, that only that which lends itself to direct physical test can be "real." Which implicitly reduces reality to only its physical aspect, and so begs the question of what is real.
Notwithstanding, take the example of a book, any book at all. Books typically have lots of words in them and pictures, too, sometimes. Those words and pictures are not spontaneous, emergent properties of the physico-chemical constituents of the book materials -- i.e., paper, ink. Neither are their meanings derivative from such properties. The source of their meanings is not physical at all.
Just think about that for a bit, and draw your own conclusions. I have to run for now, but hope to be back shortly.
Right. Good observation. Which is precisely why ID is regarded as a joke among scientists.
Every science has unanswered problems. Such problems are the stuff that PhD dissertations are all about. That's how science advances. If you took a list of the topics being worked on by grad students in the biological sciences (or any other sciences) you'd see a great catalog of unanswered problems. They're being worked on -- using the scientific method.
The gradual progress of the sciences in working on such problems can be seen merely by glancing at the table of contents of any professional, peer-reviewed journal. Such as-yet unanswered questions are gradually being answered. By scientists -- the only people who are equipped to provide the answers. That's how it works.
But elsewhere, far from the places where science is done, a few unanswered questions (and some that have already been answered) are being touted by public relations con-men, or they're being presented to woefully ignorant school boards, with arbitrarily proclaimed, non-testable answers, as an alternative "theory" amounting to a "controversy" for the children to decide.
The contrast between the activities in the sciences (on the one hand) and the hocus-pocus, flim-flam, mumbo-jumbo, buy-my-anti-evo-tapes world of creationism/ID (on the other hand) is so strikingly obvious that it doesn't require any elaboration.
Wrong level of analysis. They are the emergent properties of the physical books, the people who wrote them, and the culture in which the people were born and educated. All of these components are emobdied. There are no invisible or undetectable force fields or spooky mumbo-jumbo.
Don't accuse science of reductionism, when it is you who are unable or unwilling to adapt your level of analysis to the task at hand.
A perfect post to test drive the new "Cosmology Ping List" graphic! It's a bit bigger than I would like (in terms of file size), but putting everything in the JPEG basket is much easier than an JPEG/HTML combo platter. I might convert it to a GIF, which would shrink the file size by about a third, but my photo space on the web doesn't accept GIF's--some bizzare software limitation.
Freep mail me if you want on/off the Cosmology ping list.
The key to betty boop's essay is Cosmology not the "catalog of unanswered problems" for the very reason that the problems are not altogether compartmentalized.
As a metaphor, we might imagine the monitor display missing a pixel here and there - or groups of pixels - mysteries in scientific knowledge which beg for resolution. This is the object of science journals and PhD dissertations as you say.
But what if the entire screen were missing a primary color altogether? The image would be faithful but not True.
Have you ever printed something on your color printer when one of the ink cartridges went empty? That is the difference, IMHO. It's not that you can't see at all, but that you cannot see truly.
The Intelligent Design catalogue primarily features this missing context of an intelligent designer (structure, primary principle) which illuminates everything else - both what is known and what is not yet known.
I wish I could hang around and participate this afternoon - but, sigh, I must be off to assist in finishing work again. LOL! I'll catch up this evening, though.
I'm not getting the conceptual difference between the missing pixel and the missing color.
Are you saying that scientists generally have a great guffaw when it is pointed out to them that there are serious questions they have not answered? And that there is some likelihood that the answers to such questions are critically important to the future development of their own work? Seems a most cavalier, closed-minded, arrogant attitude, PH -- a certain lack of seriousness, of curiosity, of humility, seems evident in such a reaction.
Why do you suppose that scientists are "the only people who are equipped to provide the answers?" Answers about what?
Let's put it this way: If all that there is, is the physical, and only the physical, then I could be persuaded by your statement. But you cannot prove that the "accident" of physicality exhausts all phenomena in the Universe, actualized or potential; and not only that, but my own experiences/observations suggest a different conclusion.
Therefore, I am forced to conclude that your statement is an expression of faith -- in a materialist/physicalist cosmology. But you do not prove anything, you make an assertion that can neither be falsified nor confirmed on an experimental basis.
The scientific method is constrained to make physical observations, in principle. So are you saying that it is wholly legitimate for scientists to "answer" that ONLY physical objects exist, just because their method cannot engage anything that is not physical? And then you tell me the scientific method is the only legitimate tool for understanding "all that there is?"
There's something quite irrational about this line of reasoning.... or so it seems to me; FWIW. But maybe someday you'll explain it all to me (including why it isn't irrational) dear Patrick; and I will "get it." :^) So keep trying! Thanks so much for writing!
What I find more interesting is the missing concept and missing memory of color in people who have had brain damage -- people who were born with color vision.
But that would imply that the concept of color is embodied in the eye and brain. Otherwise, if the mind were in a remote location, the lack of color would subjectively resemble looking at a black and white photograph.
In the mean time, try putting this URL in your browser's address bar and see if that helps:
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/127/1066/1024/CosmoGraphic4.jpg
Scientists don't laugh because there are unanswered questions. They laugh when people suggest bogus and unproductive ways of approaching these questions. They laugh when people suggest that perfectly ordinary questions, like the structure and behavior of the brain, are declared off limits to scientific methodologies.
Access denied placemark
Nope. Not at all what I said. Rather, what I was trying to get across was that unanswered questions are routine. They're expected. They're well recognized. They're the agenda of working scientists. They are NOT some astounding discovery that the ID folks have stumbled onto. So when they (the ID people) leap up and down as if they've uncovered a big secret, then yes, their behavior is a joke.
Seems a most cavalier, closed-minded, arrogant attitude, PH -- a certain lack of seriousness, of curiosity, of humility, seems evident in such a reaction.
Okay.
Why do you suppose that scientists are "the only people who are equipped to provide the answers?" Answers about what?
Because people who are not educated in the sciences just don't have the training and experience. Is this notion really all that difficult?
Let's put it this way: If all that there is, is the physical, and only the physical, then I could be persuaded by your statement.
Yes, of course. But I've never claimed that. And on numerous occasions in the past I've specifically dis-claimed that proposition.
But you cannot prove that the "accident" of physicality exhausts all phenomena in the Universe, actualized or potential;
True. I wouldn't attempt such a proof. Those who assert that there's more than that which is in evidence have the burden of coming forward with verifiable evidence. This is rather basic.
... and not only that, but my own experiences/observations suggest a different conclusion.
I don't deny it. But my experiences are different from yours, so we have a bit of a Mexican standoff. This is why objectively verifiable evidence is so highly prised in such investigations, as it provides a method for resolving such conflicts.
Therefore, I am forced to conclude that your statement is an expression of faith -- in a materialist/physicalist cosmology.
I don't think so. All I'm saying is that I don't see any objectively verifiable evidence for another cosmology.
But you do not prove anything, you make an assertion that can neither be falsified nor confirmed on an experimental basis.
I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm looking for objectively verifiable evidence.
The scientific method is constrained to make physical observations, in principle.
Yes.
So are you saying that it is wholly legitimate for scientists to "answer" that ONLY physical objects exist, just because their method cannot engage anything that is not physical?
I don't think that's what's being said. But scientific answers, of necessity, must be expressed in terms of the physical world. Those are the only answers which are scientific. Any others are philosophy.
And then you tell me the scientific method is the only legitimate tool for understanding "all that there is?"
For the material world, yes. But I don't claim that's "all there is." Merely that it's all science can work with. For spiritual matters, science is entirely useless.
There's something quite irrational about this line of reasoning.... or so it seems to me; FWIW. But maybe someday you'll explain it all to me (including why it isn't irrational) dear Patrick; and I will "get it." :^) So keep trying!
Yes, I'll keep trying.
And can we use the telescope or the microscope in an investigation of what we mean by "culture?" Is culture a physical object amenable to direct scientific test? How would you fit it into the lab?
To me, a better model of the idea of culture would be collective consciousness. Now it has been argued that consciousness is the epiphenomenon of the physical brain. But this would seem to refer to a discrete brain, producing an epiphenomenon. When the epiphenomenon, however, has achieved a mass effect, are we to attribute this to a mass collection of discrete brains? If so, how many brains would be sufficient to explain the effect? Are we going to herd them all into the laboratory, hook 'em up to EEGs, and imagine we can come up with a result that explains what mass consciousness is? Do you think it is an additive thing -- one brain's epiphenomenon added up with those of all the other brains -- such that it can be shown to be a simple cumulative effect? How would all these brains "connect" such that they recognize the common elements of the culture, and agree that they are common?
And if it is a simple cumulative effect of presently-living brains, then how do we explain the persistency of culture over time? Or explain how we can get an idea of even cultures that have been long dead, whose resonances no longer have direct effects in our world? Is the loss of cultural influence due to the fact that the "brains" whose epiphenomenon the culture is are no longer alive?
And yet we know there have been cultures that have survived for millennia. What is the interest of discrete, physical brains in their persistence, such that they do, in fact, persist?
Now for the people who write the books -- are they epiphenomena of their brains, too? What's in it for the brain to write a book in the first place? Especially, why would a "brain" write a work of fiction? Or choose to write poetry? Or create a work of art?
Do you really think it is brains per se that do all these things?
Questions, questions. Can your "analytical model" handle them? Or should we simply disregard such questions, forbid them altogether? But if we do, would that help to make our world more intelligible?
You do have a knack for seeing the forest and wondering where the tree are, and vice versa.
why would you discuss telescopes and microscopes in the context of studying culture? I know you are not stupid, so I can only assume you are being belligerent.
I see no evidence of colletive consciousness, other than as a metaphor. If it were something other than a metaphor then it could be studied with the appropriate analytical tools. Are you suggesting something along the lines of ESP?
Brains do not write books, at least no so far. People write books, and brains are a component part of people. So far, no one lacking a brain has written a book. And some people are born missing the cortex, and so far, none of them have written books.
Yes it is, PH. It is difficult to accept that you believe that only "trained and educated" people can know anything about reality. Sheesh, you have just confirmed my suspicion that in certain scientific quarters, science has become the Holy Writ of a class of High Priests; and the "profane" had just better keep their mitts off. :^)
Still, it seems to me science does not hold the monopoly on knowledge of the real. Even uneducated people must know something reliable about the world every now or then. Otherwise, they'd probably all die young. Plus I could point out that this great nation of ours was not discovered, explored, and finally settled by a bunch of Harvard dons.
Must get back to work for now. I'll be back in a bit and finish my reply to your last as soon as I can. Meanwhile, thanks for writing!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.