Posted on 05/03/2005 2:12:35 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Well, I understand they don't occur in the wild - nature surely isn't THAT unpredictable!
As a former college prof, I would suggest that there are many reasons: cultural distaste for science, inclination of student (and teachers) to be lazy, lack of funding (for teaching, not for school systems), lack of policy (nationally, locally), etc.
The creationists and their soulmate postmoderndeconstructionists get their attacks on science amplified by the ignorance of the politicians.
But aren't the majority of politicians college grads??? Many from Ivy League schools? Hmmmm.
Absolutely.
Not many science grads.
"Small" detail: science students take the same history, economics, language etc. classes as the non-science students.
Non-science students get carefully designed "science for poets" classes.
Non-science students also take far fewer science type classes than science students take non-science classes
I don't have any evidence whatsoever, because I am not sure what processes led to the formation of the first living organism. However, were the processes leading to the first organism similar to those that drive evolution (they can't be the same, since there would be no mutation in a pre-biotic chemical aggregate) the origin of life is still logically separated from the theory of evolution.
Think of it this way. Suppose God created the first living cell by speaking it into existence. Does that mean that the natural selection of mutations that this cell underwent could not have happened? Suppose the first cell came from outer space. Does this imply that mutations could not have occurred when this cell reproduced? Does this imply that natural selection could not have occurred? Suppose the first cell is the result of some natural process occurring on the pre-biotic earth. Could mutations not occur when this cell reproduces? Could natural selection not weed out the undesirable ones and propogate the desirable ones?
In short, it makes absolutely no difference where this first living cell comes from. In any case implicit in calling it alive, is the notion that it can reproduce itself. We know that living things reproduce imperfect copies of themselves. We know that natural selection weeds out the variants that cannot survive well and causes those that can survive well to become the dominant variation. The source of the cell says nothing about its behavior after it has been formed.
Do you realize you just demanded empirical evidence of genesis from me? Even Nobel Prize winning biologists understand hypotheses proposed about the origin of life are speculative. The next thing you know, some creationist is going to say that after having my eye teeth pulled I reluctantly admitted that science does not, in fact, know how life began despite the best efforts to hide it.
It is not just simply stremba's or my logical distinction. Limiting the scope of study is an integral part of scientific investigation. Through the use of modern DNA sequencing technology, we can directly observe genetic markers travel through populations of bacteria over time. In this sense, evolution is an empirical fact. On the other hand, no one conclusively knows how life began. We cannot travel back in time and there are very few rock formations easily available to us from the earth's earliest time. Therefore the bounds of study must be limited in scope and assumptions must be clearly laid out beforehand. Doing so allows us to move forward knowing full well what we're positive about and what has some uncertainty so that we may understand our margin of error.
Can science answer what drives natural selection?
What then is the meaning of the following?
"Four and a half billion years ago the young planet Earth... was almost completely engulfed by the shallow primordial seas. Powerful winds gathered random molecules from the atmosphere. Some were deposited in the seas. Tides and currents swept the molecules together. And somewhere in this ancient ocean the miracle of life began... The first organized form of primitive life was a tiny protozoan [a one-celled animal]. Millions of protozoa populated the ancient seas. These early organisms were completely self-sufficient in their sea-water world. They moved about their aquatic environment feeding on bacteria and other organisms... From these one-celled organisms evolved all life on earth."
This one is from a textbook:
Aristotle believed that decaying material could be transformed by the “spontaneous action of Nature” into living animals. His hypothesis was ultimately rejected, but... Aristotle’s hypothesis has been replaced by another spontaneous generation hypothesis, one that requires billions of years to go from the molecules of the universe to cells, and then, via random mutation/natural selection, from cells to the variety of organisms living today. This version, which postulates chance happenings eventually leading to the phenomenon of life, is biology’s Theory of Evolution. [emphasis mine]What is your interpretation of these statements?
If the origin of macro-evolution is of no interest for those who are studying the differentiate of species why do prominently evolutionists, and not just the 'popular' sources above, talk about it at all?
Cordially,
The problem with your argument is that you seem to misunderstand what scientists mean by useful. The explanation of an eclipse as being due to "magic" is not a useful explanation. What can you predict based on this "magic" hypothesis? To what further research will this lead? The "moon blocks out the sun" hypothesis, on the other hand is useful. If you know the orbit of the moon and earth well enough, you can predict when future eclipses will occur. It leads to the question of "why does the moon follow a regular path" which leads directly to a study of gravity.
However, to this day, we have no solid, absolute proof that the "moon blocks out the sun" hypothesis is true and the "magic" hypothesis is false. There is no observation that we have made to date that could possibly disprove the "magic" hypothesis. Furthermore, there exists no possible observation that would disprove the "magic" hypothesis, given a sufficiently powerful magician. You might say that the regularity of eclipses rules out the "magic" hypothesis, but that's untrue. Maybe the magician only performs his trick at certain times, and these times follow a regular pattern. Even a direct observation of the moon lying between the earth and the sun doesn't disprove the "magic" hypothesis. This could just be an illusion conjured by the magician.
This points out a further reason why the "magic" hypothesis is less useful than the "moon blocks out the sun" hypothesis. There's no way to test it. If the result of any "test" must always be that we can't reject the hypothesis, then we don't have a meaningful test. By contrast, the "sun blocks out the moon" hypothesis could, in principle, be shown to be false. All you would have to do is call an observer on the opposite side of the world at the time of the eclipse. If he were to look up and see a full moon, the "moon blocks out the sun" hypothesis would be falsified, since the moon cannot be in two locations simultaneously.
Hence we don't know for sure that our hypothesis that "the moon blocks out the sun" is true and the "magic" hypothesis is false. Since the magic hypothesis could be equally well applied to any phenomenon that is studied in science, we don't know that any of our scientific explanations are true. Hence truth is not the criterion for judging scientific ideas, but rather usefullness.
I believe I explained that to you in an earlier post.
What was unclear?
Were either of the authors practiciing scientists?
Ok, but when as influential a group as the National Academy of Science says ‘For those who are studying the origin of life, the question is no longer whether life could have originated by chemical processes involving nonbiological components. The question instead has become which of many pathways might have been followed to produce the first cells’, do you think it is improper to demand some empirical evidence for such assertions?
Cordially,
Well, apparently is doesn't make any difference to the schools that use the textbook.
Cordially,
I don't understand the driving force behind natural selection - I admit ignorance. I understand it would be necessary for survival of species but what drives the need for survival? I've never heard an adequate answer to that question. When scientists talk about nature/natural, it seems that they are talking about some type of power.
Scientists have little to no control over textbooks, and are entitled to any speculative opinions they care to postulate, even if they are well known, however, none of those things are science, as it is presently practiced, they are just speculation. Get back to me when you see a discussion of spontaneous generation from inert matter in a mainline refereed biological science journal.
My posts 535 (part) and 538 address this.
I said in my last post (the part you redacted) that biologists state clearly that hypotheses surrounding the origins of life are speculative. Even the Nobel Prize winning biologist quoted in your last post says this. As I have mentioned before, supernatural explanations lie outside the bounds of scientific investigation. It is unsurprising that "those who are studying the origin of life" would investigate naturalist hypotheses. What other line of reasoning should people in the physical sciences pursue?
Just wait until CAIR wants to put its finger in the pie.
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