Let's Have No More Monkey Trials - To teach faith as science is to undermine both

The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crÃ¨ches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.

But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal SchÃ¶nborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."

Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. SchÃ¶nborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does SchÃ¶nborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.

In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, SchÃ¶nborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.

This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.

How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.

To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.

"Yes evolutionists insist you have to 'understand' their theory. It wasn't spontaenous because it took a very very very long time and lots of really really wacky random situations. One day ape. One day latter cave man. There's not much more to understand than that evolutionists have observed similarities in man and similarities in ape and ASSUMED they must have once been the same thing."

Actually the ties between other apes and ourselves is not limited to simple morphological similarities as you are asserting. I agree that it is much easier to attack a straw man version of a concept and can understand why you insist on doing so, however it does show your inability to contemplate concepts beyond your perception of reality.

If you were to observe the actions of Chimps in similar combative circumstances to what you currently find yourself in, you would recognize the same emotional reaction and consequent actions portrayed by the Chimps in your own actions.

First of all, Ich's post, believe it or not, IS a "readers' digest" version of the evidence for evolution. However, let me at least attempt to make a summary of just one of his lines of evidence, namely the significance of the retroviral insertions in higher primates.

In the genome of every organism are sections of DNA that are derived from viruses, rather than a normal part of the genome. These viral insertions are essentially random as to the location in the genome at which they occur. With this in mind, and remembering that the genome of a multicellular organism usually consists of billions or trillions of base pairs, we can reasonably conclude that if two organisms have the identical insertion located at the identical location in their genomes that it is astronomically unlikely that this is the result of two independent insertions, but is more likely the result of one insertion event that occurred in the gametes of an ancestral organism that was subsequently inhereted by the two organisms. In short, a shared insertion located at a single location in the genomes of two organisms is strong evidence that the two organisms have a common ancestor.

The next question is then, are there such insertions that are found in different species of organisms. The answer is a resounding yes. Furthermore, relationship patterns can be inferred by studying the pattern of such insertions. For example, there are insertions that are shared by humans, gorillas and chimpanzees. There are also other insertions that are shared by humans and chimpanzees, but are not seen in gorillas. From this, it can be inferred that gorillas, humans and chimps all share a common ancestor. It can also be inferred that humans and chimps share an ancestor that's not shared by gorillas; that is, the common ancestor of all three primates diverged into a lineage that produced the common ancestor of chimps and humans and another lineage that led to modern gorillas.

Now, for the piece de resistance: if we have the story correct, namely that gorillas diverged away from the chimp/human/gorilla ancestor earlier than the human and chimp lineages diverged, we would predict that any insertions that are found in gorillas and chimps must also be found in humans. Similarly any insertions found in gorillas and humans must also be found in chimps. This is a direct result of the proposed relationship. It is hypothesized that a single organism, namely the chimp/human ancestor split off from the gorilla ancestor. Therefore, chimps alone could not inherit any insertion found in gorillas, since such an insertion must have occurred before the split of the gorilla and the chimp/human lineages. Humans must have inherited the same insertion.

Does this prediction hold true when the genomes of chimps, humans, and gorillas are studied. So far, yes it does. We have yet to find any insertions in gorillas and chimps, but not humans, for example. Note, that finding an insertion in gorillas that doesn't occur in humans wouldn't falsify this hypothesis, however, since such an insertion could have occurred in the gorilla lineage after it diverged from the chimp/human lineage. It must be an insertion that occurs in chimps AND gorillas, but not humans to falsify the hypothesis. While we can never be entirely sure that such falsification will never occur, the fact that the predicted pattern of insertions has been found is strong evidence for the hypothesized ancestral relationships of humans, apes and chimps.

This is just one such pattern that has been derived from such considerations. Many other such patterns of relationships have also been studied. Further, in almost all cases, the pattern of relationships that has been found from studying viral insertions matches the pattern of relationships derived from independent methods, such as morphological studies, all of which lends strong support to evolution.

DISCLAIMER: I am not an evolutionary biologist, nor any other kind of expert on evolutionary theory, just a reasonably well-educated practicing scientist. I am sure that Ich can correct any mistakes I might have made in the above post.

Faith cannot be separated from science. Faith is based on acceptance of evidence. All science is built on faith in the observations of others.

That is a different type of faith than the one discussed in the article. Faith in a supreme being is a very different usage of the word than having faith that the toilet will flush when I press the handle.

Science relies on the usage of the word "faith" as laid out in definition #1 below. Creationists rely on the "faith" described in definition #2, #3, #4 or #5.

faith ( P ) Pronunciation Key (fth)
n.

Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing.
Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence. See Synonyms at belief. See Synonyms at trust.
Loyalty to a person or thing; allegiance: keeping faith with one's supporters.
often Faith Christianity. The theological virtue defined as secure belief in God and a trusting acceptance of God's will.
The body of dogma of a religion: the Muslim faith.

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.