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

Time Magazine ^ | Monday, Aug. 01, 2005 | CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

[wallcrawlr]

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 crèches 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 Schönborn 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. Schönborn'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 Schönborn, 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, Schönborn 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.

[b_sharp]

I loved the example of detecting ID. Just throw in a sequence we know and suddenly we also know it's ID.

It still does not explain how to differentiate 'mathematically', which ID is supposedly based on, between designed and undesigned. This guy makes all the same mistakes I've seen others make including the assumption that the sequence has to appear complete in one step. No imperfect replicators, no selection, no multiple concurrent trials.

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks. But did you have to be so clear?

I'm a simple man, so clarity is all I've got. If I knew a lot, I'd probably be babbling all over the place.

[b_sharp]

That's it? Simple.

Thanks muchly.

[xzins]

did you get the post about html for super and sub script?

This is one of the old html bootcamp links for FR. There's probably a newer one, but I don't have it. (If you don't need this, please forgive my assuming.)

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a38ca6c2b4bd5.htm

[spunkets]

"If my model isn't working, then yes, it could be my understanding of the physics is wrong, or it could be some outside intelligence is toying with the results.
If we'd ruled out that the math or logic wasn't done correctly, then odds are with the physics being wrong, but we cannot rule out an outside influence.

Right. In practice, it's usually the logic that's screwed up.

[xzins]

I agree with that.

I truly am a very absent-minded person. It's one of my trademarks (endearing qualities, I hope? :>) in the church I pastor. This is not an affectation. I'm a "do one thing at a time" kind of guy.

[atlaw]

Oh for crying out loud. Is that what you derived from my post? I need a beer.

[xzins]

Ohhh...it's even worse. Better get some jack and forget the beer.

I think you regret not winning. :>)

[spunkets]

Same one thing at a time here. Trouble often comes with a shortcut over one of those things followed by continuing on.

[b_sharp]

OK.

We have a number of strings.

1) AAAA
2) AAAB
3) AABA
4) AABB
5) ABAA
6) ABAB
7) ABBA
8) ABBB

If we demand that only the third one of these strings 'AABA' win the the probability is 1 out of 2 letters(A,B) for each position. so we have 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 or 2 ⁴ or 1 out of 16. The probability is .0625

If we demand that any one of the 8 strings win, the calculation becomes string 1 or string 2 or string 3 or string 4 or string 5 or string 6 or string 7 or string 8. Since we are not contemplating events that have an overlap, we use the special addition rule of probability which says:

P(A or B)= P(A) + P(B)

Since the specific probability of each string is the same and is .0625 our calculation becomes .0625 x 8 = .5

Now which of the two probabilities is higher, .0625 or .5 and by what magnitude?

Keeping the strings short allows you to see how probability works and one small reason why those calculations you like are inaccurate. The actual calculation is slightly different with abiogenesis because not all strings are equally likely to succeed but the general direction is the same.

[b_sharp]

Yes I did. Thank you very much for the help.

[balrog666]

Gee, does "Retards-R-Us" pay you by the post or by the word?

[austinTparty]

Oh, stop making sense, why don't you? ;-)

[balrog666]

Either I'm not understanding well or you're not writing well. We seem to be at an impasse.

Stop being stupid. He's saying that you don't know how many of the 10^150 tickets are winners and 10^149 could be winners.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for pinging me to your conversation, xzins!

We began a far reaching evaluation of the alternative theories of abiogenesis, gathered a great deal of information and then ran into a snag when we ask the respondents to agree on "what is life v non-life/death in nature"

The original crew all agreed to use Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications - but some of the other correspondents objected and offered no functional substitute.

The bottom line to us was that no theory of abiogenesis can be taken seriously until there is agreement on the "from" and the "to". How can one say they have a theory for life from non-life when they cannot say what either is?

One must consider that rocks, rabbits and dead rabbits are made of the same elementary particles and fundamental forces. One must consider the difference between a live skin cell and a dead one, what is removed from a live cell that it becomes death before we can examine its chemical structures. And then one must fit all engimas into the model: viruses, mimiviruses, viroids, bacterial spores, prions, etc.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for your challenge!

Can you briefly outline what a science "rid...of the presupposition of methodological naturalism" might look like?

In a word: physics.

But I'm sure you want more than just a word.

Methodological naturalism is simply “the idea that the mode of inquiry typical of the physical sciences will provide theoretical understanding of world, to the extent that this sort of understanding can be achieved.“ (Stoljar)

That sounds innocent enough, but problems arise almost immediately because all kinds of things are swept off the table in the process as non-physical - things like mathematical structures, geometries, information, autonomy, semiosis, etc. IOW, the boundary writ large as "here there be dragons" is not just the super-natural but the non-physical as well.

Physicists and mathematicians deal with non-physicals every day. After all, physical laws and theories are universal and non-corporeal per se - and every time a mathematician puts a variable in a formula he admits to a universal, a non-corporeal.

Methodological naturalism - as it is applied in biology - is physio-chemical - a very reduced view of reality compared with physics. As H H Pattee (The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut) said:

“Many biologists consider physical laws, artificial life, robotics, and even theoretical biology as largely irrelevant for their research. In the 1970s, a prominent molecular geneticist asked me, ‘Why do we need theory when we have all the facts?’ At the time I dismissed the question as silly, as most physicists would. However, it is not as silly as the converse question, Why do we need facts when we have all the theories? These are actually interesting philosophical questions that show why trying to relate biology to physics is seldom of interest to biologists, even though it is of great interest to physicists. Questioning the importance of theory sounds eccentric to physicists for whom general theories [are] what physics is all about. Consequently, physicists … are concerned when they learn facts of life that their theories do not appear capable of addressing. On the other hand, biologists, when they have the facts, need not worry about physical theories that neither address nor alter their facts. Ernst Mayr (1997) believes this difference is severe enough to separate physical and biological models: ‘Yes, biology is, like physics and chemistry, a science. But biology is not a science like physics and chemistry; it is rather an autonomous science on a par with the equally autonomous physical sciences.’”

In effect, the biologists (and most metaphysical naturalists) are thrilled that they find physical answers to their questions. To the rest of us it is a yawner - of course they find physical answers, that is how they framed their questions and it is the only place they looked.

Thankfully, though, the mathematicians and physicists who have been invited to the biology table ignore the "here there be dragons!" boundaries of methodological naturalism.

[Dimensio]

Clearly the point was made.

The only point you've made is that you don't have any actual argument against the theory of evolution.

[Rockingham]

But which sense of evolution do you hold to be true and enduring?

The vulgar evolution of "evolution proves there is no God, and if you say otherwise you are a faith-besotted dummy," or the strictly limited and proper scientific view of evolution that makes no such assertion because the scientific data does not permit it?

Oddly, even when it is repeatedly explained, few people seem to recognize that the Catholic Church no less accepts the latter sense of evolution as a valid exercise of scientific reasoning. Indeed, the Catholic view of Creationism and Intelligent Design theories is that they are flawed theology to the extent that they assert that Christian faith requires support for such theories or that their disproof is in any sense a blow against such faith.

In the end, the Catholic view of evolution is compatible with both the best of science and the tenets of Christian faith. And faithful Catholics thus can both acknowledge evolution, properly understood, and go on to propagate and carry on Western civilization and their faith.

[Rockingham]

No advantage for you there: I have never smoked and rarely drink, and my extended family is notoriously long lived, healthy, and tends to look younger than our ages.

[chariotdriver]

the theory of evolution.

What are you talking about?

Evolution is not a theory like the gravity and electromagnetism or atomics you always want to group it in with. Thats just more deception, more of the Demented gambit.

Do Demented knuckleheads ever stop repeating a lie after it has been explained to them why it is a lie?