Leading Republican differs with Bush on evolution (Santorum)

[Asphalt, I'm pinging you to this post as well because the material in the final section applies to a lot of the discussions you and I have been having]

He had a much longer post with more information recently, but it was so big it was removed ...

Here's an alternate copy: The tip-of-the-iceberg evolution mega-post.

[smokeman:] I am not claiming that all of TOE is crap, just that parts of it, i.e. ape to man is simply speculation based on a few bones and common genes found over a million years. I just don't buy it.

It is far, far more than "simply speculation". First, see the "mega-post" linked above. Then note that even though it's *HUGE*, it's only a vanishingly small fraction of one percent of the amount of evidence that has been accumulated supporting and validating evolution.

I recently went to a large university library in order to find a copy of a paper I couldn't get online (and PubMed, an online database of biology-related research papers, has over TWELVE MILLION papers cataloged). The archived biology journals filled the second, and half of the third floors of the library. Each volume of bound journals held around a thousand pages, and was the size of a big-city phone book. Each shelf held about twenty volumes in a row. Each 8-foot-tall rack held eight shelves. There were about twenty five racks to a row (fifty when you count both sides of the "aisle"), they were *really* long. It was a chore hiking up and down them. There were about seventy rows. I got lost in them several times. And that was just the one floor, there were more upstairs.

And of course, those weren't all the journal articles, just the ones from the biggest journals, and not a lot of the ones published in languages other than English.

*That's* the kind of magnitude of evidence we're talking about. You could hike into those stacks, walk as long as you like, and then pull out a volume at random and flip it open to any page you chose, and I'd make money betting you that if the exact page you chose didn't contain a study providing supporting evidence for evolution, flipping 2-3 pages on either side would. You could literally spend the rest of your life trying to read it all, and not make it through a fraction of it.

Even just the dozens of different specific ways in which "ape to man" has been validated involves enough evidence to literally bury people under.

"Simply speculation"? Not hardly.

But that's not all.

Explaining the scientific method

I've recently noticed that most creationists have absolutely no clue about how the scientific method works, so allow me to give you a *very* simple overview. The reality is far more rigorous than this, and subjected to endless review and retesting, but here's the short version...

Creationists imagine that scientists just gather some data, make up a "reasonable" speculation that they think could account for the data, and then kick back and go on vacation. The creationists think that's all there is to science, just the "speculation" part.

Nope.

That's just the barest *beginning*.

That's called the "hypothesis" stage. Scientists all over the world try to come up with all the hypotheses they can as possible explanations for any given scientific puzzle. This is a good thing -- the more brainstorming, the better the chance that someone will come up with a "speculation" that hits closest to the right answer.

So then they just argue over it to "decide" which one's right, eh? Nope, sorry, that's the creationist version.

Instead, they *test* these various ideas to see which ones actually work when compared against reality, and which ones fail when compared against reality. You've heard of those "experiment" things, right? This is the testing.

But contrary to cartoon-level public impressions of experiments, they're not always done by guys in a lab pouring test tubes together, or by scientists attempting to actually *reproduce* the process they're studying. Those are *one* way to test a hypothesis, but nowhere near the only reliable way. It's not possible to recreate the entire Hawaiian Islands chain in order to test hypotheses about how they formed, for example, but there *are* countless other ways to test hypotheses about geology -- or evolution, or any other field.

That's why you've heard scientists talk about "predictions" so much. One of the most widely useful, and most reliable, methods of testing a hypothesis is to work out its consequences -- to determine what results would occur if that explanation *was* the correct one. If that really *is* how things happen (or happened) in the universe, what "side effects" would it have, aside from the data or phenomenon itself which we crafted the hypothesis to explain? These are its *predictions*.

This is how we test to separate the good explanations from the bad explanations. If the Hawaiian Islands formed as a result of continental drift carrying the Pacific tectonic plate across a crustal magma plume, this would leave many, many kinds of tell-tale results which would be noticeably (and *test-ably*) different than the kinds of things you'd find if some *other* explanation was correct about a different manner in which the Hawaiian Islands had formed.

So to decide between the two (or fifty) potential explanations (hypotheses), you work out the "side effects" (predictions) of each different explanation -- what you'd find if X had actually happened, versus what you'd find differently if Y had actually happened, etc., then you go and *look* to see which of those side effects (if any!) you actually find when you look.

This "looking" can take different forms depending on the nature of the process being explored. In the case of some physics questions, you can build a tabletop setup of lasers in a certain configuration, or whatever, to reproduce the conditions which should act one way if hypothesis X is right, or another way if Y is correct, etc. This is a classic "experiment" in the layman's mind. In the case of medical hypotheses about what disease a patient has, you can try different drugs to see which he responds to. In some cases of geology, you can take core samples of the rocks under the Hawaiian Islands to see whether their composition and structure matches the predictions of one hypothesis, or another. In evolutionary biology, you can go check the DNA of various species to see if the pattern of differences and similarities matches the precise patterns (not just *general* patterns) which distinguish one hypothesis from another, or go find new fossils (or re-examine old ones) to see whether predicted features which no one sat down to check before match the predictions of various hypotheses, etc.

When this is done over and over and over again, and the *dozens* of different predictions of any one particular hypothesis are tested and all the predictions are found to match, and perhaps even more importantly, the things that the hypothesis predicts you *won't* find are looked for and found *not* to be present as well, then you can have more and more confidence that the hypothesis is, if not 100% correct (since you can never be *entirely* sure), very much on the right track, and is very close to being right explanation. Meanwhile, you can have great confidence that the alternative explanations which made predictions that *failed* are wrong, and can be taken out to the trash dumpster.

(Also, any one person can obviously make mistakes about reasoning out the predictions, or how to test whether the real world matches the predictions, etc. This is why science places such stress on *repeatability* -- you have to publish your data, your reasoning, your tests, etc., so that thousands of other experts can go over it with a fine-toothed comb looking for mistakes or fraud or untested presumptions, and can repeat your tests to verify that your results were valid and/or not a fluke. Also note that *this* is the kind of "repeatability" that science requires -- creationists often think that it means that the *processes* need to be repeatable, like being able to repeat the formation of the Hawaiian Islands; that's not the case. The *tests* have to be repeatable, the *verification* needs to be repeatable by anyone who cares to double-check your results, or try a new method of validating them.)

The core tenets of evolutionary biology make *VERY* specific predictions about what we should find (and what we *shouldn't* find) when we go looking at nature, and make *hundreds* of different predictions which allow multiple independent validation tests (since any one prediction might "come true" and match just by luck, even if the explanation is wrong). The tenet of common descent doesn't just predict that DNA from closely related species will "be similar", it predicts that they will be similar in *very* precise, specific ways, and that they will *differ* in other precise, specific ways. And when we examine and compare DNA, this is *exactly* what we find, *every* time we compare new DNA sequences which we had never examined before.

But wait, there's more!

Creationists often say, "but maybe DNA doesn't match all those predictions of evolutionary common descent, maybe DNA just happens to be that way because God chose to make it that way, even if those features of DNA don't seem to make sense from a 'design' standpoint (because after all, He works in mysterious ways, and He might have some Design reason for that configuration which is beyond our understanding), and it just *happens* to 'look like' the results one would expect from evolution."

Ah, but that excuse doesn't hold water.

Here's why.

The beauty of the scientific method is not only that it can decide between the hypotheses that *have* been thought of, it can also validate a hypothesis in the face of alternate *unknown* hypotheses (like the "maybe God did it instead" hypothesis).

Here's how that works.

The beauty of the "make predictions and then test them" method (especially since it's iterative -- after you do that, you make *more* predictions and test *them*, repeatedly) is that if your hypothesis (explanation) is wrong, there's *no* rational reason for an entirely unrelated explanation to "just happen" to match *all* of your explanation's 70 or 80 predictions "by coincidence", no matter *what* unrelated explanation we're talking about, including ones you haven't even thought of.

An unrelated explanation, if true, might by chance match the results of 10 or 12 of the predictions of your "wrong" explanation, but it's just ridiculous to think that (and mathematically close to "impossible" for) a process which actually works in a different manner than your speculatory explanation to "just happen" to match *ALL* the same expected results.

It's like OJ saying, "it wasn't me who killed my wife, it was some *other* guy, I don't know who... who just happened to wear my same large shoe size... and just happened to be wearing a rare, expensive type of shoe... that I just happen to have owned too... and just happened to get injured during the struggle and drop blood from his right hand... on the same night I just happened to cut that same hand shaving... and his blood DNA just happened to match mine... and he just happened to leave a glove at the murder scene that just happens to match one found in my alley... and I just happened to have received gloves just like that from Nicole as a gift and been photographed wearing them... and hairs matching mine just happened to be in the hat left at the murder scene... and fibers matching the carpet of my Bronco just happened to also... and the only hour of that day I can't account for my whereabouts just happened to be the time of the murder... and my houseguest heard thumps like someone climbing over the fence into the yard which just happened to match the time I would have had to have returned from Nicole's... But I didn't do it, it was some other guy."

Not freaking likely, is it?

When *all* of the different pieces of evidence implicate OJ, even the most unlikely and specific ones -- when they match predictions of what you'd expect to find if the "OJ is the killer" hypothesis is the correct one -- the odds of those results being "coincidental" matches with some *other* guy actually being the killer, vanish to nothingness. As attorney Vincent Bugliosi wrote in his book, in his "how I'd have prosecuted OJ" speech:

"At what point do these things stop being a coincidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? When you folks, as intelligent human beings using your common sense, say to yourself- 'Aw, c'mon, you've got to be kidding. It's ridiculous to suggest all of these things are just an incredible coincidence. That's not life as we know it.' That's when all this circumstantial evidence stops being a coincidence. When you people, as intelligent, sensible human beings -and that's why we selected you folks for this jury- say to the defense attorneys in this case, 'Let's stop living in a fantasy world and come back to earth.'
"When a person is innocent of a crime, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, chances are there isn't going to be anything whatsoever pointing toward his guilt. Chances are there will be nothing. But now and then, because of the very nature of life and the unaccountability of certain things, maybe one thing, in rare situations maybe even two things, will peculiarly point toward his guilt even though he is innocent. And in highly unusual and virtually unheard-of situations, maybe even three things will point to his guilt, even though he is innocent. But ladies and gentleman of the jury, in this case, everything, everything, points to this man's guilt. [...] We've set forth for you a staggering number of pieces of evidence that point to this man, and this man alone, as the murderer of these two precious human beings. Under these circumstances, it is not humanly possible for him to be innocent."

This is actually an excellent description of the manner in which scientific hypotheses are "proven beyond a reasonable doubt" as well.

When we test the biological hypothesis of common descent, we don't just test *one* prediction of that hypothesis. Any *one* prediction might, by chance, "just happen" to match the results of some *other* process that was "actually" responsible for the formation of modern living things. Any *one* successful prediction/test, as they say, "doesn't prove anything". The creationists are right about that. If God made living things through a process *other* than letting them evolve from a common ancestor, especially one we couldn't comprehend, it might "just happen" that this included the existence of a half-bird/half-reptile looking animal like Archaeopteryx. Just coincidence that you'd get something like that through common descent also. And maybe the non-OJ killer just happened to wear expensive, rare shoes that OJ had too. It could happen.

But science doesn't stop there.

Common descent *also* predicts that we should find shared endogenous retroviruses in the DNA related species (see the link at the top). And indeed, they are there in the DNA when we look. Match #2. Now, whatever God's beyond-our-understanding-but-not-by-common-descent method of making life, even though we *don't* know anything about it, there's *no* reason to expect that it *has* to match, down to the tiniest specific details, the several hundred exact characteristics of endogenous retroviral patterns which would have resulted from common descent. God's different-method-entirely would be very likely to have different characteristics, produce different patterns in DNA which, even if we didn't understand the reasons for those patterns, would be unlikely to match the intricate patterns produced by the common descent of past viral infections. But, gosh, they do! Does that make sense, that God's Method would *coincidentally* match the mathematically *hugely* unlikely exact patterns that common descent would have produced? It *could* happen by luck, I guess. And the real killer of Nicole Simpson might have been a one-in-a-trillion DNA match to OJ, too. It's not *impossible*.

Common descent also predicts that the number of synonymous codon SNPs between related species should be directly correlated to the time since their last common ancestor. There's no plausible "design" reason for this, by the way, since those nucleotides are functionally silent. Flip them on, flip them off, nothing changes. And when we analyze DNA, across thousands and thousands of species, the results *do* match the predictions of common descent (*and* the indications of LCA time match the fossil record -- another coincidence?) Once again, God's Method, whatever it might be, needn't "just happen" to match the results of common descent. Whatever God's design criteria, surely *some* of his choices are going to result in a design that "just happens" NOT to match the outcome of common descent in some respects or another. But here on test #3, we find that yet *again* the real-world tests beautifully match the predictions of common descent. But the creationists assure us that *this* is just a coincidence too, just like the random coincidence that Nicole's killer cut his left hand in the same place and on the same night that OJ cut his own hand too. Mere coincidence.

Item #4: Common descent predicts that synonymous protein substitutions should fit a very specific pattern across phylogenies, entirely apart from any phenotypic "design" considerations, because it has no effect on phenotype. Again, these very specific patterns *are* found every time we do DNA analysis. Again, there's no reason for God's Method to match these results, since God any other method than actual common descent would be unlikely to "just happen" to produce results that look *exactly* like the signature of common descent. And yet... that signature *is* found in DNA. Mere coincidence again? Still?

Items #5-#10,000... Well, you get the idea.

And even each "single" item above is actually *thousands* of smaller individual items in a "family" of predictions along that line of evidence, and they *all* keep matching the predictions of common descent. Coincidence?

If life is *not* the result of common descent, by what STAGGERINGLY enormous "coincidence" does God's "other method", *whatever* it might be, JUST HAPPEN to match in every large and small detail, EVERY prediction of common descent? What dumb luck for the evolutionists, eh? The evolutionists are wrong, the creationists say, but the evolutionists lucked out in the evidence lottery, because God's non-evolutionary Design criteria "just happens" to LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THE RESULTS OF EVOLUTION IN EVERY WAY.

Just by mere coincidence, of course, and it don't prove a thing. The creationists assure us of that.

Thus endeth the lesson on the scientific method, and how it is used to validate theories in hundreds of ways, large and small, and carry them far, far beyond the shaky unreliability of "simply speculations". Speculations have not passed a mind-boggling battery of tests and reality-checks. Scientific theories have -- and continue to be tested and retested every day, and adjusted as needed to keep them as accurate as possible as new evidence and test results keep being added to science's vast body of knowledge.

Epilogue

Now, for a few clarifications. In the above, I have *not* said that science could rule out the existence of God. I have not said science could rule out the *involvement* of God. (For that matter, science can't rule out the existence of Santa Claus, and neither can any other method.) Some things are impossible to demonstrate even in principle, nor does science make the attempt. What I *have* said, however, is that the scientific method can rule out certain *kinds* of explanations. In the example I gave above, what we ruled out (to a high degree of probability) was any *alternative* to common descent that did not *include* common descent. In other words, we demonstrated that *whatever* (or "Whoever") else might be involved in the formation of life, common descent *was* part of the process. God may have made us, but if He did, he did it via some variation on common descent.

The second caveat is that yeah, there's some bogus "science" out there. But for the most part, it isn't really science -- it's not stuff that has passed through the "reality-checking" filters I've described above -- it's some quacks putting on some white coats and calling a press conference to masquerade their agenda as actual science. The things that deserve the name "science" are those that have really passed the gauntlet of heavy-duty testing and restesting, and have survived all challenges thrown at it. And yes, there have been mistakes and frauds (albeit not nearly as frequently as the creationists try to claim). But science, by its very nature, is self-correcting -- eventually someone will spot the problems, and weed them out. And almost without exception, that someone is another scientist.

The final caveat to the above discussion is that in order for predictions to be testable, the world has to work in ways that are, well, *predictable*. The world (Universe, whatever you want to call it) has to be non-capricious, it has to work within guidelines, so to speak -- it can't be *deceptive*. This is often misunderstood and mislabeled as a "presumption of materialism", but it's not. As long as God doesn't play tricks on us, or act capriciously, the world is still "lawful" enough to be testable, to operate by steady "rules". As long as God/Nature/pickyourfavoritename doesn't *actively* attempt to disrupt our quest to learn how things work, the scientific method still works too. But, in exactly the same way that all the evidence of the guilt of OJ really *could* be "coincidental" if someone carefully *framed* him for the crime, it's also possible (in concept) for all of the features of life, DNA, fossils, etc. to so exactly match the results -- the predictions -- of common descent in so many different ways, but common descent *not* to actually have happened, if God *purposely* set up all the evidence in order to falsely *mimic* such results. But I don't think that *anyone* is actually willing to claim that God might be a liar, trying for some unfathomable reason to convince us of something that isn't really true.

Barring that, though (and barring newly discovered evidence overturning everything we've already discovered -- and don't hold your breath on that one), the only rational conclusion is that so many findings, in so many different independent lines of evidence, *so* closely match the *countless* predictions of common descent, because common descent *is* actually the case. Common descent has been demonstrated to be true.

If you want the bumper-sticker version of all of the above, it's the old saying, "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, it probably *is* a duck." Likewise, when the vast amounts of evidence overwhelmingly look like common descent, then...

[A dozen creationists posting, "that doesn't prove anything" in 3... 2...]

True, but there seem to be a whole lot more dinosaur fossils, complete or incomplete, than there are ape-like fossils.

Hominidae: On the planet for 30 million years, small family-level taxon (4 genera, 5 species extant),
localized to Northern Africa for most of their history, not terribly successful until the rise of modern humans.

Dinosaurs: On the planet for 185 million years, covered the Earth as the dominant life form, extremely successful
and diverse subclass-level taxon (several hundred genera):

You do the math on how many more fossils will be found of dinosaurs versus the Hominidae...

No, I won't say that the idea of ID is "common sense"?

I'd prefer "common non-sense".

Now, that's definitely publishable. Not that your other posts aren't, but that one needs to be published.

It will be memorialized in The List-O-Links. And I will be posting links to it often. But that's hardly enough. Send that thing out for publication.

[Thunderous applause!]

...one day when the Democrat base lies in splinters and the Republican party splits into the libertarian and the conservative branches...

You've read my mind.

I just enjoy how you decide to believe some scientists, even though you have no direct knowledge of what they do in the lab or how they do it (or even what they themselves observe), and not believe others.

I'll score that as another direct hit, and move on.

You know, there is another way of dealing with your issue with God. And that is... DEALING with your issue with God.

Dan

But the bad/inconclusive chili of man to ape is being thrown in our kids face whether you realize it or not. Not all parents can afford private schools therefore IMO, there has to be a rebuttal or debate in public schools where its being taught and we cannot expect our kids to bring about that debate. That's what parents are for.

And my response to this is that WHY s the focus only on alternate theories to evolution? If people want to argue a more conclusive issue of better trained teachers, better textbooks, or less government involvement in schools, in all for it.

But that's NOT the argument that is usually presented ... it's that the theory of evolution is somehow flwaed ... sceintifically, that has NOT yet been proven, despite what ID supporters might hope ... and to let those with a misunderstanding of scientific techniques dictate what they think the techniques should be undermines science. (Some might so that's not a bad thing, but they would be confusing science with some of the political/social/religious theories people use science to attempt to support --- environmentalism, atheism, etc.).

Just because TOE might not be correct ... but has not yet been shown to be incorrect ... is not a reason to not teach it. In English class they (should) teach the current words used in English ... and not start throwing in words they might one day use in our language. SPending a day describing that "gerfjjfdsi" is a brown angry cat isn't very productive.

True, but there seem to be a whole lot more dinosaur fossils, complete or incomplete, than there are ape-like fossils. Crushed or not, we find human, not ape-like, remains from the distant past all over the place. ID or no ID, I just think its too much of a stretch. It feels and looks like science constantly trying to stop a leaky faucet. Too many, oops where did that come from or maybe if we do this it will fit again. At least in terms of the ape to man evolution.

But how long were dinosaurs around versus ape-ancestors? And "dinosaurs" is a broad range of creatures, sort of like "mammals" today ... if would be more acurate to compare the number of complete apish fossils to the number of, say, complete brontosaurs skeletons (or pick another dino).

And what criteria are you using to separate the "human" fossils from ones that merely appraoch human?

Too many, oops where did that come from or maybe if we do this it will fit again.

Yes, but to know if new data fits the existing theory, and to "fix" the existing theory, one would need to actually know the existing theory. I can't run around saying that because I found a red sweater, the theory of gravity is incorrect, and expect to be taken seriously or positively contribute to science.

At least in terms of the ape to man evolution.

You sem to be applying a different standard to "ape to man" evolution than to many other species. Just how many fossils do we have for transition of other species as compared to human evolution? It would be very difficult to find a completely unbroken transition in every case, as you'd need a sample of each and every generation ...

Santorum and Frist should get a room.

And what was the point of wasting the students' time with any of this?

1. So they understand what the current theory of evolution is.

2. Without this understanding, they could have no hope to ever effectively argue for or AGAINST the theory of evolution, or to be taken seriously in the scientific community.

3. What's the point of many classes? I'm never going to diagram a sentence in real life, why do I have to read all that Shakespeare if I'm not going to be an actor, why do I have to do all this math if I'll have a calculator, why do I need to learn about WWII if I'm never going to invade Poland, etc.

4. Why should any currently accepted scientific theory be taught, then? They are all so limited, trying to only describe a piece of the puzzle! They should only teach one big unified theory of everything in class, perhaps make it a math equation so there's little room for argument.

5. The kind of statement you made is what leads some to believe the ID side is equally happy with ignorance as with knowledge.

(I don't think all IDers are that way ... there are plenty that have serious concerns about the issue (usually because their teachers ignorantly stateed that the theory of evolution was fact, and didn;t bother to explain the basic scientific concepts between theories and evidence), and are trying, finally, to build a proper case for their argument.)

6. If we KNEW exactly what was going on, it wouldn;t be science :)

an occasional proselytizing atheist .... millions of proselytizing Christians

Please remove your bias and file it in a dark place.

Maybe its just my skeptical nature, but doesn't some of these specimens seem a little like puzzle pieces that were not meant to fit together.

Without the ligaments and skin to hold the bones together in a "person" shape, of COURSE bones are going to need to be fit back together ... sometimes scientists luck out and find a skeleton laid out wonderfully well in the "correct" order, but if the bones are moved around in the thousands of years since dying, there's not much that can be done. They do have to work with the available evidence.

Also, some of the specimens in the same transitional stage look nothing alike.

Look around at people on the street one day, and find 100 that look exactly alike ... same facial structure, same height, same leg length, same arm length, same fingers ...

As to your question, its impossible to discern because each transitional stage has very different looking specimens that are supposed to be from the same species.

There are variations within most species at a given time ... as I said, look around you. Is anyone who's not exactly like you not human? Is someone with dwarfism not human? Those NBA players are real tall. What's your standrard for "very different looking"?

Thanks for posting. I couldn;t seem to find the links ...

No, there have been plenty of fossils that many scientist once thought were neanderthal, but now believe were just humans.

Well, that's not an accurate description of the debate. The question now is whether Neanderthals are a separate hominid species or whether they are a subspecies of Homo Sapiens. However, no scientist involved in the study of Neanderthals would say they were "just" humans.

What evidence is that? Because apes and humans share some genes?

Apes and humans share a lot of genes. Also, we share many, many physiological traits. Finally, the fossil record supports our common ancestry.

If you want to prove that humans come from apes then simply show me an ape that is in the process of becoming human

Something like that is highly unlikely, if not impossible. The next step in the evolutionary ladder for chimps is not becoming human. If they evolve into a species with comparable intelligence to humans, they still won't be human.

The mistake you seem to be making is the assumption that we evolved from chimps or gorillas. That's not the case. Rather, we share a common ancestor but our species' diverged some time ago and went down separate paths. Chimps and gorillas aren't in the process of evolving into humans.

And I might add that you would think that since the process of evolution takes so many millions of years to come to pass that there would be warehouses upon warehouses fo neanderthal, cro-magnum, etc.. to see.

The conditions required for fossilization are very, very rare. Furthermore, many of the hominid species existed for a fairly short timespan. They weren't around for millions of years, like some species of dinosaur, for example. So, it is not surprising that we have only discovered a limited number of hominid fossils. Still, there's a pretty good number out there. In the hundreds, IIRC.

The mistake you seem to be making is the assumption that we evolved from chimps or gorillas. That's not the case. Rather, we share a common ancestor but our species' diverged some time ago and went down separate paths. Chimps and gorillas aren't in the process of evolving into humans.

Thank you. A simple analogy is cousins. Cousins share a common ancestor some time ago, but are themselves in distinct branches of the family tree.

In fact, I work at a university, and have done for 30 years. What basis do you have for your claim that people teach that God did not create the world?

I'd also like to point out that anyone who teaches in science class that there is no creator is not practicing good science.

Science is incapable of addressing the existence or non-existence of supernatural beings. I think that any good scientist would know that.

3. What's the point of many classes? I'm never going to diagram a sentence in real life, why do I have to read all that Shakespeare if I'm not going to be an actor, why do I have to do all this math if I'll have a calculator, why do I need to learn about WWII if I'm never going to invade Poland, etc.

Those other things are functional, evolution is a curiosity, it is interesting to wonder about. It is more interesting to wonder about when we consider the catalyst.

4. Why should any currently accepted scientific theory be taught, then? They are all so limited, trying to only describe a piece of the puzzle! They should only teach one big unified theory of everything in class, perhaps make it a math equation so there's little room for argument.

Now you have placed me on the opposite side of the spectrum from what I've been suggesting.

5. The kind of statement you made is what leads some to believe the ID side is equally happy with ignorance as with knowledge.

Now you have placed me on the "ID side", I'm on no side.

Someone who is religious and would like to promote a particular religion should probably not want anything to do with creation being considered in school. I suspect that is where Santorum is coming from. I, being neither religious nor anti-religious, think that is exactly the place where creation should be considered, scientifically without the religious instruction.

Frankly, public schools were a LOT better before Jimmy Carter invented the Department of Education in 1979.

Can't argue with that.

Though, to be fair, local school boards are responsible for their fair share of educational stupidity.