"The evolution wars" in Time [Time Magazine's cover story]

National Center for Science Education ^ | 11 August 2005 | Staff

[PatrickHenry]

The cover story of the August 15, 2005, issue of Time magazine is Claudia Wallis's "The evolution wars" -- the first cover story on the creationism/evolution controversy in a major national newsweekly in recent memory.

With "When Bush joined the fray last week, the question grew hotter: Is 'intelligent design' a real science? And should it be taught in schools?" as its subhead, the article, in the space of over 3000 words, reviews the current situation in detail. Highlights of the article include:

• A photomontage -- available only in the print edition -- on p. 26 and half of p. 27, with the elderly Darwin at the center, orbited by images of Pepper Hamilton's Eric Rothschild (a lead litigator in Kitzmiller v. Dover) brandishing a copy of Of Pandas and People, students in a biology classroom in Kansas, President Bush, the Cobb County disclaimer, and so forth.

• A comment from Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, on President Bush's remarks on "intelligent design": "It sends a signal to other countries because they're rushing to gain scientific and technological leadership while we're getting distracted with a pseudoscience issue ... If I were China, I'd be happy."

• A map, compiled from data provided by NCSE, showing antievolution proposals considered by state legislatures and boards of education since 2001 and antievolution proposals considered by local schools or panels in 2005. As members of NCSE and regular visitors to its website will have guessed, the map is crowded.

• A pair of definitions from Kenneth Miller and Joseph Levine's Biology textbook on the one hand and Percival Davis and Dean Kenyon's Of Pandas and People on the other hand. According to the latter, "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact."

• A brief history of the development of creationist tactics from the Scopes era to the post-Edwards era, under the heading "A subtler assault," which quotes NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott as quipping, "You have to hand it to the creationists. They have evolved."

• A paragraph explaining the significance of state science standards as a new venue for creationists. NCSE's Glenn Branch told Time, "The decision-making bodies involved in approving state science standards tend to be small, not particularly knowledgeable and, above all, elected, so it's a good opportunity for political pressure to be applied."

• A recognition of the disparity between President Bush's seeming endorsement of teaching "intelligent design" and the Discovery Institute's recent distancing of itself from such proposals, with Connie Morris (a conservative Republican on the Kansas state board of education), and Senator Rick Santorum seeming "to be reading from the same script."

• A section in which scientists -- primarily the Oxford zoologist and popular expositor Richard Dawkins, as well as the Harvard mathematician and evolutionary biologist Martin Nowak -- castigate "intelligent design" as resting on misconceptions and mischaracterizations of bology.

• A pithy diagnosis of the "teach the controversy" strategy by David Thomas, the president of New Mexicans for Science and Reason: "The intelligent-design people are trying to mislead people into thinking that the reference to science as an ongoing critical inquiry permits them to teach I.D. crap in the schools."

• A sidebar asking four prominent figures -- the National Human Genome Research Institute's Francis Collins, Harvard's Steven Pinker, the Discovery Institute's Michael Behe, and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's Albert Mohler -- "Can you believe in God and evolution?"

While Wallis's article is inevitably not as scientifically detailed as, for example, H. Allen Orr's recent article in The New Yorker, or as politically astute as, for example, Chris Mooney's recent article in The American Prospect, overall it accomplishes the important goal of informing the general reader that antievolutionism -- whether it takes the form of creation science, "intelligent design," or calls to "teach the controversy" -- is scientifically unwarranted, pedagogically irresponsible, and constitutionally problematic.

[drlevy88]

Alright, isn't that just the same assertion that slyentists trot out to justify it when the scientific fact of Day N is superseded or even contradicted by that of Day N+1?

[PatrickHenry]

You don't like scientists? Okay. That's up to you. Have a nice day.

[b_sharp]

"Do the logic and answer my question first: How can you show radioactive decay has remained the same over the past thousands of years? If you cannot demonstrate it in real time, then it is no different than faith, and faith is to science what garlic is to a vampire. Right?

I did answer your question. If the decay rate was accelerated enough to mask 10000 years with 4.5 billion years the Earth would have been uninhabitable for the majority if not the entirety of that time. If the speed of light was accelerated enough to travel 15 billion light-years in less than 10000 years the energy from the sun would have slagged the Earth and it would still be uninhabitable.
E=mc²

[drlevy88]

Well I've sure seen some bigotry about creationists out of the mouths of scientists who apparently never bothered to put the questions under their own system of study for determination of truth or falsity. What, scientists study scientists? Blasphemy!

[PatrickHenry]

... the energy from the sun would have slagged the Earth and it would still be uninhabitable.

Oh yeah? Were you there?

Six days ... tower of Babel ... Noah's Ark ... must fight science ... must not learn ... evolution is evil ...
</creationism mode>

[Fester Chugabrew]

"Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final word"

Which do you believe carries more weight in science, a "theory," or a "tentative conclusion?" Or are they pretty much equal in value WRT certitude? Is the "Theory of Evolution" built upon a mess of tentative conclusions? Also, how much "testing against the empirical world" does the Theory of Evolution entail in terms of repeatable, realtime, direct observation?

If science demands that God reveal Himself directly and physically before He is at all subject to the practice of science, should we not also demand that every particle of nature give itself a label before we consider it to be at all subject to the same?

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"How can you show radioactive decay has remained the same over the past thousands of years? "


Because, as B_sharp was trying to make you understand was that if the rates of decay had been even remotely fast enough to make 10,000 year old rocks look like they were 4.5 Billion, the amount of energy released would have staggeringly high. There is no evidence that the rates have changed; there are multiple elements that are used to date the geological record that all agree, along with other methods. It is exceedingly improbable that this could have occurred by chance. It is incumbent upon YOU to show that the rates have not been consistent, not on science to *prove* they have been steady. There is no way for a scientist to *prove* the decay rates were steady, but all the evidence says it has. If you are going to make your case, you need more than *I don't agree with radiometric decay rates.* You need evidence.

I won't hold my breath.

[Old Landmarks]

I have noticed one thing very clearly over the past several decades since the Hippie 1960s.

Those who oppose the Bible are much more openly derogatory toward traditional Biblical morals, beliefs and Biblical authority than before the Hippie 1960s.

They have been taken captive by the Jack Kerouacs, Herbert Hunkies and Alan Ginsburgs who were some of the orginal freaks I remember from the 40s and 50s.

Now with an arrogant boldness, these fledglings feel compelled to stay on the Hippie-paved highway of attack.

Conservatives did not openly speak like a Bible-rejecting Marxist before the Red Diaper Babies nourished themselves on Marcuse and Marx. Now that red influence even shows up on Free Republic and is just as loud and arrogant.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Also, how much "testing against the empirical world" does the Theory of Evolution entail in terms of repeatable, realtime, direct observation?"

Good God we are back to *direct observation* again.
In the words of the immortal philospher Lou Costello,

"Third Base!

[HKMk23]

What kind of predictions can be made and tested if supernatural causes are accepted?

I would assess that all of the same predictions we already make would still be equally valid, and every bit as verifiable whether or not metaphysical agency were accepted. Though one would be at liberty to posit metaphysical agency, experimental results pointing to physcial causes would still be recognized as such. In fact, I do not think that the allowance of metaphysical agency in questions of cause has hindered the discovery of a physical cause for any given phenomenon; I think that is an unfounded fear. Many causes of natural phenomenae have been discovered by scientists who's metaphysics predisposed them to a belief in unseen agencies, yet these discoveries came to light at their hands, nonetheless. They did not simply throw up their hands and declare, "I can't figure it out, so it must be God." The simple fact is that a man's theology does not invalidate his science.

To argue, then, that science is only capable of dealing with the material -- that it can tell us nothing of the metaphysical -- is to reduce science to mere scientism and deny the possibility that any metaphysical linkage exists; that there is, by definition no existing agency. We are left with an impoverished "science" that can tell us everything about "what" there is, but nothing about "why".

Under this regime, a view must be either religious or scientific, but there is no way that it could be BOTH religious AND scientific. By definition, the use of legitimate scientific methodologies to gather data in support of any view that incorporates the metaphysical as causal is "not scientific", and any data set that may imply a metaphysical cause is de facto corrupt, without regard to the purity or propriety of the scientific methods used in its collection. Within the confines of this present scientism, there are NO possible agencies beyond the physical and, therefore, all metaphysical implications to any scientific discovery are expressly prohibited.

But, all cosmological views have implications in the realm of the metaphysical and, likewise, all metaphysical views have cosmological implications. Destroy my cosmology and you undermine my metaphysiology. Prove my cosmology and my metaphysical views gain credence. Everyone has TWO castles to defend, not just one, whether they like it or not and they are inextricably entwined. Therefore, our definition of science must be sufficiently robust to encompass the linkage between the two, and our assumptions may not arbitrarily deny the metaphysical a causal role.

[Fester Chugabrew]

If the decay rate was accelerated enough to mask 10000 years with 4.5 billion years the Earth would have been uninhabitable for the majority if not the entirety of that time.

A couple problems. 1.) No one was there to witness and record decay rates at the time, and 2.) If there was any variation no one knows the degree or amount of time over which it took place. Understand? Arguments from absence of evidence do have some value, to be sure. But if they are to be granted to those who believe matter self organizes without an intelligent agent, then they ought also be granted to those who have difficulty in getting God to come down out of the sky and play Elvis. You dig?

[CarolinaGuitarman]

I should have pinged you for post# 387, as I mentioned you.

[b_sharp]

"Six days ... tower of Babel ... Noah's Ark ... must fight science ... must not learn ... evolution is evil ...

Hold on PH, help is coming...
Alert! Code blue! Alert! This is a general call to all DC Emergency Detox Technicians. We have a code blue in progress.

Could someone bring the damn de-creationfib-ulator. We've got a bad one here.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"A couple problems. 1.) No one was there to witness and record decay rates at the time, and 2.) If there was any variation no one knows the degree or amount of time over which it took place."

But if the decay rates WERE fast enough to make 10,000 year old rock look 4.5 Billion years old, where did all that energy go? Are you arguing that the entire field of particle physics is now to be subservient to your interpretations of Genesis?

E= mc^2

[b_sharp]

Frustrating isn't it?

[b_sharp]

"Third Base!

But who's on first?

[Fester Chugabrew]

. . . if the rates of decay had been even remotely fast enough to make 10,000 year old rocks look like they were 4.5 Billion . . .

Hehe. You must be some kind of comedian. The 4.5 billion year idea is yours. The rocks don't look 4.5 billion years old to me. Do you know whether radiometric dating pertains to the age of the rocks themselves, or the form they took at a certain time? Radiometric dating is useless in determining the age of matter. Quantum physics is just beginning to figure out that matter is not as solid as it appears to the eye.

Get over yourself, babe.

[HKMk23]

This is not something that is subject to proof or disproof. If it were, philosophers would have settled it long ago. Neither you nor I are in a league that can compete with the experts on this.

If you would like to claim victory by default on this, go for it.

You are exactly correct that this is not subject to proof or disproof, but that is secondary to my point.

My point is that, whether or not proof of anything metaphysical can be discovered, to eliminate the metaphysical from consideration as a cause is unnecessarily arbitrary; a move that science itself neither requires nor welcomes. It first diminishes the scope of our definition of science, then diminishes the implications of our experimental results and our data sets.

As for claiming victory, that will have to wait for another day. No man can declare victory, here, for it would be a declaration apart from proof. No, such declarations are for the future; for now, we must all hold onto our conclusions losely; keeping them in upturned and open hands that they may be tested against every discovery to see whether they are supported, altered or refuted.

[CarolinaGuitarman]

"Hehe. You must be some kind of comedian. The 4.5 billion year idea is yours. The rocks don't look 4.5 billion years old to me. "

That's because you have your eyes closed. (Along with your mind).

"Get over yourself, babe."

I'm not your babe. Surprising what tendencies you display. Better reread your Holy Book!

[longshadow]

"my noodly appendage is bigger than your noodly appendage" Placemarker