One side can be wrong: 'Intelligent design' in classrooms would have disastrous consequences

Guardian UK ^ | September 1, 2005 | Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne

[The Red Zone]

You need evolution to be more than this fluctuation, governed by natural selection, to bring about speciation. You need generation of something to select. E.g. the appearance of new, purple moths. Tell me: Is, or is not, the generation-of-something-to-select part of the TOE?

[Tax-chick]

It is politics interfering directly in science

What's new?

[Dimensio]

You need evolution to be more than this fluctuation, governed by natural selection, to bring about speciation.

Why? What is needed. Be specific.

You need generation of something to select. E.g. the appearance of new, purple moths.

And this would come about through genetic "fluctuation".

Tell me: Is, or is not, the generation-of-something-to-select part of the TOE?

Yes, but it's not as abrupt an appearance as some seem to think.

[bobdsmith]

Are you denying that embryonic recapitulation is true?

It is partly true. Embryonic development does contain features from the oganisms evolutionary history, its just that these do not happen in a linear order. The original claim made by haekel was that evolution tacks parts onto the end of embryonic development. But instead it tacks parts onto any stage.

You are incorrect to say modern textbooks do not teach that. My college biology text indeed taught that. I gave my teacher some articles to refute it. Didn't hear much back about it.

I doubt it taught haekel's recapitulation as that is very old and long ago discredited. It probably taught the real version.

[SeaLion]

This opens up psuedosciences to be taught in colleges, and because they are labelled science they will become entrenched as science in the public mind. It even possible that they could influence political policy decisions with disasterous consequences. I can even imagine new scientific fields being set up solely to support certain political objectives. I heartily agree, bobdsmith, that is exactly what happened under Stalin in the Soviet Union (Lysenko's revised Lamarckism, aligned with 'Marxist philosophy', or some fool thing). I don't like hysteria--and some of the posts in here, which seem to attribute various failings in our school and our society to the teaching of 'Darwinism', seem to be silly assertions, with no demonstration of the supposed connections offered. So without sounding too hysterical myself, let me suggest just where a society can end up when it starts setting up religion against science: Afghanistan under the Taliban, where they dispensed with science altogether in the name of religion

[The Red Zone]

And this would come about through genetic "fluctuation".

You'd need a fluctuation which does more than give you less of A and more of B, in a population that always has A and B. You'd need a fluctuation that gives you C.

[Quark2005]

Well, silly string theory, with its 7 of its 11 dimensions by definition being UNTESTABLE...

Any physicist will tell you that string theory has not been experimentally confirmed; and it is still controversial, even among many physicists; it's not a very good parallel to the Theory of Evolution (string theory still in its relative infancy).

A better comparison in particle physics would be the Standard Model, which has many abstract aspects & requires some minor tinkering to accomodate new data, but is well-verified experimentally and accepted by virtually the entire physics community, even though some of the particles it requires (e.g. gluons) have never been observed directly (though their effects have).

[MEGoody]

At first hearing, everything about the phrase "both sides" warms the hearts of educators like ourselves.

No, it didn't. Educators only want THEIR side of things told. The phrase 'both sides' to them means 'my side'.

[bobdsmith]

Amazing how "evolution" has been stretched to something that doesn't even rise to the level of generating new breeds of dogs or cats.

It hasn't been stretched - that is how it has always been defined. Even in Darwin's time evolution refered to great and slight changes alike.

[The Red Zone]

So without sounding too hysterical myself, let me suggest just where a society can end up when it starts setting up religion against science: Afghanistan under the Taliban, where they dispensed with science altogether in the name of religion

It sounds as though in the schools if anything is happening it's the opposite. 'Science' is chasing religion into a corner. Some people here seem to like it that way.

[Coyoteman]

Just pointing out to you something that your own series of stories makes clear by relief: the Bible creation story is in a genre by itself. The concept of a deity that pre-existed ALL matter and physical energy, rather than coexisting somehow with it at the start of all events, is unique to the bible and those works that borrow from the bible (e.g. Koran). I am not here pitching for ID, but for the bible.

You make my point. The CS folks got bombed out by the Supreme Court in the late 1980s, so ID was "created" to better pass constitutional muster.

The ID folks would have us believe that any ID story is equally valid, so I post Native American and other creation stories. The reaction I usually get is precisely the one you provided, essentially "cute, but that's not our kind of creation story."

[Doctor Stochastic]

"Survival of the Adequate"

[Doctor Stochastic]

As a mother of three children, the oldest being a boy, I could not with conscience back an organization that supports NAMBLA.

But she has no trouble allying herself with the Islamic extremists of Harun Yahya.

[The Red Zone]

How is pitching for the bible any of these other things? Non sequitur.

[atlaw]

You were taught Lamarckism in the 1970s? Odd.

On the other hand, are you familiar with the "science" curriculum of public school districts nationwide? How do you know they're not still teaching Lamarckian "genetics"?

Can you point me to any textbook that refereneces as an example of evolution neck stretching by giraffes? Or are you demanding that I prove a negative, in the absence of which you may declare a positive (i.e., I cannot show you that every single textbook is free from the "stretching neck" theory, therefore it is possible, even if improbable, that one textbook, somewhere, contains such a notion).

[Psycho_Bunny]

Like most pseudo-intellectual blather, this article never explains how its premise is correct.

[The Red Zone]

Whose converse is "inadequate." If such a worldview takes over, not just the naturalist's notebook, but the general philosophy of adolescents (who are PAINFULLY aware of adequacy/inadequacy issues) this is asking for social trouble.

[bobdsmith]

You'd need a fluctuation which does more than give you less of A and more of B, in a population that always has A and B. You'd need a fluctuation that gives you C.

Evolution is change in gene frequencies within a population. The frequency can change by existing variants changing in number, or by new variants appearing. Both are examples of evolution.

[atlaw]

Like most pseudo-intellectual blather, this article never explains how its premise is correct.

How is its premise incorrect?

[bobdsmith]

Like most pseudo-intellectual blather, this article never explains how its premise is correct.

What premise?