Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
"And that religion is so important to so many Americans and this issue is so divisive in schools suggests to me that ID is worthy of discussion. "
Would those really falsify the entire theory of natural selection and evolution? What would each of those finds suggest as an alternative? If a particular pheonomenon did not have a natural explanation (e.g., a miracle), would science be able to deal with it?
Of course another way of looking at it is that ID isn't an independent theory so much as it's a commentary on evolution and an encouragement to see if one can find a rabbit fossil in the Cambrian stata or a genome that isn't where it belongs.
I asked for a falsification test. Are really you telling me that if they don't find an intermediate form that it would disprove the theory of evolution? Somehow, I doubt it.
I suppose that I should point out that ID does not necessarily preclude the possiblity of natural selection and evolution, either.
Right or wrong, ID is no more Christian than evolution is atheist.
Well, now you're getting into the whole question of whether Popper's falsificationism works as a model of the scientific enterprise. But I don't think we could patch up evolution if there really were a mammalian fossil in the Cambrian or a serious discrepancy in genomics. We would certainly look for a causative explanation. I suppose, given enough failures, we might eventually give up looking for causes.
Of course another way of looking at it is that ID isn't an independent theory so much as it's a commentary on evolution and an encouragement to see if one can find a rabbit fossil in the Cambrian stata or a genome that isn't where it belongs.
But we're looking at genomes and strata anyway. What good is ID doing then? Robust encouragement from a bunch of guys the scientists doing the work don't respect anyway?
This is an interesting pair of examples, because I think it corresponds pretty well to a possible relationship between evolution and ID. In many ways, Newton was correct but ultimately Newtonian physics is incomplete and cannot explain some very important phsyical pheonomena. That means that the average person can generate plenty of evidence to confirm Newton's theories and may never run into those places where Newtonian physics fails to properly explain the universe. Similarly, evolution may be the "Newtonian Physics" of biology, largely correct and incredibly useful but lacking in a few normally hidden but deeply meaningful ways.
What would constitute disproof of natural selection? That is a bit like asking what would constitute disproof of the heliocentric system of planets. Perhaps some overwhelming series of anomalies in the genome. I know that some ID advocates are placing high hopes on conserved non-coding DNA. But when an anomaly is found, the first thing science does is try to explain it. How would ID approach it differently?
I don't think it would. In fact, if it makes it easier to deal with, you can simply think of ID as a structured approach to disproving natural selection and evolution as the sole processes governing the development of life on Earth. Maybe that's a better way of describing it than an independent theory. That's why I think it's appropriate in a public school classroom. But to clarify, no I don't expect them to spend a semester teaching it. One class would be fine, and that same class could be used to otherwise describe the scientific method and such. ID, itself, it not incompatible with Evolution any more than Newtonian mechanics are incompatible with Einstein's theories when I'm driving a car or looking to build a frame for a house.
What is the alternative to seeking a natural explanation?
If something is not natural, then our experience differentiating natural and man-made phoneomena suggests that it's created, and creation suggests a creator. But unless you are willing to at least leave the possibility of non-natural explanations for phenomena open, then your trust that there is a natural explanation for everything is dogmatic and not scientific. It's an assumption, not a theory that's being tested.
It took a hundred years to solve the chemical mystery of genetics. Is impatience a virtue?
No, which is why I don't see the impatience directed at ID as being warranted. At it's core, it suggests that evidence for non-natural biological features should be searched for. If it finds them, then it's uncovered a problem with evolution. If it doesn't find them, then we'll learn a lot more about evolution and how life works in the process. And as an added bonus, people who believe in biblical literalism are given a nod that evolution doesn't yet have all the answers so they'll feel better about what their kids learn in public school. I see it as a win-win-win situation for everyone.
I do think that a certain amount of skepticism is a virtue, as is the questioning of assumptions, which should be clear from my screen name.
Then we still disagree. There is nothing that makes ID any more worthy than crystal healing, astrology, or kirilian halo energy, of a day's worth of science class.
And then what? That's sort of what I mean when I talk about dogma in science. Most scientists don't really believe they'll ever run into a non-natural explanation for something and simply assume that they won't.
But we're looking at genomes and strata anyway. What good is ID doing then? Robust encouragement from a bunch of guys the scientists doing the work don't respect anyway?
The purpose it serves is to illustrate the incomplete nature of current scientific understanding and it gets religious people off the back of scientists by overtly admitting that science doesn't yet have all the answers and that religous people and doubters should feel free to formulate competing theories and look for their own evidence to prove them. That ID actually attempts to look for evidence of creation is a positive step away from teaching faith as science. Rather than slamming the door on it's face, invite it in because so long as it stays reasonably scientific, it should do no harm and could actually be somewhat constructive.
No, that's not what I'm telling you--what I'm telling you (and which is not a speck different from what several others have told you) is that if the intermediate form started turning up in mass numbers out of place in the geographic stratum, that would make evolutionary theory sit up and take notice. But, although it obviously could, and we do look, that never seems to happen. Are you going to make a career out of misconstruing what you're told?
I suppose that I should point out that ID does not necessarily preclude the possiblity of natural selection and evolution, either.
Well, you could, but that would presuppose that anyone here who has an iron in this fire doesn't already know this. That is not at issue, at issue is whether or not ID theory rises to the level of being taken seriously as a scientific conjecture, and it doesn't, any more than crystal healing energy (which science equally cannot disprove) does.
What if the science class was geared towards debunking those things?
And, since I was cured by pyramid crystal healing through the focusing of kirilian energy, and because there were more, bigger books written on this subject than on irreducible complexity, I can definitely insist that we ought to have a day of physics devoted to pyramid crystal healing through the focusing of kirilian energy; it becomes a matter of integrity and honesty to bring it in. That's all I ask for sure.
Well, I'd call that misconstruing the issue in the opposite direction. Science can't demonstrate that ID didn't happen, nor that crystal healing doesn't occur. Because they could have. Science isn't in the business of forming definitive opinions, just presently useful ones, about such evidence as we presently have.
But presumably it can demonstrate that Occam's Razor doesn't favor ID, right?
We haven't yet. Science spends very little time worrying about non-existent problems, mostly because we have so many interesting problems that do actually exist.
If at some stage in the future, when we knew a lot more about pre-biotic chemistry than we do now, and there were still no plausible explanation for the origin of life, we would be in a crisis, similar to that faced by physicists in the 1920s when there was a huge volume of atomic spectral data and no atomic theory came even close to providing an explanation for it. (In that case, quantum mechanics, which discarded quite a bit of established physics and was highly revolutionary, came along). So, if we were in a similar situation, I think we'd cast the net wider - looking for some extraterrestrial creation of life. But we're not in that situation now.
The purpose it serves is to illustrate the incomplete nature of current scientific understanding and it gets religious people off the back of scientists by overtly admitting that science doesn't yet have all the answers and that religous people and doubters should feel free to formulate competing theories and look for their own evidence to prove them.
No one's stopping them. What we are objecting to is calling what they're doing science. And you have pretty much admitted as much above, by saying that 'science doesn't yet have all the answers', tacitly excluding ID from science.
IDers and other creationists can teach absolutely anything they want in Sunday School. I just want them to stay out of science classes.
That ID actually attempts to look for evidence of creation is a positive step away from teaching faith as science. Rather than slamming the door on it's face, invite it in because so long as it stays reasonably scientific, it should do no harm and could actually be somewhat constructive.
Now you're trying to have it both ways. Sorry, you can't. You've failed to put forward a mechanism for falsification of ID. I sympathize. In fact, I've proposed that ID could be falsified by showing that the human genome contains features that no intelligent or even sane designer would have included. I was rebuffed with the response that we can't expect to be able to fathom the mind of the designer (though, at this stage, it's generally become the Designer). That pretty much puts the kibosh on the idea we can detect design, no? So, if it isn't falsifiable, and evolution is, then we have reasonable grounds for saying ID is not science.
Not particularly. Occam's razor is not a law of science, it is a vexingly subjective rule of thumb, and not all that reliable even at that. Personally, I think some form of ID, or at least panspermia, is the best way out of several mutational clock dilemmas that presently puzzle us....which isn't sufficient to make it a science of any significant note.
Like I said then, I say now, and after this will never post to you again no matter what you say.
In a pig's eye.
I do not expect you to behave any different than you have, to have any more honest less evasive, better or more answers.
What will this be? About the fourth time you've waved the exact same insults in my face while demanding I stop posting to you? Stop throwing stones while hiding behind the admin's skirts. What cheesy behavior.
It's what enabled us to reject the geocentric model in favor of the heliocentric.
Personally, I think some form of ID, or at least panspermia, is the best way out of several mutational clock dilemmas that presently puzzle us....which isn't sufficient to make it a science of any significant note.
It's sufficient to make it an hypothesis, at the least.
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