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 ...
People looking for God's hand in creation also led to plenty of real-world useful applied science, too. Do the names Keppler and Mendel ring a bell? And please note that ID does not necessarily dispute the idea that evolution plays a role in life. It claims that evolution, alone, is not sufficient to explain the life on earth.
I'm curious. Can you point me to a medical breakthrough that would not have happened if science were dominated by people who believed in guided evolution rather than natural evolution? Given the percentage of Americans and scientists who believe in God, I suspect there are at least a few doing real science today. I'm also curious how evolution plays a role in the geological discovery of petroleum deposits. Please note that ID does not inherently claim that the Earth is only 5,000 years old, either. Don't confuse ID with biblical literalism. They are not the same thing.
Good point!
I agree with this. I do believe the soul is what separates us from the rest of nature. I only take issue when people try to confuse this with a scientific conclusion. Science doesn't anywhere deny or confirm the existence of the soul or Spirit - this issue lies outside its province.
Hehehe... Settled schmettled. We ain't buying what you're selling.
This sounds like fun.
Because the facts aren't conclusive. The conclusion is though.
Thanks. I'll check that out.
And don't forget the hand-waving. Gotta have that.
"People looking for God's hand in creation also led to plenty of real-world useful applied science, too. Do the names Keppler and Mendel ring a bell?"
You're shifting the argument from metholodogy to philosophy. Nice try.
Now, back to methodology: all you need do is show how ID theory leads to breakthroughs that natural evolution doesn't.
"And please note that ID does not necessarily dispute the idea that evolution plays a role in life. It claims that evolution, alone, is not sufficient to explain the life on earth."
OK, so let's see their applied science that flows specifically from the axiom "evolution, alone, is not sufficient to explain the life on earth."
"Can you point me to a medical breakthrough that would not have happened if science were dominated by people who believed in guided evolution rather than natural evolution?"
You asked the wrong question.
Can you show me a medical breakthrough that explicitly DID happen based on a theory of guided evolution, and would not have happened without it?
You are asserting that ID is a superior explanation of how life came to exist on Earth. All I'm saying is "OK, now prove the assertion."
"Running" and "Dodging" ????
Too bad. Then you can go without.
Anyone who thinks this is conceivable is simply ignorant of the basic principles of geology and soil-mechanics. You don't get meandering canyons hundreds of miles long with sheer drops thousands of feet high by the Mt St Helens canyon formation mechanism. The Mt St Helens canyon was formed rapidly on the mountain-slopes through new volcanic ash. It doesn't have giant meanders. It doesn't have huge vertical drops. To attempt to equate the two is just makes you look ridiculous.
Imagine some kind of cataclysmic dam-burst forming the Grand canyon quickly. Let's say the ground it is forming in his hard; well the water will just flow over the surface - it won't form a meandering canyon hundreds of miles long. Let's say the gound it is forming on is soft; well the water may cut some kind of canyon but the material won't be strong enough to support huge vertical drops (to picture this imagine the canyon edges made of sand, can you see those big vertical drops forming?) and it won't meander.
The bottom line is that we know what gradual erosion looks like, and the Grand Canyon looks just like what we'd expect to get from millions of years of the Colorado River meandering across the Kaibab uplift as it slowly rises (the rising of the Kaibab uplift is an ongoing tectonic process whose continued progress is measurable and observed)
Further, take a look at a real geological cross-section of the Grand Canyon. Now, can you see the angular unconformity between the proterozoic and paleozoic sediments? Tell me, if flood geology is true and the Grand Canyon was (somehow) cut through fresh sediments after the flood, just how did that angular unconformity get there? You cannot get angular unconformities in rapidly formed catasrophe sediments.
Sometimes YEC believers get jobs in oil companies and come into contact with the real geological data that ICR and AiG don't really want to talk about. To see what happens to them I'll quote Glenn Morton, who used to write articles for AiG before he got a job with an oil company:
But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil industry. I asked them one question.
"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run to be true? ,"
That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No!' A very close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question, exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is now but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him.
The trouble is that ID is by its nature an untestable hypothesis. Yes, we can find examples of systems that appear to be designed. Yes we can try to determine whether these could have evolved or not. However, the appearance of design is not really evidence of design.
The theory of evolution states essentially that a series of DNA mutations occurred and were propogated differentially according to whether or not the mutations gave organisms a survival advantage. ID typically does not question this premise. It merely suggests that the end result of this process is a product of design rather than purely natural forces. How is it possible to test whether a given series of selected mutations arose from natural processes or from design?
To give an analogy, suppose the only thing you could observe directly was a series of 10 numbered coins on a table and whether they had their "heads" side up or their "tails" side up. Without being able to directly observe the history of the coins, what test would you propose to determine whether they were just thrown on the table or whether some person placed them there with that particular sequence of heads and tails?
Current ID theory is akin to stating that "The coins are all heads. That this occurred randomly is improbable, so it's likely that someone placed them there like that." However, if the sequence of coins were HHTTHTTHHH, you probably would be led to the conclusion that they were thrown there at random. However, note that the probability of the sequence HHTTHTTHHH is exactly the same as the probability of the sequence HHHHHHHHHH. Therefore, there's no basis asserting that one is random and the other is a result of design. There's no test that can be done on the coins themselves to settle the question.
Similarly, WRT living organisms, there's no test that can be done to determine design vs. non-design. The mistake that people make when talking about evolution is that they believe that evolution requires non-design. This is not the case. Evolution requires variation selected on the basis of survival value. Whether the variation or selection is a result of design is irrelevant. It is true, however, that in the absence of positive evidence required to settle the question, Occam's Razor tells scientists to not needlessly multiply entities, so no designer is postulated. This is the result of the methodology of science and not a result of anything inherent in evolution.
Inasmuch as Kepler tried to apply theistic ideas to science he came up with conclusions that were dead wrong. For example he asserted that all the planets must contain life or God wouldn't have bothered to make them. The important orbital mechanics results that he got that are now famous resulted from methodologial naturalism. Just observe the facts, and construct a theory, without worrying about a creator.
Mendel set out using methodological naturalism to disprove the Theory of Evolution. He ended up making a giant contribution to the modern synthesis of evolution. Just like Kepler his methods and results owed nothing to his faith. Just good science.
Then what's your beef with evolution? It doesn't say anything at all contradicting what you have posted.
You keep saying that I need to show you this. Why? Frankly, I don't see what ID really changes other than the thesis that the research is trying to address and what people assume about the unkown.
OK, so let's see their applied science that flows specifically from the axiom "evolution, alone, is not sufficient to explain the life on earth."
Like I said, I don't really see what ID changes other than the type of evidence being looked for and the assumptions made about the unknown.
You asked the wrong question.
I'm asking the same question of you that you are asking of me. If you can't answer it, then why should I be expected to answer it? In fact, you made an assertion that evolution had practical applications in several specific areas and I asked you to explain your claims.
Can you show me a medical breakthrough that explicitly DID happen based on a theory of guided evolution, and would not have happened without it?
Why should I have to? If you can't point to a specific medical breakthrough that was the result of strict adherence to the theories of natural selection, then why should you expect me to do the same for guided evolution? And I'm still curious how evolution helps find oil, an assertion that you've made.
You are asserting that ID is a superior explanation of how life came to exist on Earth. All I'm saying is "OK, now prove the assertion."
I'm asserting that ID may be a superior explanation of how life came to exist on Earth. It's a theory. And that's why they are looking for evidence to support it. Further, I think it illustrates the reliance that evolutionists place on the unsupported assumption that anything they can't explain will ultimately be explainable through natural selection and evolution, at which point it shifts from science and the scientific method to orthodoxy and dogma. Evolutionists should be looking at all the same things that ID advocates are looking at in order to test their theory, which is why I'm so puzzled at the hostility toward ID.
momentum = rate of change of force. What changing force hurls the moon away from the earth?
Of course I have it backwards. Force=rate of change of momentum. Unless the moon is moving on a linear path with constant velocity, its momentum is changing. What force is changing it?
"You keep saying that I need to show you this. Why?"
Because that is the measure, ultimately, of any scientific theory--its predictive value. If it does not have better predictive value than a competing theory, the competing theory wins.
Yes, it's survival of the fittest.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.