Posted on 10/16/2005 11:50:09 AM PDT by Crackingham
Edited on 10/16/2005 12:04:43 PM PDT by Sidebar Moderator. [history]
Natural history museums around the country are mounting new exhibits they hope will succeed where high school biology classes have faltered: convincing Americans that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a rigorously tested cornerstone of modern science. At Chicago's Field Museum, curators call their upcoming effort "Evolving Planet." The University of Nebraska State Museum in Lincoln calls its program "Explore Evolution." And here at the American Museum of Natural History, the exhibit that opens next month is called simply "Darwin."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
> Yeah but almost every "interruption" we try, upon further analysis, seems to akin to something tried and proven to a very bad idea.
...
> ... this Representative Republic. The combination of basic human & property rights, treatment of religion, our Capitalist system, etc. have been the best recipe for civilization I've seen yet.
Well, this is why many of us with scientific (or humainist, or materialist, or whatever you wanna call it) "leanings" are disturbed by the prospect of introducing religion into science classes. History is replete with theocracies, but very few representative republics. One of the few was the old Icelandic republic, a millenia ago. They were pagan, they were dirt poor... they were largely free and "libertarian." And then, because of fights breakign out between the pagans and the Christians on the island, they held a vote, and decided to make Christianity the official religion (Iceland had not had an "official religion" prior to this). Within 50 years, the republic collapsed.
They'd been poor before, but the farmers generally owned their own lands and flocks and homes; by the end, the Church owned everything, and had reduced free men to serfs.
As has been said, those who do not remember history...
"You have an intuitive understanding of 5 billion years? Wow. Most people can't wrap their minds around a few decades and the changes that they bring.
"
Excellent point. My family on my father's side is Mormon, although my father is not. So, I remember visiting his Mother a few times. She was very much into the geneology of the family, and had done years of research, trying to get information farther and farther back.
When she died, she had only managed about 8 generations before herself, and a lot of that was pretty sketchy. This, with the help of the LDS geneology records.
We generally think about generations as being around 20-30 years long, or something like that. So, at most, she was able to go back no more than 200 years before there was no trace in the records of ancestors.
200 years.
Nobody has an intuitive feeling about billions of years, or even millions. We know a little bit about the times a couple thousand years a go, but not a lot. We can look back in human history for maybe 4-5000 years, but at that point, we're dealing with artifacts, not language, for the most part.
Well, that's not far, is it. If we look at how shadowy our knowledge of 2,000 years is, think about 1000 of those time periods to equal 2 million years. 1000 times the time since Jesus. What might have happened in each of those 2000 year periods? We have no idea. And that's only 100 generations or so.
And now, look at that 2 million years, and try to imagine 1000 of those 2 million year periods. That gets you to 2 billion years ago. It's incomprehensible.
I have never found it surprising that evolution has taken place in such a long period of time.
> Spending public dollars to convince the public that intelligent design has no merit ...
... is not being done. Or perhaps you think that publicly funded planetariums and the like are in violation of the Establishment Clause when they teach about astronomy and not astrology?
I do.
The problem with ID is not that it is wrong, it is that it is not science. We cannot prove definitely that ID is wrong. However, little observational or calculational evidence has been provided to show that it is right.
On a thread a day or so ago this was discussed. The article quoted total numbers of publications in biology for the past 7 years or so, ever since Behe's book on ID. Total number of citations for Intelligent Design: 1. Total number of citations for "horse feces" : 97. The quote was perfect: "When the number of scientific citations for ID rises to the sum for horse feces (97), then maybe ID will achieve the level of intellectual respect it deserves."
Priceless.
It's a purely mathematical argument that could be easily modeled and tested.
We have heard that argument before. I would dearly love to see that mathematical treatment. If you have seen it, please post. I have asked every ID proponent who has ever mentioned that point to please post the math. I'm still waiting, however, with an open mind.
I've never heard of such a group. Can you name it?
I also think it is wrong for these scientists to be so close-minded to alternative explanations
What, like Flat Earth theory?
That's unscientific!
ID isn't scientific. For one, it's based on a subjective view of complexity.
It's a purely mathematical argument that could be easily modeled and tested.
How?
You're confused. You're thinking of F=G(m1*m2)/(d^2) which is Newton's "law" of gravitation. F=ma, concerns the relationship between mass, acceleration and force, and seems to work everywhere.
Actually, it doesn't. It is only true in the nonrelativistic limit.
Even at relativistic speeds, F=ma still works. You just have to remember what m means.
All scientific theories are "Godless" in that they don't refer to God. In this, they differ in no way from the Theory of Evolution. Are you telling us you think science violates the Establishment clause?
Why not spend the same amount of public dollars to tell both sides, thus avoiding the "taking sides" problem?
By your own admission, the ID side is religious in nature. That precludes governmental support.
Where is the ACLU challenge? Where is the religious legal challenge?
??
So the billions of years are simply scientific superstition?
You have to be a little more specific. Which 'billions' of years and which superstition?
Could you identify by name a few members of the "group of people who are using evolution as a weapon"? Are they a cabal, or a conspiracy?
I also think it is wrong for these scientists to be so close-minded to alternative explanations or modified descriptions of evolution.
Scientists as an organized group are the least close-minded group on the planet. They comically bend over backwards to give way more of a hearing than the evidence deserves, for all manner of whacky notions in every branch of natural science.
That's unscientific! As long as these theories can be tested in some rigorous way with quantifiable results they should consider it.
And in the event of such a fortunate circumstance, they surely will.
I don't understand the attacks on Intelligent Design.
As far as I can see, it is ID that is attacking the teaching of evolutionary science in science class, I have not observed any great move to attack ID in church, philosophy class, history, or social studies classes, or science fiction books, where they belong.
From what I understand, all they are saying is that the number of random mutations required to get the complexity of today is in question.
Such concerns have been the long-time gist of the scientific mill. There have been myriad such questions in the history of evolutionary theory. None but ID wants to suggest that the proper solution to the dilemma is to throw up our hands in surrender and claim that the only possible answer is that a miracle occured.
It's a purely mathematical argument that could be easily modeled and tested.
No matter how much math you can eat, you can't prove something that occurred in the natural world is impossible. To do statistical math you need to accurately model a sequence of dependent state-spaces and selection criterion. Don't buy a bridge from anyone who claims they can do that for the history of the natural world.
Just because the Creationists have taken it as a pet cause to defend themselves shouldn't discredit the hypothesis itself.
It isn't the function of science to discredit hypothesis, just to provisionally accept some that have been proved to have compelling support under cynical and careful scrutiny, & that prove useful.
If you were a politician, you would embrace it, because it would be a happy medium where evolution could co-exist with spirituality.
Evolution co-exists with spirituality throughout most of the christian world. Science has nothing significant to say about spirituality. The catholics officially accepted evolutionary theory just recently. It is only in the overheated imaginations of some literal creationists that there is a pitched battle between evolutionary theory and God.
Nothing in the displays shows that religion is wrong or that the theory is Godless. Besides, the leader of the ID movement believes in common descent - that is we all came from little squishy things. So what is your gripe?
The Establishment Clause prohibits government from taking sides when it comes to religion. We do not have a Church of England, as it were. Science is science, the vast vast majority is reglion neutral. E=MC2 is not religious. All science is subject to critical analysis - nothing should be off the table when seeking the truth. With one big exception: Darwin must not be subject to this critical thought if that critical thought questions its basic foundation. There no more evidence that creation is 100% chance than there is for ID. So why should ID be off the table? It is deemed religion. I happen to think Darwin was right in a lot of what he postulated, but his theory does not answer all the questions, especiall when it comes to inter species evolution. The government has taken off the table such critical thought simply because ID implies God, and that is takihg sides.
That there are people approaching the question from a religious perspective does not mean the debate is fundamentally religious. Any question could be approached from a religious perspective.
Behe:
Many people think that questioning Darwinian evolution must be equivalent
to espousing creationism. As commonly understood, creationism involves
belief in an earth formed only about ten thousand years ago, an
interpretation of the Bible that is still very popular. For the record, I
have no reason to doubt that the universe is the billions of years old that
physicists say it is. Further, I find the idea of common descent (that all
organisms share a common ancestor) fairly convincing, and have no
particular reason to doubt it. I greatly respect the work of my colleagues
who study the development and behavior of organisms within an evolutionary
framework, and I think that evolutinoary biologists have contributed
enormously to our understanding of the world.
Oh please, you just posted a crock of crap about superstitions that you grew up with to prove that millions could turn into billions. The question is how, when, and why did you folks decide that millions were incapable of producing the results you desire?
To compute an orbit, say, of bodies in the rims of galaxies, you need to resolve the acceleration forces against the gravitational forces. I'm sure I'm confused on many levels, but not about this.
And who is this Behe? Just one of the two 'scientists' that the ID'ers are relying on in presenting their case for teaching ID in the classroom ...
"The board names two scientists who advocate ID "as a scientific theory": Michael Behe of Lehigh University and Scott Minnich of the University of Idaho*."
Welcome to the common descent bandwagon. Now that both sides agree that man has evolved over millions of years from little squishy things, maybe we can step forward to a new understanding.
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