Posted on 01/30/2006 10:27:35 PM PST by Sweetjustusnow
The two scariest words in the English language? Intelligent Design! That phrase tends to produce a nasty rash and night sweats among our elitist class.
Should some impressionable teenager ever hear those words from a public school teacher, we are led to believe, that student may embrace a secular heresy: that some intelligent force or energy, maybe even a god, rather than Darwinian blind chance, has been responsible for the gazillions of magnificently designed life forms that populate our privileged planet.
"LOS ANGELES - Scientists say they have confirmed that a so-called 10th planet discovered last year is bigger than Pluto, but that likely won't quell the debate over what makes a planet."
They can't even agree on what a planet is. Apparently they can't agree on what a human is, either.
If it were only so cut and dry.
Michael Ruse, a professor of zoology and philosophy of science at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada testified at the McLean v. Arkansas trial in the early 1980s and indeed said that creation-science is not science at all. Invoking the fact/faith dichotomy, Ruse claimed that Darwinism was scientific because establishing its validity required no philosophical assumptions. All other views, he claimed, required such assumptions and were therefore unscientific. His testimony became the centerpiece of Judge Overton's ruling and became a judicial precedent.
What does Professor Ruse say now?
He has now come to view evolution as ultimately based on several unproven philosophical assumptions.
In fact, he was a key speaker at a seminar convened to debunk "The New Creationism." Ruse had specifically been asked to refute Phillip Johnson's book, "Darwin on Trial." Instead, he endorsed one of its key points.
"I'm no less of an evolutionist now than I ever was," Ruse nevertheless explained that he had given fresh consideration to Johnson's thesis that Ruse himself, as "an evolutionist, is metaphysically based at some level just as much as . . . some creationist. . . . I must confess, in the ten years since I . . . appeared in the Creationism Trial in Arkansas . . . I've been coming to this kind of position myself."...
"Evolution as a scientific theory makes a commitment to naturalism," he said–that is, it is a philosophy, not just facts. He went on: "Evolution . . . akin to religion, involves making certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions, which at some level cannot be proven empirically."
Ruse's colleagues responded with shocked silence and afterward one of them, Arthur Shapiro, wrote a commentary titled, "Did Michael Ruse Give Away the Store?"
OK, it seems you're smarter than them silly scientists, so maybe you can help them to decide what a planet really is.
Would you like to point out where I have said I am smart at all? I just posted what scientists said. They don't have a definition for a planet. Unless you could enlighten us and give us a scientific definition.
"Some astronomers have debated over what is a planet and whether Pluto should keep its status. The difficulty is there is no official definition and some argue that setting standards like size limits opens the door too wide."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060201/ap_on_sc/new_planet;_ylt=AoPVagE2VUgXg0YAMeGWxjGs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3b2NibDltBHNlYwM3MTY-
Did you arrive at this statement empirically, or is it more like a gut feeling? IMO, science is no more coherent than religion. Both encompass a vast range of thought. Better to focus on a particular aspect of science or religion and from there see what degree of consensus might be found. Even within narrow parameters, both science and religion seem to produce variances.
That is one of the reasons I prefer the biblical texts as a starting point WRT the big picture. They reside outside of my creative power and as such may govern it. While their interpretation is subjective and by no means coherent for all people at all times, at least the texts themselves, prior to subjective interpretations, are largely coherent to begin with.
Another hilarious emission from FesterWorld. Can you actually say this with a straight face?
While (the interpretation of biblical texts) is subjective and by no means coherent for all people at all times
The understatement of the century.
I'll mindread, and suggest that you are trying to imply that because scientists disagree, often violently, about matters of detail in their respective fields, that makes science somehow subjective or less valuable or flawed. Physicists will have extremely heated arguments about the nature of quantum mechanics, biologists and geneticists will have heated arguments about the precise mechanisms of "descent with modification", all fields have their contentious areas. Indeed the heat of the debate amongst real scientists can at times make the schoolyard spats that we have here in FR seem quite feeble.
What you are missing however is that these disputes are about detail. The big picture is not in doubt except in completely new fields. Even when Newtonian Mechanics was overturned by Einstein it didn't change the fact that Newtonian Mechanics is correct for most real-world purposes. Frenzied arguments about quantum mechanics don't invalidate quantum mechanics per se. It would be a bit unfortunate if they did, because the computer that you are sitting at reading these words relies on that science being substantially correct. Likewise frenzied arguments between experts about evolutionary mechanisms like punkeek or the precise positions of certain fossils on the phylogenetic tree don't invalidate evolution, which is so solidly grounded in reality and observation as to be beyond dispute.
Even the scientists pushing ID into the classroom from the Discovery Institute are united and quite clear in their acceptance of the evidence supporting common descent, a fact that most of their cheerleaders find it convenient to ignore. Some new paradigm might come along and overturn evolution, but just as Newtonian Mechanics remains correct for most real-world purposes (all those bridges didn't collapse when Einstein pointed out where Newton was wrong), any new theory of evolution will for most purposes have to resemble the current one so closely as to be barely distinguishable, or it won't be able to explain the existing data. That's how science works, it adjusts its theories to fit results and observations, but the more observations you've got, the more certain you can be that your theory is substantially correct. Evolution is amongst the most solidly grounded of all scientific knowledge, supported as it is by literally millions of data points and successful predictions.
Well, it's no surprise since all "truth" is subjective, even "scientific truth" if a Darwinist will allow the theory of evolution to be taken to its ultimate conclusion and ramifications.
Nancy Pearcey delivered an excellent speech last year at Stanford on Darwinism and this topic. Of course, she was picketed and protested by athiests and others who supposedly adore free speech. Think of her as an ID Ann Coulter. Here are some of her thoughts:
"To understand how Darwinism undercuts the very concept of rationality, we can think back to the late nineteenth century when the theory first arrived on American shores. Almost immediately, it was welcomed by a group of thinkers who began to work out its implications far beyond science. They realized that Darwinism implies a broader philosophy of naturalism (i.e., that nature is all that exists, and that natural causes are adequate to explain all phenomena). Thus they began applying a naturalistic worldview across the board–in philosophy, psychology, the law, education, and the arts.
At the foundation of these efforts, however, was a naturalistic approach to knowledge itself (epistemology). The logic went like this: If humans are products of Darwinian natural selection, that obviously includes the human brain–which in turn means all our beliefs and values are products of evolutionary forces: Ideas arise in the human brain by chance, just like Darwin's chance variations in nature; and the ones that stick around to become firm beliefs and convictions are those that give an advantage in the struggle for survival. This view of knowledge came to be called pragmatism (truth is what works) or instrumentalism (ideas are merely tools for survival).
One of the leading pragmatists was John Dewey, who had a greater influence on educational theory in America than anyone else in the 20th century. Dewey rejected the idea that there is a transcendent element in human nature, typically defined in terms of mind or soul or spirit, capable of knowing a transcendent truth or moral order. Instead he treated humans as mere organisms adapting to challenges in the environment. In his educational theory, learning is just another form of adaptation–a kind of mental natural selection. Ideas evolve as tools for survival, no different from the evolution of the lion's teeth or the eagle's claws.
In a famous essay called "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy," Dewey said Darwinism leads to a "new logic to apply to mind and morals and life." In this new evolutionary logic, ideas are not judged by a transcendent standard of Truth, but by how they work in getting us what we want. Ideas do not "reflect reality" but only serve human interests.
To emphasize how revolutionary this was, up until this time the dominant theory of knowledge or epistemology was based on the biblical doctrine of the image of God. Confidence in the reliability of human knowledge derived from the conviction that finite human reason reflects (to some degree at least) an infinite divine Reason. Since the same God who created the universe also created our minds, we can be confident that our mental capacities reflect the structure of the universe. In The Mind of God and the Works of Man, Edward Craig shows that even as Western thinkers began to move away from orthodox Christian theology, in their philosophy most of them still retained the conception that our minds reflect an Absolute Mind as the basis for trust in human cognition.
The pragmatists were among the first, however, to face squarely the implications of naturalistic evolution. If evolutionary forces produced the mind, they said, then all are beliefs and convictions are nothing but mental survival strategies, to be judged in terms of their practical success in human conduct. William James liked to say that truth is the "cash value" of an idea: If it pays off, then we call it true.
'Constructivism' is a popular trend in education today. Few realize that it is based on the idea that truth is nothing more than a social construction for solving problems. A leading theorist of constructivism, Ernst von Glasersfeld at the University of Georgia, is forthright about its Darwinian roots. "The function of cognition is adaptive in the biological sense," he writes. "This means that 'to know' is not to possess 'true representations' of reality, but rather to possess ways and means of acting and thinking that allow one to attain the goals one happens to have chosen." In short, a Darwinian epistemology implies that ideas are merely tools for meeting human goals.
These results of pragmatism are quite postmodern, so it comes as no surprise to learn that the prominent postmodernist Richard Rorty calls himself a neo-pragmatism. Rorty argues that postmodernism is simply the logical outcome of pragmatism, and explains why.
According to the traditional, common-sense approach to knowledge, our ideas are true when the represent or correspond to reality. But according to Darwinian epistemology, ideas are nothing but tools that have evolved to help us control and manipulate the environment. As Rorty puts it, our theories "have no more of a representational relation to an intrinsic nature of things than does the anteater's snout or the bowerbird's skill at weaving" (Truth and Progress). Thus we evaluate an idea the same way that natural selection preserves the snout or the weaving instinct–not by asking how well it represents objective reality but only how well it works.
I once presented this progression from Darwinism to postmodern pragmatism at a Christian college, when a man in the audience raised his hand: 'I have only one question. These guys who think all our ideas and beliefs evolved . . . do they think their own ideas evolved?' The audience broke into delighted applause, because of course he had captured the key fallacy of the Darwinian approach to knowledge. If all ideas are products of evolution, and thus not really true but only useful for survival, then evolution itself is not true either–and why should the rest of us pay any attention to it?
Indeed, the theory undercuts itself. For if evolution is true, then it is not true, but only useful. This kind of internal contradiction is fatal, for a theory that asserts something and denies it at the same time is simply nonsense. In short, naturalistic evolution is self-refuting.
The media paints the evolution controversy in terms of science versus religion. But it is much more accurate to say it is worldview versus worldview, philosophy versus philosophy. Making this point levels the playing field and opens the door to serious dialogue.
It is this worldview dimension that makes the debate over Darwin versus Intelligent Design so important. Every system of thought starts with a creation account that offers an answer to the fundamental question: Where did everything come from? That crucial starting point shapes everything that follows. Today a naturalistic approach to knowledge is being applied to virtually every field. Some say we're entering an age of "Universal Darwinism," where it is no longer just a scientific theory but a comprehensive worldview.
It has become a commonplace to say that America is embroiled in a "culture war" over conflicting moral standards. But we must remember that morality is always derivative, stemming from an underlying worldview. The culture war reflects an underlying cognitive war over worldviews–and at the core of each worldview is an account of origins."
From the article I linked: "Rather, Schwartz argues, they have not been found because they don't exist..."
That's the reporter's *paraphrase* of what he thinks Schwartz's position is, not something Schwartz actually stated for himself. Even leaving aside the crappy level of the ability of reporters to correctly summarize science findings (how many examples of garbled science reporting would you like me to show you?), I find it amusing that you're gullible enough to believe *reporters* now.
In any case, I suggest that you toodle off and read Schwartz's books before you make any more goofy presumptions about them. Oh, look, here are transitional fossils on pages 374-375 of his book, "Sudden Origins : Fossils, Genes, and the Emergence of Species:
If Schwartz actually believes that transitional forms "don't exist", then why is he documenting them in his book, hmm?
Go on, tell me another creationist lie, I get such a laugh out of them.
Clue for the clueless: Schwartz argues that due to mutations in regulatory genes, *fine-grained* transitions need not take place between certain kinds of phenotypic changes during evolution (and yes, Schwartz *does* firmly support evolution).
For example, people with six fingers on each hand (yes, they *do* exist, Google for "polydactylism") are born from five-fingered parents -- they are not the result of a long string of ancestors which started out with a small stub of a sixth finger on the side of the hand, followed by a larger nub in following generations, growing to a half-length sixth finger in even later generations, etc. until the sixth finger finally achieved its full size in the most recent birth. Instead, a glitch in a regulatory gene just "cloned" a sixth finger, *bam*, out of the "finger making" gene complex which is responsible for growing fingers in the developing embryo.
Similarly, Schwartz argues that certain morphological changes don't require gradual "growth" across many generations (with a resulting string of intermediates), instead alterations in regulatory genes can produce certain types of developmental modifications which result in the "sudden" change (appearance, disappearance, or other alteration) of a feature, in the same manner as the "sudden" appearance of a fully-formed sixth finger in some humans, without having to go through a "growth" process across many generations.
Actually, this has been known for a long time, Schwartz just argues that it might account for more instances of evolutionary change than previously thought.
But he never suggests that this would in any way result in the total absence of transitional forms, like nothing between reptiles and mammals. That would be a stupid claim, because a great many transitional fossils between reptiles and mammals have already been found and are well known. On the contrary, he acknowledges many transitional forms along that evolutionary pathway. He just feels that *fine-grained* transitionals might be lacking, because evolution can successfully make somewhat bigger jumps than the almost invisibly small variations that Darwin pictured. So in Schwartz's view, the transitional sequence from, say, reptiles to mammals is made up of many "hops" from one transition to the next, instead of a practically infinite regress of transitions between transitions, and even more transitions between *those* transitions, etc.
I now await your failure to grasp *this* point as well.
The initial point stands, your arrogant elitism notwithstanding.
Your false claim falls flat, your arrogant ignorance notwithstanding.
Now see, if you actually had bothered to *learn* any biology before attempting to debate it, this would have been obvious to you already from the article, and you wouldn't have drawn such a bizarre and wrong conclusion from it.
Wouldn't it have made more sense for you to go actually read Schwartz's books before you jumped to mistaken conclusions about his position and recklessly tried to fling him in my face as allegedly refuting evolution?
But hey, learning about a topic before you try to argue with someone isn't the creationist way, is it?
That's it exactly. And these metaphysical assumptions should be acknowledged as such, not glossed over as if science can take place without them. No human observer can escape the philosophical assumptions with which he undertakes science, and science is not able of empirically testing which assumptions are more in accord with objective reality.
The issue, or debate, should be in regard to whether or not the results of dissimilar philosophical assumptions should be granted open expression in a public context. This is a right our Constitution guarantees, but our stubborn inclination is to become emotionally attached to our own points of view and thus denigrate our neighbor's point of view not only personally but also by legal prohibition.
See the post below.
In short, for the sake of our culture we should reject, or perhaps ban, the theory of evolution, regardless of its scientific merit. (And while we're at it, for the sake of our knees we really should ban the theory of gravity.)
Yeah, boy, DNA sequences and research results are just "posturing and propaganda", you betcha!
Do even you believe the stuff that falls out of your brain?
When you restrict the outcome of 'research' to only that which fits your humanist desires,
I don't, nor do I have "humanist desires". You sure jump to a lot of wild conclusions, don't you?
the result is not science by any reasonable definition.
Translation: editor-surveyor doesn't like what the real-world evidence shows, so he hand-waves it away as "not science". After all, "science by any reasonable definition" means "whatever tells editor-surveyor what he wants to hear".
I don't wish to deny you or Ichy the right to your beliefs,
No, you just want to deny the real-world evidence. There's a word for people who deny reality so strenuously.
but I demand that you recognize the difference between a biased view, and evidence.
Oh, believe me, I'm *well* aware of the difference. I'm perfectly able to recognize that all you have are your biased views, and can't even deal with the evidence, much less provide any of your own.
I have a tagline suggestion for you, editor-surveyor: "This is your brain on creationism". You should be proud to use that one, if your posts are actually as brilliant and clear-headed as you think, right?
And the difference between an idea representing objective reality well, and an idea working, is..... ? To put it another way, how can ideas that don't represent reality work? You seem to be saying that even though science makes successful predictions and fails falsifications (the definition of "working" that scientists go with) it might be coming up with answers that are wrong and don't accurately represent reality. Presumably you have a better alternative. What is your proposed method for coming up with answers that are "right" as opposed to "useful"? How can we tell the difference?
EXCELLENT!!!
I thought gravity was a law.
You thought wrong. Newton had a law of gravity, but it is innaccurate. There is a modern theory of gravity.
Didn't you mean "content-free Hokum"?
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