Evolution: World science academies fight back against creationists

PhysOrg.com ^ | 21 June 2006 | Staff

[PatrickHenry]

In a veiled attack on creationism, the world's foremost academies of science on Wednesday called on parents and teachers to provide children with the facts about evolution and the origins of life on Earth.

A declaration signed by 67 national academies of science blasted the scriptural teaching of biology as a potential distortion of young minds.

"In various parts of the world, within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied or confused with theories not testable by science," the declaration said.

"We urge decision-makers, teachers and parents to educate all children about the methods and discoveries of science and to foster an understanding of the science of nature.

"Knowledge of the natural world in which they live empowers people to meet human needs and protect the planet."

Citing "evidence-based facts" derived from observation, experiment and neutral assessment, the declaration points to findings that the Universe is between 11 and 15 billion years old, and the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.

Life on Earth appeared at least 2.5 billion years ago as a result of physical and chemical processes, and evolved into the species that live today.

"Commonalities in the structure of the genetic code of all organisms living today, including humans, clearly indicate their common primordial origin," it said.

Signatories of the declaration include the US National Academy of Sciences, Britain's Royal Society, the French Academy of Sciences and their counterparts in Canada, China, Germany, Iran, Israel and Japan and elsewhere.

The statement does not name any names or religions, nor does it explain why it fears the teaching of evolution or the scientific explanation for the origins of planetary life are being sidelined.

It comes, however, in the context of mounting concern among biologists about the perceived influence of creationism in the United States.

Evangelical Christians there are campaigning hard for schools to teach creationism or downgrade evolution to the status of one of a competing group of theories about the origins of life on Earth.

According to the website Christian Post (www.christianpost.com), an opinion poll conducted in May by Gallop found that 46 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so.

Scientists say hominids emerged around six million years ago and one of their offshoots developed into anatomically modern man, Homo sapiens, about 200,000 years ago, although the timings of both events are fiercely debated.

Nearly every religion offers an explanation as to how life began on Earth.

Fundamentalist Christians insist on a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis in the Bible, in which God made the world in seven days, culminating in the creation of the first two humans, Adam and Eve.

A variation of this is called "intelligent design" which acknowledges evolution but claims that genetic mutations are guided by God's hand rather than by Charles Darwin's process of natural selection.

US President George W. Bush said last August that he believed in this concept and that he supported its teaching in American schools.

The academies' statement says that science does not seek to offer judgements of value or morality, and acknowledges limitations in current knowledge.

"Science is open-ended and subject to correction and expansion as new theoretical and empirical understanding emerges," it adds.

[furball4paws]

It's called a moral blank check.

[gondramB]

I meant internally he may not be able to really seek forgiveness i nthe right spirit - if he is willing then god is ready.

[OmahaFields]

I meant internally he may not be able to really seek forgiveness i nthe right spirit - if he is willing then god is ready.

So, no matter how evil you live your life, you can get into heaven on a last minute reprieve. No wonder the mob bosses felt free to do evil.

[Virginia-American]

Someone who rapes 100 children may not be able to really seek forgiveness such that he will get into heaven. He is always able to seek forgiveness. If he is truely repentant, he will get his last minute request?

Consider Constantine, for example. Waited until he was on his deathbed to get baptized; now he's a saint.

[grey_whiskers]

So God doesn't mind watching torture, even of his own son, but if you pray to him and ask that you get your taxes paid on time, or that he ease your stress because the kids are being too loud, he is likely to answer those type of prayers? Yeah, nice try.

I never made either of those claims, so taxing me with them is pointless. My original point several posts back was that your theology was considerably simplified even compared to the rudiments of Christian teaching, and therefore germane to it.

And the point about watching His Son die is simply that the Cross as the recognized symbol of Christianity points out that God is not indifferent to suffering, having gone beyond the call of duty to experience life as a peasant in a country under military occupation, betrayal by a friend, a kangaroo court, torture, and death.

Cheers!

[grey_whiskers]

My words "with a supernatural bent..." were in response to your post (somewhere before 581) which said:

So, to get back to your thought on a connection to something eternal, why does it matter to be human if all we are is a big aquarium where a God tests our ability to handle different stresses? In that case, aren't we just lab rats?

Christianity stipulates that "Life the Universe and Everything" is more than God running us around a maze in a series of meaningless experiements. (Even if the answer *isn't* 42.)

And in a later post you wrote:

God's not supernatural? Also, didn't he create Satan? Instead of kicking him out of heaven, why didn't he just ZAP him? Is all of this just a big game for God? He whipped up a bunch of food from 2 fish and a loaf of bread, he Zapped everything that is in 6 days, and he answers your prayers when grandma is about to get operated on by a Godless Doctor who believes wholeheartedly in evolution and the Scientific Method, but he chooses not to get in the way when an innocent child from a good Christian family is choking up their liver and gasping for one more breath? Why? And you people think Evolution is Crazy?

No, you have put your finger on why so many atheists are pissed at God--why is there evil?

And, for the nonce, why so many other people are "sitting on the fence".

OTOH, you seem to be veering from strawman territory and approaching the troll lane by your exaggerated insistence that God heals via a godless evolutionist doctor but declines to heal a sick child. The reason the doctor's treatment works is the same reason that sick children don't often get miracles. Nature works for the most part by predictable rules (turbulence, chaos theory, quantum mechanics and certain politicians excepted). And if the doctor has certain specific knowledge and the tools to take advantage of the rules, then his treatment may help effect a cure. But a miracle (by definition) is an exception to the rules and is pretty rare.

The disadvantage of the empirical approach, on the other hand, is that it can't account for *true* exceptions. It can handle apparent discrepanceis (precession of the perhelion of the orbit of Mercury due to relativistic effects), by embedding the behaviour in a larger context (see also "correspondence principle"). But in the case of a miracle, mere observation of the regularities won't enable you to predict or to create one.

Only prayer can do that--and since Prayer is asking for a special favor, it is often not granted. But the assurance of Christianity is that the reconquista of a fallen world has begun, though not yet complete. "The last enemy to be destroyed is death" and all that.

But the last point is that Christianity is not there merely as an opiate, nor as an ineffective remedy to material ills, but to address a different problem entirely--the restoration of a lost relation to God. So that even death is not the final evil that it appears in a non-Christian worldview--although Christians are still enjoined to actively fight against and overcome evil where they find it.

And so this comes full cirle to the "lab rats" issue. If we are rats in a maze, it is our own fallen world that has rendered us so. Christianity says that God came and died as one of us little lab rats in order to bring back our freedom and dignity in its proper relation to God.

Cheers!

[2nsdammit]

Read this. Of course it's got a lot of words, but there are some pictures. If you get bored, you can just skip to the 300 or so references.

http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html

Yet another, with references:

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/design2/article.html

[Diamond]

Of course it's got a lot of words, but there are some pictures. If you get bored, you can just skip to the 300 or so references.

You will notice I said, "peer reviewed". Neither article is. Second, I am familiar with both articles. That Matke's valiant stab at a detailed proposal is invariably the first, and usually the only, article cited as evidence, I take as a tacit confirmation that a detailed, rigorous account has yet to be published in the professional literature. I commend Matke for his effort, but it is not peer reviewed. Be that as it may, there is a lengthy 6 part response to both Matke and Miller here: Evolving the Bacterial Flagellum Through Mutation and Cooption . It has some pictures, too.

Miller can say the the flagellum has been unspun all he wants with his just-so Type III secretory systems stories, but the fact remains that the argument from ignorance with which he charges ID proponents really lies with evolutionary biologist who yet to publish detailed, peer reviewed accounts of how the flagellum evolved by Darwinian mechanisms.

Cordially,

[Diamond]

It is an outright political wedge intended to bring theology into the classroom pretending to be science.

Why do evolutionists consider arguments that they constantly make for evolution based on what God would or wouldn't do concerning what is found in nature "scientific", and automatically consider arguments for God or creation based upon what is found in nature unscientific?

What is it; the game is rigged so that only evolutionist theological and metaphysical argument is considered scientific?

Cordially,

[SaveUS]

"Consider Constantine, for example. Waited until he was on his deathbed to get baptized; now he's a saint."

I wonder if dunking him had anything to do with his death?

[Diamond]

Start with the Journal of Anything Biological at your local University Library and continue with the rest. Should be about 2-3 floors. When you finish that you should be informed and we can have a nice talk...otherwise quit pretending.

I'm not pretending anything. You flashed your credentials as an expert authority, implying that your opinion should be given added weight. That's fair enough. So I would like to see your professional articles, or if that's outside your professional area, any professional articles on the origin of the bacterial flagellum.

Cordially,

[SaveUS]

"with which he charges ID proponents really lies with evolutionary biologist who yet to publish detailed, peer reviewed accounts of how the flagellum evolved by Darwinian mechanisms."

I take it you have scholarly information on this? Is there any particular reason this "flagellum" has become an OCD case for you?

[Diamond]

I take it you have scholarly information on this?

That's what I'M asking for.

Is there any particular reason this "flagellum" has become an OCD case for you?

What do you mean by OCD?

Cordially,

[SaveUS]

OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Anything at all relating to your flagella is not going to prove anything to the realm of Creationism. Of course, you could always show us God. Not a faith, but the guy that used to walk around with Adam.
The ultimate fallacy of the Creo's is they want physical proof, and when they are presented with it they scream liar and break out with scripture. When they are asked for physical scientific proof, they point to a document of faith. It really is a no win except to drive intelligent people farther from their grasp.

[Diamond]

OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

Since you are willing to allege that there is something "wrong" with my noetic equipment you should at least be able to give an account, in purely Darwinian terms, of course, of the notion of dysfunction in the first place. Something not functioning as it ought to at least implies that it was designed for a purpose that is not being fulfilled. And if as in the Darwinian paridigm there isn't any such teleology since there is no designer, how do you account for and justify this idea of dysfunction or 'disorder'?

The ultimate fallacy of the Creo's is they want physical proof, and when they are presented with it they scream liar and break out with scripture...

Behold, the poster child of ID:

• Water-cooled rotary engine
• Driven by proton motive force
• Operates at 6,000 to 17,000 rpm
• Can reverse direction within 1/4 rotation
• Runs in forward and reverse
• Can self-assemble & repair
• Only 20 nanometers wide

I haven't called you any names, and I have broken out any Scripture. All I have asked for is a Darwinian explantion in the professional literature of what I see as an engineering marvel. Insisting on documentation of a Darwinian scientific explanation for such a phenomena when one is loudly and frequently purported to exist is not evidence of a compulsive disorder.

Cordially,

[SaveUS]

Touche' (sp). If you are OCD, at least you keep it fed. So what is the engine? I'm all ears as long as this isn't heading toward Moses and the burning bush.

[Diamond]

So what is the engine?

It's a photomicrograph of the rotary motor of a bacterial flagellum.

Cordially,

[js1138]

Sorry, there is no official description of the evolution, but this one meets the stated ID criterion as a possible explanation:

http://www.talkdesign.org/faqs/flagellum.html

Perhaps you'd care to tell us where it is wrong.

I've always wondered what kind of Designer would make His signature piece something whose sole propose is causing agonizing deaths in children and infants. Seems satanic to me.

[OmahaFields]

Why do evolutionists consider arguments that they constantly make for evolution based on what God would or wouldn't do concerning what is found in nature "scientific", and automatically consider arguments for God or creation based upon what is found in nature unscientific?

Stupid post #1.

What is it; the game is rigged so that only evolutionist theological and metaphysical argument is considered scientific?

Stupid post #2.

[OmahaFields]

Behold, the poster child of ID:

Poster of one more failed attempt by ID. You didn't provide the argument but those arguments have been thoroughly debunked.