Such is the fundamental internal conundrum of contradiction which bedevils all that passes for putative Evo-locution!
Home run, bb!
FReegards!
Posted on 08/28/2012 3:39:34 AM PDT by rickmichaels
Scientist and children’s television personality Bill Nye, in a newly released online video, panned biblical creationism and implored American parents who reject the scientific theory of evolution not to teach their beliefs to their youngsters.
“I say to the grownups, ’If you want to deny evolution and live in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we’ve observed in the universe that’s fine. But don’t make your kids do it,’” said Nye, best known as host of the educational TV series “Bill Nye the Science Guy.”
The video, titled “Creationism Is Not Appropriate for Children,” was posted on Thursday by the online knowledge forum Big Think to YouTube and had netted more than 1.3 million views as of Monday.
In it Nye said widespread public doubt in the scientific concept of evolution — which holds that human beings and all other forms of life developed from a process of random genetic mutation and natural selection — would hinder a country long renowned for its innovation, intellectual capital and a general grasp of science.
“When you have a portion of the population that doesn’t believe in (evolution) it holds everybody back, really,” he said.
According to a Gallup poll that surveyed 1,012 adults in May, 46 percent of Americans can be described as creationists for believing that God created humans in their present form at some point within the last 10,000 years.
Education advocates have argued for decades over what children should be taught in public schools in regard to the formation of the universe, life and humans.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1987 that requiring biblical creation to be taught in public schools alongside evolution was unconstitutional as a violation of the First Amendment separation between church and state.
In April, a law was passed that protects teachers in Tennessee who wish to critique or analyze what they view as the scientific weaknesses of evolution, making it the second state, after Louisiana, to enable teachers to more easily espouse alternatives to evolution in the classroom.
Nye said that while many adults may believe in creationism, children should be taught evolution in order to understand science. Absent a grasp of evolution, he said, “You’re just not going to get the right answers.” And he called evolution the “fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology.”
Teaching children the building blocks of science is essential for the country’s future, he added, saying, “We need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future.”
Nye’s popular show, produced by Disney’s Buena Vista Television, aired from September 1993 to June 1998 on PBS and was also syndicated to local television stations.
The remarkable thing about Darwin's theory is it does not change; after 150+ years, it is still just as Darwin proposed it. It seems remarkably resistant to modification based on new evidence, observational capabilities, and understandings. IOW, it appears to be strikingly "complete." And yet on the other hand....
How long were were geocentric theory and Newtownian mechanics considered accepted theory before they were supplanted? You make it sound as if a theory being unchallenged for 150 years is an historic anamoly.
It does sound like you are straining to find fault.
[ Perhaps you think I’m straining on a gnat here, dear tacticalogic. But what I understand myself to be doing is searching for the logical basis of Darwin’s theory; and so far, I haven’t found it. ]
Dear Boopy;
I think I found the logical basis for Darwin’s theory..
It is his opinion...
It reminds me of the well known academic bromide, “I have my truth you have yours”..
Which obviously makes any truth an opinion..
Even at a young age when hearing this punch line I laughed..
I laughed at the poor challenged soul that drooled it..
2 + 2 is 4... any other answer is not the truth..
Charlie Darwin must not been good with his cyphers..
I think I might have found the logical basis for finding the flaws in his theory.......
And dear hosepipe, your remark about "2+2=4" directly responds to tacticalogic's objections about Newtonian mechanics being stable for so long.
More specifically, 2+2=4 in base 10 - but 2+2=8 in base 3 etc. Likewise, even today Newtonian physics will get you around the planet and solar system quite well (classical level.) But if you want to look or go further, you'll need Einstein. Or if you want to delve deeper, you'll need quantum mechanics.
But physicists like other "hard science" investigators - and mathematicians - are careful to lay out their axioms or presuppositions. Einstein's Relativity takes a four dimensional space/time continuum as an axiom. Likewise, high energy particle physicists presuppose the quantum mechanical level rather than the classical or astronomical level.
But Darwin, as betty boop describes, did not define his subject, what life "is." To this day, biologists rarely speak of anything more than what life "looks like" even though that is their field of study, whatever it "is."
By comparison, physicists and mathematicians who are involved in biological systems investigations do seem to care a great deal, e.g. Rosen, Pattee. Indeed, I suspect the greatest strides in biology will come about when biologists understand and accept the mathematical implications, i.e. the Newtonian paradigm does not support the circular model of living organisms. Function (final cause) cannot be ignored.
I read an outstanding defense of methodological naturalism (as opposed to metaphysical naturalism) the other day. You can read it here.
Quote:
It is not inconsistent to claim there is more going on in the evolutionary process than is dreamt of in evolutionary biology. This is the thesis that there are "hidden variables" — causal influences on evolutionary outcomes that are not recognized in our science. If evolutionary theory were causally complete, there would be no room for this idea. However, we have no assurance that the theory covers all the facts that are causally relevant to what happens in evolution. Please note that I am not saying that there now is evidence that such hidden variables exist; my claim is only that they are not ruled out by current theory.But it is clear that Richard Dawkins — the great promoter and popularizer of Darwin's theory — does rule them out in principle. For he declares that Darwin's theory allows him to be "an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
This is what drives theists (like me) nutz.
But as the author of the linked article — Elliott Sober, of the Philosophy Department at the University of Wisconsin — points out, when it comes to the idea of possible divine intervention in the world of space and time after the evolutionary process is underway, we have to ask
...what does "divine intervention" mean? In theology, it is often understood to mean God's violating the laws of nature. I do not use the term in this way. [Neither do I.] What I want to consider ... is the view that God supplements what happens in the evolutionary process without violating any laws. [God cannot contradict Himself.] An intervention, as I'll understand the term, is a cause; it can trigger an event or sustain a process. Physicians do both when they intervene in the lives of their patients. Physician intervention does not entail any breakage in the laws of nature; neither does God's.Actually, I understand that this was Newton's understanding.
Sober's analysis
...say[s] nothing about whether there have ever been mutations in the whole history of life that God made sure would happen. Scientists do not have a way of testing this theistic assertion. However, that does not show that it is false. Scientists sometimes use the derisive comment "not even false" to characterize hypotheses that cannot be tested. The derision can be separated from a point on which theists and atheists should agree: there is a difference between hypotheses that the evidence tells us are false and hypotheses that our data do not permit us to test....To the extent that Darwin's theory is often depicted in the light of metaphysical naturalism — as Dawkins does — and not methodological naturalism (which "keeps its mind open," as explained above), it has more of the flavor of a religious creed than of a scientific theory.
Is every statement in a scientific theory testable? Mathematized theories in biology and in other sciences entail that numbers exist. Is the existence of numbers empirically testable? ...
Carnap (1950) and Reichenbach (1938), among other positivists, held that scientific theories often contain conventional elements. These are statements that are in a theory because they are useful, not because we can offer evidence that they are true.
Or I should say, an antireligious screed.
To the extent that such an understanding of evolution theory prevails, we can understand the promoters of Darwin's theory to be more defending a dogma than engaging in "open" scientific inquiry.
This observation can shed some light on why Darwin's theory has remained fundamentally unchanged for 150+ years: It is a fact of human nature that people will tenaciously defend a religious doctrine "come hell or high water."
But that's not science! Science must remain "open." It cannot just assume causal closure about any aspect of the natural world.
If it does, it eventually puts itself out of business.
FWIW.
But Darwin, as betty boop describes, did not define his subject, what life "is."
Darwin took the existence of life as axiomatic. Newton did not define what mass, space, and time were, and where they came from.
"How long were were geocentric theory and Newtownian mechanics considered accepted theory before they were supplanted?"
The answer can be expressed as as simple timespans.
Exactly so, dear brother in Christ!
If there is no Truth, then every man's opinion is just as good as any other man's: There is no universal criterion that can be invoked to discriminate between them as to their adequacy in making trustworthy descriptions of the world of men and of nature....
As Ivan Karamazov put it, "If there is no God, then everything is possible."
Or as Chesterton recognized, If one does not believe in God, that doesn't mean that one believes in nothing. It means that one can believe in anything.
But where does science itself find any purchase under such conditions? Its most basic assumption is that the world is intelligible, because in some way it reflects a truthful order — described by what philosophers call Natural Law.
Long before the advent of Christianity, great thinkers recognized that God — as Plato put it, the Unknown God Beyond the Cosmos — is not only pure Being, but Truth itself. Human beings are "participations" in both.
Some of the greatest thinkers in all of human history recognized — long before Christianity — that absent the idea of universal Truth (Logos) — always understood by mankind as being of divine origin — there is only doxa, or "opinion."
In situations involving disputed opinions, it is always the guy who commands the most "power" (personal and/or social) who wins the debate. If anybody needs an illustration of this, he need only review President Clinton's speech at the DNC last night.
Clinton is the finest example of a "sophist" available to our inspection these days. He seeks to win debates through the power of emotional appeals. It doesn't matter that his discourse is riddled with logical fallacies throughout. He persuades without any recourse to Truth or reason itself....
If God "dies" in human consciousness, Truth and reason die with Him.
But of course, man cannot "kill God," no matter how hard he tries.
Thank you so very much for writing, dear brother in Christ!
Which order of time did you have in mind, dear tacticalogic?
Oh so true, dearest sister in Christ! Which is why it's important to know which "base" is being invoked. For both 2+2=4 and 2+2=8 are truthful mathematical statements, though they superficially appear to be contradictory.
And I so agree with your observation: "the Newtonian paradigm does not support the circular model of living organisms. Function (final cause) cannot be ignored."
Thank you so very much for your outstanding observations!
My favorite humanist argument is when they try to tell me my morality is wrong or inferior to their morality. (They call it “ethics”).
“So, you, a random collection of stardust, are going to try to tell me, another random collection of stardust, that I’m somehow morally “wrong” in my belief system?”
Since the complaint is registered in years, it would seem practical to provide the answer in those same units, for comparison. Do you think that might be possible, dear betty boop?
The fallacy in this statement is that "you" and "me" are random collections of stardust.
If what were true, your "humanist" might have a leg to stand on.
But your humanist cannot either test, let alone prove his statement. Thus it can only be his "opinion." And as such, is fundamentally meaningless.
For how can anything be "meaningful" if everything is "random?"
Thanks so much, MrB, for your astute insight here!
No. And you are (I think) missing my point.
What I was trying to get at is the different time orders implicit in the way human beings experience time — linear, serial, irreversible, expressible in "units" (such as hours or years), and inherently "local" — and the non-local "time" in which universals live....
Does this make any sense to you?
I suspect you're nibbling around the margins of my argument, but don't really get what I'm talking about.
And let me clear up in advance an objection you might raise on that score: I DO NOT THINK YOU'RE "STUPID!!!"
I think you misunderstood my post.
the “random collection of stardust” quote is what I say to the humanist who tries to borrow the Christian-based existance of absolute morality by which any value system can be judged.
My point is, he, the humanist, has no superior basis for his morality within his proposed worldview than I do, also within his worldview. We’re both just stardust, within his worldview.
When you hold a materialist to consistency, no basis exists for right or wrong, nor for even simple “meaning”. It’s a very depressing worldview to hold, if held consistently.
And how about the converse?
ToE was dismissed as "just Darwin's opinion".
If there is no Truth then everything is just an opinion.
If everything is just an opinion, can there be any Truth?
Such is the fundamental internal conundrum of contradiction which bedevils all that passes for putative Evo-locution!
Home run, bb!
FReegards!
Aren’t platitudes fun?
Could you all remove me from this ersatz ping list? I have gained what I can from this discussion, thank you.
This (science) guy is so far off people's radar screens that they assume he's dead and the only publicity he's gotten apart from the death rumor is this evolution stuff.
So of course he's going to go on talking about it. It's the only way he can think of to say, "Hey, people, I'm still here! I'm still alive! And I'm still relevant! Somehow ..."
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