Posted on 02/18/2002 4:59:53 AM PST by cracker
The Dispatch tries to verify the identity of those who submit letters to the editor, but this message presented some problems. It arrived on a postcard with no return address:
Dear Representative Linda Reidelbach: Evolution is one of my creations with which I am most pleased.
It was signed, God.
The Dispatch cannot confirm that this is a divine communication, but the newspaper does endorse the sentiment it expresses: that there is room in the world for science and religion, and the two need not be at war.
The newspaper also agrees that Reidelbach, a Republican state representative from Columbus, is among the lawmakers most in need of this revelation. She is the sponsor of House Bill 481, which says that when public schools teach evolution, they also must teach competing "theories'' about the origin of life.
Reidelbach says the bill would "encourage the presentation of scientific evidence regarding the origins of life and its diversity objectively and without religious, naturalistic or philosophic bias or assumption.''
What this appears to mean is that any idea about the origin of life would be designated, incorrectly, a scientific theory and would get equal time with the genuine scientific theory known as evolution.
Those who correctly object that the creation stories of various religions are not scientific would be guilty, in the language of this bill, "of religious, naturalistic or philosophic bias or assumption.''
Never mind that science is not a bias or an assumption but simply a rigorous and logical method for describing and explaining what is observed in nature.
What Reidelbach and her co-sponsors are attempting to do is to require that science classes also teach creationism, intelligent design and related unscientific notions about the origin of life that are derived from Christian belief.
So bent are they on getting Christianity's foot in the door of science classrooms that they apparently don't mind that this bill also appears to give the green light to the creation stories of competing religions, cults and any other manifestation of belief or unbelief. Apparently, even Satanists would have their say.
But the real problem is that Reidelbach's bill would undermine science education at the very moment when Ohio should be developing a scientifically literate generation of students who can help the state succeed in 21st-century technologies and compete economically around the globe.
The fact is that religious ideas, no matter how much they are dressed up in the language of science, are not science. And subjecting students to religious ideas in a science class simply would muddle their understanding of the scientific method and waste valuable time that ought to be used to learn genuine science.
The scientific method consists of observing the natural world and drawing conclusions about the causes of what is observed. These conclusions, or theories, are subject to testing and revision as additional facts are discovered that either bolster or undermine the conclusions and theories. Scientific truth, such as it is, is constantly evolving as new theories replace or modify old ones in the light of new facts.
Religious notions of creation work in the opposite fashion. They begin with a preconceived belief -- for example, that God created all the creatures on the Earth -- and then pick and choose among the observable facts in the natural world to find those that fit. Those that don't are ignored.
The scientific approach expands knowledge about the natural world; the religious approach impedes it.
The classic example of this occurred 369 years ago when the Catholic Church forced Galileo to recant the Copernican theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. That theory contradicted the religiously based idea that man and the Earth formed the center of God's creation. Had the church's creationist view of the solar system prevailed, Ohioan Neil Armstrong never would have set foot on the moon.
Today, Copernican theory is established and acknowledged fact.
When it comes to evolution, much confusion grows out of the understanding -- or misunderstanding -- of the words theory and fact. Evolution is a theory, but one that has become so thoroughly buttressed by physical evidence that, for all intents and purposes, it is a fact. No one outside of the willfully obstinate questions the idea that new life forms evolved from older ones, a process conclusively illustrated in biology and the fossil record.
Where disagreement still exists is over how the process of evolution occurs. Scientists argue about the mechanism by which change occurs and whether the process is gradual and constant or proceeds in fits in starts. But while they debate over how evolution occurs, they do not doubt that it does occur.
Another way to understand this is to consider gravity. Everyone accepts the existence of this force, but many questions remain about just what gravity is and how it works. That scientists argue about how gravity works doesn't change the fact that gravity exists. Or, as author Stephen Jay Gould has put it, "Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome.''
Just as with gravity, evolution is a fact.
Those who persist on questioning this fact are a tiny minority, even among people of faith. But they are a loud minority and, to those not well-grounded in science, their arguments can sound reasonable, even "scientific.'' But their arguments are little more than unfounded assertions dressed up in the language of science.
This minority also insists on creating conflict between religion and science where none needs to exist. Major faiths long since have reconciled themselves to a division of labor with science. Religion looks to humankind's spiritual and moral needs, while science attends to the material ones.
The Catholic Church, which once tried to hold back the progress of science, now admits that it was wrong to suppress Galileo. More than a billion Catholics draw sustenance from their faith untroubled by the knowledge that the planet is racing around the sun.
Religion, in turn, provides spiritual and moral guideposts to decide how best to use the awesome powers that science has unlocked and placed at humankind's disposal.
Nor are scientists themselves antagonistic to religion. Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientific geniuses in history, was deeply reverent: "My comprehension of God comes from the deeply felt conviction of a superior intelligence that reveals itself in the knowable world,'' he once said.
Others have made similar observations. The more the scientific method reveals about the intricacies of the universe, the more awestruck many scientists become.
The simplest way to reconcile religion and evolution is to accept the view propounded early last century by prominent Congregationalist minister and editor Lyman Abbott, who regarded evolution as the means God uses to create and shape life.
This view eliminates conflict between evolution and religion. It allows scientists to investigate evolution as a natural process and lets people of faith give God the credit for setting that process in motion.
As for what to do about creationism and evolution in schools, the answer is easy. Evolution should be taught in science classes. Creationism and related religiously based ideas should be taught in comparative-religion, civics and history classes.
Religion was and remains central to the American identity. It has profoundly shaped American ideals and provided the basis for its highest aspirations, from the Declaration of Independence to the civil-rights movement. There is no question that religion is a vital force and a vital area of knowledge that must be included in any complete education.
But not in the science classroom, because religion is not science. There is no such thing as Buddhist chemistry, Jewish physics or Christian mathematics.
The Earth revolves around the sun regardless of the faiths of the people whom gravity carries along for the ride. Two plus two equals four whether that sum is calculated by a Muslim or a Zoroastrian.
Reidelbach and her supporters genuinely worry that a crucial element -- moral education and appreciation of religion's role in America -- is missing in education. But they will not correct that lack by injecting pseudoscience into Ohio's science curriculum.
And Reidelbach is not the only one making this mistake. Senate Bill 222, sponsored by state Sen. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, is equally misguided. This bill would require that science standards adopted by the State Board of Education be approved by resolution in the General Assembly. This is a recipe for disaster, injecting not only religion, but also politics, into Ohio's science classes.
These two bills should be ignored by lawmakers.
In a few months, when the State Board of Education lays out the standards for science education in Ohio's public schools, it should strongly endorse the teaching of evolution and ignore the demands of those who purvey pseudoscience.
Darwin thought protozoa was living jelly. He thought had no idea of the complexity of the structure in a protozoa. I'm sure that observation would never have shown him that it was too complex to exist by chance.
I know about the 2.7 degrees K and how it is suppose to prove everything. Do you believe that a cosmological formula really yields that answer? Do you understand the science as well as some people here understand snow. Understanding or not understanding what they say proves nothing, I know. But you are hanging your hat on something that is as untangible to you as God is to me.
One of the latest findings may result in much longer lifespans for human beings. Researchers into aging first needed to determine why we age (why did we evolve to grow old and die), using this as a basis, they went in search of the genes which control this aging. Once the researchers had a possible target gene, they ran a study using the most complete geneological records to be found -- Iceland (going back to the 13th century) and traced out families which had a preponderance of folks living for more than nine decades. Matching this against a control group of folks who lived less than nine decades, the researchers took genetic samples from living descendents of both groups and compared their DNA and discovered their theories were on the mark.
DUH!
This was exactly Vade's point in response to your complaint that "no instances of the creation of even so much as a pre-biotic soup have been observed in nature".
A "pre-biotic" soup can only form if there is nothing around to eat it; i.e. before the world, as now, is full or organisms and micro-organisms gobbling up any bit of yummy organic material left lying about. Savvy?
There is no "cosmological formula." The astronomers in question wanted to determine why, no matter where you look in the sky, galaxies appear to be moving away from us. It was as if all the galaxies originated in one spot and were blasted out from that spot. Well, astrophysicists worked out the conditions that would have prevailed if such an event had occurred and what we could expect to see now if this were the case. Now that we know about the background radiation, we can see that the predictions match up nicely with the observations, so the Big Bang is a quite viable theory. Now, if someone comes along with a new theory that covers not only what the Big Bang covers, but makes predictions that can be tested and confirmed it will supplant the Big Bang as the theory of the origins of the universe. At the moment, though, while a number of hypotheses appear promising, none have panned out -- yet. Until they do, we work with what we have.
Twas not I sir. You provided the obviously generalizable statements regarding our ability to know or understand basic natural phenonmena - it is your epistemology, not mine. I merely pointed out the logical results of your choice. If you object to the conclusion, perhaps you should examine the premise?
Exactly! And it has been refined with each new piece of evidence which comes to light. Paleontology, biology, anatomy, genetics, geology, astronomy, anthropology, and many more have all contributed to the theory of evolution as it now stands. The basics remain the same (critters change over time and all originally derived from a single organism), but the mechanisms have changed over time. Mutations occur, but just how random are they? Are they environmentally driven? Is natural selection the only weeding-out mechanism? What about sexual selection? The Theory of Evolution is far from being complete. It is constantly evolving.
But he isn't. He knows that he could (with proper education and sufficient funding) construct a machine to detect the evidence of the background radiation. (or at least, he can find the people who can do so reliably and verifiably) It would not then be untangible. However, he could never construct the machine to detect God.
The same logic applies to evolution: he can examine the fossils and the circumstances of their discovery, the geologic records, the dating methods, the DNA evidence, and he could recreate the experiments illustrating the genetic commonalities between species that evolution predicts should be closely related. He can observe the natural world with his own faculties and assess the evidence on his own. All this any of us could do to see the evidence for evolution - but where is the similar evidence for creation? (other than in a single uncorroborated, non-peer reviewed, very old text of uncertain authorship)
No. One is science and the other is faith. Don't try to make your faith into something it is not, because that degrades your faith. If your faith is strong, you will be able to accept it as faith instead of trying somehow to change it into something else. Science is important, and faith is important. Let them be.
the dmz--God built a fase trail to keep the fools out---
and evolution paves---free busses it!
All this any of us could do to see the evidence for evolution - but where is the similar evidence for creation? (other than in a single uncorroborated, non-peer reviewed, very old text of uncertain authorship)
349 posted on 2/22/02 8:34 AM Hawaii-Aleutian by cracker
Evolution is what keeps empty souls from overgrazing the heavens---happy in the feedlots over at the spam mill!
Dumb heifers--steers!
That's exactly the point of natural selections. 1000 individual members of a species can have all sorts of unfavorable mutations, but they will die as a result, and therefore not pass their genes on. The one individual in 1000 with a favorable mutation will live to reproduce, so more individuals in the next generation will have that favorable gene.
Evolution is the smoke signals--drums--cave drawings school in the age of fiber optics and computers...
funny--not science...
witch craft-doctors!
The old proverbial LIGHT at the End of a tunnel--GOD!
Yes there are. However, this is simply to show that it is possible for these systems to evolve naturally. They needn't necessarily have been designed. In other words, one need not invoke the supernatural every time one sees a problem.
This was exactly my point. In a prebiotic world, nothing gets eaten. In a biotic world, what can be eaten will be eaten. With typical creationist logic, you were bludgeoning with your failure to imagine when you wondered why pre-biotic soup never forms today.
So your question really has nothing to do with the ID vs evolution debate.
So you don't want to understand the fallacy of your argument.
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