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.
I liked your earlier idea of "composite" but you probably have it right this time. I know of no way to clean this up further tonight and am too tired to chase it.
Yeah right. I got a good laugh out of that. Science is unbiased, for example:
global warming "science"
gun control "science"
environmental doom "science"
population study "science"
The EPA
The CDC
Al Gore and Earth in the Balance
No biased science here.
JWinNC
Sorry for the tardy response, I was occupied. Yes, I understand and commiserate. On the other hand it is particularly galling when Richard Dawkins relates biblical lessons to believers and is completely wrong when he does so.
Science in itself is just science; models that are created from observed phenomena. Unfortunately, not all scientists are unbiased towards their models.
And there are people outside of Answers in Genesis who are just as troubled by blind chance.
B3: Extrapolating From Small Changes -- This has no attribution but argues against small changes + time = large change
| Roland F. Hirsch For example, molecular analyses indicate that all living things fall into three domains-the Bacteria, Archaea, and Eucarya-related by descent from a common ancestor." This has been a fundamental point of Darwin's theory- stated here by its strongest adherents. Yet the microbial gene sequence information indicates it clearly is wrong, which suggests to me that the Darwinian theory itself is fundamentally, perhaps fatally flawed. Rather few cellular processes are enabled solely by the presence of a single gene product. Indeed, in some cases several different proteins must be present simultaneously, or the process does not take place at all. Such a process is called irreducibly complex. It does not occur at all unless every essential protein is present. So gradual, step-by-step evolution of the process would not work, for none of the intermediate stages would be "selected" because none of the intermediate stages would be functional. I should add that this point is supported by fundamental principles of information theory, as well as recent research that concludes that random mutations cannot create complex, biologically-specified genetic information. What is the origin of this complex specified information? Until recently it was thought that this problem of generating complex specified information could be solved by recourse to evolutionary or genetic algorithms. That hope is now dwindling as a result of the recently proven No Free Lunch theorems, which show that evolutionary algorithms fail on average to outperform blind search
|
| ID Friendly Evolution This link is to an article that uses quotations from a presentation by James A. Shapiro. I was unable to find the original document and must trust that this is a faithful representation of the original. The citations are ostensibly the word of Dr. Shapiro. One of the most important questions in evolution is: How can new adaptations originate? This is a difficult question, because most evolutionary novelties, such as the eye or the wing, involve the orchestrated expression of many different loci, a number of which act in the expression of multiple phenotypes. Conventional explanations that randomly generated advantageous changes in complex characters accumulate one locus at a time are unconvincing on both functional and probabilistic grounds, because there is too much interconnectivity and too many degrees of mutational freedom. The genomic reorganization perspective, however, allows us to restate the question of adaptive novelties as : How can a complex multicomponent genomic system be assembled before screening by selection? |
A gall bladder, perhaps. Plato is a fuzzball of compassion.
Didn't Michelangelo paint Plato on the ceiling of the Cistine chapel once?
Yes. Alas, it was thought too sexually suggestive, so the original was altered to put a man in Plato's place. All that we have now is Junior's blasphemous representation. Perhaps he'll post it for us.
[Got a question for Plato? Send it in, only 2 cents per minute -- much cheaper than Miss Cleo.]
That's right! Tease the organ-gimp! (These threads can get very un-PC.)
So we have no "material" evidence of a "pre-biotic soup", yet it is necessary for the paradigm so is assumed. And this is different from faith in what way?
The "pre-biotic soup" is not a necessary assumption. That life began is axiomatic. If that's faith, it's a faith everyone on earth shares. Kumbaya!
For the paradigm I believe we are discussing it is necessary. The fact that life began is also "evidence" that it could have been created.
No, it isn't. The "pre-biotic soup" is only one of many hypotheses for beginning of life.
Okay pick one.
The fact that life is axiomatic. It isn't evidence of anything.
We can create abiotic conditions in the laboratory (since they don't exist in nature anymore) and we get can get complex hydrocarbon soup in fairly short periods of time. A week or so, not billions of years. With a small flask, not a whole ocean.
So, you think what a whole abiotic planet and lots of time might do.
Is that faith or just a rational model with a skoach of imagination? Before you take off on "imagination = faith," look at gore3000 woodenly assuming that each scrap of fossil bone is all the evidence there ever is or was for the reconstruction of said fossil. That's a failure of imagination, not faith.
Look at Frumious B's original argumentum ad walnut that the lack of pre-biotic soup today proves something. Faith he has. Imagination he has not.
Here, I answered, "Do you find it interesting that if you set out fresh bread, meat, milk, butter, or cheese, something large or microscopic or in-between will eat it?"
Frumious's rather jaw-dropping response:
Wouldn't happen if the lifeforms that eat these foods didn't exist. So your question really has nothing to do with the ID vs evolution debate.When the other side does that, I want to thank them for making it so clear what's going on. Not that you're sure what it is that's going on, but it can't be good.
Stultis was analyzing this curiosity when you chimed in, "'So we have no 'material' evidence of a 'pre-biotic soup', yet it is necessary for the paradigm so is assumed."
Factually incorrect, O Accuracy-Obsessed one.
Then how can it be a fact? You believe in facts without evidence?
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