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.
The axiom that life began is a self-evident fact. (Come on, AndrewC!)
Great! and the discussion is not that life did or didn't begin but what "evidence" there is for the view that it began from a soup or stew(take your pleasure). Space aliens could have transplanted the whole ecosystem in. We can go into space
We can make cages to hold animals
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Australia
Ergo space aliens transported life in umpteen million years ago.
Sure. Panspermia. Another theory.
We have evidence that life started very small: the first fossil evidence of life 3.5 billion years ago is unicellular. Is that what you are looking for?
I think it was "Godel" who posted the "Platy on the Chapel Ceiling" jpg.
That's just silly. The lab is necessary because the world outside the lab is contaminated with biota to the remotest and seemingly most inhospitable corner. The facts that emerge are supportive.
Your grumbling about "assumptions" would be more appropriate if I had claimed "proof" instead of "evidence." But evidence was your word, the lack of same supposedly buttressing your claim of abiogenesis as a faith. But evidence there is, and a lack of viable, non-spooky alternative models.
Yes, that is evidence. It is evidence of life of a certain type. It is not evidence of a pre-biotic soup.
You err. I claim assumption of something, namely a pre-biotic soup, without evidence is like faith. I do not accept a lab experiment as evidence of that specific condition any more than I would use a can of Campbell's chicken broth as that evidence. Traces of chemicals or structures formed by crystallization of various compounds would be evidence of said culinary delight.
Do not assume that you know what is inedible, or how much/little time we are talking about. Schopf (Cradle of Life) estimates something in the low hundreds of thousands of years--I forget exactly--from soup to life.
You have a model that says organic compounds form in the absence of life. (This is absolutely incontrovertible, BTW. We've been finding the stuff in space. Yet you obfuscate on.)
In a pre-biotic environment, nothing gets eaten. In a biotic environment, what can be eaten will be eaten.
Where do you do the experiment to test your ideas?
1. In a lab, in sterilized glass.
2. In a farm pond.
3. In a cesspool.
Where do fossils come from?
And evolutionary theory is built on evidence of life of a certain type. It does not necessitate a "pre-biotic soup". We even covered two other theories. And VadeRetro is explaining why "soup" theories are more plausible than others.
You are the octopus in this discussion. I made no claim as to the formation of organic compounds. I, in a round about way, ask for evidence of a pre-biotic soup, because my original question was how assuming something without evidence(since it is eaten) is different from faith. You try to wiggle from the question by saying an experiment is evidence of it. I do not accept that. Even more damaging is that the conditions required by that experiment are now evidently discredited. The early atmosphere was not a reducing atmosphere as the experiment requires.
Thank you very much. That is not under discussion. I am also not discussing Smurfs.
I know that the pre-biotic soup, if it ever existed, is a problem for your belief system, but let's put that aside for a moment and see if we can't reason this out.
1. If we find a dead man with no apparent cause for his demise except for a knife sticking out of his back, we can reasonably assume that someone stabbed him in the back. (It could have been done by an angel or a demon from hell, but we will probably assume a human killer, based on our experience.)The foregoing are two simple examples of rational, experience-based, cause-and-effect thinking, something scientists and others do all the time. I know you're with me so far, even if you're dragging your feet a bit, sensing where this is going, so I shall continue.2. If we find a huge hole in the ground, such as the one at Meteor Crator, Arizona, and all around it we find evidence of fused sand and scorched metalic chunks buried in the soil. We have the experience of seeing meteors. We can reasonably assume that a meteorite cause the crator. (It could have been Zeus, jabbing the earth with his pinky, but reasonable people usually don't leap to that "explanation" as their first choice.)
If you see a planet full of life, such as the Earth, you can -- quite reasonably, based on our knowledge from chemistry and biology -- suggest that it developed over a long time from a pre-biotic soup. (Or you could, as some here do, assume that space aliens or supernatural creatures are responsible.) Occam's Razor is a useful tool in such cases.
I believe Pasteur showed that was not likely. But I'm in a hurry and can't check that. Out for a while
Evolution, generally, is under discussion on these threads.
But, may I ask, why do you want evidence of pre-biotic soups?
But...I do not accept a lab experiment as evidence of that specific condition...
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