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Evolution debate: State board should reject pseudoscience
Columbus Dispatch ^ | February 17, 2002 | Editorial

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: crevolist; educationnews; evolution; ohio
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To: Nebullis
"It's an idea older than Darwin. Lamark, and others before him, promoted these type of transformation ideas. "

Much older than that even. At least as far back as Lucretius who has atoms arranging themselves and creating the universe.

It is quite ridiculous to say, when you think about it, that non-thinking matter can design what even man today cannot.

921 posted on 02/26/2002 8:35:55 PM PST by gore3000
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To: Nebullis
there is no such thing as random in evolution

Oh come now! Can you predict what the next advance in the human species will be? Or in any species? Mutations are not random? They are thought about by the genes?

922 posted on 02/26/2002 8:44:05 PM PST by gore3000
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To: PatrickHenry
Thanks, but to be true to my principles, we'll have to let it go to the fittest among us.

Oh oh. Now you've got me trying for the 1000 spot. If I can stay awake...

923 posted on 02/26/2002 9:14:31 PM PST by scripter
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To: scripter
Now you've got me trying for the 1000 spot. If I can stay awake...

The race is on! The game's afoot! We need to decide on a reward, other than some kind of lame cyber-immortality.

924 posted on 02/27/2002 3:04:23 AM PST by PatrickHenry
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Comment #925 Removed by Moderator

Comment #926 Removed by Moderator

To: PatrickHenry
"The scientist, faced with a contradiction between theory and reality, would go back and review his assumptions.

So what is the theory of evolution? Is that how evolutionists avoid contradiction - by never saying what the theory of evolution is?

927 posted on 02/27/2002 4:00:45 AM PST by gore3000
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To: Heartlander
Would man then become God?

How does that apple taste?

We already know how that apple would taste. We have seen in Nazism and Communism how completely atheistic societies which think that man, society and everything else can be molded according to someone's will behave. The result is mass murder and slavery.

928 posted on 02/27/2002 4:06:56 AM PST by gore3000
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To: Nebullis
" Look at all the evidence of life deep in the subsurface and in space."

Please state your source for the above. Was it the National Enquirer, the Star or Art Bell?

929 posted on 02/27/2002 4:11:45 AM PST by gore3000
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To: gore3000
In other words, they had a bone without a purpose. They had tried to fit it several times into something, anything. Finally they found two ankle bones, and since the bones were the right size, in spite of having been discovered some 30 years earlier, hundreds of miles away, with no other connection between the two, they were assigned to Eosimias to "prove" that the missing link had indeed been found.
No. The paragraph you quoted is about another fossil, originally thought to be Ramapithecus but reclassified as a new species, Lufengpithecus (Ape of Lufeng). The discussion of Eosimias is confined to the preceding paragraph. As for Lufengpithecus:

Its phylogenetic affinities are still under debate with various authors suggesting affinities to the orang-utan, African apes or the last common ancestor of all living great apes, including humans.
From your link on Chinese Hominid Fossils.

I see nothing in that to buttress your claim that anyone's claiming to know the knee joint from the mandible. At any rate, gore3000 is the only one calling it Eosimias. You screwed up AGAIN.

930 posted on 02/27/2002 5:56:48 AM PST by VadeRetro
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To: gore3000
The list of what I would call "the whores of evolution" which have hailed this as a great find consist of the Carnegie Museums, ABC News, Der Spiegel, UCLA, UC Davis, the BBC, The NY Times, Johns Hopkins as well as Time Magazine and Newsweek.

And Europe and Asia.

931 posted on 02/27/2002 5:59:01 AM PST by VadeRetro
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To: PatrickHenry
The race is on! The game's afoot! We need to decide on a reward, other than some kind of lame cyber-immortality.

A three week vacation on a small isolated, uninhabited island with "medved" and "G3K"?

932 posted on 02/27/2002 6:23:23 AM PST by longshadow
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To: longshadow
ooops, bold OFF!
933 posted on 02/27/2002 6:24:58 AM PST by longshadow
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To: PatrickHenry
So what word do we use to describe a person who clings to obviously false dogma?

In my post I used the word insane. I happen to believe that logic is an editing function rather than a productive function. I think people build their world view pretty much independently of logic (if I could describe how, I'd be rich and famous). What we call logic is a rather recent invention in the history of mankind. And of course the systematic and iterative application of logic and experiment is even more recent.

But I think even scientists form their ideas of how the world is and what what should happen in experiments before the results are in. Sanity is conforming to unexpected results.

934 posted on 02/27/2002 6:37:11 AM PST by js1138
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To: gore3000
In fact, DNA tracing has shown most of the evolutionists assumptions about what species "evolved" from each other as total bunk

Just wanted to see it again :)

935 posted on 02/27/2002 6:51:17 AM PST by Havoc
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To: Havoc
You could hardly make a bigger mistake than to let gore summarize the state of the evidence for you. Especially the DNA evidence.
936 posted on 02/27/2002 7:04:01 AM PST by VadeRetro
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Comment #937 Removed by Moderator

To: longshadow
A three week vacation on a small isolated, uninhabited island with "medved" and "G3K"?

I think I see a new season of "Survivor" in this. But we need to add f.Christian and the TIME CUBE guy. Plus some of the old-timers from the long ago crevo threads.

938 posted on 02/27/2002 7:14:24 AM PST by PatrickHenry
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To: lexcorp
The vilest smear imaginable is that which the Creationist sears across the mind of Man. The attempt to blind the species and hold us in thrall to mindless abject spernatural ignorance is the vilest thing that can be done to the species.

Well done! Really.

939 posted on 02/27/2002 7:18:34 AM PST by PatrickHenry
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Comment #940 Removed by Moderator


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