Posted on 01/07/2005 2:42:22 PM PST by Ed Current
The "creation" controversy has splashed down in Gull Lake, Mich. Last spring, according to the Kalamazoo Gazette, a parent complained that two middle school biology teachers were giving the concept of "intelligent design" equal treatment in the classroom with the theory of evolution. The district has told them to stop, and both are now crying foul, appealing to the community for help.
Gull Lake parents are divided.
"Intelligent design," or ID, contends that the diversity of life on Earth and the complexity of some biological systems could not have arisen by means of evolution. To correct that perceived inadequacy, ID stipulates that an "intelligent designer" authored the world’s species.
Proponents argue that intelligent design is a serious scientific theory, and that, at the very least, its existence should be taught in biology classes. Opponents dismiss it as a superficially secular attempt to inject biblical creationism into public school classrooms – a Lamb of God in sheep’s clothing.
Michigan isn’t alone. All told, roughly 40 states are now embroiled in battles over the teaching of evolution. On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups filed a lawsuit on behalf of Pennsylvania parents objecting to their school board’s decision to teach ID. Eugenie C. Scott of the National Center for Science Education told the Gazette that "by lobbying school boards to include creationism or weaken evolution in their science curricula, (biblical) creationists are politicizing science education."
But Ms. Scott understates the problem — and mislays the blame.
Every aspect of the public school curriculum, not just science education, is inherently political. Decisions over what and how to teach are made by elected and appointed government officials. Because there is only one official state organ of education, everyone wants it to conform to their own views.
That is impossible.
In a pluralistic society, there are countless different and incompatible worldviews. Our effort to serve that diverse audience through a monolithic school system has not only failed to forge common ground; it has bred animosity and discord.
But this failure of compelled conformity is no cause for alarm; it is unnecessary to force all Americans to accept a single view on the origins of man. While there are certainly issues on which consensus is important in a free society, such as a commitment to the democratic process, respect for the rule of law and equal rights for all citizens, the origin of humanity is not among them.
Nor is it clear that centrally planned public schooling is the best means of nurturing societal agreement in those special areas where it is important. Research shows private school students to be as tolerant and civic-minded as their public school counterparts, and it also shows private schools to be, if anything, more meaningfully integrated than public schools.
Private schools, with their diverse world views, coexist as peacefully as private churches. If every family in America had the financial resources to choose the public or private school they preferred, as they would under a universal education tax credit system, we could enjoy the same harmonious relations in education that we have experienced in the field of religion. Thanks to the separation of church and state, American religious life has avoided most of the political and ideological conflicts that have beset our official state schools.
And honestly, is anyone happy with the way schools currently handle this issue?
Adherents of intelligent design presumably aren’t. They must fight to have their views heard in the public schools, and when they succeed, they immediately face legal challenges. Even if ID prevails in court (as biblical creationism did not), will science teachers present it in a way that will satisfy its advocates?
Adherents of evolution have nothing to cheer about, either. Virtually all biologists see evolution as the fundamental structuring principle of their entire discipline. By contrast, schools often teach it as a brief, isolated unit to avoid controversy. Tellingly, after generations of public school instruction in the theory of evolution, a recent Gallup poll found that 45 percent of Americans believe humanity is the comparatively recent product of divine creation, while only one-third believe that evolution is a theory well-supported by scientific evidence.
These results must dismay most scientists, and they should cause intelligent design advocates to question the wisdom of entrusting their own views to the public schools.
Back in Gull Lake, both sides are digging in their heels, and accusations of miseducation and brainwashing have started to fly. So long as we stick with a single official state school system, however, there will always be ideological winners and losers, and such antagonism will remain.
Wouldn’t we all be better off giving school choice a chance instead?
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Andrew J. Coulson is senior fellow for education policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in Midland, Mich. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author and the Center are properly cited.
I suspect they refuse to debate rationally because they already know in their hearts that ID raises a credible and substantial question, the answer to which would be fatal to an essential part of their dogma.
The last thing a materialist wants to hear is a theory and evidence to support it that there is a mind, an intelligence "out there" that is responsible for informing life in all its dazzling complexity, wonder, and beauty. When that evidence is grudgingly admitted by a dogmatic materialist, there is no need for anyone to invoke religion. The materialist will invoke it himself, hestitatingly and fearfully.
ID raises a lot of questions, just none that can be addressed by evidence.
If you know of an ID assertion that can actually be tested, let us know about it. Perhaps you can discuss the ID research program. Perhaps you can name an irreducibly complex biological structure, one that would change your mind if it turns out to be made of separately functional components. Too bad the flagellum turned out not to be that component.
Some very bright people agree or have agreed with this basic conclusion including the former arch-atheist Antony Flew and the late Sir Francis Crick. Crick, especially, didn't like the implications and sought to answer it by appealing to panspermia. But panspermia doesn't answer the question. It just defers it.
In the same bald, conclusory way I could say that it does.
The same scientific community that runs in a panic from ID, happily supports pouring millions of dollars into SETI, using the same mathematical and statistical models and Shannon information theory in the hope of discovering intelligently designed radio signals from distant galaxies.
Why is that?
Devastating. Fortunately, nobody argues such a thing about the first life forms, so I'm not sure what exactly you've devastated, but there you go.
Yes, and Zeno proved, with impeccable logic, that nothing can travel from point A to point B. When sane people encounter an apparent paradox, they settle it in favor of evidence that the impossible event happened, and the problem is with the formulation of the logical statement.
Evolution is an observed fact. All the phenomena necessary for natural selection to produce new species are observed, both in nature and in the laboratory. We have rather good lists of species that are currently in transition.
We can observe bacteria evolving to survive antibiotics.
We can observe insertions and duplications of DNA material. We can observe changes in chrosome count. In short, all the individual parts necessary for evolution to work have actually been observed.
What has not been observed is abiogenesis. You get that point. But it looks like a slender thread to me.
Prophesying things that have already happened.
Prophesying things that are obviously likely to happen.
Prophesying things so vague that it is easy to claim success.
Outside these 3 camps you'll get the odd startling success through blind luck, and no-one counts the failed prophecies.
Scientific predictions made by theories like ToE are a completely different kind of thing. They are definite. They are non-obvious (unless you accept the theory). If they fail people alter or reject the theory. Stuff that has already been observed only counts if further different observations can be made of the same prediction.
I would have to google such phrases as polyploidy, chromosome evolution, and so forth. When you do this you have to weed through a lot of stuff, but you will find a few nuggets.
My point is not that I have a deep understanding of this subject. It's just that chromosome variation exists, even in humans. Sometimes it results in retardation or sterility, but not always.
If chromosome anomalies were both frequent and inconsequential, the world would be a vastly different place. The fact that anomolies exist at all provides a mechanism required and implied by evolution.
If variation in chromosome count did not exist, or if all hybrids were sterile, that would make common descent impossible.
We both agree that the Bible is not science. My point was your argument that the Big Bang was science because it made predictions that were verifiable was fallacious.
Don't get me wrong, I do think it is a useful big picture model, just as I think the concept that all life evolved is, and also the big picture concept of intelligent design.
But realistically there are virtually endless pieces of evidence that could be interpreted to either support or contradict these big pictures, and none of them are well enough defined or testable for mortal science.
Although current examples of the evolutionary processes are scientifically verifiable. The larger picture of evolution being a sufficient explanation for the origins of life is speculation. Its not necessarily a bad speculation. Exactly when and how are always arguable, just as prophecy is, and just like prophecy, we will never know unless God lets us know. As for myself, I think God may very well have chosen to let life evolve. The similarity between the DNA of species for instance is a good hint. But I do not claim my speculation is following the scientific method any more then my interpretation of the Bible is.
Are you aware that Cosmic Microwave Background was predicted by Big Bang theory, and subsequently detected (for which a Nobel Prize was awarded). Its absolutely tiny anisotropy fits superbly with our expectations of an expanding universe.
I am not aware of any rival explanation for CMB.
No, I wasn't. So now its too late for the Big Bang to predict it for me.
Its absolutely tiny anisotropy fits superbly with our expectations of an expanding universe.
"Anisotropy" is not even in my vocabulary...seriously what does it mean?
I am not aware of any rival explanation for CMB.
Don't feel bad. I'm not aware of a lot of things, quantum mechanics in particular seems to give me trouble. I can start to follow it mathematically, but I just can't get an intuitive feel like I get with good old Newtonian physics. But God help me in figuring out why the universe exists at all.
Here is a quote I found that helps to describe the phenomenon for those of us (including me) with a relatively modest understanding of physics:
Why does the CMB support the Big Bang picture?
The basic point is that the spectrum of the CMB is remarkably close to the theoretical spectrum of what is known as a "blackbody", which means an object in "thermal equilibrium". Thermal equilibrium means that the object has had long enough to settle down to its natural state. Your average piece of hot, glowing coal, for example, is not in very good thermal equlibrium, and a "blackbody" spectrum is only a crude approximation for the spectrum of glowing embers. But it turns out that the early Universe was in very good thermal equilibrium (basically because the timescale for settling down was very much shorter than the expansion timescale for the Universe). And hence radiation from those very early times should have a spectrum very close to that of a blackbody.
The observed CMB spectrum is in fact better than the best blackbody spectrum we can make in a laboratory! So it is very hard to imagine that the CMB comes from emission from any normal "stuff" (since if you try to make "stuff" at some temperature, it will tend to either emit or absorb preferentially at particular wavelengths). The only plausible explanation for having this uniform radiation, with such a precise blackbody spectrum, is for it to come from the whole Universe at a time when it was much hotter and denser than it is now. Hence the CMB spectrum is essentially incontrovertible evidence that the Universe experienced a "hot Big Bang" stage (that's not to say that we understand the initial instant, just that we know the Universe used to be very hot and dense and has been expanding ever since).
In full, the three cornerstones of the Big Bang model are: (1) the blackbody nature of the CMB spectrum; (2) redshifting of distant galaxies (indicating approximately uniform expansion); and (3) the observed abundances of light elements (in particular helium and heavy hydrogen), indicating that they were "cooked" throughout the Universe at early times. Because of these three basic facts, all of which have strengthened over the decades since they were discovered, and several supporting pieces of evidence found in the last deacade or two, the Big Bang model has become the standard picture for the evolution of our Universe.
Whoa there, boss. "negative entropy"? No such thing exists in either mathematics or reality. I made my fame and fortune authoring parts of modern information theory, and much of what passes for "information theory" in these arguments is grossly misapplied and generally just plain wrong. It is one of the most difficult fields of mathematics to wrap one's head around and is very counter-intuitive. Not to worry though, just because you do not grok it does not mean the other guy does either.
And charlatans like Dembski, inventing concepts that both don't exist in math and which directly contradict proven theorems, rightly attract my ire because most people do not know enough about the field to differentiate turds from chocolate. But in a nutshell, if it ain't in Li & Vitanyi (the de facto Principia Mathematica of the field), it is nonsense.
Pssst...
You do now that Shannon information theory is a narrow sub-field of the broader discipline primarily limited to communication protocols, don't you? Perfectly appropriate for trying do alien signal intercept (no matter how stupid I personally think SETI is), but a mathematical antique for most everything else related to modern information theory.
SETI should be using the principles of Shannon information theory. The ID community should be using something that didn't pass the Sell By date in the 1970s. Outside of very narrow bands, like communications, information theory has been almost completely rewritten in the last decade or two and the Shannon version has been largely replaced with far better and more general math.
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