Posted on 08/01/2005 10:58:13 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.
But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."
Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.
In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Schönborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.
This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.
How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.
To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.
You mean it hasn't yet? News to me.
Making me laugh this early in the morning is probably a good thing. :)
For instance, Strominger/Vafa used string theory to calculate the Bekenstein/Hawking black hole entropy. Another example was Einstein's pulling Riemannian geometry off the shelf to describe general relativity. Communications and computer technology is proof of Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications. And there are many other such examples…
In fact, the whole issue of matter itself is quite “up in the air” in physics. The Standard Model requires the Higgs which has neither been made nor observed. Even if CERN finds it, it would still be only 5% of the critical density of the universe. Hence all the work on supersymmetry because higher mass particles are necessary to explain dark matter (25%) which is the non-radiating form around which galaxies rotate and dark energy (70%) which is dissipated throughout the universe and acts a counter to gravity.
The mainstream of physics is looking to dimensionality (geometry) for explanations of matter.
More good questions, unfortunately not questions I can answer. However I do not believe there is some 'essential' difference between prelife and life. I do believe that there is a difference between abiogenic prelife and death.
The only thing I hate more than fundamentalists are DIGITAL guys.. all they do is keep droning out the same stupid things.. Analog is natural, elegant and beautiful, digital is zombified and brain dead.
You are making an unfounded assumption that there is indeed 'stuff'.
Come up with your own eye-catching phrase... for a change ;)
Ohh, you gotta scientist "hit list" now ? befits you'll quite well.
RWP: I find it amusing you both are so entertained by a point originally raised by Richard Dawkins.
The thing which is missing when a live rabbit becomes a dead rabbit is information (successful communication).
Moreover, when one investigates the Shannon theory applied to biological life – there are several ways in which a communication may be initiated within the molecular machinery. Among these are:
cycle – rhythm or timing
will – either involuntary (“will to live” “struggle to survive” “fecundity principle”) – or voluntary (choosing to move a finger, to fly away, to raid or defend, select a mate, etc.)
Send it to me and I'll fix it for you.
"Stuff" is for want of presuming the answer to the definition.
I'm sure you'll agree that the dead rabbit and live rabbit are different, and that "something" is no longer with the dead rabbit that was with it prior to its death.
AG, I'm not a student at all of Shannon (who, what, when, etc.) and what she has written/done. Can you give the nutshell version? Thanks. Z
Nope. I believe it is more like something is turned off.
>"AG, I'm not a student at all of Shannon (who, what, when, etc.) and what she has written/done. Can you give the nutshell version? Thanks. Z"
I'll let A-G field that question. The only basis in Shannon I have is in relation to computer network communication.
Claude Shannon is the father of "information theory" which is part of the discipline we call "mathematics".
Here is a biography on Shannon from Mathworld
His original theory, written back in the 1940's is available here: A Mathematical Theory of Communications.
His theory has been applied for many years to "molecular biology" in both cancer research and pharmaceuticals. For an introduction: Introduction and Overview
Obviously this is one of my favorite subjects - but I must leave soon to go help with some construction projects and thus won't be able to respond until late this evening. But I am looking forward to reading your comments!!!
Thanks for the offer, but I think I can manage :-)
Oh, given he's an Oxford professor and probably interacts with mathematicians on a daily basis - in fact, given that he was one of the first biologists to apply game theoretical insights to evolution - I doubt he's much intimidated by mathematicians.
BTW, if he's a rabid atheist, are you a rabid Christian?
Oh, for sure. And the Bible says its value is 3.
It is a theory a theorem.
Is English your first language?
Depends on the cause of death. Often, it's a few quarts of blood.
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