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.
Because evolution is an ideological doctrine, similar to a religion. The problem is that in order to have a religion taught alongside evolution on an equitable basis, you'd have to have a religion which operated on a comparable intelectual level to evolution, and the only two feasible candidates are rastifari and voodoo.
First, a significant percentage of mainstream society adheres to creationism; the same cannot be said for alchemy or any of the others. Debunking something no one believes in is a pointless exercise; debunking someone's actual misconception may be necessary to getting that person to consider the alternative.
Second, I don't think one gets a proper respect for the power of the ToE to describe what's going on (and has gone on) in the world without looking at the inability of any other theory to do so with any reliability.
And it's not like it's entirely without precedent to teach theory "B" in part by pointing to the flaws of its predecessor, theory "A" (and how "B" solves 'em). For example, I still recall learning in astronomy class about the problems with the circular planetary orbits hypothesized by Copernicus leading Kepler to formulate his laws (and theorize that planets had elliptical orbits).
Like I said, I think the bigger problem would be Christians who also believe in evolution thinking that the debunking was unnecessary and therefore a gratuitous attack on Christianity.
In that sense, it would make sense to teach evolution in the context of 18th and 19th century conceptions of the universe as a clockwork whose laws are knowable to scientific examination. Evolution would be prefaced by a discussion of the state of the life and geological sciences previous to Darwin. This sort of chronological approach would make clear how long evolution has been central to biology, and would also illustrate how many later challenges and discoveries have strengthened the theory (DNA, plate tectonics, etc.)>
Yet this would all take away time from discussions of photosynthesis, cell structure, anatomy, frog dissections, and the other frequent topics of middle school and high school biology.
But he already did that in post 87, which you had called in advance in post 68 after lexcorp linked Thewissen's cetacean page showing a Pakicetus skull fragment next to a coyote skull for comparison.
Gore's 87 also contains the following intriguing little snippet:
BTW - evos were trying to pass off the hippo as the ancestor of the whale, but they ran into a little trouble - DNA. The DNA proved conclusively that whales did not descend from hippos.When O when will he tells us his sources?
True, but similar to what I said before, nobody's seriously disputing what the various animal body parts are called, where they're located, etc. In that respect, evolution differs from the rest of the biology curriculum.
gore3000: God did it. I have special dispensation to lie for God. Besides, I'll ignore all your evidence so that I can complain you never give me any.
medved: God came from Saturn.
On your computer tonight: A crevo rerun marathon!
AndrewC denouncing a Pakicetus skull as a replica (cue taken by gore)
Repeat for (whales, hominids, primates, quote ethics)
1) gore announces lack of evidenceEnd repeat (if you can get to here)
2) gore gets showered with evidence
3) go to 1)
Thank you very much.
| To: AndrewC The skull is a composite. Four skulls plus 150 post-cranial bones were found. 469 posted on 2/22/02 5:33 PM Alaska by Nebullis To: AndrewC Composite? Ah. Yes. |
In other words, a reasonable person might at least listen to a theory which requires one or two probabalistic miracles in the entire history of the Earth, but an endless series of them? That basically just stands everything we know about mathematics and probability on its head.
Now, creationism, you can take or leave. I'd be perfectly happy with having both religion and evolutionism banned from our science courses, or at least not ever taught at public expense. Religion does not need public money. Christianity has been barred from our schools for the last thirty years and is still thriving. Could the same be said for evolutionism some thirty years hence? That would make an interesting experiment.
On the other hand, if you want to insist that evolution be taught in public schools at public expense, then you really need to teach Rastifari alongside it. In fact, Rastifari would fit well into team-teaching systems; in other words, a teacher wondering how to put 30 teenagers into the proper frame of mind to be indoctrinated into something as dog-stupid as evolution, could walk across the hall to the rasta class for a box of spliffs...
medved bases this "theory" on his own interpretations of primitive myths and his belief, contrary to all attempts to show him its folly, that dinosaurs could not stand up in a 1G field and therefore Saturn must have been tugging on Earth to reduce its gravity to one-sixth of a G.
It has been pointed out to him on this forum and on numerous other forums and websites that the planetary configuration of the Earth and proto-Saturn would be very unlikely to form in the first place; that the gravitational tug required to reduce Earth gravity by five-sixth would of necessity create humongous tidal stresses on Earth; that engineers and biologists have shown that dinosaurs could, indeed, walk around quite comfortably in 1G; that the energy required to break up proto-Saturn and move Earth would be literally astronomical as would the energy required to even out the resulting orbits to the tiny bit of eccentricity they now enjoy; that the angular momentum of the Solar System would be changed by such a move; etc.
However, these points have increased his paranoia that there is a conspiracy by Satan-worshipping atheistic scientists (literally tens of thousands of folks in on this conspiracy, mind you) to lead humanity down the road to perdition in an effort to teach evil-ution. He has never addressed the criticisms of his "theory," and he has never given any up-to-date scientific evidence why evolution is wrong. He simply calls evolutionists, and anybody else who disagrees with him "idiots" and posts decades-old out-of-context quotes to bolster his ego and earn browny points with the "evolution is the devil's tool" crowd.
And, oh yeah, his best friend is bat named Splifford.
"We've got a whole lot of these folks on this forum..."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#4
"Knowing gore3000, he'll take a look at your link and claim that evolutionists say coyotes are descended from whales. Do not underestimate the power of willful ignorance..."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#68
You didn't even read the freakin' article, you dolt, or you wouldn't have made the inane comment about whales evolving from coyotes, or vice versa. Do you ever read any of the stuff we give you, or do you glance at the pretty pictures, decide that nothing's going to change your mind and then post inanities on these threads?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#143
My theory has always been he's nothing more than a rather primitive computer algorythm.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#152
You are the only person I've met who suffered from Tourette's Syndrome of the keyboard.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#384
Face it, gore3000, your brain (or programming) has been trained to force a cognitive disassociation between the pariticulars of evidence and the sum total of evidence. You can't see the forest for the trees. You'll pick at individual pieces of evidence given you, but fail to understand the overall picture painted by the evidence coming in from dozens of scientific disciplines. And, you show an inherent inability to actually learn anything
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#632
except by creationists who cannot see the forest for the trees and refuse to accept any evidence unless in the form of a living, breathing critter (and then they'd probably claim it was ginned up by geneticists in some secret laboratory to mislead good, God-fearing Christians in an effort to damn their souls to Hell).
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#750
Gee, you get caught quote-mining red handed, and attempt to weedle out of it by bantering semantics. You haven't read any real science since that nice old guy down the street introduced you to Saturnism... http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#978
Dear, dear, deluded g3k.... http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#1073
What must God think of you that you are reduced to bantering semantics, twisting words, willful ignorance, and outright lies to support Biblical creation?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#1080
I never said that, you liar and twister of words. The serpent in the Garden of Eden could take tips from you.... Remember, God said, "Thou shall not bear false witness" (which means lying). Of course, you probably think lying for God makes you a saint, don't you?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#1082
Ahem, Mr. "I've got to lie for God,"
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#1088
I'm wondering if my asking gore3000 how he believed God felt about his lying for Him is what caused him to clam up. Medved, you claim God hates idiots, but not one of the commandments states "Thou shalt not be stupid." However, there is a "Thou shalt not bear false witness." Now that you know that your quotes are, at best, disengenuous, shouldn't you attempt to distance yourself from them, or is it okay to lie as long as it's "for the children?" http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts#1209
That is why PatrickHenry keeps publishing the list - so that y'all do not keep spouting the same, discredited drivel. http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3a68abe52d91.htm#147
I merely said that's what the Indians claim. And shortsighted politicians are more than willing to bend over and grab their ankles for these folks.
http://www.FreeRepublic.com/forum/a3a68abe52d91.htm#191
Ah... the "Static Cling Theory" of life, the universe and everything. Came to you one day while cleaning out the dryer lint trap, did it?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/636491/posts?q=1&&page=101#140
I figured it had to be you. Can't keep a tinfoil hatter down.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/634527/posts?q=1&&page=51#55
Your beliefs can't be proven scientifically so they must be forced on the populace through deception and the courtroom. Nice. In a few centuries America will have come to resemble the Islamic world in its backwardness and you can sit back in that special Hell God reserves for people who lie in His name, and gloat at your handiwork.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/634066/posts?q=1&&page=151#164
Proof positive you have absolutely no clue about that which you speak. Your creationist brethren have given up this argument as factually incorrect, but you persist in your ignorance as if it were some sort of talisman keeping the real world at bay.
The Sun does not "reverse" entropy, you muggle....
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/626685/posts?q=1&&page=201#203
BTW, a mutation is simply a change in the genome. It happens all the time -- usually during the creation of the sex cells from transcription errors (there is a word for this, but I cannot remember it for the life of me). Sometimes it is caused by an external influence -- a stray particle of radiation might knock part of a gene out of kilter (the biggest source of such radiation, BTW, is the Sun), or environmental chemicals might play merry hell with one's genetic coding. It's quite common and happens all the time -- which you would know if you actually read something other than the Bible once in a while.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/626685/posts?q=1&&page=301#346
Oh, I forgot, the scientific community is conspiring to keep you silent, so just sit in your basement and brood...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/626685/posts?q=1&&page=351#356
A case could be made that you should alter your drinking...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/626685/posts?q=1&&page=351#372
You are more incoherent than usual. Have they upped the dosage on your meds?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/626685/posts?q=1&&page=551#556
Are you being dense, or what? A descendent species can coexist with its parent species. There is nothing precluding Homo Erectus, Homo Neanderthalensis and Homo Sapien from occupying the planet at the same time. The fact that you cannot see this obvious situation indicates a lack of thought on your part.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts?q=1&&page=1370#1367
gore3000: God did it. I have special dispensation to lie for God. Besides, I'll ignore all your evidence so that I can complain you never give me any.
medved: God came from Saturn.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/fr/630185/posts?q=1&&page=1408
If you'd like, I'll send you an autograph.
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