Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
To Seattle area residents the struggle over how evolution is taught in public high schools may seem a topic from the distant past or a distant place.
Don't bet on it. One nearby episode in the controversy has ended, but a far-reaching, Seattle-based agenda to overthrow Darwin is gaining momentum.
Roger DeHart, a high-school science teacher who was the center of an intense curriculum dispute a few years ago in Skagit County, is leaving the state. He plans to teach next year in a private Christian school in California.
The fuss over DeHart's use of "intelligent design" theory in his classes at Burlington-Edison High School was merely a tiny blip in a grand scheme by promoters of the theory.
The theory is essentially this: Life is so complex that it can only be the result of design by an intelligent being.
Who is this unnamed being? Well, God, I presume. Wouldn't you?
As unlikely as it may seem, Seattle is ground zero for the intelligent-design agenda, thanks to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and its Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).
Headed by one-time Seattle City councilman and former Reagan administration official Bruce Chapman, the Discovery Institute is best known locally for its savvy insights on topics ranging from regionalism, transportation, defense policy and the economy.
In the late '90s, the institute jumped into the nation's culture wars with the CRSC. It may be little known to local folks, but it has caught the attention of conservative religious organizations around the country.
It's bound to get more attention in the future. Just last month, a documentary, Icons of Evolution, premiered at Seattle Pacific University. The video is based on a book of the same name by CRSC fellow Jonathan Wells. It tells the story of DeHart, along with the standard critique of Darwinian evolution that fuels the argument for intelligent design.
The video is part of the anti-Darwin agenda. Cruise the Internet on this topic and you'll find something called the Wedge Strategy, which credits the CRSC with a five-year plan for methodically promoting intelligent design and a 20-year goal of seeing "design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life."
Last week, Chapman tried to put a little distance between his institute and the "wedge" document. He said it was a fund-raising tool used four years ago. "I don't disagree with it," he told me, "but it's not our program." (I'll let the folks who gave money based on the proposed strategy ponder what that means.)
Program or not, it is clear that the CRSC is intent on bringing down what one Center fellow calls "scientific imperialism." Surely Stephen Jay Gould already is spinning in his grave. Gould, one of America's most widely respected scientists and a prolific essayist, died just two weeks ago. Among his many fine books is one I kept by my bedside for many weeks after it was published in 1999, "Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life."
In "Rock of Ages," Gould presents an elegant case for the necessary co-existence of science and religion. Rather than conflicting, as secular humanists insist, or blending, as intelligent-design proponents would have it, science and religion exist in distinct domains, what Gould called magisteria (domains of teaching authority).
The domain of science is the empirical universe; the domain of religion is the moral, ethical and spiritual meaning of life.
Gould was called America's most prominent evolutionist, yet he too, was a critic of Darwin's theory, and the object of some controversy within the scientific community. There's a lesson in that: In the domain of science there is plenty of room for disagreement and alternative theories without bringing God into the debate.
I have no quarrel with those who believe in intelligent design. It has appeal as a way to grasp the unknowable why of our existence. But it is only a belief. When advocates push intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations of evolution, it is time to push back.
That's what they continue to do in Skagit County. Last week, the Burlington-Edison School Board rejected on a 4-1 vote a proposal to "encourage" the teaching of intelligent design. Bravo.
Despite proponents' claims of scientific validity, intelligent design is little more than religion-based creationism wrapped in critiques of Darwin and all dressed up in politically correct language. All for the ultimate goal — placing a Christian God in science classrooms of America's public high schools.
As a science it has fallen. As a faith, well, anything can be taken as a faith. You can even claim the universe is resting on the back of cosmic turtles. The odds are almost the same as abiogenesis.
1) Because we haven't found them.
2) Because the common conception of a "missing link" does not correspond to anything real scientists actually think happened. There is no step between modern monkeys and modern men because both evolved from something else, examples of which are no longer around breathing air. It isn't a chain with a link that can go missing. It is a tree, some of whose branches have left no extant skeletons where we could find them.
(And don't tell me that we're still looking for it -- one would think that any archaeologist who can find bones dating back millions of years would be able to find large numbers of quasi-human remains dating back tens of thousands of years.)
Sciences aren't dismissed from school on the basis of the expections of cranks with axes to grind. We take what we can conveniently get by way of fossil finds. There is no orderly process controlled by the Master Paleonologist committee at Oxford, which can be held accountable for not finding whatever the next crank in the queue demands it find.
2. Why don't we see evidence of: a) ill-formed "mutants" from prehistoric times in which the evolutionary process didn't quite work out right (i.e., a pteradactyl with only 50% of the wing structure needed to fly),
Fossil finding is a sparce sampling process--we're lucky to find any examples at all of most species. In many cases, we only have one example of a thing. How would we know whether it was a mutant or not? If we did find a mutant of a common type, what would prevent our ever-zealous paleo-zoologists from declaring it a different species? Speciation is an arbitrary labeling of checkpoints in a continuous process. Treating this convenient sorting technique as if there were some physical reality underlying it is basing an argument on a ghost.
and b) any evidence of a macro-evolutionary process at work today?
Apparently you forgot to provide me with the proof that if I keep digging, I won't eventually find all the transitional fossils.
Kindly provide me with the State-Space, and the selection critera of the argument which has caused the downfall of abiogenesis, so that I can duplicate the calculation of the odds, and evaluate the likelihood of its assumptions. When a scientific theory falls, it generally falls on the basis of technically detailed scientific arguments, and I generally notice them in "Nature" and "Science News". This one slipped by me. Kindly remedy that omission, I will calculate the odds and get back to you.
Because evolution operates on what it happens to have by way of genetic resources, and doesn't consult the aforementioned cranks with axes to grind to decide what to do next. We also haven't developed the ability to leap from planet to planet, despite the obvious biological advantage of doing so. Why not?
Kindly don't put words in my mouth. This in no way approximates what I, or any reputable scientist takes to be the requirements of a scientific theory.
Kindly provide your positive PROOF that if we dig down to the center of the earth we will not find that the earth is actually operated by a Wizard of Oz pulling all kinds of switches and knobs.
Since I don't think proof has much of anything to do with science, I incur no such obligation.
So what your argument comes down to, is that the technological advantages of advanced bookeepping practices and electronic communications makes future's trading in some manner biologically different from other forms social insurenace through reciprocity and trust take in human affairs. Easy to say--hard to demonstrate.
OK. So now we know where you are coming from…
Remember this - evidence beats facts - every time.Source:
546 posted on 6/10/02 12:55 AM Eastern by gore3000
And that, my friend, is where the entire theory of evolution breaks down, because you can't have it both ways. On one hand you claim that a tiny, limited sample of fossils is sufficient basis to "support" the theory of evolution, but when I or someone else uses the lack of fossil evidence as an argument against evolution, you simply claim that the sample size is too small to use as evidence!
Perhaps, as we seem to learn every time we send a probe to one of these other plants, there really is no obvious biological advantage to doing so.
Easy to demonstrate. Technological advances and electronic communications have made human beings the only species on the planet that can alter their own environment instead of waiting for Mother Nature to do it for them. Monkeys can share and trade bananas as much as they want, but if for some reason there are no bananas in the jungle one year, these creatures are going to starve.
Not that science and criminal law are related in any way, but a lesson in legal process is worth noting here. If a prosecutor is involved in a case in which a piece of physical evidence is needed, he will usually be very careful before seeking a search warrant to look for it. The reason for this is simple -- if he obtains a search warrant and doesn't find what he's looking for, his failure to find what he's looking for can and will be used as evidence of the defendant's innocence.
In the realm of science, I'd say that the longer you look for something without finding it, the less likely it is that what you are looking for exists.
But that wouldn't stop ardent evolutionists, either. If every square inch of the earth's surface was scoured for those rare pieces of fossil evidence in support of evolution and no such evidence was unearthed, a future protege of Stephen Jay Gould is likely to refine his "theory" even further by suggesting that tese fossils cannot be found because some cataclysmic event destroyed them.
If abiogenesis has a scientific basis why are you comparing it to divine intervention? Personally, I consider a belief in God to be faith, as I do a belief in abiogenesis.
Now, God's existance should be considered axiomatic since our culture and values are based on this belief. But that still doesn't make it science.
Not a lot of beaver in your neck of the woods, eh?
That's perfectly logical. Unfortunately, evolutionists are pretty much immune to logic at this point; logic basically just bounces off them sort of like water off a duck. This thing is ultimately going to have to be settled in courtrooms and at ballot boxes. It's a pure political issue; science has nothing to do with it.
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