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.
PMFJI, but your analogy is flawed. Punk eek doesn't say that it only occurred in one case. Punk eek says this same pattern should be found in most cases. So it's like the historian saying, "Ah, this pattern has popped up many times throughout history among many different civilizations. Most of the time, when we finally uncover enough mummies to link a populous civilization A with a later civilization B, it turns out that the intermediate population was much smaller than either of the two large populations, hidden off in an isolated area where they evolved more rapidly than when their numbers were huge."4. When all else fails, you develop an interesting theory called "punctuated growth," or "Punk-Gro," which states that the people living in this region were always 5'4" tall until a very brief period of time in which they grew to 5'8" in height. If we look hard enough, you claim, we will find evidence of that "transitional" period between Egypt and Civilization B. But it will be very hard to find these fossils, you warn, because the transitional period was very short and therefore the pool of fossils will be very small.
At some point, even you would have to admit that you are really grasping for straws here. On the other hand, MY simple explanation would seem much more reasonable:
"There isn't any 'transitional' phase, Don, because there is no relationship between Egypt and Civilization B. Civilization B is nothing more than a bunch of tall people from a foreign land who settled here after Egypt declined."
Punk eek describes a pattern, and the pattern has held up in several cases so far. That's why punk eek has stuck around. There's some positive evidence in its favor.
Surely you can see the problem here. IndoEuropeans and Semitics are both caucasions, meaning that the languages split within the span of time that caucasians have been walking around, i.e. within the last 12k and probably within the last 5 or 6k years. That isn't enough time to pull the language groups as far apart as they are. In fact, the only provable connections betewen IE and semitic groups are a few words which were borrowed within historic times, like Eretz/Erde/Earth. All of the common words which would have to be the same or similar if the two groups were actually related are totally different.
What if an outsider were to come up with something hundreds of times more fabulous than flight or sonar. For onstance, what if a creature were to be found which, without recourse to any technology, was naturally able to withstand the cold and vacuum of space and somehow navigate and travel across cosmic distances?
Is there any point at which even the most hardcore evolutionist would have to stop, examine the evidence, and say to himself "JEEEsshh, now I KNOW that shit can't evolve... time to go back to the drawing board."
If there is no such point, than evolution is basically unfalsifiable and clearly a pseudoscience.
I believe that a number of things which are normally termed "paranormal" represent just such a case. Evolutionists generally pooh-pooh such evidence and attempt to discredit the people involved with such studies, since they instinctively dislike the idea of having to deal with anything like that within an evolutinoary context.
Nonetheless, there are other people and groups of people who do not have the luxury of trying to ignore things which do not fit within their ideological paradigms. The king of France in the 1400's, for instance, did not have such a luxury. The Catholic church, apparently making up in thoroughness for anything they might lack in celibacy, took several hundred years to analyze the case of Joan of Arc, and ultimately determined that at least some of her activities required information that she had no way of having other than for paranormal means; they cannonized Joan in the 20'th century.
Likewise the US military does not have the luxury of ignoring such things. You can check out this article on the US military's interest in remote viewing or do your own google search on 'Stubblebine' and 'remote viewing' at your leisure. Books have been published on soviet activities in this area and I presume American general officers are not paid to investigate pseudoscience.
My own take on this sort of thing as I've noted resides on bearfabrique.
I believe I've done a more adequate job of presenting these ideas on this page than I had with previous efforts.
Rupert Sheldrake's www site is Sheldrake.org
Sheldrake is a former director of studies in cellular biology at Cambridge University who has made a second career of using statistical methodology and intelligent experiment design to investigate things normally termed "paranormal" and is generally viewed as public enemy #1 by the CSICOP crowd and other such "science vigilantes". If nothing else, his methods are unassailable and his credentials are significantly better than theirs are. The best starting point for reading Sheldrake's view of nature is "Seven Experiments Which Could Change the World", which is available as an inexpensive paperback. Sheldrake notes that the big questions in science no longer require "big science" or large sums of money to investigate them. In particular, major compute power which not long ago was exclusively found at government agencies and universities, is now available to the public for under $1000.
I've notice one of the features of your "theories" is that they do not take into account the overall picture; it's as if you took a snapshot of a pine tree, then declared all trees to be pines based upon your snapshot.
That's not too surprising. There's a lot of assimilation, cultural diffusion, and cultural imperialism in history. Prehistory figures to be similar.
Initially the article refers to the Intelligent Design as a "theory". This reference morphs in short order into Seattle is ground zero for the intelligent-design agenda. Hmmm --- a theory has quickly become an agenda and supposed science-talk "goes nuclear" with ground zero. Certified Bias holds full sway from that point on in the article. "Bias", though, is too kind a word. It's lies. Liberal lies.
Let's parse a little more just to secure the point. ...science and religion exist in distinct domains, what Gould called magisteria (domains of teaching authority). This is indeed classic Gould, attempting to establish Evolution as science and place it on an equally authoritative footing with religion, specifically with Catholicism. Magisteria are, in truth, official pronouncements by the Pope/Catholic Church. Here is a link to the 1996 Magisterium wherein the Pope specifically denies Atheist Materialist Evolution (next time an Evolutionist tells you that the Pope endorses Evolution, tell him/her to read this Magisterium). Here, in this particularly egregious lie, one can clearly see what is being attempted by the Libs in this most fundamental of battles in the Culture War.
It's clear that Mindy Cameron is an acolyte of Gould: Gould, one of America's most widely respected scientists [well, hardly, to say the very least] and a prolific essayist, died just two weeks ago. Among his many fine books [?] is one I kept by my bedside for many weeks [my, my] after it was published in 1999, "Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life." Kind of harks back to the time when folks would keep a Bible by their bedside, doesn't it? Well, we should all remember that Gould was the great promoter of "chance" as explanatory of not only the origin of life but the universe itself. And this utterly bizarre, surreal, asinine proposition (on its face!) by "one of America's most widely respected scientists" had a fairly long run in the popular press and on the talk boards. Gould is no scientist or he would have understood that chance is random and explains nothing.
The article is about politics, the Culture War, not science, and we know which side Cameron's on. Given her now-established Liberal credentials and fast-and-loose treatment of the truth, I think the article can now thus be dismissed with a wave of the hand.
All and always, of course, in my humble opinion . . . ;-}
I eagerly await the example you intend to post of a formal proof from a natural science journal.
Beyond that, (natural science) what is your ‘theory’ in regards to why a tree is not a rock.
My theory is that when you fail a straightforward test of the thesis you seem to want to defend, that you will try to recover using purile strawman arguments.
Obviously, the inability to produce proofs does not suggest--as you are implying--the inability to make observations, draw distinctions, and assess likelihoods--which is what science does: something you could easily ascertain by direct observation.
My position is that as a science, abiogenesis has fallen. The odds are exponentially against it occurring by accident.
Yes, I agree that that is your position. However, I missed the proof that you were going to post, but no doubt forgot, that abiogenesis was an instant spontaneous leaping together of a prokariotic cell. Failing such a proof, you have no basis for telling me what the state-space and selection criteria for calculating those odds are.
Just because you don't know how something happened, is not a scientific basis for running around shouting "A MIRACLE!, A MIRACLE!"--common as such practice has been.
Agreed. Here's a wild example: If the islands of Japan were to sink beneath the waves, the majority of surviving Japanese people would probably be English-speakers in the US. If there were no records of the catastrophe, how would anyone figure it out in a few thousand years? I suppose that kind of thing (on a less grand scale) happened more than once, long ago, when populations were smaller and it was therefore easier to wipe out the parent stock who spoke their original language.
In otherwords, it has fallen as a science.
Oh brother. Nooo...now pay attention class--massive computational attempts to look back in history, as proof, has little to do with science, and the obvious failure of such attempts, should they be made, would have no impact whatsoever on science.
Science, reasons by induction on available evidence, even though such evidence will always be appallingly incomplete compared to the exhaustive knowledge it would take to make such computations. And only with exhaustive knowledge could you make such a computation a proof.
Which is why randomly supposing that prokariotes are the start of life, and basing your "computations" on that to dismiss abiogenesis is an appallingly obvious fool's errand.
I just said that. But you also need a great faith to believe in anything abstract. Did you know we had a proof of the 4 color theorem that was extant for many years before a scholor somewhere put in some seat time to find a mistake in the proof? Did you now that Principia Mathematica's main line of proof had a mistake that stood unnoticed for almost a generation?
Even formal proofs are not proof against the need for faith in our undertakings.
What you should ask is: if abiogenesis didn't occur using exactly the scenario I insist on, how did it occur?
It occured by some means other than the one you insist on, for no spectacularly good reason, other than that it aids your argument.
There are dozens of alternative suggestions on the table. RNA world seems most likely to me, but Cairns old bubble&mud theory is pretty interesting. Panspermia is on the table, although, from my point of view, all panspermia does is shove the main quandry backwards in time a long ways.
Pretty long-winded way to say that scientific reasoning by induction is not proof, and can easily support false premises. We know that--that is why science proceeds through methodical attempts at falsification of theories, which is why we have science journals with referees.
We observe gravity in action in our solar system, we extrapolate gravity to work even where we don't see any bodies to interact. We have an underlying explanatory paradigm called Newton's three laws, whose application seems to explain what we see. We are alert to countermanding examples--so far, although we have several current problem areas, we still like the law of gravity.
We observe evolution in action in our local time frame, we extrapolate evolution to work even when we can't watch the critters breed, and establish each and every continuous pedigree. We have an underlying explanatory paradigm called DNA mutational distance, which seems to be shared in proportional measure by proportionally older families of critters. We are alert to countermanding examples--so far, although we have several current problem areas, we still like the theory of evolution.
If you know of a completely devastation countermanding example, please trot it out. Evidentiary gaps are not the same thing, and science does not require, and cannot pay for, exhaustively filling in every knowledge gap.
If you know what evolutionary theory does that is different in underlying principal from what classical physics does, please trot it out.
I'm sorry, I had assumed you were aware of the background.
Dr. Harold Morowitz, former professor of biophysics at Yale University, estimated that the probability of the chance formation of the smallest, simplest form of living organism known is 1 out of 10^340,000,000.
Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University, figured the odds at 1 out of 10^2,000,000,000.
Only a certain amount of events have taken place in this universe, which is estimated it to be about 5,000,000,000 light years across. Assume that it is a million times wider, taller, and deeper for a diameter of 5*10^15, (5 quatrillion) light years or 3*10^28 miles in diameter.
The effective diameter of a proton is about 2.4*10^-15 meters -- one inch is equal to about 10 trillion protons side to side. Now, shrink the size of a proton by a trillion and imagine the universe completely filled with these extra-small particle.
* Universe Diameter = 3*10^28 miles = 1.2*10^59 small-particle" diameters
* Universe Volume = (4/3)*(PI)*[(1.2*10^59 small-particle diameters)^3]*(1/8)
* Universe Volume = 8*10^177 particles.
Note: the universe is 1 million times wider than reality, and the particles are 1 trillion times smaller than protons.
Assume that each of the 8*10^177 particles can participate in one trillion trillion trillion events at one time. This factor would be 1*10^36 events per second.
The current estimated life expectancy of the universe is about 30 billion years. Let's multiply this by 1 billion to give the universe 30 quatrillion years --or 1.1*10^22 days or 2.6*10^23 hours or 1*10^27 seconds -- to produce life.
This means that the universe, crammed with 8*10^177 particles working at 1*10^36 events per second for 1*10^27 seconds, could only make:
* (8*10^177)*(1*10^36)*(1*10^27) = 8*10^240 events.
Morowitz says life could evolve from non-life every 1 out of 1*10^340,000,000 events; while Sagan says 1 out of every 1*10^2,000,000,000 events.
Yet only 8*10^240 events are possible in our extra-old, extra-big universe.
Note: Borel asserts that 1*10^50 represents a negligible event on the cosmic scale
If you believe we came into existance by accident you believe in a miracle.
(Me) In otherwords, it has fallen as a science.
(You) Oh brother. Nooo...now pay attention class--massive computational attempts to look back in history, as proof, has little to do with science, and the obvious failure of such attempts, should they be made, would have no impact whatsoever on science.
You are playing games with words here.
Science, reasons by induction on available evidence,
You have that part right. Now, the odds of undirected abiogenesis are at 1 out of 10^2,000,000,000. You want to say it hasn't fallen as a science? While researching life by accident remember to set time aside for turning lead into gold.
Which is why randomly supposing that prokariotes are the start of life, and basing your "computations" on that to dismiss abiogenesis is an appallingly obvious fool's errand.
So we agree that randomly supposing that prokariotes are the start of life has fallen as a science. Or are suggesting there is another hypothesis out there for the accidental occurrance of life?
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