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.
IOW, as I read it, Morowitz is saying that after the universe experiences its heat death . . .,
I think you are reading it wrong which it isn't hard to do since it rather poorly written. The article you posted is basically a criticism of James Coppedge who cited Morowitz, -- a biophysicist and Robinson Professor in Biology and Natural Philosophy at George Mason University, with a Ph.d from Yale where he was an associate professor of biophysics, something not noted in the link.
Well, after re-reading it, I think my interpretation is correct. the 10340,000,000 odds figure that you quoted came from Morowitz's Energy Flow in Biology, and Morowitz's specialty seems to be the thermodynamics of living systems.
I wonder what "The Thermodynamics of Pizza" is all about! I also see an intriguing title: "Beginnings of Cellular Life, Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis". I assume this means that the metabolic pathways of current living things reflect the history of how abiogenesis happened. (You do realize of course that Morowitz is an evolutionist?)
A direct attack on Morowitz's assumption of a 239-minimum protein genome can be found in the critic of Coppedge at your link.
Yes, the discovery of self-replicating RNA (ribozymes) about 20 years ago is what got RNA-world theory started, as I understand it. That really reduces the required number of genes in a self-supporting cell.
IOW, as I read it, Morowitz is saying that after the universe experiences its heat death, it will be impossible for even one cell to form - spontaneously or not! - because there won't be any energy gradients left to tap into for the required energy.
After maximum entropy --"heat death" -- is reached, of course it will be impossible for a cell to form. It will be impossible for anything to form. The universe will be dead.
I don't think Morowitz or anybody would waste their time calculating the odds of anything forming at maximum entropy.
Your understanding is correct.
But there appears to be chemcial problems with the RNA World.
Something else to think about (from the link)
Furthermore, the relevance of ribozyme engineering to naturalistic theories of the origin of life is doubtful at best, primarily because of the necessity for intelligent intervention in the synthesis of the randomized RNA; then again in the selection of a few functional RNA molecules out of that mixture; then, finally, in the amplification of those few functional RNA molecules
A similar critque about the possibility of the RNA World can be found in the link in post 582.
I hate to keep uselessly trying to burst this bubble, but no one's speculations, however couched in apparent mathematical rigor, is science. Science is a heavily co-operative enterprise that works extremely hard, extremely publicly, extremely methodically, to hammer out a current concensus about what we think is going on, based on critically designed experiments and field work--see "Nature" or "Science News" and the refereed technical journals, do NOT see random compilations of speculations no matter how august the speculator.
What you are looking for is a miracle. You're next project should be finding the perpetual motion machine.
I believe I've found one. No matter what gaping objections one points out in his vastly over-generous understanding of what science consists of--he keeps cranking out the exact same unscientific thesis under the rubric of science over and over.
Kindly supply the proof you have been ducking for 100 posts that abiogenesis could only have happened by the sudden spontaneous formation of a prokariote.
And you're quite free to waste your years -- or even 3*10^19 if you had them -- trying to get life to spontaneously arise from a chemical soup.
Kindly supply the proof that abiogensis had to be the sudden spontaneous creation of prokariote.
Every objection I have heard about RNA world, including your link, relies heavily on the chemical nature of discrete-cell reproduction. All I can suggest is that nobody really tries very hard to understand the nature of the notion being presented. If RNA world existed, it almost certainly did not have discrete cell reproduction, and almost certainly was not into high fidelity reproduction (How could it, without DNA?) And so it's chemical requirements were radically different than those of cellular entities. The arguments you have linked to are, to be kind, irrelevant. DNA world was constructed radically differently from ours. So the failure of the chemical world to provide things we cellulars find copesthetic is not a devastating argument against it.
What the version of RNA-world thesis I like best holds is that DNA packaged in single cells was just one of many things RNA world tried out, much as DNA world "tries out" various combinations of meat machines as DNA carriers.
In light of this, it is no more surprising that RNA-world managed to select DNA-carrying cellulars, than that guppy breeders can create lyre-tail guppies.
Every objection I have heard about RNA world, including your link, relies heavily on the chemical nature of discrete-cell reproduction. All I can suggest is that nobody really tries very hard to understand the nature of the notion being presented. If RNA world existed, it almost certainly did not have discrete cell reproduction, and almost certainly was not into high fidelity reproduction (How could it, without DNA?) And so it's chemical requirements were radically different than those of cellular entities. The arguments you have linked to are, to be kind, irrelevant. DNA world was constructed radically differently from ours. So the failure of the chemical world to provide things we cellulars find copesthetic is not a devastating argument against it.
What the version of RNA-world thesis I like best holds is that DNA packaged in single cells was just one of many things RNA world tried out, much as DNA world "tries out" various combinations of meat machines as DNA carriers.
In light of this, it is no more surprising that RNA-world managed to select DNA-carrying cellulars, than that guppy breeders can create lyre-tail guppies.
No, but let dohh see if he can answer.
Whose dohh?
Aside from those who specialize in them, who cares about any specific beastie? The evidence for evolution does not rest on specific beasties, it rests of the relations of the overall morphological patterns we see in successively dated geological layers--with particular regards to increases in general complexity.
I don't know if tests have been made to find out whether the two subspecies at the end of the ring could be fertilized with each other
If they have been they aren't widely known.
The Herring Gull is divided into breeds with a pattern of continuity that makes it obvious which direction around the earth it has been slowly migrating its nesting grounds. Every breed that's adjacent can interbreed--until you get to the end of the migration sequence, somewhere in Siberia, as I remember. As this point, the two adjacent breeds, taken, from the assumed direction of migration to be the oldest and newest, cannot interbreed.
I don't know if this is what y'all are talking about, but the Herring Gull's breeding pattern is kind of famous in biological science circles.
What we are having is a dispute about a definition. You are defining science as "a heavily co-operative enterprise etc." and citing Nature and other journals as the arbitrator of what falls under that definition.
I will give you a layman's view. When Francis Crick invokes space aliens as the cause of life on earth because spontaneous development would be impossible-- the science has fallen. I'd say the benchmark is the space aliens.
Kindly supply the proof you have been ducking for 100 posts that abiogenesis could only have happened by the sudden spontaneous formation of a prokariote.
I've given you links to mathematical calculations from respected sources showing the impossibility of the spontaneous formation of life. I'll confess I can't do better.
Yes, that would indeed be the view of a layman. However, we do not consult the views of laymen to determine scientific issues, we consult the views of our best specialized scientists as expressed rigorously in the technical journals of their specialization--and nowhere in that venue has abiogenesis fallen. In precise point of fact, in its proper venue, with Woese's work, abiogenesis is a newly healthy subject, after being moribund for some time.
Sorry about the typo. For BMCDA's sake -- Palentologist O.C. Marsh found the apatosaurus bones in 1877. Two years later he found a second set of bones which he declared to belong to a new species "brontosaurus." The set was missing a skull which he took from a site a few miles away, hence the belief he had a new species. It was determined the rest of the skeleton was another apatosaurus. The mistake was rectified in 1975. Because apatosaurus was found ealier, its name was kept -- despite bronto's popularity.
Bronto never existed. The creature it was thought to be was a mixed-matched skelton.
Aside from those who specialize in them, who cares about any specific beastie?
The moral is beware of overenthusiasm concerning the fossil record. Bronto was a rather mild and insignificant mistake -- unlike say Piltdown man. I'll provide a personal dentist-office epiphany. I was reading one of his waiting room magazines - I think it was Scientific American -- which featured an article speculating that phororhacos -- the large flesh-eating South American bird -- had lived in Florida. The evidence provided for this speculation concerned the discovery of bones originally thought to belong to an eohippus. I remember thinking "so much for the fossil record."
Several creation sites claim that the pro-evolution evidence presented by the defense in the Scopes Trial has been found to be completely inaccurate. I can't find any challenges to this claim.
Now, I'm not discounting fossils or claiming they are unworthy of study or that that exotic, extinct prehistoric creatures never existed or that it is even somehow wrong to draw pro-evolution conclusions concerning fossils. I just feel any conclusions should be treated with some skepticism and be made tenuously.
The Herring Gull is divided into breeds with a pattern of continuity that makes it obvious which direction around the earth it has been slowly migrating its nesting grounds. Every breed that's adjacent can interbreed--until you get to the end of the migration sequence, somewhere in Siberia, as I remember. As this point, the two adjacent breeds, taken, from the assumed direction of migration to be the oldest and newest, cannot interbreed.
There are lots of related creatures that can't interbreed -- housecats and tigers, for instance. But at what point does the seed of one species become incapable of fertilizing the egg of another? I got into a rather heated discussion on this matter on another thread and the conclusion seemed to be that a housecat can fertilize a tiger's egg -- albeit artifically and with little hope for a successful birth. I suspect the same would be true with the gulls, although I'd be interested if you have information showing otherwise.
Well, actually, you could do better by responding to the substance of my argument, rather than running the car ever deeper into the same rut. The only "respectable sources" in science is where the rubber meets the road in the referreed technical journals.
You have not with this, provided me with a demonstration as to why I should believe that spontaneous generation of a prokariote is the only possible way abiogensis could occur.
This is a mistaken question, fostered by the iniquitous habits of zoologists to earn their keep by classifying the snot out of anything they see. There is no such point--there is just a cloud of probability densities overhanging the question. The probability that a POPULATION will produce viable offspring with another POPULATION diminishes over time. There is not a biologically functional on/off switch that delineates the boundary crossing between species--the odds of success just keep diminishing with time since biological distinction occured.
Evolutionary science, like all natural sciences, is vulnerable to over-enthusiasm, fraud, and mistakes. That does not somehow render it not a science. Nobody faked the Grand Canyon. Nobody faked the painfully obvious fact that successive geological layers yield successive biological features which have an obvious morphological serial flow to them.
Nobody faked the extra-ordinary correlation between the morphological fossil flow and the tree of relationships established by DNA mutational distance mapping.
You have mistaken the Punch and Judy show at the entrance of the library for the library itself, and judged the library on the basis of the Puch and Judy show.
There's quit a bit in both links about how short half-lives for sugars would make it very unlikely they were available as prebiotic reagents.
All I can suggest is that nobody really tries very hard to understand the nature of the notion being presented.
When you say nobody do you mean the authors of those links or science in general?
In light of this, it is no more surprising that RNA-world managed to select DNA-carrying cellulars, than that guppy breeders can create lyre-tail guppies.
Here's where I keep referring to "fallen science." Guppy breeders have created lyre-tail guppies. Why would DNA come about if RNA was doing it's job?
Unless you're asking for money. You're not saying that a self-defined "community of experts" should be above scrutiny are you? Remember Carl Sagan predicting a new ice age because of oil well fires in the Gulf War?
we consult the views of our best specialized scientists
Like Francis "ET" Crick?
WHAT? If macroevolution is true, then what I described must have occurred. (Now you are going to ask me for proof of that postulate.)
I didn't say it wasn't. I was saying abiogenesis was kaput, remember?
Nobody faked the Grand Canyon. Nobody faked the painfully obvious fact that successive geological layers yield successive biological features which have an obvious morphological serial flow to them.
Nobody faked the Cambrian explosion either.
Nobody faked the extra-ordinary correlation between the morphological fossil flow and the tree of relationships established by DNA mutational distance mapping.
I'm reserving judgement on this one. I think there is some dispute on the molecular clock.
Remember, the biggest challenge evolutionists face now is irreducible complexity. If this challenge prevails other explanations must be found for the things you mentioned such as mutational distance mapping and the fossil record.
There is "some dispute" in every nook and corner of the science game. The cavils about the molecular clock are silly distractions. The fact is that ever since Fitch and Margoliash started doing it back in the 70s, we haven't had a single clock tell us that, say, chimps preceeded blackbirds in the human family tree. The quibbling is about the clock discrepencies, which are not surprising, and in the details of relatively new and minor genes over very short mutational distances, about whose history we are quite uncertain, just as one might expect. For the genes whose changes charactarize big branches in the tree of life established by the fossil record, the DNA clock has been astonishingly high-fidelity with respect to the fossil record's tree connectivity graph.
Remember, the biggest challenge evolutionists face now is irreducible complexity.
Only in the minds of creationists. To real scientists, its the same kind of yawner that fossil gaps are: a willful denial of what science, and its limits are.
If this challenge prevails other explanations must be found for the things you mentioned such as mutational distance mapping and the fossil record.
Uh huh. And how, exactly, will we explain the Grand Canyon's layering of fossils, or the astonishing correlation between the fossil family tree graph and the DNA family tree graph? God laid an incredibly expensive trap for unbelievers? That's one messed up God, if you ask me.
I've always been curious why anyone thinks the Cambrian explosion was anything special.
The Cambrian explosion occured shortly after mountains heaved up above sea level, and started leaching tons of calcium into the ocean every year. Without calcium there can't be much by way of fossils. Naturally, you are going to suddenly see a lot more fossils turn up at this point in the record.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.