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.
I'll grant you that abiogenesis is in the same scientific category as "multiple possible previous universes."
I'm getting awfully tired of responding to these offtask cheap shots using category errors big enough to drive a truck thru. I didn't suggest there were actual multiple possible universes. I said you'd have calculate all the equally possible configurations of the past universe that are possible from our knowledge of the current universe, in order for a calculation to be a formal, deterministic proof of anything that happened, or couldn't have happened in the past.
Oh piffle. Like "premeditated" means anything significant in this context. You only calculated one possibility, without providing a proof as to why it's the only possibility. "Random" is a far more accurate word than "premeditated" in this situation.
is definitive. I'm just pointing out that it is far more rational to believe in God.
Believing in God is an act of faith not an act of material rationality, and material rationality is the the arena science restricts itself to. I have no quarrel with you about this, until you transmute this personal opinion of yours into a statement about what science believes.
Well, you did actually. But I'll take you at your word that you meant something else.
I said you'd have calculate all the equally possible configurations of the past universe . . .
No, you wouldn't. Unless you are claiming the laws of nature were somehow different in the universe's past.
"one must contemplate not just a single shot at obtaining the enzyme, but a very large number of trials such as are supposed to have occurred in an organic soup early in the history of the Earth. The trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in 1020 x 102000 = 1040,000, an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup."
--Sir Fred Hoyle
It makes a lot more sense to believe in God.
As I've been pointing out a belief in abiogenesis is an act of faith and irrartionality.
and material rationality is the the arena science restricts itself to.
Can you explain the Law of Biogenesis?
Second, can you explain the Law of Biogenesis?
Well, you did actually. But I'll take you at your word that you meant something else
Do not put words in my mouth unless you make some effort to understand them. I made no such claim, nor anything remotely like it, as I just explained.
Yes, you would, if you claimed your calculation was proof that abiogensis had to happen by the spontaneous formation of a prokariote. As I pointed out before, merely claiming something in no way demonstrates it, not matter how mind-scroggingly often you repeat it.
Believing in anything is an act of faith. Irrationality is yet to be demonstrated by the submission of your proof that abiogensis had to happen by the spontaneous formation of a prokariote. A submission that is still, I believe, on your to-do list.
Can you explain the law of gravity-genesis? You have lot of nerve believing in Gravity with such an irrational gaping hole in your formal understanding.
Take more care in the words you use when you write.
Then I'll be more specific. Believing in abiogeneis is an act of faith not an act of material rationality, and material rationality is the the arena science restricts itself to. I have no quarrel with you about this, until you transmute this personal opinion of yours into a statement about what science believes. :-)
Materialism is a faith. It is a very irrational faith. In no way should it be axiomatic. If you agree that God's existance should be an axiom, I'll stop arguing with you.
Point to my words that you take to suggest the existence of multiple universes, and I will attempt to straighten out your misunderstanding. Or, alternatively, lets just take as given that you are puffing and bluffing.
I just said that. All ontological theories have to be taken on faith. Materialism as a specific philosophy is not the same thing as the fact that science deals only in material phenomena--if that is where this shot at Materialism comes from.
It is a very irrational faith. In no way should it be axiomatic. If you agree that God's existance should be an axiom, I'll stop arguing with you.
I can certainly agree that it (God's existence) is an axiom of many faith's creeds, and that there is no point in trying to argue about it in a discussion about science--the existence of an immaterial being can be neither refuted nor confirmed by material means. It is, however, totally irrelevant to the present concerns of science.
Of course maybe "multiple" really doesn't mean many. Or "possible" really doesn't mean "chance of others." Or "previous" doesn't imply universes existing before ours. I'm sure you can explain.
Abiogenesis is not a science. It is a theology based on the belief that life can --naturally, without direction -- come from non-life. This is a violation of science.
I can certainly agree that it (God's existence) is an axiom of many faith's creeds,
It is the axiom of Western Civilization, which is under attack as we correspond.
and that there is no point in trying to argue about it in a discussion about science--the existence of an immaterial being can be neither refuted nor confirmed by material means.
That's right. It should be considered an axiom.
It is, however, totally irrelevant to the present concerns of science.
You are right that science should not involve itself in the supernatural. On the other hand, science is not the most important thing in a culture or a person's existance. Our universe is based on spiritual, not material, things. You are going to die. I am going to die. Yet our existance means something profoundly eternal.
If science is pursued with the goal to glorify God and to enjoy the puzzle He has provided us in understanding his creation, much good will result.
If science is used in attempt to deny God's existance, great and very real evil will result.
The most relevant thing in one's life, by far, whether one is a plumber or one is a Ph.d researcher at Livermore National Laboratory is the existance of God.
Indeed, in that I already did, twice.
I am not suggesting there were or are multiple universes. I am suggesting that when a particle could have come from two or more places or states that existed in the just-previous state of the universe, with equal probability, then you have to figure out what the universe looked like in either case, in your omnibus back-calculation. If you make me explain this again, I'm going to withdraw your license to think about what's entailed in attempting to calculate what the world once looked like.
I agree that abiogenesis is not presently a science. RNA world speculation may well be an active science now, with the acceptance of Woese's work by the general biological sciences community. However, the heart of abiogenesis, which is not RNA-world, is not yet on the scientific table in any meaningful sense. To say that such speculation somehow "violates" science is absurd. Formal science has no opinion on un-scientific, or pre-scientific subjects--and no veto to exercise even if it had an opinion.
I have no opinion on this subject, and neither does science. I hope you fair well with it, and it that does you good.
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