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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Why not? Does the board member misunderstand the relation of religion to science? One of the features of a true liberal education is an integrated understanding of all the sciences, including theology. Why the various sciences have to bunker and protect themselves from others appears to be more of a disease, than an liberal education. If science abandons metaphysics, not to mention relgion, you know they are cheating for a monopoly.
Ha ha ha, "scientific"???? It presupposes a "designer" aka God. It might fool members of the choir, but it's a religious faith.
Come on. If it weren't for the fact that evolution disagrees with the Biblical account of creation, none of this would be under discussion. There's scientific disagreement about the underlying theory of gravity; why isn't Georgia insisting that that controversy be included in the curriculum?
Dr. John G. West, Jr., is a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and an associate professor of political science at Seattle Pacific University.
The Discovery Institute is a stealth creationist think-tank. Of course they're going to run interference on this play.
One of those professors is Dr. Henry Schaefer, here at UGA. Here is his guest editorial from Sunday's AJC.
[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 9/28/02 ] GUEST COLUMNISTS
Standard evolutionary theory has shortcomings
By Henry Schaefer
Professor of chemistry at the University of Georgia
As a theorist who uses quantum mechanics to solve problems ranging from biochemistry to astrophysics, the subject of this essay is of great interest to me. It is a question that is discussed in depth in my University of Georgia freshman seminar entitled "Science and Christianity: Conflict or Coherence?"
This autumn 18 gifted UGA students and I are spending six weeks examining Stephen Hawking's best-selling book "A Brief History of Time." Therein Hawking states, "A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements. It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements. And it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations."
I consider Hawking's statement to be an excellent definition of a good theory. How does evolution stack up to the two demands of a good theory? By the term "evolution," I mean the claim that random mutations and natural selection can fully account for the complexity of life, and particularly macroscopic living things.
I think that the standard evolutionary model does a good job of categorizing and systematizing the fossil record. It serves as an effective umbrella or big tent under which to collect a large number of observations. If evolution has a weakness in this regard, it is that the tent is too big. Thus the 20th century witnessed a series of hoaxes, beginning in 1908 with Piltdown Man and continuing to recent fabricated fossil "discoveries" in China, that have been embraced as missing links by distinguished paleontologists.
Nevertheless, I give evolution a B grade with respect to Hawking's first category.
The second requirement for a good theory is far more problematical for the standard evolutionary model, sometimes called the modern synthesis. Over the past 150 years evolutionary theorists have made countless predictions about fossil specimens to be observed in the future.
Unfortunately for these seers, many new fossils have been discovered, and the interesting ones almost always seem to be contrary to the "best" predictions. This is sometimes true even when the predictions are rather vague, as seen by the continuing controversies associated with the purported relationships between dinosaurs and birds.
Is the expectation that a good theory be predictive unrealistic? Let us consider two theories to which evolution is often favorably compared. The theory of gravity precisely predicted the appearances of Halley's comet in 1910 and 1986. On the latter occasion I was on sabbatical from Berkeley at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand. The newspaper (informed by classical mechanics and the law of gravity) told me exactly when I had to wake up in the middle of the night to enjoy the wonder of Halley's Comet. And in fact, the theory of gravity never fails for the macroscopic objects to which it is applicable.
A second successful theory, the atomic theory, is grounded in Schroedinger's Equation and the Dirac Equation. Atomic theory is able to make many predictions of the spectra of the hydrogen molecule and the helium atom to more significant figures that may be currently measured in the laboratory. We are utterly confident that these predictions will be confirmed by future experiments.
By any reasonable standard the theory of gravity and the atomic theory are good theories, well deserving of A grades. In comparison with these quantitative theories of the physical sciences, when it comes to Hawking's second requirement for a good theory, the standard evolutionary model fails, and should be given a D grade at best.
Might I be more detailed in stating my reservations concerning the standard evolutionary model? Sure. Let me preface these brief remarks by noting that I think the scientific evidence that God created the universe 13-15 billion years ago is good.
My first concern is that, with the collapse of the Miller-Urey model, there is no plausible scientific mechanism for the origin of life, i.e., the appearance of the first self-replicating biochemical system. The staggeringly high information content of the simplest living thing is not readily explained by evolutionists.
Second, the time frame for speciation events seems all wrong to me. The major feature of the fossil record is stasis, long periods in which new species do not appear. When new developments occur, they come rapidly, not gradually.
My third area of reservation is that I find no satisfactory mechanism for macroevolutionary changes. Analogies between a few inches of change in the beaks of a Galapagos finch species and a purported transition from dinosaur to bird (or vice versa) appear to me inappropriate.
Excellent question.
But scientists supportive of teaching the scientific controversy over evolution don't fit the stereotype of science vs. religion, so the national newsmedia neglected to mention them.Journalists should relinquish the "Inherit the Wind" stereotype and update their knowledge about what is really happening in the natural sciences. Today, growing numbers of scientists are raising serious questions about Darwinian theory.
Some of them, like biochemist Michael Behe of Lehigh University and mathematician William Dembski of Baylor University, are proposing a scientific alternative to Darwinism known as intelligent design. Other scientists are simply pointing out that the underlying evidence for Darwinian theory is a lot more complicated--and controverted--than is usually presented to students. Biologist Jonathan Wells points out that biology textbooks routinely cite "evidence" for Darwin's theory that even many modern Darwinists no longer accept as legitimate. The textbooks also ignore the serious disagreements that exist among modern biologists on major issues such as the fossil record and embryology.