Posted on 06/17/2002 3:10:50 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up
When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.
Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.
Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.
To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.
1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
CONCLUSION
"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.
In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)
Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.
Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.
Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.
The Author(s):
John Rennie is editor in chief of Scientific American.
No. Sorry. You don't win Nobel Prizes for proving the earth is round, even though a tiny minority of people believe it to be so. And you don't win Nobel prizes for 'proving' Evolution, because the entire scientific community, barring a few nuts, accepts it. I mean, I'm sure you boys think you weigh heavily on the minds of the Nobel committee, but honestly, if they think of you at all, it's with amused contempt.
I do not know whom you are quoting here, but a science cannot be true or false. There may be specific statements that are true or false, and there may be valid or invalid inferences.
As for theories, they are primarily characterized by consistency and completeness. And, as has been pointed out by Godel, these cannot be ascertained simultaneously.
There are scientists (and nonscientists), that are atheists. It is only logical for them to rely on science exclusively, since they believe there are no other entities involved. It is not, therefore, a separate religion, but merely atheism.
Science is the way to describe a way of describing reality, not reality.
You first test an idea you have, then you do an experiment, then you change your explanation according to the experiment's results.
Electrons have weight in one experiment, so they are particles. But in atoms, they have a wave like attributes. They also act like waved when used in things like Electron microscopes.
I don't remember the names of the various experimenters, but will look them up and post these when I have a chance, with references.
Electrons have weight in one experiment, so they are particles. But in atoms, they have a wave like attributes. Electrons do have mass (incidentally, it is different from having weight: the latter exists only in the presence of gravity, whereas mass is a property of the object itself).
It is a misconception, however, to think that waves do not have mass. You must have been thinking about light: that wave is indeed massless.
All objects, even the Sun and the Earth are described by waves. Some have mass and some don't. When the masses are relatively large, the wavelike properties become inessential, and the object behaves classically, "like a particle." You are correct, of course about the atoms: there the masses are small, and the wavelike properties are essential. The wavelike properties are always there, however: they are merely more visible at the atomic level.
There are no two different realities.
Regards, TQ.
I never meant to imply there are two different realities.
My original post was pointing out that the arguments on creation vs darwin are based on the idea that only science can describe reality, and that the way we describe reality is reality itself.
Reality exists, and science is one way to try to find reality. I'm not a philosopher, but what I mean is that the argument mixes up the means (science and the scientific method) with the end (reality).
Wilde once quipped that a cynic is a person who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing. Evolution as described by Darwin has been stretched to mean many things outside of a scientific observation; this includes the rejection of God, the idea that morality is a construct, and that it is okay to kill six million untermensch that stand in the way of evolution.
And after reading Peter Singer's book, I hate to tell you that this last reality is still alive and kicking in our universities.
We are now in the realm that you probably know better than I do: that is psychology, not science. As you argued, the object may be different from how it is preceived. So is science, with respect to which people often misconstrue two things: what the implications of a finding are, and statements by a scientist that he makes outside his or her profession. By the latter I mean that, when a scientist says, "I do not believe in G-d," it is unrelated to his professional knowledge. SUch words of a scientist weight no more than when spoken by a plumbe. Yet no one argues with the plumber about G-d, and everyone argues with the scientist.
How evolution is applied is indeed the question of values, but this is no different from gun control. Guns do not kill, people do --- depending on their values. Evolution is much the same: it is not responsible for the genocide, people are. Very same people who were at the healm of various leftist regimes in the past century, and many of those that teach in our universities. It is they, and their values are to blame, not science itself.
Especially if one revives them after they've been dormant for a year.
ID is a mathematical model that establishes a probability of X happening randomly. It is not a theory of origins.
It says that accidental progress to where we're at today is pretty darn unlikely.
That mathematical model gives impetus for those using any particular model of origins to relook what they're theorizing.....even evolution.
Indeed, I suspect there will eventually be a formulation - which cannot be denied - that illustrates there was not enough time and information content to have evolved biological life on earth through an unguided process of random mutation and natural selection.
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