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.
I really didn't expect that you would agree, only to be open to the possibility, which I think you are by saying you're not sure.
I view any claims to such knowledge as requiring extraordinary substantiation.
Well, the Bible is an extraordinary book, but I'm sure it is insufficient for you. I have found it to be trustworthy in the areas that I have had opportunity to test it, and where it is untestable, I have decided to accept its statements on faith.
For some people, it's because they're proverbially from Missouri: they have to be shown something to believe it.
For some, it's a convenient excuse.
And for some, it's because their religious teaching didn't deal with the question of the relationship between faith and reason.
Preaching to the converted is unrewarding, so why should Scientific American publish an article about the errors of creationism? Surely this magazine's readers don't need to be convinced. Unfortunately, skepticism of evolution is more rampant than might be supposed. A Gallup poll from 1999 and a National Science Board poll from 2000 both revealed that close to half the American public rejects evolution. Inadequate education plays a part in this--confidence in evolution grows with schooling--but clearly a lot of remedial tutoring is in order: the NSB also determined that only about half the population recognized the statement "The earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs" as false.Source of this editorial: Bad Science and False Facts .With respect to evolution and science education, this year has already had a mixed record. The state legislatures of Mississippi and Georgia considered bills that would have undermined the teaching of evolution (thankfully, the bills died in committee). The Cobb County Board of Education in Georgia voted to insert into new science textbooks a notice that evolution is "just one of several theories" about the diversity of life on earth. As of this writing, the Ohio Board of Education is still deciding whether to give equal time to the creationist ideas known as intelligent design.
Ideas deserve a fair hearing, but fairness shouldn't be an excuse for letting rejected, inadequate ideas persist. Intelligent design and other variants of creationism lack credible support and don't mesh with the naturalistic fabric of all other science. They don't deserve to be taught as legitimate scientific alternatives to evolution any more than flat-earth cosmology does.
Unfortunately, creationism's allies set up smoke screens. For example, writing in the Washington Times, Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania claimed that the federal education bill signed into law this year contained a provision that "where topics are taught that may generate controversy (such as biological evolution), the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist." But biologist Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University has pointed out that the law says no such thing--the "Santorum amendment" was removed before the bill was signed.
Addressing the Ohio education board, two prominent advocates of intelligent-design theory, Jonathan Wells and Stephen C. Meyer, submitted a bibliography of 44 peer-reviewed papers that they said "challenge" evolutionary explanations for life's origins. Sleuthing by the National Center for Science Education revealed, however, that this list is less than it seems. The NCSE attempted to contact all the authors of those papers and heard from 26 of them, representing 34 of the 44 publications. None of those authors agreed that their work contradicted evolution, and most insisted that their work actually supported it (the complete story can be found at www.ncseweb.org).
Readers of Scientific American are well placed to expose ignorance and combat antiscientific thought. We hope that this article, and a new resource center for defending evolution at www.sciam.com, will assist them in doing so.
Weren't you one of those who have said that the Bible was written by "sheepherders?"
LOL, no.
Such usage may be undiplomatic, but it isn't false.
You believe what you believe quite strongly, but it is not necessary to attack your opponents in such a sophmoric manner, especially if you are trying to show yourself more learned.
Rigidity is believing what you believe despite mountains of contrary evidence. Insisting upon following evidence and logic isn't belief at all but realism.
In short, you should be criticizing medved for posting his indefensible lunacies over and over and over and over in-line on thread after thread after thread. To say we have to simply post our rebuttals every time he posts his junk is to empower him to make every thread about why the Earth having ever orbited Saturn is nonsense, why instantaneous light travel is nonsense, why psychic parrots and recent dinosaurs are nonsense.
He's going to post his crap on every thread because he's a nutcase. Some of us are going to call him on it because he's polluting the discussion in a brazen attempt to make everything about his delusions. You're going to nod your head and tell him what a revolutionary he is because you've got the critical faculties of a bivalve mollusc or you wouldn't be a creationist.
Get used to it.
The very title of the thread is sophmoric. The opinions of Scientific American writers and the High Priests and Priestesses of evolution are not the final word on how things came to be.
The article cites facts. It's not the results of an opinion poll.
The fact that a publication such as Scientific American would stoop to such tactics, to say nothing of the tactics of groups such as the National Association of Biology Teachers, the American Humanist Association, ACLU, National Science Teachers Association, the American Geological Instutute, the American Chemical Society, the National Educators Association, the American Institute of Biological Sciences and the American Anthropological Association, speaks volumes concerning the motovatations of these adherents to the theory of evolution.
What tactics? If you mean the word "final," talk to PH. He appended it, not SciAm. If you mean compiling rebuttals to creationist arguments, it seems there is no satisfactory way to make such an answer, including not answering.
If creationism raises its clamor of charges and no one answers: point for creationism. They're trying to ignore you away.
If some few scientists take up the onerous task of researching and rebutting the claims of creationists, they are "zealots." I've seen the TalkOrigins crew, Dawkins, Gould (when he isn't being misquoted to sound like a creationist), and Don Lindsay attacked and their points dismissed ad hominem for exactly the sin of compiling the research of mainstream science and exposing the falsehood of creationsist claims. But if Scientific American publishes a rebuttal of creationist points, now they're "stooping."
The claims of your literature are false. Who is allowed to tell you?
The published articles and papers I have collected over that time tell me one of two things. 1) Evolutionists are a collective of control-freaks who cannot tolerate their views being questioned; or, 2) They know their positions are untenable and they are very afraid of having to share the millions of dollars funneled into their research and education programs by governments every year. Perhaps they are a mixture of both.
In all your long spew, you have not answered a single point raised by Rennie in his article. You have done nothing but assault messengers. All of Rennie's 15 rebuttals are based on hard fact. You are 0 for 15 in addressing them. The charges you raise are hypocritical.
Evolutionists make me sick in general, but atheists make me sick in particular.
I've never heard any atheist say: "I don't believe in God because of science." What I usually hear them say is something like: "I don't believe it because there's no evidence for such a belief." Or words to that effect. I'll let the athesists speak for themselves.
Or maybe, as the article points out, creationist claims are simply false.
Pure Barbra Streisand! You, little girl, are one of the most hostile to religion on FR. If you didn't "hate" it, its discussion would not warrant your attention as much as it does.
Well I'm sorry, but you guys set the terms of "proof".
I'm rdb3, a Christian, not "one of those Christians."
Your faith is science.
Really? Wow!
It certainly can not be more of a "neurotic disorder" than what you share with us, Dimentio.
It's sickening. But this is America. It's your choice to believe as you choose.
You may have an opinion on people of faith. I may have an opinion on atheists.
See how this works?
Actually I said what JediGirl said -- science and religion are unrelated unless you say that God intervenes daily in the outcome of the material world. In that case science can detect such influences. For instance if "prayer works" then we can set up statistical tests and see whether those who pray have more favorable outcomes then those who don't pray. When God intervenes in reality, it leaves a signature different than the normal processes of physics, etc. This is all detectable. Science has been pretty good a proving God doesn't intervene routinely -- to the extent he may have intervened, it isn't obvious -- no trace evidence, etc.
So science can't prove that God doesn't exist, but it can show in most day to day events that he doesn't intervene with means that are disallowed by standard physics theories.
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