Having made a long defense of red-staters and their religious beliefs, let me remark on another issue, if you will:
School officials have revised the science curriculum to allow the teaching of creationism, prompting an outcry from more than 300 educators who urged that the decision be reversed.
Members of Grantsburg’s school board believed that a state law governing the teaching of evolution was too restrictive. The science curriculum “should not be totally inclusive of just one scientific theory,” said Joni Burgin, superintendent of the district of 1,000 students in northwest Wisconsin.
Last month, when the board examined its science curriculum, language was added calling for “various models/theories” of origin to be incorporated.
Teaching creationism in science class and pretending it is a viable ‘model/theory’ is akin to teaching magic in calculus just because some people are too unwilling or too stupid to understand the fundamentals of mathematics.
I would call this sort of nonsense junk science, but out of respect to legitimate junk scientists everywhere, I will keep my mouth shut.
Idiot flat-earthers.
Jim Henley
I think you may have mistyped there, if I’m understanding the context of your other remarks correctly.
superhawk
Amen, John.
The creationists have already made serious inroads in high school curricula across the country as they take legitimate scientific findings and twist them to try and discredit not only Darwin, but geologists, physicists, biologists, and others who are trying to unravel how life on earth evolved.
Even though they represent a tiny minority of parents, creationists are highly organized and passionate. I’ve argued with these people using the following:
In 10 years, the bio-medical industry is going to be exploding as products related to research into the human genome come on-line.
Do you want your children leading that revolution…or do you want them sweeping the floors of German and Japanese bio-tech firms? For without knowledge and belief in evolutionary biology, your children will be doomed to suffer in ignorance while the children in Europe and Asia take advantage of your myopia.
John Cole
Woah, nellie. Thanks, Jim- it was a typo.
Francis W. Porretto
It was just as valid the first way.
No theory of the origin or development of life on Earth is falsifiable. They all lack predictive power. Therefore, they don’t qualify as science. That embraces not only creationism, but every form of evolutionary theory, from the original one to the variations posited by Gould.
See also this.
Josh Martin
There are in fact credible theories which propose that the universe is created, but that do not discount intra-species evolution. Teaching that such theories exist is a far cry from teaching that the earth was created by God in six days.
Sandi
-John You remind me of this scientist:
Personally I don’t care whether they teach it in school or not.
David Gorski
I agree with you 100%. I have no problem with creationists believing the way they do. I have no problem with their pointing out the flaws in evolutionary theory (evolutionary scientists are probably more ruthless about doing so than creationists, in fact). I DO have a problem with them trying to claim that what they believe is a science. It most assuredly is not. I also have a problem with them intentionally equating theories of abiogenesis (the development of life from non-life) with evolution. They are not the same thing or the same theory. Evolutionary theory describes how already existing organisms evolve. It has nothing to say about how life came to be in the first place. Finally, my biggest problem comes when they try to ram their religious beliefs down the throats of children in public schools, calling it “science.”
Contrary to some comments creationists will make, the evidence that evolution occurred (and continues to occur) is overwhelming, and evolution as a theory does have predictive power. The main arguments among scientists are NOT over whether evolution occurred, but over the MECHANISM by which it occurs. Dismissing evolution by natural selection as “just a theory” reveals ignorance of what the word “theory” means in science. In science, a “theory” is a set of explanations that are considered at present the best explanation of a natural phenomenon, supported by large amounts of evidence.
Finally, evolution is not incompatible with religion. It is simply wrong, however, to represent religious beliefs as “science,” as creationists do. In this area, Catholics are actually far more enlightened. The Pope himself has said that evolution and natural selection are not incompatible with Catholicism.
Nigel Kearney
Isn’t it better to have creationism regarded as a scientific theory and evaluated against the evidence as we do with other theories, rather than allow creationists to (with some justification) continue to claim that they are being victimized by government suppression of their view and promotion of the opposing view?
If a school teaches kids how to evaluate theories based on evidence, teaches them about all the relevant evidence that has been discovered to date, offers them two possible theories, and the kids prefer the one that is known to be false, surely the solution is to teach the stuff better, not to suppress the false theory?
Mark
Ironic that this is a BLUE state. But I digress…
Toren
Actually Darwinism is under attack in the scientific community itself (see the recent National Geographic issue). And some of the laws written in the past to keep creationism out of schools also barred them from teaching Gould’s punctuated equilibrium theories because it drifted too far from the officially approved canon!
I’m not sure there is a place for creationism as such in school textbooks, but if they’re going to put global warming and other such belief-based enviro-nonsense in there (which they do), I don’t see why theories critical of Darwinism should be banned.
Or do they object to a little “diversity”…?
platosearwax
They can teach creationism in the schools…in theology classes. Not science, shouldn’t be taught in science class.
religiontranscends
Re: global warming and creationism equivalence —
Anyone who thinks we know ANYTHING from science hasn’t been paying attention. Science is a process of understanding how the world works. When theories are disproved, it is because science is working.
Global warming is a well-supported hypothesis backed up by observations. If it is debunked later, nobody will shed a tear, but the observations cannot be ignored. Darwinism: same thing. The theory is constantly refined with every data point, but if another theory arises that makes more sense given the available evidence, kiss Darwin goodbye.
Creationism, on the other hand, is a belief that is poorly supported by observable evidence. Were there no bible to tell us about it, we would not divine its occurrence from the world around us. And it’s a part of a mode of thinking that does not believe it can be disproven.
I don’t know what happened at the dawn of time, and neither do you, or any scientist or human alive. But teaching creationism in science classes is not teaching good science.
shark
It repulses me, but what can you expect? This is a direct outgrowth of liberal educational models that give any and all differences in opinion equal weight. Just look at history curricula, for example.
So why should liberals look dowm on teaching an alternate view of the origins of our planet?
SDN
Religion Transcends:
I found thru Jerry Pournelle’s site, where three scientists from University of Toronto(?) had disproven the original global warming paper this summer. Don’t have the link handy.
willyb
religiontranscends:
I don’t think we should teach either one of these theories.
Merriam-Webster Online defines science as “knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method.” Pray tell me what scientific method was used to conclude that mankind evolved?
I’m not sure that I place much stock in either theory (creationism or evolution). And I don’t think it is necessary to teach either one in order for us to be able to move from the current state of our existence forward. I think they are both based on probability calculations, with one set of calulations appearing to be more precise that the other because it is based on fancy mathematics.
Almost every mathematical model that tries to predict the future, based on past events, is unable to recreate those past events with complete accuracy. While that may only be a small problem when you are using 2 years of history, it might be a huge problem if you are using 2 million years.
How does one go about proving that man, in the generic sense, evolved from lower lifeforms. If indeed we did evolve, wasn’t that evolution the product of a physical environment that has been continuously changing, And unless that changing environment was running in a cycle that was exactly repeating itself, with the earth returned exactly to its beginning state with each renewal of the cycle, how can we stand here in 2004 and conclude scientifically what was happening at the beginning of the earth’s existence, millions and millions of years ago?
Both theories are guesses, and I don’t see how embracing either one affects much of what we do today. Am I just confused? Maybe someone could give me a summary of the evidence upon which evolution is based.
Technogeek
The belief in spontaneous generation is a religion. It is a belief system that is almost infinetely less mathematically probable than most of the intelligent design theories out there. It is quite amusing that so many pseudo-scientists out there still consider spontaneous generation a “hard science.”
torchy
What is this creationism you/they speak of? Are evolutionary scientists of the same mind, are creationists?
Your comments and others smack of mindless bigotry against creationism.
Why not just teach the sciences, the theories, the weaknesses and strengths of those theories and alternative theories.
Seems like that would go further in teaching critical thought and unleash the “creative” impulse in students rather than just running scared from alternatives.
willyb
Technogeek:
“The belief in spontaneous generation is a religion. It is a belief system that is almost infinetely less mathematically probable than most of the intelligent design theories out there.”
What is the probability of the most intelligent design theory out there and where do I find more information on it?
Slartibartfast
The problem is not necessarily that of creationism; the problem is that of so-called young-earth creationism. The idea that the Earth is only about 6000 years old, and that it (along with the rest of the universe) were created then so as to present an appearance exactly consistent with that of a universe many billions of years old requires a miracle. Miracles and science are incompatible; science explains ordinary reality. If the earth was in fact created 6000 years ago, it means precisely nothing at all relevant in the way we interact with it. The religious implications are separate and up to the individual. But I’ve noticed that religion is fairly useless for doing things like trajectory predictions.
I tell my daughters what some religions believe (I haven’t gone into Norse mythology yet; a bit too early for that) AND what science seems to indicate to be true. But I’m not sure I’d want the schools to be teaching about Creation Science, as it were, in a scientific context. Because it ain’t science.
religiontranscends
My point is that the teaching of science in schools is not about memorizing theories. It is about learning to critically evaluate theories. In science, theories that predict better than others survive, those that do not are relegated to the dustbin. Global warming, for example, is happening — but that doesn’t mean anything, except that it’s an observation. Is it just for this period in time? Will it revert back tomorrow? In short, why? But simply saying you THINK it’s not true or that people are overreacting isn’t good science. Scientists observe, make theories, see how the theories hold up. That’s it.
It is the process of thinking scientifically that needs to be taught in schools. The theories themselves, such as evolution, are simply examples of the process in motion. The sun going around the earth is a theory that explains a phenomenon; the earth going around the sun explains it better; the fact that their masses actually affect each other and the sun is slightly pulled by the earth is better still. Creationism is a theory, and Evolution is a theory. Which is perfect? Neither. Which has better predictive abilities? Those are the questions that kids should be taught to ask in classes.
ape
Francis –
what on earth are you on about? “the original one” “variation posited by Gould”
By ‘original one’ perhaps you mean Lamarckism. This is falsifiable, and has been proven false.
Or else you could be more wrong than that, and be prey to or a perpetrator of some of the ‘nonsense’ that JC refers to, in referring to Darwinian Natural Selection as different from Gould’s ‘variation’: Gould believes in Darwinian Natural Selection. This is also falsifiable, but has not been shown to be false.
You conflate the question of ‘origin’ and ‘development’ of life. Darwinian Natural Selection does leave room for the explanation of the origin of life. You should note that ‘creationism’ doesn’t, as it suggests life on earth has its origin in a different kind of life from elsewhere which is not explained.
You say that ‘Creationism’ is not falsifiable. This is only true to the extent that the term is vague. Statements such as ‘the universe is less than 20,000 years old’, if (as they often are) they are part of ‘creationism’ are falsifiable and clearly false. (EG how could we see those stars whose light would not have had time to reach us).
the ape
Slartibartfast
Hey, ape, if God can do anything, He can take care of the starlight problem in His sleep. That said, the Creationist “theory” is in fact unfalsifiable (without direct access to the Deity in question) and hence isn’t subject to debate. It pretty much places the issue outside of debate.
Theories that require a miracle to work fall outside of science, and should therefore not be even discussed in the same class as science, except perhaps in passing.
willyb
religiontranscends:
I’m still not sure that teaching evolution advances the cause of today’s scientific issues. Just how scientific are the methods that have advanced this theory? How has this theory of evolution been used to predict the evolution of lifeforms on earth? What is the probability that we evolved? At bottom, the theory of evolution seems to be based on the collection of fossils and SPECULATION about how these fossils came to be. How scientific is this?
Most scientific methods involve deterministic formulations that rely on establishing initial conditions to a high degree of accuracy, infinite accuarcy if the exact results are to be reproduced. When dealing with complex systems, such as a human beings on earth, how is it possible to obtain the accuracy needed to have a predictive model? And even if such a model were available, how would you go about reproducing results for 1,000s and 1,000s of years ago, where only limited data is available. My point was that even the scientific method that proclaims to support evolution, is very weak at best for definitively establishing what happened a long time ago. And calling it scientific does not change this result.
ape
willyb – ‘prediction’ and ‘reproducing results’, in the sense you use them, do not define what is scientific or not. Astronomy would hardly be a science under those terms. However, lots of predictions have resulted from the theory of evolution (I think the mutation of haemoglobin is one. Mutation of pathogens another.)
However, statements in Astronomy, just like biology, are falsifiable; such as if I said, “Suns are formed by me mixing shampoo in my bathtub” or “the earth is less than 20,000 years old” or “Fishes and humans do not have a common ancestor” or “the common ancestor of the human and the chimpanzee is more remote from the human than the common ancestor of fishes and humans”.
Slartibartfast: I appreciate the sentiment! Of course god(s) or devil(s) could have put fossils in the ground and made the turbot just to fool us. However, as I implied by referring to the ‘vagueness’ of particular forms of ‘creationism’, i don’t think that any existing form of ‘creationism’ (which usually likes to title itself “scientific creationism”, just to emphasise the point) sells itself as engaging in radical scepticism/ solipicism to the extent that you imply. There are genuine questions to be answered (such as, “Why is there reproducible adaptive complexity?”) and ‘creationists’ in practice at least purport to answer them. When they do this, certain parts of their answer are actually wrong (falsifiable and shown to be false) and the people propagating these ideas are actually lying. I agree very much that creationist arguments, if ‘boiled down’ to their elements, don’t amount to anything, but the doublethink can be exposed to destroy the hideous complacency of ignorance that allows adherents to claim it is as valid as any other belief.
Slartibartfast
ape:
Absolutely. It was the “Scientific Creationists” that I’ve been referring to all along. Those that simply believe in a young earth but don’t claim a scientific basis for that belief I have less of an issue with.
Of course, you could debate Dr. Dino and collect whatever reward he’s offering today, but only if he thinks you won.
David Gorski
Someone requested a summary of the evidence supporting evolution. I suggest an excellent place to start, which contains summaries of the evidence written for a lay audience:
http://www.talkorigins.org
In particulary, check out the FAQs:
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-intro-to-biology.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-definition.html
Some other sites worth reading:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/EvoEvidence.html
http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htm
Slartibartfast
Thanks, David. I’ve read a great deal of TalkOrigins, although I have to say that there’s so MUCH there that it’s going to take a while to even scratch the surface of what’s there.
It also ought to be said that some of the SCists seem to be just as at odds with the cosmologists and geologists as they are with the evolutionists. In other words, lumping anything that goes counter to strict-creationism together and calling it evolution.
ape
Slart – yes – they think so many people are lying to them they must have a terrible time interacting day to day.
They must think their situation is like that of ‘Neo’ in the matrix.. every piece of evidence is false.
Tongueboy
Neither range of theories qualifies as “science” but have obviously influenced the intellectual history of the West. It seems to me that the proper place for the discussion of evolutionary and creationary models of planetary and lifeform development would be in a Western intellectual history class.
vanderwall7
I don’t think is quite the forum for creation/evolution debate. The premise of some that anyone who does not accept evolution as fact is an idiot is extremely ignorant.Technogeek and slarti.. there are many brilliant scientists in all fields who do not adhere to the theory of evolution. That is just the tip of the iceberg as some others have noted. Bichemically, the probability for the most simple of proteins to evolve given certain elements being available and the necessary conditions has been estimated to be in the range of 10exp 29 years and given the age of the universe is estimated at 10exp9 years we are a little short of time. It gets even more involved after that. Evolution as a theory would not even be discussed unless the assumption that a simple organism somehow appeared from nothing is valid.Evolution theory cannot be subjected to the scientific method so how do you prove the theory?, you can not, so just say it is a theory and don’t use creation and science in the same sentence either because the same principle applies.
Slartibartfast
Hold on. I didn’t say anything remotely resembling that. What I said was, the Creation-Science crowd have their collective heads stuffed up their collective rectums.
And don’t conflate TOE with paleobiochemistry. TOE doesn’t attempt to explain how life began; it attempts to explain how organisms adapt. Not the same thing at all, if you ask me. You need life for a workable TOE, but if TOE doesn’t explain how life began, it’s not invalidated in the least.
vanderwall7
tachnogeek
What are you saying about spontaneous generation being religion? That is precisely what had to happen at some point. Was not something generated, either a simple protein(you know, the building blocks of life)or complex molecule from nothing.
This statement “The belief in spontaneous generation is a religion. It is a belief system that is almost infinetely less mathematically probable than most of the intelligent design theories out there. It is quite amusing that so many pseudo-scientists out there still consider spontaneous generation a “hard science.””
Infinetly less mathematically probable? That is not very quantative.
Science is the work of quantification.
Creation and evolution as well as spontaneous generation are closer to the realm of philosophy than science.
Neat stuff this.
vanderwall7
slarti
Sorry I was not attributing a particular quote to you. BTW you must tell me how you get the gray shading on that text.
“TOE doesn’t attempt to explain how life began; it attempts to explain how organisms adapt”. Do you think organism “adapt”.Natural selection does not propose that. All mutations are purely random and whatever results in the ability to survive wins, ie. survival of the most fit. If an organism “adapted” somehow are you saying it evolved during its generation. I think not, we know that aquired characteristics are not hereditary, and most significant mutations are fatal, and do not results in significant change thus you need microevelution, but that does not help in a catastrophic event. I think the theory is intruiging but there are many misguided proponents on both sides. I once was watching a rain forest documentary and was astonished when the commentator said that a tree had evolved with a particular hole in the trunk just to accommodate a particular bird whose sole habitat was the hole in that particular tree. And we wonder why they are questioned.
willyb
“However, lots of predictions have resulted from the theory of evolution (I think the mutation of haemoglobin is one. Mutation of pathogens another.)”
Please explain how the two examples you cite relate to the theory of evolution??? Regarding your comments about astronomy, are you an astrophysicists? It seems to me that quite a bit of what we know of the universe is based on mathematics! Wasn’t Newton that used calculus and other mathematical tools to predict the positions of planets, etc.?
I put a definition of scientific method in a post. Do you have a better one. It seems to me you need observations to use the method, and that ultimately you use your hypothesis to predict future observations. All of this is pretty difficut when the observations are back before Moses was a pup.
This whole thread is silly. Neither one of these “theories” is all that “scientific.” Since when is uncovering a bunch of fossils and speculating about their origins based on other fossils scientific?
religiontranscends
I think the bone of contention is: is it worth trying to understand our origins the same way we try to understand, say, electricity?
Ultimately, the creationist says no. You understand humanity’s origins the same way you understand God. The evolutionist says, absolutely. For why should this one aspect of the observable world fall under a different category than all others?
I hold with the evolutionists. Why should God have given us the ability to rationally understand the world and then tell us that our origins are somehow off-limits to the same inspection? To test our faith? My faith in God is enhanced the more I learn about the universe and its workings, and crushed when people hold fast to imperfect ideas of His creation. I suspect the process of learning why we are here is a big part of why we are here.
It’s possible that everything was put in place merely to give the appearance that it had been there for millions of years. But a serious cop-out for anyone with an inkling of curiosity. And what is science but applied curiosity?
Slartibartfast
First, the html lesson. Without spaces, do this:
Text you want to quote.
Kinda like this:
Not precisely. That would imply self-directed adaptation, as opposed to adaptation through elimination of environmentally (or otherwise) unsuitable variations. I’m not at all interested in semantic haggling; my understanding of evolution is rather more dim than that of someone who studies the stuff as a career and rather less dim than that of most Creation Scientists.
Sandy
No one at any time has seen life evolve from non-life, or one kind of animal evolve into another.
If you disassembled a bicycle, how long would time, chance, and natural law take to put it back together?
Evolution is a faith argument.
Kimmitt
Er, tell that to canis familiaris.
religiontranscends
Actually, the bicycle argument should be: if we came from another planet and found a disassembled bicycle, how would we decide it was put together?
An evolutionist would probably create two unicycles and not know what to do with the pedals. A creationist would say “the bible says it’s a fish, and that’s what I KNOW is true because the bible says so, so stop tinkering with it because you’re clearly wrong.”
vanderwall7
Kimmitt
canis familiaris (or Dingo) is just a dog. Some say a subspecies however most agree its ancestry is likely the grey wolf. These are still all the same family. I think the point is not that microevoltionary changes in skin,eye color, hair, do not occur but that in the end the species is the same. A dog will not cross species. The most common animal experimented with earlier on was the fruit fly or drosophila, mainly because you could run through thousands of generations rather quickly. You would see mutations of all sorts but never could you produce something other than a fly. I think that is what Sandy is trying to say.
There are no transitionary life forms either or macroevoltionary evidence.
Slartibartfast
I’ve heard that no transitionary life forms argument before. The problem with it is, it’s self-fulfilling. Come up with something in between, and damn, now you’ve got two gaps to fill instead of one.
You’re not going to achieve continuity in the fossil record. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.
vanderwall7
Slarti
It is just an observation that begs the question.
Yes, but the gaps would be closer together and more supportive of the theory. As it stands there are huge leaps to make with nothing in between. It is very coincidental that of all the fossil record there are none. Achieving continuity is one thing, I agree, but how about just some transitional evidence.
willyb
“You’re not going to achieve continuity in the fossil record. Sorry, but that’s just the way it is.”
That’s the point. The theory is based on someone’s calculation of what most likely happened and getting a group of others to agree. Wasn’t the flat-earth theory generally accepted at a point in time?
Slartibartfast
So, how small a gap is small enough? The transitional evidence is there, I submit. One only has to look.
Fortunately, talkorigins.org has dealt with this and most other questions much more ably than I could hope to. Read the FAQ on transitional fossils and see if that doesn’t answer your question.
Slartibartfast
willyb, I encourage you to read the entire FAQ (including the first level of linked-to subFAQs) over at talkorigins.org. Flat-earthers had to engage in major suspension of disbelief. If you think that those subscribing to evolution are engaging in something similar, it’s incumbent on you to point out exactly where they’re doing that. If you can do so after reviewing the FAQs, you’re one up on me.
technogeek
I believe it would take a PhD microbiologist to fully understand the complexities of even the simplest living cell known to have ever existed. That being said, I hold degrees in Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering, but I do understand the basics of Biology. The nucleus of any cell contains DNA, which is a amino acid encoded tertiary-based digital code that is a blueprint for the organism it is a subset of. During cellular reproduction, there is a small strip of similar amino acid construction called RNA that makes copies of DNA to replicate the cell during a cell split. The energy source for all of these processes is the cellular mitochondria, which produces a substance called ATP (Adenosine Tri-Phosphate) that releases a tremendous amount of energy when the phosphorus bond is broken by other cellular factories. Without going into more detail, This whole system depends on the cell wall, specially constructed to let some stuff in and other stuff out, golgi bodies, transport systems, cytoplasm (which even biologists can’t figure out yet) etc. This is a factory more complex than the 2500 acre Ford Motor Company car factory – in fact, we, as humans will probably never fully understand it.
The DNA tertiary, error checking, error correcting code is multi-layered digital information. The encoding scheme has been found to be far more complex than Huffman’s encoding algorithms, but information scientists think they have figured it out. Humans have built experimental computers based on tertiary (vice binary) logic, but the complexity was such that they could never become useful.
Now Willyb, I can give references on all the material above, and we could sit down and compute mathematical models. I could give web references also, but I’d have to go back and look them all up. You have my email address.
technogeek
Sorry – I forgot to finish my point. Beer does that to me sometimes.
For spontaneous generation to occur, all of the systems I described, and countless more, would have to have to simply happen by chance. Despite the claims to have created certain (one or two) amino acids in beakers under very suspious conditions, it takes many more than that (39 I believe – I might be mistaken) to create the simplest protien. Willyb mantioned hemoglobin in past posts. Hemoglobin is made up of a very large number of very specific amino acids. It does not mutate – if it did, it would not carry oxygen, and would kill the organism.
In any case, the probability of all this happening by random chance, not including the probability of initial conditions happening by random chance (i.e., the exact position of the Earth in relation to the Sun, Earth’s elemental composition, etc.), is about 10 to the power of approximately 120 (there have been scientifically peer-reviewed studies on this). This is not a number you’d want to comprehend The probability of intelligent design, as far as I know, has never been attempted, because it seems to be axiomatic to people who adhere to the concept.
Kimmitt
No, actually. There never was a “flat earth theory,” since there was never a scientific community which ever took the notion of a flat earth seriously. As long as there have been scientific theories, the various proofs regarding the shape of the earth have been taken as authoritative.
Scientists can and have held false beliefs, which is I suppose what you are getting at. But the whole point of a scientific belief is that it is falsifiable. If you can find a way for me to prove that it is impossible for God to have designed creatures, then you can call “intelligent design” a theory. Until then, it is a religious doctrine used to reconcile creation myths with scientific fact. Which is fine; I have no problem with people bringing up their kids in religions which acknowledge scientific advancement. I just don’t see why anyone should be able to tell anyone else’s kids what religious beliefs to have on taxpayer money.
willyb
technogeek:
Dude, where did you get that beer? I think I need some of that! Very interesting comments, but I’m not sure I have the gray matter to know how they support the theory of evolution. Please understand that none of the comments I have posted here are intended to support creationism by attacking evolution. I just don’t think there is rock solid proof of the “retrodiction” that man evolved from apes.
Slartibartfast
I took this quote from the link you recommended:
“Calling the theory of evolution “only a theory” is, strictly speaking, true, but the idea it tries to convey is completely wrong. The argument rests on a confusion between what “theory” means in informal usage and in a scientific context. A theory, in the scientific sense, is “a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena” [Random House American College Dictionary]. The term does not imply tentativeness or lack of certainty. Generally speaking, scientific theories differ from scientific laws only in that laws can be expressed more tersely. Being a theory implies self-consistency, agreement with observations, and usefulness.(Creationism fails to be a theory mainly because of the last point; it makes few or no specific claims about what we would expect to find, so it can’t be used for anything. When it does make falsifiable predictions, they prove to be false.)
Lack of proof isn’t a weakness, either. On the contrary, claiming infallibility for one’s conclusions is a sign of hubris. Nothing in the real world has ever been rigorously proved, or ever will be. Proof, in the mathematical sense, is possible only if you have the luxury of defining the universe you’re operating in. In the real world, we must deal with levels of certainty based on observed evidence. The more and better evidence we have for something, the more certainty we assign to it; when there is enough evidence, we label the something a fact, even though it still isn’t 100% certain.”
I really don’t have the time to completely analyze everything at the link, and respond in any sort of timely manner to your posts. So I will bid this issue farewell for now. But, my last parting shot relates to the quote above and theories that are not 100% certain.
The trouble with theories that are more qualitative than quantitative in nature, and are less than 100% certain, is deciding just how certain they are. My point, which Kimmitt correctly assessed, is that “scientists” can and have held false beliefs. And when much of your current theory rests on the “conclusions” of your predecessors, how easy would it be for someone to be off-base. Look at what Einstein did to some of the work done by Newton. And Netwon was hardly a flat-earther.
Slartibartfast
First, the “only a theory”. Relativity is “only a theory” too, but that doesn’t make considerations of relativity to be any less vital for, say, the day-to-day operation of GPS satellites. Not 100% certain is also an interesting point. Does evolution explain everything, everywhere? No. Is the theory of evolution contradicted by any physical evidence in hand? Also no.
So, in a sense, it is 100% certain. In that it’s falsifiable, and has yet to be falsified. No one’s saying that the current TOE is going to wind up being 100% accurate and unchanged a millenium from now. The entire point here is, it’s the best theory that currently fits the facts. Taking a “no theory” approach just because you don’t think TOE has yet reached a suitable point of untouchability is ok with me, but then you have no tool. You can’t have this shovel, because we haven’t fully optimized shovel design.
vanderwall7
Slartibartfast
I do not have a problem with evolution being a theory. That is exactly all it is. There are many theories that have been proven and are accepted as fact or scientific law.Some are proven mathematically, and some by experimentation. Some can not be proven by either method.Some are falsified. Astropyhsicists debate about Big Bang, Strings, Choas, Bubble, etc. I just disagree with evolution being taught as “fact” by many educators especially in the secondary system, and students and scientists called morons or unenlightened, or religous freaks because they choose to disagree with the theory of evolution. I sat in a mammalian physiology and comparitive anatomy class taught by an atheist professor who promised to tear to shreds the ideas of anyone who believed in God and that is not conducive to education (or getting a good grade in his class). Just lay the cards on the table and call them for what they are. Evolution can not be proven and just because you can not falsify it does not make it “fact”.
That is not science. I don’t necessarily care for a “no theory” approach because theories are great tools and motivators.
BTW I read in Physics today that Big Bang is on the outs.
Slartibartfast
Yes, that happens periodically.
No, again (what, is that three times now? I can’t keep track), no one’s claiming that the theory is never going to change. The theory is there to explain a phenomenon. Come up with a better theory to fit the phenomenon, and I’ll cheerfully trash the old one.
So, what’s yours? Or are you a “no-shovel” adherent?
vanderwall7
Slartibartfast
I guess you must not have read my entire post. I did say that I was not a “no theory” advocate and why just before the Big Bang. I have said several times that I do not have a problem with evolution as a theory but that is not the way it is taught. It is taught as fact. That is not the case. The burden is on the proponent to prove the theory, if it can not be falsified that does not make it fact.
THEORY,THEORY,THEORY, theories are good. I did not say that there is any other “scientific theory” You need a shovel, what are you digging at?
technogeek
That’s a good point Willyb. Very little is actually provable. The entire field of mathematics is built upon the axiom of addition, which cannot be (as far as we know) mathematically proven. You can’t prove that one plus one equals two, but it seems so blatently obvious that mathematicians accept it as fact, thereby proving other mathematical concepts using the axiom.
The existance of a divine Creator seems axiomatic to me, but obviously not to everybody.
technogeek
Slartibartfast, I’m with you. I have no problems with well-developed theories, and evolution is about as viable as anything else. However, evolution as a function of random chance has certain problems. Of all the sciences, Biology is the only one that chooses to ignore the laws of thermodynamics, specifically the one that states “in a closed system, energy tends toward entropy.” Or, you cannot get order from disorder.
Random chance evolution theory states that a machine with a complexity beyond all human comprehension (called the single-celled organism) that encodes and interprets digital information, replicates itself, and has the ability to repair itself, spontaneously emerged from a soup of chemicals. Not only that, but it improved upon itself until it became what we are today. People who believe these things call this “hard science.”
Nowhere else in any scientific discipline do you find claims as remotely preposterous, nor do you find any empirical evidence of order arising from randomness.
But, a theory’s a theory’s a theory…
Kimmitt
For spontaneous generation to occur, all of the systems I described, and countless more, would have to have to simply happen by chance.
That’s really not fair — there are organisms which have cells with significantly less complex methods of metabolism and reproduction. We can see a fairly straightforward chain of increasing complexity from prions to virii to bacteria to other unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms. You don’t have to suppose that everything evolved at once, mostly because examples of creatures which do not have some of the structures can be found on your kitchen countertop.
Now, the opinion that macroevolution is nothing other than accreted microevolution . . . that’s probably going to die off eventually. We need to find a mechanism which is more satisfying, and I expect that we will. I also expect that we will find it scientifically, rather than theologically. Remember, just because Newton’s laws don’t predict Mercury’s orbit correctly doesn’t mean that the deviations in Mercury’s orbit were caused by God pushing on it. It just meant that there was a deeper layer of knowledge that had yet to be discovered and articulated.
Slartibartfast
This is an erroneous interpretation. Thermodynamics only says that as an aggregate, closed systems tend toward disorder. The Earth is not a closed system. And as an aside, the laws of thermodynamics themselves are not provable; they’re only disprovable.
Vandervall7, my apologies, but you’re picking at nits. Any sane curriculum would introduce the theory of evolution as such: The THEORY of Evolution. As Technogeek has pointed out, nearly everything we think we know is based on some unprovable assumption or other; mathematics itself is an entirely artificial construct. And Nature doesn’t know about -GMm/r^2; it just does what it does. The so-called Laws we’ve come up with to explain what Nature does are also constructs. They’re constructs that happen to do a pretty decent job of predicting how Nature will behave, but they’re constructs nonetheless. Evolution is similar; I’d compare it with Newton’s Laws in terms of maturity.
And what Kimmitt said. Damnit.
technogeek
Good point Kimmet. Prions and viruses are indeed self-replicating at the expense of the cell. However, it is difficult to believe that those organisms existed prior to the living cell, since their existance depends upon it (chicken or egg scenario). Viruses and Prions are regarded by most biologists as chemical annoyances, and not life.
Nevertheless, those chemical compounds do not come close to containing the massive infrastructure needed to maintain the life of the cell. I do indeed believe it is a stretch to evolve an organism from Prions or Viruses.
Great debate point though. Maybe we can explore this further.
technogeek
Vandervall7, I agree. Theories are theories. I have no idea what GMm/r^2 is – maybe the Inverse Sqare Law that governs the orbit of sattelites around gravitational bodies? I’m not a physicist – I don’t know.
technogeek
Slartibartfast, The Earth is an open system. The Solar System is an open system. The Universe is a closed system. Can you cite any examples, aside from the science of Biology, in which order arises from disorder in any of these systems?
Again, nothing is probable. Rene Descartes thought he had proven existance by saying “I think, therefore I am.” He was wrong – you and I might be the a product of some alien’s bad dream.
Slartibartfast
Sure. technogeek. You could have a swirl of undifferentiated mass that self-attracts and eventually forms a planet.
It’s immaterial that the Universe is closed. Actually, I’m not even sure that’s been established, but we can postulate it without damaging the argument at all. Any system can have localized order, or appearance of order. Hurricanes are arguably order from disorder. The total entropy in the universe increases, but local order can be established without violating any rules. Thermodynamics does, in fact, allow for the possible (although extremely improbable) event of having heat from the air in your office spotaneously warm up your cup of coffee. Improbably events may require many millions of years to occur, but we’ve had billions.
technogeek
Slartibartfast, I don’t really think of the affects of gravitaional force as orderly – it’s just a force. By that logic, you could correctly state that electron valence shells are orderly – but without them, we would have no universe. By the same token, hurricanes really have no true order or complexity, but are shaped by thermoclines and pressure systems in the atmosphere. The Milky Way superficially of looks like a hurricane. (Crystals, on the other hand, do form to a specific set of orderly rules dictated by electron valence shells). I’ve never taken a class in chaos theory, but I vaguely understand the concepts.
I suppose I should refine my meaning to information vice order. Meaningful information does not spontaneously appear, and if something that looks like information appears by random chance, odds are beyond astronomical that it will happen on a consistent basis. Information also has to be understood to be meaningful (“one if by land, two if by sea” meant nothing to the British).
The DNA strand has been irrefutably demonstrated to be an extremely complex code of digital information that certain mechanisms within the cell can read, understand, and perform certain tasks according to the instructions contained within the digital information. Viruses and Prions notwithstanding, I don’t think that this kind of “order from disorder” is likely to happen, no matter what the circumstances.
In a rather funny way, the food industry performs billions of spontaneous generation experiments every year. You cannot find a better laboratory for this kind of experimentation than any given package of food. These are “open systems” that have a much higher probability of producing a new form of life, since all the building blocks are already there, and most are subjected to an endless supply of energy. To the best of my knowledge, no new life form has ever emerged from these billions and billions of experiments conducted over the years.
Slartibartfast
Exactly. Of course, in a mass of undifferentiated matter, that force is going to be random and chaotic. That there exists equilibrium points of higher order rather reinforces my point, I think. Ditto for hurricanes, although the increas in order is not a very stable equilibrium.
You’ve been monitoring these billions and billions of experiments, personally? How would you know if something new had appeared? You’ve made some good points in this discussion, but this is not one of them.
Kimmitt
Prions and viruses are indeed self-replicating at the expense of the cell.
While viruses specifically can only reproduce with the help of cells, prions do not suffer from this lack. They replicate in any environment with the appropriate protiens.
vanderwall7
Slarti..
Are you the same slartibartfast that I read on Nov.7 over at Obsidion Wings? I do appreciate your insight and thoughtful respectful
discussion. I was googling and found an interesting site that had some thought on Darwin, actually the four men who were the pillars of evolutionary theory.Most of it was quotes from the men themselves and comments by the writer. A sample is this quote by Darwin in “Origin”
Yet Darwin almost certainly knew that he was requesting miracles and that evolution required faith at least as great as the alleged religious “superstitions” he rejected. Consider two illustrations Darwin was willing to let stand in The Origin of Species. Although they hardly convey the degree of miracle required for evolution overall, they nevertheless give us an indication of Darwin
vanderwall7
Slarti
I have been reading at the FAQ at talkorigins as you suggested. Interesting stuff there. I guess the problem I have with some of it is that the generealizations and suppositions are enormous. First the paleontologists are all predisposed to a mindset that the theory is fact, as this quote says,
“Actually, no paleontologist that I know of doubts that evolution has occurred, and most agree that at least sometimes it occurs gradually”
That will tend to color their perceptions of what they discover and what it supports. I guess most people approach things that way. One tends to believe what one wants to believe and when looking at evidence, see it in through the predisposed mindset.
Discoveries or thoughts to the contrary are dismissed more easily and others accepted applying a less rigorous set of criteria.
I have a lot yet to read there. Please do not misinterpret my misgivings about the theory to say that the theory is not valid. It may be the only valid scientific theory there is but has a lot of problems.
Creation on the other hand is not a scientific theory at all. I guess it is like trying to prove how Jesus turned water into wine. Not possible apart from faith.
Although I think evolution theory requires a certain amount of faith also.
cheers