DF, you’re about the last guy on the Dope I would find lacking in reason or well-thought arguments, and I appreciate you expounding on your position. I think we’re pretty much on the same page here the more you tell me.
But alas for this debate! Not because people haven’t argued well, but that there apparently will be a need to argue about evolution with miscreants like the ID “theorists” forever. I wish I didn’t care, but it’s deeply discouraging to me that we’ll probably never be rid of such baseless attacks on sound principles backed up by vast evidential support, not to mention the people who work so hard and honestly to develop and expand the field. I can’t think of many things in the modern world that are more wrong and vile than what is at the root of the so-called debate, and I’ve no confidence I’ll see an end to it in my lifetime. Again, I hope I’m wrong.
I assume you know this, given your quote from Einstein elsewhere in this post, but I’ll point it out nonetheless - He belived in some kind of God (although not in true Judeo-Christian sense). A quote: “Whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances in science is moved by a profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence” (God for the 21 Century, pg. 154). So did Darwin; so much so, in fact, that it pretty much crushed him later in life when it became obvious the extent to which his theories were going to be used against religion.
Pick up the book God for the 21st Century sometime, 'cause I get the impression based on the credentials of some of these contributors, that most people would probably assume they were scientists:
Ted Burge (Emeritus Prof. of Physics, Univ. of London)
Sam Berry (Prof. of Genetics, University College London - former Pres. of the Linnean Society & British Ecological Society)
Elving Anderson (Prof. Emeritus Genetics, Univ. of Minnesota)
John Polkinghorne (former Prof. of Mathematical Physics, Cambridge Univ.)
David Bartholemew (Emiritus Prof. Statistics, London School of Economics - former Pres. of the Royal Statistical Society)
Joel Primack (Prof. of Physics, UCSC)
etc, etc…
So, who, pray tell, are you?
P.S.
Nature magazine did a survey of American scientists in 1996 - 40% described themselves as believers (the same fraction as in the previous survey in 1916).
Loopydude:there apparently will be a need to argue about evolution with miscreants like the ID “theorists” forever.
Nah. Take heart, this is just part of the long, but finite, maturation process for controversial scientific theories with cosmogonic implications.
A hundred and fifty years after the first serious scientific endorsement of the heliocentric theory, many people were still ferociously rejecting it as irreligious and unacceptable, and promoting physically improbable substitutes like the mixed geo/heliocentric “Tychonic” system. Achieving genuine consensus between scientific theory and religious doctrine looked practically impossible for a long time.
And now, a scant three hundred years or so later, look at heliocentrism: nobody minds it at all. It has totally slipped below the radar of religious literalism, and the vast majority even of hardcore fundamentalists would deny that it contradicts the Bible in any way or ever did.
I promise you, in another two or three hundred years the debate over the religious implications of human evolution will be just as dead. Of course, scientists and religious literalists will doubtless have found a new topic to quarrel over by then, but at least it’ll be a change.
By quoting the sentiments of a few scientists you have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Judeo Christian God exists, and that evolution is bunk!
Einstein did not believe in God. He explicitly said so and it pissed him off that people tried to twist some of his words to make him out to be a theist.
The fact that a lot of scientists believe in God does not make it a scientific belief.
The existence of a “creator” is something that is completely outside the ability of science to examine. We CAN say that there isn’t a shred of observable evidence for a creator. We can say that there isn’t the slightest empirical support for ID. We CAN say that we know for a fact that all living things have evolved, and continue to evolve from a common ancestor. We can say that without making any reference to how life originated. We CAN say that there are no competing scientific theories to evolution. We CAN say that, thus far, we have discovered nothing in the universe that cannot be explained by the natural properties and laws of the universe itself. In fact, we MUST say these things because they are facts and because children have a right to know them. It is indecent and immoral to supress this information because it conflicts with the irrational religious beliefs of a minority (Before I get jumped, I don’t mean theism, I mean Biblical literalism and Biblical creationism, both of which have been thoroughly, decisively and repeatedly falsified by hard physical evidence).
I have a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Princeton University. I’m an agnostic who believes Intelligent Design has no place in science classrooms. And I can point to you a list of over 500 other scientific professionals who think the same thing, here. And those are just the ones named Steve.
Now, perhaps we can lay the “N scientists agree with me” arguments to rest?
Umm… simmer down for a minute and learn to read - I never stated anything on behalf of any particular God. In fact, I said quite clearly that Darwin did not believe in the Judeo-Christian God; for the record, neither do I. If you read my first post on this topic (again, assuming you can), you’d see that I think the Judeo-Christian Creation Saga is totally untenable given the knowledge generated by modern science.
I also never said anything about evolution being bunk - I believe in evolution wholeheartedly (as do the individuals I cited); I’m just not prepared to rule out a role for a God of some sort, and I do not believe that the two are mutually exclusive.
By the way, do you know who Einstein and Darwin were? I find it puzzling that you’d be so dismissive of two of the top scientists in the last 200 years…
My freshman year in college–UC San Diego, Revelle College*, we went through the entire Jerusalem Bible, as we went in order through three quarter-length humanities courses…“Jew and Greeks”, “Rome and the Middle Ages”, and “The Renaissance”. IMO there’s nothing wrong with using the Bible as cultural background in a Humanities course, as long as it’s left at that.
I’d be interested in seeing the source/quote/whatever for your Einstein contention.
As I said above, I agree with evolution wholeheartedly - all I’m trying to say is that (for example) maybe all the random mutations which provide the raw material for evolution aren’t entirely random after all.
Yes, everything in this universe can (so far) be explained by the " natural properties and laws of the universe itself." Sooner or later, however, you’re going to have to address the question of a root cause - where those laws and properties came from; I challenge you to come up with an answer that is testable. Bottom line is, at some point, you’re going to have to put your faith (for lack of a better word) into something you can’t prove.
For the last time, I do not believe the Judeo-Christian account, and I think anybody who takes the Bible literally has a screw loose.
Orbifold:
If you’ll read my original post, you’ll see that my reason for bringing the Judeo-Christian Creation story into classrooms (which is what they want to do in Kansas, which was the original point of the whole thread) was so that competent scientists could dispel it once and for all (maybe I’m being idealistsic to assume that that would be the result; I just think it’s better to meet a problem head-on than sweep it under the rug).
I did say 40%, didn’t I? Yeah, it’s a minority, but it seems a bit much to brush off so cavarlierly, don’t you think?
Forgive me then, I certainly did not ge that from your post. It seemed you were attacking the position of another poster which was specifically talking about the current ID/creationist position. I infered, somehting about you that I suppose I should not have.
I was being sarcastic in case you didn’t get that.
But of course you did get that, and it’s probably a little insulting to you for me to hint that you wouldn’t know that. Just as I find it mildly insulting that you really think I might not know who Einstein and Darwin are. But I’ll let it go
Einstein professed a kind of faith in “Spinoza’s God” that is about as far removed from anything but pure deism as can be. I doubt, given their Christian bent, many ID theorists today would be happy to call him an ally. And he would almost certainly have never considered this a “scientific” principle, but rather his own interpretation of the facts as he saw them, an aesthetic judgement not subject by itself to falsifiability. As it was, this aesthetic drew him to vehemently oppose the basic premises of quantum mechanics, and while his criticisms of quantum theory led to some deep insights, they only yielded clearer evidence that quantum theory was entirely accurate and conceptually sound. He went to his grave on a quixotic quest for a unified feild theory which was doomed from the outset, not the least because this aesthetic caused him to underestimate how incomplete the standard model of physics at his time really was without a fully-developed quantum field theory and the new forces that waited to be discovered. Einstein’s God did not play dice, and that belief did him little good.
Darwin was scrupulous to a fault, and was beguiled into science by his love of Paley’s argments that God’s mercy and goodness was manifest in nature, and that naturalism would lead one inevitably to conclude the world is a product of His design. Darwin later became enamored of Lyell’s geology, which led him to reject scriptural literalism, and after not only publishing The Origin of Species, but losing his daughter, he felt himself led inexorably to agnosticism in his old ages, considering the question of a God “beyond the scope of Man’s intellect”. From his letter to Asa Grey, we see his crisis:
I wonder what today’s ID theorists would do with such melancholy ruminations on an intuition of design with no morality, and a doubt in our ability to discern the truth of the matter.
As for the rest of your arguing from authority, you may want to at least try to do it accurately. Case in point:
The results of a better-designed survey, spurred in no small part by Larson’s results, and published in Nature in 1998, can be found here.
Some illuminating commentary is to be had here. A relevant quote:
Who am I? I fail to see how that matters, but I am a primarily a cellular biologist who dabbles in molecular biology and comparative medicine, of modest but respectable achievement, working for a biotech company under the supervision of some very accomplished scientists who are much smarter than myself. Throughout my nearly 15 years spent getting to where I am, I’ve known a couple true luminaries, loads of benchmonkeys just like me, and everything in between. All I can gather from my experience is that professional science is virtually devoid of religious expression, and my first boss was a conservative Jew. I was not being arrogant. It was a good example of how inappropriate the mixing of untestable assertions and the practical application of the scientific method really is. You could line up a thousand Nobel Lauriates who say otherwise, and I still would insist that was true. ID, in its present form, isn’t science, plain and simple. It’s just a front for religion, which is increasingly what your posts look like.
I don’t see that I’m being inaccurate - The Larson survey still supports the 40% figure (with the caveat, which I didn’t realize, that 40% refused to respond, so the “real” figure can only be accurately reported as being somewhere between 24% and 80%). The latter survey (which I also wasn’t familiar with, so thanks for bringing it to my attention) is interesting. I find it hard to believe that the figure drops from 40% down to 7% or so in one year just because the latter was “better designed”. I think - and this is admittedly just based on a quick read of your links - that it may be in the specific wording of the question: If Larson asked about “a deity” (pretty vague), whereas the follow-up specifically concerned a “personal God” (one who takes an interest in and/or guides the affairs of individuals, and who answers specific prayers), that may account for the difference. The two are worlds apart; I’d answer “no” to the latter, but would, on most days, answer “yes” to the former…
??? Not a commie and not a bastard, by any stretch of the imagination.
??? Maybe my definintion of fascism is different than yours.
Seriously, I re-read the quote I posted and I have absolutely no idea how you get the idea that either communist or fascist wrote it. Where do you get the idea that using the political system in order to fight the seperation of church and state is either communist or fascist? To my thinking, the quote is ultimate expression of the democratic ideal - unhappy with the way shit is going? Run for office on a platform opposing it. How are you reading the quote SteveG1 and Hoodoo Ulove?
Unfortunatly, I can not find the original on-line. The quote comes from an essay called Scientific Creationism: World View, not Science by Alice Kehoe. She used to be a professor of archaeology at the University of Wisconsin, and I don’t know if she still is. BTW: the essay can be found in Cult Archaeology and Creationism, edited by Francis B. Harrold and Raymond A. Eve, pp.11-20. University of Iowa Press, Iowa City.
I should have been more clear - my fault. The situation the quote was talking about sounded fascist, the seeming goal of Big Brother controlling every belief, every thought, every action, every aspect of life.
Creationism is a religious philosophy. Since no one has been able to establish its scientific validity, there is no reason to waste time discussing it in a science class. Further, since Creationism deals with personal religious beliefs, I would think that it would be unConstitutional for a public school teacher to discuss its merits or lack of credibility. And certainly, the topic could not be adequately dealt with in one hour’s time.
Only a religious or other private institution would be able to give it the “fair shake” that you think it deserves.
Meanwhile, there is nothing elitist in demanding scientific standards for topics broached in a science class.
Do you resent intellectualism? Why did you put quotation marks around it? Do the blogs or columns that you read and agree with frequently criticize intellectuals? (I’m not attacking you for your comment, but I am sincerely curious.)
Yes, I think you are being idealistic. For starters, biology below the university level is in general not taught by scientists. Bullshitters like Dembski have honed their obfuscatory skills to such a fine edge that non-experts will have a very difficult time refuting it. Which is why school boards are their target. The entire effort to shoehorn Intelligent Design and its ilk into classroom via schoolboards is at least in part an attempt to do an end run around the scientific establishment. Your suggestion will likely just enable that.
And even if it doesn’t…even if evolutionary biologists volunteer their time to coach high-school teachers or produce classroom material (and assuming that the high-school teachers share your views about ID’s merit, which is not certain)…that still won’t settle the issue. The hard-core creationists will just play the victim, crying to all who’ll hear that the mean old scientific establishment is using our public schools to make fun of their religion.
Oh, I can brush it off quite easily. I’m sure a good healthy percentage of the Steve’s are religious as well. But even if 95% of them believed in Zoroastrianism, that wouldn’t change what is and is not appropriate in science education. I’ve no doubt that the vast majority of religious scientific professionals are smart enough to distinguish between their faith and their science.
It is perhaps worth noting that the official position of the Roman Catholic Church (and likely others) is that there is no conflict between the Bible and the Theory of Evolution. The conflict is between biblical literalists and science, not between religion and science.
If you can’t dispose of Creationism in an hour using scientific principles, you ain’t trying.
I never advocated that science give Creationism a “fair shake;” call it maybe “honorable mention (in passing).”
Never said otherwise (about elitism).
I didn’t recall putting quotation marks around the word, but I see on preview that I did, and I now have no idea why. Durned quotation marks, sneaking into my post like that. Gotta watch them critters.
To a certain degree, when it’s practice is used as a tool to bludgeon other modes of thought, or attempts to stifle them. When it is practiced as a mode of thought to promote critical thinking (and not just the critical thinking of arrogant, condescending, intellectual elitists*), the advancement of knowledge, and human understanding, I embrace it.
I’ve had some bad run-ins with some pretty snarky intellectuals; they acted like they were “lowering themselves” to our mere-mortal plane of existence to even acknowledge your presence as a human being. But I did get to see my philosophy professor put a stuck-up, arrogant, smarmy physics professor in his place in a debate in college, and let me tell ya, that was a hoot to see. Reduced the fool to sputtering incoherently in about 10 minutes.
And I don’t blog in the usual sense; I will check in on one guy’s website evey now and then (once a month, tops), just 'cause, but other than that, I won’t even knowingly open a link to a blog posted by another member of the Straight Dope.
And I gotta admit, totally off the subject: as a Firefly fan, I can’t look at your screenname w/o thinking of Ginna Torres.
