It’s amazing; no matter how many fucking times you explain to some people what the hell “theory” means in science, it doesn’t sink in. You still keep getting “It’s only a theory.”
I was raised Catholic; since I was never excommunicated, technically I’m still in the club, even though I’m an agnostic. Next time some fundamentalist Baptist tells me the government should run on Christian principles, I’ll say, “You’re right; the Pope should be running the country.” When they stare at me I’ll add, “with the help of the College of Cardinals, of course.”
By the way, the nation of Belarus has just passed a law making the Eastern Orthodox church the only legally recognized religion in the country. Yea! Church and State united! No more conflict between your faith and your government – what? You’re not Eastern Orthodox? Well, you’re fucked and you’re goin’ to Hell, heathen.
I too am against the teaching of ‘Creation Science’ in schools, but for the record, may I suggest that there are similar inconsistencies in the Darwinian model that may cast some doubt as to it’s accepted validity. While these have been seized upon by people like Henry Morris of ICR fame, I do not believe they add credibility to the ‘Creation’ model: rather, they raise the question about whether evolution itself should be ‘taken for granted’.
The ‘baby’ of much evolutionary conjecture is the fossil record. At first glance, the testing of fossils and rocks via the use of radiometric and other techniques should provide conclusive answers as to when they were ‘laid down’…was it 4000 or 4 million yrs ago? The evolutionists are quick to assure us that these processes are methodologically and ideologically neutral, but, apart from being somewhat unreliable, there is no way of knowing in any categorical sense whether the resultant ‘ages’ given to them are correct. To obtain an accurate outcome involves a presupposition of what that outcome should be and what the result should be can only be determined absolutely by an eyewitness to the original event (which neither side can lay claim to). Indeed, the tests can just as readily be used to support a creationist account as an evolutionary view, depending on the time frames that are factored in in the first place. We are then left with a situation called ‘experimenters regress’ where the outcome is inevitably tainted by the expectations of the scientist involved.
This situation is repeated when ‘index’ fossils are used to age and classify other fossils and geological formations. The use of these fossils’ presupposes evolutionary processes and thus involves a (scientifically) unacceptable circularity of argument. As Morris (IMHO) so rightly questions, “How can the fossil sequence prove evolution if the rocks containing the fossils have been dated by those fossils on the basis of the assumed stage of evolution of those same fossils?” (Morris 1984…The Scientific Case for Creation) It does raise an interesting issue…well, I reckon it does anyway!! Sometimes even ‘science’ does not behave all that scientifically in practice.
So, while I still hold myself to be an ‘evolutionist’, I feel that many of us are guilty of the same sins that we ascribe to the creationists…that is, holding on to our beliefs and never questioning them even when there may be a suggestion of fallibility.
kambuckta, I really hate to say it, but your understanding of evolutionary theory seems to be flawed. Maybe you should bone up on your radioactive dating information over at Talkorigins? In any event, one of the biggest problems with the fossil record for creationists is that there’s so much of it. I can’t remember off the top of my head, but if all the animals were laid down in the past ten thousand years or so, we’d have been up to our ears in trilobites and there would have been a zillion animals per square mile.
Mighty Maximo, I thought I made it clear in my post that I do not support the creationists arguments, and that the ‘fossil record’ indeed does not give them a scientific leg to stand on.
In many, MANY ways, evolution does a better job of explaining the fossil evidence than any of the other proposed explanations for the origin of species.
What I was suggesting was that evolutionary science itself has some problems, in that it too is not falsifiable (given that it cannot present an observer of fossil deposition), and thereby untestable as well (apart from microevolution). While I love to believe in scientific universalism, I would be naive to think that ANY scientific theory is untainted by the human being inside the lab coat. Particularly with a theory as value-laden as evolution…(but that is another argument altogether)…and before you jump up and down, it is MY belief that ‘science’ is affected by cultural practices…whether you choose to believe that or not, is not my concern. There is much out there that masquerades as ‘science’ that by rights belongs in the pseudoscience annals…and I’m not talking about astrology or psychic phenomena. Even stuff that we have been assured is ‘good science’ can be dodgy. Take a look at the current writings on the Placebo Effect, just as an example of scientific dogma gone wrong.
And even after reading the link you gave, it has not allayed my cynicism. There are still too many assumptions that are taken as scientific ‘gospel’ for me to just accept everything as absolute truth. It’s just unfortunate that I don’t have a better one!! So evolution will do me fine for now.
And, ultimately, it doesn’t really matter if the ages are exact. What really matters is that certain fossils are always found above or below certain others. And what matters is that certain fossils are always found in certain rock layers – one will not find tyrannosaur bones in Permian rocks, regardless how old those Permian rocks really are, for example. The ages determined by the fossil record simply assign the earth an old age, and bear out Darwin’s theory that natural selection takes place very slowly, in terms of our perception of the passage of time.
However, were we to find that the earth is much younger than we previously thought, that knowledge would not invalidate evolution. A young earth does not invalidate current theories of genetics, of documented instances of mutations, of selection at work, of other processes such as genetic drift, or the mechanisms of speciation. All that changes is the pacing and timing of these processes.
The fossil record is gravy, in that it allows further testing of evolutionary theories through a larger time span than we can directly observe. But it is not the foundation of evolutionary science.
—In a world where the paranoid fantasies of Lahaye/Jenkins outsell Stephen Jay Gould’s essay collections by a considerable margin, the flame of knowledge flickers all too precariously.—
Time to speak ill of the dead. Gould did as much to hurt the popular understanding of evolution as he did to help it. His criticisms of adaptionism were ill-thought out and mostly in service of a political interest rather than scientific agenda. While many of his criticisms helped other theorists refine their ideas in response, his own broad thrusts were almost always a little too far down the windmill tilting road and worse, very misrepresentative of the people and ideas he was criticizing. He was a fantastic writer and lecturer, but proof positive that genius doesn’t make you right.
>>Hey, it’ll keep the fundie kids out of competition for science and tech jobs, so it’ll leave more room for the rest of us.<<
Yep. And then unfortunately, they grow up to become voters and heaven forfend, office holders who will make ill-informed and religiously biased decisions on the legality of such potentially life-saving procedures such as cloning.
Maybe the fundamental parents are hearing their chidren telling them that the science teachers in their school are mocking their faith when the children asked questions about it. Atheists are quite vigorous about being mocked in school as well. They probably also think that since ‘God is out of the schools’, atheism flourishes. Try to fight that notion. Good luck.
Has Jack Chick done a tract about this? Sounds like a natural.
[Jack Chick]Evolution-teaching biology teacher after being hit by a meteorite sent straight from God: Hey, look, I’m dead! I’ll be damned! Uh-oh.[/Jack Chick]
According to fundamental logic, if teachers are prohibited from talking about religion, then that means they are free to talk atheism. That notion is so stuck in the fundamentalists’ craw that even a Supreme Court ruling against preference for atheism won’t satisfy them. Then they see many scientists acting like militant atheists, and they are totally convinced that they must fight on behalf of their faith.
And you know what you can do about all this? Go over to the Pizza Parlor, argue for evolution, and never let them forget that you’re a Christian. It seems to me that if creationists associate atheism with arguing for evolution, there’s a good reason for it. Whenever I see people debate CvE, none of the evolutionists stick out in my mind as being Christians; the ones whose religion I can identify are generally atheists. Meanwhile, the people who I can identify as being Christians are all creationists. The evolutionist Christians either stay out of the debate on the grounds that CvE is just “endless genealogies,” or limit themselves to declarations that it’s possible to be both a Christian and an evolutionist. That’s entirely nonthreatening to the creationists, who generally claim to believe that already, whether they really believe it or not. The one thing I don’t see evolutionist Christians doing is trying to challenge the pseudoscientific beliefs of their brethren. Like I said, either they dismiss science education as being unimportant, or they limit themselves to theological statements that don’t rock the boat too much.
Now, I’m willing to admit that I might be completely wrong about this. Maybe if I took a census, I’d find that plenty of the active evolutionists were Christian all along. But I’ll tell you one thing: those creationists aren’t taking any censuses. If I don’t see any Christians arguing for evolution, then I’m willing to bet the fundamentalists don’t see them either.
—According to fundamental logic, if teachers are prohibited from talking about religion, then that means they are free to talk atheism.—
I’m not sure how that’s fundamental logic. Talking against religion is not acceptable. I’m not sure how anyone could “talk atheism” in the context of a science class without it being anti-theism, which again is not acceptable.
