Finch
Bravo!
Bravo, again! It is so refreshing to see such rock-solid and well-stated reasoning. Thanks, Finch
That’s one of the lamest articles I’ve ever seen in Sci-Am. It is rebutted nicely at Answers in Genesis.
While I didn’t think the Scientific American article was perfect, I have to point out that the claptrap posted in AiG is not a rebuttal at all. First of all, Answers in Genesis is considered a pretty poor Web site for a variety of reasons. But more importantly, that AiG article simply whines about the items the writer feels are most easy to attack in the public eye, and then attempts to deconstruct them in wishful “it’s all relative” and highly selective fashion.
For example, the Scientific American article highlighted that in a nation as advanced as the US it is embarrassing that “creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy” (from the Scientific American article). A perfectly valid point, particularly as American schooling is not exactly a soaring success. The reply was:
Talk about confusing the subject. Or how about this perfectly true statement:
which the ignoramus writing the article can only counter with:
So, the correct response to references to summarized overwhelming evidence that are in line with the great majority of scientific knowledge and consensus is to pooh-pooh it and instead give a shallow lecture on the techniques of debate? The Scientific American article reminded readers that knowledge from most if not all sciences supports evolution theory; the writer of the rebuttal did not like this assertive approach and immediately moved to confuse the issue for the “benefit” of the public. Perhaps he would have preferred a 300-page Scientific American article?
After the lengthy preparatory set-up phase, the AiG writer finally starts to address the meat of the SC article. I will ignore point one, since the AiG writer offers no objection apart from focusing on a side-issue.
Hm, actually I will ignore point two as well, since no objections to it are offerred.
Point three gets a little bit more interesting. SC wrote:
AiG’s answer to that is an unnecessary diatribe about how evolutionary propagandists are the ones who are guilty of conflating micro and macroevolution. It would help if AiG could stick to the arguments, which, by the way, are coming from science and not propaganda (sadly, the same may not be claimed of creationists in general, and this Web site in particular). Oh wait, in spite of a bit of teeth-gnashing AiG has no real objections against that either, so let’s move on.
Still on point 3 but a little bit farther down:
The AiG response is idiocy along the lines of “an architect uses similar materials to build different buildings”. Even in terms of analogies AiG isn’t doing terribly well, because that is not an honest one (it deliberately dumbs down the complexity of the work on the fossil record and DNA of living beings and incorrectly picks an analogy that assumes a priori a creator). Well, as we all know analogies are not arguments, so let’s move on.
Similarities need not be explained by common ancestry, but when common ancestry is the best-fitting answer to the question… well, need I say more? This link shows how Similarity implies Relatedness
Since all Earth organisms share genetic similarities to other organisms: the DNA of a worm is more similar than not to that of a human, and a human and Chimpanzee are 98.7% similar. So structural/functional similarities are to be expected. Some of them are hidden deep within useless sections of DNA, and some are prominent. Nevertheless, ubiquitous genes are known to exist.
And? Considering that avians are evolved from a reptilian ancestor, this makes sense–especially if we consider that crocodiles are the closest living relatives of birds on a molecular level. Chicken embryos can be manipulated to grow teeth on their cute little bills, meaning that they still retain at least some of the genes that are active in their crocodilian cousins. It hardly takes a stretch of the imagination to consider that the similarity in hemoglobin between chickens and crocodiles could be the result of a common genetic factor that was selected for in the struggle for survival.
Why not? Is it just because sharks live in water and camels live in deserts?
I’m not sure I follow this. Humans, although seen as very complex organisms, actually have a rather low number of genes compared to dogs and rice plants, which have bigger genomes than we do-- and some plants are ten times more endowed than we are in genetic terms. So what? An increase of information is no guarantee of an increase in organism complexity, especially considering the volume of noncoding (“junk”) DNA that is present to varying degrees in organisms. We know that “new” genetic information may arise through the process of mutation. So what is the difficulty here?
Next AiG take issue because SC wrote that “between the earliest-known ancestors of humans … and the appearance of anatomically modern humans … one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows.” AiG, those paragons of knowledge, first question ineffectively the validity of dating techniques used in science, then claim that there is no succession, there is in fact a lot of overlap.
Well, what did they expect? That all sets of ancestors die quietly or all evolve simultaneously, in order not to leave behind any trace after the emergence of a few mutants with some characteristics better suited to their environment? Some populations diverge slightly from the “norm”, but I don’t think anyone claims that all members of a species do so at the same time. An overlap of species does not preclude evolution.
Obvious and blatant lies. We might as well claim that creationists are simply racial variants of gorillas in this case–a little bit scrawnier, and somewhat lacking in brains, but gorillas nonetheless.
Ah damn, on that note I have to go. Apologies for the messy and inconsistent layout of this message.
To quote Dr. Bergen Evans in the book The Natural History of Nonsense "No error is harmless. ‘Men rest not in false apprehensions without absurd and inconsequent deductions.’ "
“Some of the deductions seem inconsequential as well as inconsequent, but in their larger aspects they are not. It cannot do much harm to believe that hair turns white over night, or that birds live a happy family life, or that orientals have slanting eyes; but it can do a great deal of harm to be ignorant of physiology or zoology or anthropology, and the harm that may result from forming an opinion without evidence, or from distorting evidence to support an opinion, is incalculable.”
“… A refusal to come to an unjustified conclusion is an element of an honest man’s religion. To him the call to blind faith is really a call to barbarism and slavery. … The civilized man has a moral obligation to be skeptical, to demand the credentials of all statements that claim to be facts. An honorable man will not be bullied by a hypothesis. For in the last analysis all tyranny rests on fraud, on getting someone to accept false assumptions, and any man who for one moment abandons or suspends the questioning spirit has for that moment betrayed humanity.”
Now Dr. Evans isn’t to be taken as the final authority but his point is well worth taking notice of when the question is asked, “What difference does it make?”
Good point. Intelligent Design is as good an explanation as any or the original design. However, a main point of ID is that life is so exquisitely well adapted to the environment that there simply has to be an intelligent designer behind it. However, the evidence is overwhelming that the current environment in every place is vastly different than it was at the time of the presumed original design. Even the Institute for Creation Research claims that the original earth into which the original designs were placed was nothing like the ruined (their words), post flood earth. So does ID postulate “intelligent re-design?”
ID doesn’t give any guidelines for making scientific predictions or further hypotheses. It is closed-ended explanation with little predictive power, if any.
Well the teachers in one San Diego Country, CA school district (I forget which one) simply refused to teach creationism as mandated by the local board. They continued to teach the biology as outlined by the State Board of Education, which establishes the elementary and high school curriculum in CA. The creationist board members were later recalled in a special election. Those teachers showed a lot of courage.
I don’t think their religious beliefs are constitutionally protected from challenge.
Exactly right. And “irreducible complexity” holds that if “I can’t think of a way to make it simpler, it must be irreducibly complex.”
Incidently, the “Johnson” referred to is Phillip Johnson, a professor of law at UC Berkeley. The fact that he isn’t a biologist doesn’t make him wrong, but his expertise is in teaching law.
Hmm, from a strictly moral outlook of the basic premises:
Evolution: Self-improvement is a long and hard process, but you can ensure that your children will have a better life than you do, just as your parents worked to give you a better life than they had. Ultimately, life is a struggle but the ultimate result of that struggle is to leave things better than they were before. Humans have accomplished great things and we look forward to more accomplishments in the future.
Intelligent design: You’re worthless, sinful scum created at the whim of a Creator, a Creator you had better get on your knees and debase yourself to, or that Creator will cast you into an eternal torment for having the slightest inclination to step out of line. You may as well carve out half your brain right now: you won’t be needing it.
The decision seems clear.
Moronic. And utterly random. Other moral takes are quite possible:
Evolution: If you can’t cut it, you should just die. Life is a game of adaptation. Those who can adapt succeed; those who can’t, they fail. You may as well euthanize the weak. It would be an act of mercy for them, and an act of responsibility to society.
Intelligent design (Ekers version): You’re worth more than any other creature, designed in the image of your Creator. Your Creator loves you and allows you the freedom of choice as to how you wish to spend eternity.
The decision is far from clear.
This doesn’t sound like the Lib I know. 
Although you are quite correct that other moral takes are indeed possible, and yours is just as plausible as Bryan’s. Although I would attribute his version of ID more to a conservative fundamentalist outlook than strictly that of an ID.
Libertarian -
Regarding your ideas about Evolution, euthanizing the weak, etc. It was called Biological Spencerism or Social Darwinism. They put an end to it early in the last century. It is not the means by which Evolution works, it is a misunderstanding of evolution through natural selection.
Mars, you’re right.
Bryan, I apologize for stepping over the line. My “moronic” comment was knee-jerk.
Saralundberg
That is not my view of evolution. I was merely making the point that it is easy to misunderstand both points of view, and that moral conclusions from either of them are random and irrelevant. Science has no metaphysic.
I’d just like to step in an say that the debate over ID does not, and should not, focus on its implied morality. We have seen what happens when evolutionary theories are twisted into moral arguments; the results aren’t pretty, and serve more to harm their scientific validity then they do to promote them.
The debate should center around the scientific nature of the claims of ID. Not the scientific truth (which would necessarily, and erroneously, invoke Lib’s metaphysic), but the validity of the arguments put forth. Thus far, said arguments have failed under scrutiny, and it is for this reason they should be denied equal time in the biology classroom.
Libertarian,
Yeah I figured you were just trying to argue the other side and that wasn’t your personal view, right after I clicked the button. Devil’s advocate? Bad euphemism for such a post? I really just wanted to point out that such a view is a misunderstanding of evolution and not at all the way it should be taken. I really hope that people don’t think of evolution in that way anymore. Exactly as Darwin’s Finch said, such ideas only caused harm to science.
No problem, Saralundberg. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. And yes, Darwin’s Finch is exactly right with respect to both views. Theories of irreducible complexity are falsifiable by statistical methodologies, and are therefore open to scientific review. As Finch points out, there are reasonable objections to the acceptance region definitions that are assigned to ID’s null hypothesis. And that, rather than any moral implications, is why IDers have much more work to do before they can be taken seriously. Meanwhile, they aren’t helping their case at all with their constant philosophical ramblings.
Balderdash. I believed in intelligent biological design, long before I believed the authority of the Bible.
S’okay. I know I was contrasting the most positive aspects of the idea of evolution (I like the idea that humans can get smarter and smarter) with the worst aspect of religion (humans are inherently sinful and evil). It’s not a fair comparison, but that hardly makes it unique in a debate like this.
Well, that’s true enough.
In America, a public school is not supposed to teach and impress upon students the dogma of a religion. If, during the course of a class a religion comes up, that’s all right. It’s all right to teach students about the strict religious laws of the Puritans because they did exist; it is not okay for teachers to tell students that they should act according to those beliefs or they’ll roast in hell.
As someone said before, religion inevitably does come up, and in nearly all subjects (especially in references to history). In pubic schools there are comparative religion classes. There are mythology classes, which after all are the studies of gods of ancient religions that have for the most part died out. There are philosophy classes that debate about the beliefs of various religions. There are science classes that speak of the reasons scientists of old were hounded and sometimes executed. There are English classes which treat the Bible as literature and history.
In private schools, religion can be taught and reinforced. They don’t just teach the history of the Catholic church in Catholic schools - they teach the whole dogmatic deal.
In public schools, however, religion is often taught in obtrusive ways because of the location of the school. In places of fundemenalist taxpayers, teachers might talk more about the Christian god. In Utah, where my boyfriend went to school for a while, they taught about Mormonism in all public schools.
I am one day going to be a teacher (not of science, thankfully, but still a teacher). I am going to have to deal with public pressure one day. I cringe for all of the teachers involved in the creationist mess, because they surely must know that if they are too vehement, they could lose their jobs. Teachers end up getting caught in the middle far too often. One false move - or even one respectable move - could end your career.
Sometimes, though, I wonder… why students can’t discuss both types of lessons. Every science class has shown me the mind-boggling order in the apparent chaos of the universe. Couldn’t students be encouraged to think about it for themselves? Couldn’t they be shown both sides and encouraged to debate a bit? The controversy over it is real enough.
I’m curious. With which part do you take exception? That IDists do not practice science? That it is a belief? That there is zero evidence supporting it? That it argues from authority? That its adherents often use the Bible to do so?
There are not just two sides, there are as many creation myths as there are religions. We have students from various religions in our public schools so why should Christian creationists think that their brand, based on the King James Bible, rates precedence over the others?
The argument is not between religion and science. It is between science and the bogus “science” of creationism in its various forms, so-called “Scientific Creationism,” Intelligent Design, Irreducible Complexity, etc.
And there is no controversy in the scientific community about the scientific value and the reality of the theory of evolution. There are differences over details, as there are in cosmology, nuclear physics and even quantum mechanics about various aspects of those fields.
As has been said in previous posts, high school or even undergraduate college classes are not where differences on the outer boundries of our scientific knowledge are thrashed out. Students at that level have enough to take in just in learning the methods of science and the well established knowledge that we already have.
Revtim, a big mansmooch for that link! I was thinking “get thee to a library and find last month’s SciAm!” IMO, In short, I guess I feel this way: Science starts with a question, religion starts with an answer. These things don’t mesh! Intelligent design in schools is hogwash. If the IDers want to learn about it, there sure are a bunch of books and pseudoscience about it. I remember a quote about religion from a priest to Washington that went something like “Piety is such an easy thing to attain, the Church doesn’t need any help from the government.” If they feel that they need to foist their ideas on others to validate them, I would say they might not be standing on a pillar of rock.
And as a resident of Ohio, I will be the first to say that we have some real frinky-dinks living here.
Hardcore already asked for clarification to this reply, but I would like to add that ID is a school of thought motivated first and foremost by the Bible, related philosophies/religion, and people’s belief in such things. Besides, ID scientific arguments amount to throwing sand in the eyes of readers or listeners, so the Bible is still ID’s primum mobile even if you quote its many scientific arguments.
So whether you claim that you believed in ID before you believed in the Bible, Go alien’s statement that ID arguments are from authority–the Bible–is applicable, especially because the ID system of inquiry consists of taking Bible stories and then trying to retro-fit science to them any way they can (obviously this too is a serious problem). You may not have believed in the Bible at some point, only subscribing to ID, but the entire school of thought ID is built on relies first and foremost on the Bible, and then on “scientific” arguments (most of which are fallacious, as is demonstrated time and time again).
As for my analysis of the AiG rebuttal I began above, I wonder if it is necessary to continue. Most people here are aware of the tactics used in these creationist articles, and that is a long piece with much rambling. Time permitting, as always.
As an up-and-coming Science Educator there are a few things clear to me:
The opponents to evolution have a point, although it is not the point they want to make. They like to cry foul whenever a scientist waxes eloquently in speculation. Rightly so, science is not about speculation. E.g. this is acutely apparent when we start talking about “randomness”. Evolution is described as a ‘random’ event, but we don’t have a good idea of what exactly ‘random’ means. There are plenty of angry atheists in science who declare their belief in pure materialism. This is fine, except that science (as Feyman puts it) doesn’t ask about the reasons or the mechanisms for the way the game is played, it only asks for the evidence of what has occurred and asks to make predictions about what will occur. We don’t know how randomness is defined other than using statistical models from mathematics. It is not necessarily mechanistic.
A compotent scientific educator needs to be aware of what science is and isn’t. Science is not necessarily a be-all and end-all of existence. It is beyond the scope of a science class to teach about such things. A science educator that stands up in the front and declares that science proves existence is based on thus-and-such is no longer teaching science. Science is a way of organizing data and testing hypotheses, but it is NOT the sum total of all there is.
If we have decided that it is valuable to teach children science, we should teach them science and not things that are beyond science (like the bible). If you look at the curricula for certain biology programs at certain Bible Colleges they are very clear in their promotion of biology in the context of Biblical literalism. That is not science, that is using the scientific method in a hidden agenda context. Science merely does science for the sake of science. In that way teaching about the bible, or creation myths of other cultures, or ID is ludicrous. Whenever we make comments on the aesthetic qualities of this or that natural phenomenon we are not doing science, we are imposing our own agendas upon the world.
Knowing the scientific paradigm itself and the philosophy behind the previous paragraph well is what will be the best in the arsenal against the ignorant Christian fundamentalist who rails against the science curriculum in the public schools. The most ignorant of them will not have a good reason to criticize. To give an example, it is easy to answer point-by-point the errors in Jack Chick’s attack on Science if need be. We should never balk at an opportunity to educate those who are ignorant, however painfully slow it may be. Of course, the most rabid of the fundamentalists will not budge even shown the evidence.
However, there will be a few Creationists who will actually bring up some of the problems in evolutionary theory that are still being debated in the scientific community. Unfortunately, the usual conclusion they will come to will be, “so if this theory is so full of ‘holes’, it makes sense to teach Biblical Creationism!” That’s not the case at all.
As others have pointed out, there’s more than one way to come up with a new speculation. One of my particuar favorites is panspermia. It’s pretty much jumping to different speculative conlcusions about the origins of life. Should we also teach this? What about the zoo hypothesis?
The answer is, “of course not”. Science is defined by the paradigms that have shown to explain the most observations. There isn’t enough time in anybody’s lifetime to go into all the various speculative theories about the way the world came to be the way it was and debate the validity of the various untestable points. Besides, such an endeavor isn’t science. That said, I wouldn’t mind teaching about current issues and debates in evolutionary theory (though I probably will not end up teaching biology, though you never know these days), knowing where the points of contention are can only help to educate. For example, I see no problem in presenting punctuated equilibrium along side of gradual evolutionary models and looking at the evidence for each and explaining the valid criticisms each side has. However, I would not deem it reasonable to debate the validity of global flood theories as we have scientific models that better fit the evidence. We might talk about what that evidence is and why the global flood couldn’t have happened, but the danger then is that we have to deal with the contextualization of a flood theory as though it is science. The global flood, for all its literary beauty or spiritual significance, just is not a scientific theory. Depending on the location and age group, it might or might not be appropriate to bring this up as I truly believe it is beyond the scope of scientific educators to reinterpret Genesis or offer alternative explanations to literalists. That is the area where things get dicey, but I think the compotent educator can deal with that.
What is better is to ground the students in scientific techniques and let them figure out for themselves that basically the Scientific Establishment actually comes up with pretty good ideas that fit the observations? They should know exactly what models are and what they can do for them. They should also know how to find out more about these subjects and learn for themselves the evidence and the truth.
In sum, there’s really only two kinds of creationists: nutcases who are ignorant, and genuine critics who end up jumping to conclusions. Either way, it is important that the teachers maintain their education level high enough to combat either group’s ulterior motives (that is introducing religious fundamentalism into the schools at the expense of science).