I just think that the fundamental problem to begin with is not the same basis as the one it is being argued, and I would love to see someone address this. Why not have one or two days in a science class where teacher and students discuss creation myths from ALL religions? The theory of evolution gives us the HOW, but not the WHY. All right, then let’s give equal time to the why-- while recognizing that there is just no reason to try to argue it as the “how.” This really should be the ground on which everybody can meet. Why not??
No, from what I’ve seen a good deal of ID proponents are not religious. Many are just confused about the complexity of life and don’t feel that random mutations could’ve created it all by itself.
First, because that’s a wonderful subject to discuss in an anthropology class, not a basic science class. Examining different cultures and their views on the nature of life is, in fact, part and parcel of any good basic anthro course. And I’d agree that such classes should be much more available in high schools. It is not a goal of elementary science, however, to examine historical or cultural views of nature. And while teachers may very well mention what people used to believe about one thing or another, it is not part central to teaching children about nature as we understand it.
Second, NO ONE can ever tell you WHY.
(some how my post got sent before I was able to finish my thought) - …No one can ever tell you WHY anything happens. Science is only about describing what we believe to be true about phenomena. Ultimately, no matter how well we can describe an event, we can never say WHY things are as they are. Ultimately, some people just say, “well, that’s the way the universe is.” And that’s as far as we can go. If you want to say that some cultures answer that question with, "Well, it’s God’s will, " well, ok, but a science class is not the place for much discussion on that level. Science is about gaining a better understanding of phenomena so that these phenomena can be better described. But no one is going to pretend that they can explain it all. Many of us are more thrilled with the presence of the mystery of it all than with the facile answer that “God made it happen.”
I think this is also a very good point to remember as well. Again, this sort of thing arises from assumptions about one side or the other.
To go back to CC’s point. I do agree that maybe this should not be taught in the lower levels of schools casue it would complicate things. But at the high school point, come on, it can at least be introduced.
It actually goes into one of the many flaws of our public education system is that the level of sophistication and encouragement to think and really question is not taught. It may explain why we are behind many other countries in the world as far as schooling goes and why most of our public schools are more busy work than meritable teaching. I don’t think it is necessarily the fault of anyoen on either side so much as it is the flawed nature of our educational system in itself.
Though taht goes into another topic in itself. To be honest, a lot of curriculums (and maybe this is just the areas I live in), are adjusting their curriculum to meet the new standardized tests and whatnot, rather than really teaching anything with any meat to it. This is just so students can take these silly standarized tests that don’t really test your ability to really think, and some just test the ability to take tests.
So now that I have gone into my views on our educational system I will continue back on this topic…
I do agree with what Anise said. It is not a totally bad idea. Maybe not a requirement for any course curriculum per se but ponder this thought…
No matter what your actual religious/spiritual beliefs are, they decide what lens you use to view the whole world around you. This does include science, which is why we have a range of disputes on the origins of life as well as evolution/ID.
I mean heck, you talk to a Theistic Evolution advocate as opposed to a neo-Darwinian one, you find many differences even amongst people who adhere to evolution. Why? Their Worldviews on life help to shape how they view these facts. One says these show a God driven process while the other said they show an unguided and undriven one. Also as much as we dont like to admit it professors express their views on various matters too. Whichever view of evolution gets expressed by the particular professor can affect how it gets taught. Ideally, it should not be this way and science classes should be teaching about the facts, but sometimes that happens and you cannot ignore that. Those differences also can have a drastic impact on how the facts come off.
So then, this isn’t to say that this is why an ID course should be taught but think about this when we keep always saying that evolution is just about teaching the facts, when clearly one’s view on life can and sometimes does put a spin on how evolution is taught. This is an unavoidable aspect of human nature, whether we wish to realize it or not.
As far as answers to my earlier questions go, well, I would like to hear some answers for this. The more reliably documented information the better.
Also, to continue on some of the earlier conversations…
Yes I know the level of sophistication is rather high yes, but well, that really just means we need more sophisticated answers for them. :).
Sure I know we don’t have all the answers and evolution does change based on new data, but to me anyway, it comes to a point where the basic assumptions themselves are called into question.
Like with the problem of the Information Theory issue and how it related to speciation. The things that need to be answered are what are the actual probabilities of a DNA alteration, and what are the chances of them being properly restored according to the error correction methods that DNA entails. Cause they do teach that there is a DNA synthase protein (I forget which one at the moment) that does so after the unwinding of the double helix.
Also, is RNA error free tranmission? Are any possible errors that may arise corrected by certain proteins designed for such a thing. The answer to this question is important to a lot of what information theory entails cause it also changes the nature of how you would calculate things out. A noisy (non error- free) channel would have more things to consider than a noiseless one does.
Either way, there is a lot to these things that still blocks a lot of assertions that grand scale speciation makes. As for any sort of inductive reasoning, you need two parts, a base case and inductive step(s). If you cannot conclusively prove all the inductive step(s) to be true, then you cannot use inductive reasoning to make your claim (which is a proof of grand scale speciation by strong induction in this case).
So this is why these questions need to be answered. Cause of all these implications that are involved. As much detail as possible is needed to conclusively prove these sorts of things. I understand these are tough questions, though perhaps it is possible that there are reliable sources that maybe have these answers.
Also, as far as the ERIs (Endogenous Retroviral Insertions) that were mentioned earlier. I found more on it. Said the same ERIs were found in humans and chimps, which is fascinating to read. My next question is where else have the same ERIs been found? Do other primates have them the same way we do? Do other non-primates for that matter? Any more details and reliable sources to show on this subject? I would very much like to see them.
Also, still wondering about any more information about how the origins of sexually reproductive organisms arose through the evolutionary process. I am eager to see if there is more material on the subject.
Yes, they’ve been studied in other primates and here’s the real clincher:
the pattern of shared insertions very closely matches the tree of common descent that had been deduced by other methods, such as comparisons of morphology. This isn’t a case of the evidence being crammed to fit a preconcieved notion, but rather two independent lines of evidence leading to the same conclusion. There’s a good description of the phenomenon here
We probably need a separate thread in GD for a proper debate to take place; this one seems to have strayed a bit off its original GQ purpose, but while we’re here, I have one more thing to point out; given that this debate has more or less turned into the usual case of:
-Creationist brings up some points from an anti-evolution website
-Some/all of these points are refuted
-Creationist returns with a different set of points from the same, or another similar anti-evolution website
-Lather, rinse, repeat…
What exactly is your motivation? Why would you return to these creationist websites for a second helping of potted arguments when the first can be clearly demonstrated as logically, factually or intellectually bankrupt (and very often dishonest)?
Why would this be discussed in a science class?
It might not be entirely irrelevant; we learned about things like the four elements in chemistry and spontaneous generation and the four humours in biology. We were not expected to treat this as anything other than interesting historical context.
However, I particularly remember that phlogiston was used as a starting point for a discussion on falsification within the scientific method.
I agree that in an ideal world, the place for the “why” discussion would likely not be a science class. But the problem is, that’s the ground where this is being argued. That’s the place where some people are trying to get ID inserted. Since that’s the battleground, the discussion has to be taken to that battleground. I still think it’s the only compromise that makes any sense… but unfortunately, I think that’s exactly why it won’t happen.
Yeah we probably should have a seperate thread for this.
If you’d like to know what my motivation is here is to see if we can go beyond the usual pointless debate, which from my experience actually goes something like this…
- Both sides start argueing
- Maybe a few select people actually show some scholarly resources
- If someone does not agree with them, bash the sources and the person providing them. Vague statements and catch phrases such as “anti-evolution”, “anti-science”, “atheist” or “anti-Christian” (depending on which side you’re on) usually come in here.
- Repeat vicious cycle until either everyone gets fed up with one another, or the people providing good sources go off and have a real discussion on the matter.
This is the kind of behavior that pushes the more moderate and mature people on both sides further and further towards the extremes in the first place.
Like if someone who is a Christian thinks evolution is fact keeps getting yelled at for no good reason by members of his church who disagree with him, obviously this person will feel more and more alienated by that church. They grow more and more of an afront towards anyone who may want to really talk about this matter if they do not agree with him.
Likewise, if comments like the one made above keep getting thrown at ID advocates who really have sound questions concerning evolution, it doesn’t make them rethink their position, it just makes them think that all evolution advocates are total jerks, which in turns pushes them further and further away from ever wishing to hear any answers to their questions cause they feel all they will get useless arguements.
So this is the sort of thing I am trying to avoid but since you seem so intent on acting like we are in a political campaign rather than an intellectual debate, I will say this.
The articles I have read on the sources I give cross reference to various sources. Some being the articles they are refuting. For example the one article on TrueOrigin.org that was refuting Dawkins had the article on it. I opened it up and read it all the way through for myself. I’ve read the ERI stuff and I read the other articles that were provided thoroughly.
The Dawkins article is here if you wish to read it…
I had my own doubts about his information theory analogy and how it seemed grossly misapplied BEFORE I read the article which refutes it.
But since your goal is to just to try and portray all this as mere creationist ignorance, let me ask you this.
Since you said I go onto one anti-evolution site after another. Have you paid attention to the fact that I have used sources from The NCSE (pro-evolution), Wikipedia (neutral), Standford University (pretty sure pro-evolution, or at least neutral) and now from the World of Richard Dawkins (pro-evolution) in this thread? Maybe you did not see it at first which is ok, or maybe you didn’t want to see that. Either way, I have used a lot more than just a few anti-evolution sites as my sources, contrary to what you claimed.
Also, yes some of these questions were refuted, like with the ERIs for example. I was unaware of those and I appreciate this information being brought to the forefront. However, my RNA and Information Theory questions have not been answered at all and some of these answers, like the sexual reproduction for example, create new and more complex questions. You could say that these uncertainties are clouding the issue, but also you could say they are topics that simply merely merit more research, which is what science is all about right? Researching the unknowns.
I was actually thinking we would have a really good debate on this once people began providing some actual sources for a change. What happened to that? I am just trying to have a discussion on this that does not follow the usual he said she said stuff. I am seeing if I can find that kind of good, respectable, intellectual discussion here.
So we can either continue these petty credibility attacks on people we don’t even know and will probably never meet in real life, or we can continue this discussion in a mature fashion as we were earlier, (though perhaps on a new thread).
I’m sorry if that came across harder than I intended; It may seem like it, but I’m not trying to attack you - it’s just that you seem fairly open-minded on the subject and I noticed that we appeared to be tending towards a pattern where refuted arguments are merely dropped in favour of different ones, rather than recognising that a horse should only be flogged a reasonable way past death.
Sorry if, as it appears, I offended you; I would still very much like to discuss the evolution/creation topic with you if you are still willing; may I suggest a separate GD thread, starting on a single point of contention, rather than a list of them?
>I agree that in an ideal world, the place for the “why” discussion would likely not be a science class. But the problem is, that’s the ground where this is being argued.
But it isn’t. Practically no scientists argue about ID versus evolution. It’s argued about in politics, and the topic does belong in classes about politics (and probably turns up in them). Please understand: the scientists don’t think this is a scientific topic. It’s no better to teach it in science class than in gym.
>It actually goes into one of the many flaws of our public education system is that the level of sophistication and encouragement to think and really question is not taught. It may explain why we are behind many other countries in the world as far as schooling goes and why most of our public schools are more busy work than meritable teaching.
Resisting ID in science classes isn’t flawed. It happens when experts in that field decide what to teach in their classes. That’s an appropriate process because experts are the best judges of what makes sense in understanding their field. Teaching material that they themselves don’t believe, or even think plausible, is hardly “encouragement to think”. If there were no church and political groups pushing it, there’d never be ID taught in science classes. In general you kind of have to take one of two paths: either you accept the word of experts in the field that a topic doesn’t belong in their class, or you become expert yourself and decide the issue with the same inputs other experts have used.
But it isn’t. Practically no scientists argue about ID versus evolution.
Of course they don’t. But science classes DO represent the battleground where this argument has been brought, since that’s where ID would be taught. I have yet to see anyone say that they want ID taught in poly sci classes, or current events classes (which is probably what you’d actually get in a junior high school!) The only place where anybody has any real interest in seeing this included is IN science classes, as far as I can tell.
>The only place where anybody has any real interest in seeing this included is IN science classes, as far as I can tell.
Yes, yes, I think you are making my point. Somebody wants their religious belief legitimized by getting it labeled as science and fed to the kids by science teachers. The science classroom isn’t the battlefield, it’s the prize, the prize. The battlefield is the political process. And the topic of ID as a topic per se is a political topic, not a scientific topic. Political topics might belong in political science classes where experts in politics would discuss them. Getting science teachers to teach ID would be getting them to lie. I don’t know about science education, but within the sciences, lying, deliberately spreading what you understand is false, especially misinformation specifically within the field of science, is pretty much the worst wrong you can commit.
Scientists love a good debate or puzzle or parts of the field that don’t make sense, don’t fit. That’s what we’re for. Any scientist will gladly go on at length about controversies in their field - just try one of us. But ID isn’t a controversy within science.
The only valid form of lesson about ID that could be taught in a science class would be entirely negative about ID. But I don’t think that is what ID proponents have in mind.
The OP has been answered long ago.
If anyone needs to continue to debate, we have a forum.
Closed. samclem GQ moderator