Will weighs in... http://slate.com/id/2118320/ What Matters in Kansas The evolution of creationism. By William Saletan This week, the Kansas State Board of Education will wrap up hearings on "intelligent design," a theistic alternative to the theory of evolution. Scientists have refused to testify, dismissing ID as tarted-up creationism. Newspapers are comparing the hearings to the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial. Liberals, editorialists, and biologists wonder aloud how people can refuse to see evolution when it's staring them in the face. Maybe they should ask themselves. It's the creationists in Kansas who are evolving. And it's the evolutionists who can't see it. To understand the fight in Kansas, you have to study what evolutionists accuse creationists of neglecting: the historical record. In the Scopes trial, creationists defended a ban on the teaching of evolution. That was the early, authoritarian stage of creationism—the equivalent of Australopithecus, the earliest hominid. Gradually, evolution gained the upper hand. In 1987, the Supreme Court ruled that states couldn't even require equal treatment of evolution and creationism. By 1999, creationists were asking the Kansas board not to rule out their beliefs entirely. This was creationism's more advanced Homo erectus phase: pluralism. Six years later, evolutionists in Kansas are under attack again. They think the old creationism is back. They're mistaken. Homo erectus—the defense, on pluralist grounds, of the literal account of Genesis—is beginning to die out. The new challenger, ID, differs fundamentally from fundamentalism. Like its creationist forebears, ID is theistic. But unlike them, it abandons Biblical literalism, embraces open-minded inquiry, and accepts falsification, not authority, as the ultimate test. These concessions, sincere or not, define a new species of creationism—Homo sapiens—that fatally undermines its ancestors. Creationists aren't threatening us. They're becoming us. You don't have to dig deep in the fossil record to see this change unfolding. Just go back to the fight in Kansas six years ago, when conservatives on the education board rammed through curriculum revisions co-authored by the president of the Creation Science Association for Mid-America. CSA believes that "Revelation" trumps "scientific pursuits," Genesis is the "written Word of God," and therefore, the world was made in six days. To protect its belief in a young earth, CSA has to argue that "fossilization does not and cannot require a long time," the Grand Canyon could have been formed "in hours or days," and "dinosaurs lived very recently and coexisted with man." The curriculum changes co-authored by CSA and approved by the Kansas board in 1999 reflected the young-earth doctrine. They removed references to the big bang, a universe billions of years old, the geologic time scale, and the Paleozoic Era. They changed "long ago" to "in the past." They excised language inferring a time sequence from fossil layers. They told students that "some stratified rocks may have been laid down quickly" and urged them to examine "assumptions used in radioactive decay methods of dating." Not all critics of evolution shared this view. On May 11, 1999, the Kansas board held a forum to invite public comment. A lawyer named John Calvert testified, "Being a geologist, I find no fault with most geologic estimates concerning the age of the earth and the times at which various stages of life appear to have come into being. I am not a creationist as that term is frequently used in the press and by the scientific community to describe one who believes in a literal and narrow interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2. However, I do believe that life has resulted from design rather than by chance." Far from suggesting that a day or two was enough time to make the Grand Canyon, Calvert argued that hundreds of millions of years weren't enough time for random processes to devise the first cell. In September 1999, Calvert founded the Intelligent Design Network to promote his mutant line of creationism. The next year, a political asteroid struck Kansas. Alarmed by the 1999 curriculum changes, voters went to the polls and wiped out the education board's creationist majority. With the old species out of the way, the new one took over. In January 2001, as the newly constituted board reopened the curriculum standards, IDnet proposed revisions radically different from CSA's. The board's draft standards said, "The fossil record provides evidence of simple, bacteria-like life as far back as 3.8+ billion years ago." CSA would have tried to remove that sentence. IDnet embraced it and proposed to add a prepositional phrase: "almost simultaneously with the postulated habitability of our earth." This would underscore Calvert's argument that life arose faster than randomness could account for. A few lines later, the board's draft mentioned the fossil record, radioisotope dating, and plate tectonics. CSA would have fought all three references. IDnet affirmed them and asked only for a revision to limit their implications: "Certain aspects of the fossil record, the age of the earth based on radioisotope dating and plate tectonics are consistent with the Darwinian theory. However, this evidence is not inconsistent with the design hypothesis." Two years later, in a bioethics journal, Calvert and an IDnet colleague, biochemist William Harris, summarized the differences between Biblical creationism and ID. "Creation science seeks to validate a literal interpretation of creation as contained in the book of Genesis," they explained. "An ID proponent recognizes that ID theory may be disproved by new evidence. ID is like a large tent under which many religious and nonreligious origins theories may find a home. ID proposes nothing more than that life and its diversity were the product of an intelligence with power to manipulate matter and energy." Last year, conservatives regained a narrow majority on the Kansas board. They've reopened the curriculum, but this time, CSA isn't running the show. Calvert and Harris are. At last week's hearings, Calvert presented 23 witnesses—scientists, philosophers, and teachers—to make the case for ID. A lawyer representing evolutionists asked the witnesses how old the earth was. Most affirmed the conventional geological estimate: 4.5 billion years. Only two stuck to the young-earth theory. Essentially, ID proponents are gambling that they can concede evolutionist earth science without conceding evolutionist life science. But they can't. They already acknowledge microevolution—mutation and natural selection within a species. Once you accept conventional fossil dating and four billion years of life, the sequential kinship of species loses its implausibility. You can't fall back on the Bible; you've already admitted it can't always be taken literally. All you're left with is an assortment of gaps in evolutionary theory—how did DNA emerge, what happened between this and that fossil—and the vague default assumption that an "intelligence" might fill in those gaps. Calvert and Harris call this assumption a big tent. But guess what happens to a tent without poles. Perversely, evolutionists refuse to facilitate this collapse. They prefer to dismiss ID proponents as dead-end Neanderthals. They complain, legitimately, that Calvert and Harris are trying to expand the definition of science beyond "natural explanations." But have you read the definition Calvert and Harris propose? It would define science as a continuous process of "observation, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena." Abstract creationism can't qualify for such scrutiny. Substantive creationism can't survive it. Or if it can, it should. It's too bad liberals and scientists don't welcome this test. It's too bad they go around sneering, as censors of science often have, that the new theory is too radical, offensive, or embarrassing to be taken seriously. It's too bad they think good science consists of believing the right things. In the long view—the evolutionary view—good science consists of using evidence and experiment to find out whether what we thought was right is wrong. If they do that in Kansas, by whatever name, that's all that matters.
Yes. You can't "design" the universe into existence. You have to "create" it. That leaves you with "creationism".
As rife with major errors as it is, at least Will’s article sheds some light on this bizarre obsession some posters in this thread have with creationism. No one in this thread has said that ID is creationism, indeed this claim has been refuted a number of times, and yet we still have people who without even bothering to try come up with a credible rationale try to label ID creationism. I suspect that this comes from the current dispute in Kansas and articles like this that erroneously try to label ID creationism. In my experience the ID and creationist camps aren’t even the same people. The creationists are the mirror image of the fundamentalist evolutionists we see here that eschew all logic and reason and science in order to hold on tight to their faith. The creationists hold tight to the “literal” interpretation of Genesis, which is equally nonsensical even by Christian standards because the Bible is a book to be interpreted, often using parables that call for interpretation. In short, the book of Genesis is not even a literal account. Indeed the Bible even explicitly warns against those who try to apply a literal interpretation and yet stray from the Spirit of God, and yet arguably that’s exactly what many of the creationists do. On the flip side we have those who claim the infallibility of the current level of their scientific understanding, and yet that is nonsense too because the “science” that they hold up is self contradictory, full of major holes, and simply bad science even by today’s standards. In the middle we have ID that tries to take an objective look at the problems and begin an exploration process that promises to expand knowledge, exactly what real science is supposed to do. But it appears that the old tribal battle between the creationists and the evolutionists has polarized the debate in general, or at least the creationists here, and caused them to abandon reason and defend the home team at all cost. It appear that this has added an extra level of politics to the inherent problems Kuhn identified and has served to further marginalize the real science in this current debate. We may not be able to get past that here but at least those who can objectively read the thread will have learned some things about the nature of the debate.
Maybe some of us can just see that the same natural forces that control the universe and mocroevolution control macroevolution and everything else. Things change, and it's random. To me it is as plain as day, it's no big deal. And it took a while for microevolution to become falsifiable or the anti-evols would be crying about it too. And maybe we can just smell the hidden agenda behind ID. It freakin' reeks. There would be no other reason for their obsession with evolution. Finally, maybe some of us will trust The National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education who have described Intelligent Design as pseudoscience. Get that crap out of here.
Sure. A lot of people believe in a lot of things, rabbit’s feet, tea leaves, whatever. As long as you don’t call it science you can believe anything you like. But a theory that skips right past the spontaneous generation of matter and then denies that there could be any force out there that is greater than the current scientific community’s ability to conceive, and that tries to hold up macroevolution as truth when there is scant to no evidence that it exists in any context, can’t be called good science. And the fact that it often is misleads a lot of children and other people and dissuades them from exploring other ideas. So the proponents of evolution protect their power base by trying to brainwash children and the general public, just like Kuhn described. I can't imagine why they would. I don't think that's ever been at issue. Or is this another scare tactic? And I have no problem with the fact that macroevolution was held up as a promising theory for some period of time. You don’t expect a new theory to be rock solid. The problems begin when the evidence starts to stack up against it and instead of admitting this the ruling clique of scientists tries to force fit the data into the theory and deny the credibility of any competing theory. That’s when it becomes politics or faith, not science. Of course this situation is further complicated by the fact that the creationists were at war with the evols (I’m stealing that term from you ) from the beginning based on their own crackpot ideas. So now the evols are resurrecting that spectre (quite specifically in the case of Will’s article) and are trying to hang it on the ID people to try to discredit them and defend their own power base. And this is science?! Kuhn show us that yes, sadly, this is how it works. I’m not close enough to the Kansas issue to know what it smells like, so if there are any hidden agendas I don’t know about them. I’m not saying there aren’t. I’m just saying that I’m out of the loop on that. There was a similar group that denounced the notion that the earth might be round instead of flat in similar terms. They put Galileo under house arrest for even saying it. Again, as Kuhn has shown, this is how scientific revolutions tend to go. The establishment people who have spent their lives invested in a given theory resist challenges any way they can. They promote the lapdogs and the bootlickers and ridicule and even jail those who oppose them. You can’t quash the truth forever, though, and eventually as information leeks out and gets around the credibility of their theory progressively erodes and it and their power base eventually collapse. Looking at the strength of the defence of evolution in this thread I’m thinking we’re well on the way to that happening again.
Come on, grizzled, you should know better. First, facts: Everyone already knew the Earth was round, had since the Greeks. They just thought land was concentrated at the "top" of the Earth. The main problem with Galileo was because he said the sun, not the earth was the center of the universe. The people that sentenced him were not bodies of science, it was the Catholic church because Christianity had long taught that the earth was the center of the universe (so it had nothing to do with "similar groups". Next, interpretation: You are using an example of a man of science being persecuated by religious leaders to support your spiritually-based beliefs against a theory of science. You don't see that as messy? I know you are trying to stay away from the religion angle, but there is a reason why it is pretty much only conservative Christians who are pushing to get ID into schools, etc..
Change is obserbavle. Microevolution is observable. We can see the birth and death of stars, we start to understand the formation of solar systems and plantery atmospheres. Change and evoltution is all around. Understanding mutation happens naturally through immense periods of time is not a leap of faith. It's very logical.
chemicals turning to organisms?? sorry...that's never been observed. p.s. i'm not pushing ID in the schools...i could not care less, frankly. i do have problems with macro-evolution taught as fact, though.
Well it had to happen somewhere at some point. Species change. Why is that so hard to believe? Everything changes!
sigh... Well it hasn't but neither has an electron yet we still have electricity. There is a point of reasonably infering from observable phenomena that similar mechanism work on a larger scale. The fact that we've directly observed microbes and other organisms evolving on a small scale right before our eyes means that it is very probable that speciation as a whole functions the same way. The belief that there may be a higher power because my brain can't explain everything isn't a logical inference that speciation is do to a higher power unless it can prove that a higher power exists in the first place. On a side note I highly recommend the National Geographic article "Was Darwin Wrong?" that covers almost all of the issues we've gone over along with a history of how Darwin formulated the theory. Two of the issues that Darwin went into in depth that we haven't was in regard to vestigial organs and embryonic development. He noted that every male mammal still has superfluous nipples and some snakes have pelvis and rudimentary legs. These things have no logical function but indicated holdovers from the evolutionary project. So (my words) it would be a sloppy designer to have left so many vestigial parts still around. As for embryology Darwin noted that embryos during development seem to go through phases where they resemble simpler organisms. So mammal embryos go through developmental stages were they resemble reptilian embryos. He saw this as an indicator of holdovers from previous forms and that evolution was a process building up on past forms rather than whole new creations.
It didn't HAVE to happen. That's the whole point. If you believe it HAD to happen then you're every bit as closed-minded as the fundamentalists you rail against. Because Darwin said it, doesn't mean it HAD to have happened. Closing off all other possibilities is hardly science. Species change. I agree. No one is arguing against that...at least I'm certainly not. Without a fossil record that gets us to the point where we can see a common ancestor for the bat and the whale, you're acting as much on faith as I am when I say I believe that God created. Just because there is micro-evolution, it does not NECESSARILY follow that they change so dramatically to believe that the entire diversity of organisms on this planet stemmed from a single cell. You can believe that if you wish...but it's a belief at this point...a theory. Let's teach it in the schools...I have no problem with that. But let's be fair in pointing out its holes, as well. I see macro-evolutionists getting defensive in the way that creationists once did...and maybe still do. Question it and you're just wrong. The problem is, it's still a THEORY...so questioning it is quite appropriate. If it's truth, it will stand. If not, it will ultimately fall. Also...let's assume it did fall...it does not necessarily follow then that there is a Creator who created. One could believe in some alternate reason for the diversity of life on this planet, and still be vehmently atheistic.
1. i'm not supporting ID. every time i've argued in this thread, i'm met with the idea that i'm supporting teaching ID in the schools or backing it up as science. i've said time and again i don't believe it to be "proveable" (is that a word?) in a scientific context...sooooo...my belief in a higher power is absolutely unrelated. Believe me when I tell you it does not hinge on whether or not evolution happened or not. 2. your just used changes in organisms...organisms mutating...to support the idea that lifeless chemicals turned into life. that's a leap of faith that, at this point, is unsupportable.
I stand corrected. This doesn’t change my point but yes you have corrected me on the details of Galileo’s story. Well, it was a similar group I maintain. It was really a political group and a political decision. Never mind that they called themselves the Catholic Church, that issue has nothing to do with anything biblical and everything to do with power and maintaining power and authority. Likewise Kuhn shows that the scientific establishment corrupts and acts in the same way. Both groups were seen as the authority of their day and they viewed the threat to their power and authority and exercised their power in response in similar ways. I can’t speak to the issue in Kansas as I’m not very familiar with it at all, and clearly it is colouring this discussion in some strong ways. Nonetheless I’ll try to work around it and deal with this issue outside that context. The religious leaders of Galileo’s day were really political leaders, correct? Their position had nothing to do with anything biblical and everything to do with the norms of the day that supported their power and authority. Second, my position is based on science. It focuses on some very basic and huge holes in the science behind the theory of evolution. The implications of the failure of good science to support the theory of evolution may or may not lead to an exploration of spirituality. We haven’t gotten to that point in the discussion. It could just as easily go in the direction of exploring the possibility of a non-intrusive designer. There are a whole range of options that can be explored once the walls of this rigid box are expanded. There is much that is messy about doing this but it stems from the fact that the rulers of that old restricted view of the world don’t want to do anything that would jeopardise their position of power and authority.
Well I meant it had to of happened... naturally. Everything else does. I dont see how tracing all life here to an early ancestor is a faith based. Science books change over time. That's a given. But I don't think we really need to explain that every theory has "holes" and what they are. Even what have taken to be as facts turn out not to be so. I think there is a understanding that theories can change or are at least tweaked over time. Why is that sooo important to certain people to emphasize these "holes" in this certain theory (which only exist because it can not be observed)? I am open to the idea that life was transported here from space, but life did form somewhere, because we exist. When we observe everything else happen naturally, why not the formation of life? That is not a leap of faith. But I don't expect that to be taught in schools as an alternative. (I really don't care that much about it) But I do think that macro evolution is a natural process that is not observable and that is the most likely possibility. When you are 99.9% chimp, and you know at one time Earth supported no life, it seems obvious. And I do recall you being being pretty dismissive about "fictional" alternative ideas to the Big Bang, and other universes etc...
Meowgi, I can appreciate that. I'm not sure kids necessarily "get" that theories can/do have holes. I'm not sure it's taught that way. It seems to me that a theory is ultimately a testable idea...could be right, could be wrong. If it's presented as necessarily "right" then i'm not sure that's really science education. If life came from outer space, that would seriously test evolution as it's been explained...that the conditions here on earth were ripe for massive mutation...that lifeless chemicals transformed into living organisms. It is a possible explanation, no doubt. Even if I can follow you on chimp/human thing...I have a harder time getting to the idea that you and I have a common ancestor with the whale. Was I? Probably I was...I don't remember that, but you're right. When we start talking cosmology, I get lost very easy. The concept of alternate universes is beyond anything I can understand. And while I think it's a cop-out to say, "Well, I just believe God did it" without any further look at it...I think it may be an equal cop-out to say, "Well, maybe there are just other universes." About both, we have no tangible scientific data that would suggest it without some leap of faith.
Why is it hard to believe that all life has a common ancestor compared to all existence having a common origin?
