TheAgitator.com
Creationist Class Visits Natural History Museum
Wednesday, March 11th, 2009My favorite quote from the article:
“Why should we be afraid to test our worldview against reality?” asked Bill Jack, a Christian leadership instructor who leads groups across the country for a company called Biblically Correct Tours.
I hope they’re not expecting any traditional biology classes to go visit the creationism museum, now…
We don’t need your stinkin’ reality!
If creationism is true, and the world is only a few thousand years old, why don’t we ever find well preserved dinosaur bodies in the le brea tar pits next to the many extinct mammals in there? Why do we never find sauropod bones with arrowheads embedded in them? If the flood killed land animals not on the arc, why did all marine reptiles go extinct? Why did Noah exclude entire an entire order of animals? Most dinos were small enough to fit on board an arc. Why do ancient histories and religious texts from various regions disagree so much (yes, there are many parallels, but I’d expect fresh history to be pretty much identical, not just similiar). How did the ecosystem recover from all those huge supervolcanoes and asteroid strikes (not just the KT event) around the world in just a few thousand years? If fossils form much more quickly than supposed by science, how come we find reletively few of them? A rapid fossilization process should preserve many times the number we usually find. What is this mechanism for extremely rapid fossilization, and can it be consistantly reproduced under controlled conditions?
Just askin.
Ark, not arc. Sorry.
While I don’t agree with the a lot of the ideas of creationism, I have to applaud the people who are willing to put their beliefs to the test. And if it makes some of them question those beliefs all the better.
Um . . . because it fails the test every time?
My world view only diverges from reality when I’m under the influence of something or when I’m fantasizing about the babes of Fox News asking me how much they would have to pay me to be their group sex slave.
Do they really need to take a class if the answer to every question is, “God did it.”
I grew up in Christian schools and the ‘science’ classes are a bizzaro parallel of reality. It definitely can’t be honestly tested against reality and survive. I do like that the Christian leadership instructor admits their beliefs must be tested against reality, which seems to admit they are not reality.
The bulk of the material focuses on better plugging the ears and covering the eyes.
Ktc2
“Um . . . because it fails the test every time?”
Because it forces them to think. They’re working on ideas based on faith, not science. If they’re “religion” -for lack of a better word- goes against every scientific fact out there, may be it will force them to incorrupt some of that science into their religion and still retain their faith. You can still believe that a God/gods made humans and everything else with out believing it was done in under 10,000 years. After all plenty of archeologists don’t seem to have a problem with incorporating their beliefs with science. They would just have to admit that some theory’s they’ve upheld are wrong.
Chance: Here’s the problem. You used one of the forbidden words a lot in your post: Who, What, When, Where, Why.
People who believe in creationism have never learned to ask those questions and get a believable answer beyond “Because God…”
Don’t you know? Dino bones are here to test our faith. You guys all failed. :)
Dino bones and UFOs test our faith. (Piloted by demons no less). I was seriously told that as a kid.
I don’t believe I have any faith in reality anymore…as we know it.
Lot of ignorance around here …. I’ll just point out that belief that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old is just one type of Creationism (‘Young Earth’). There are plenty of creationists (and more generic Intelligent design folks) who think everything is as old as you think it is. But no matter how far back you go, some ‘thing’/'entity’/'intelligence’ created the elements that allow this existence and rules that govern the universe … or it just magically appeared out of nowhere. I’d argue it takes faith either way.
Chance, you pose these questions above like you aren’t already preaching the choir here.
Also, what Krueger wrote was the funniest damn thing I’ve read all day. The scary thing is that there really are twisted people out there that fantasize about tag teaming Greta with Hannity.
Its rather simplistic to lump all creationist together. I don’t see a lot of “protestant” Christians agreeing on much other than God created the universe.
My fantasies include only the “babes”.
But, that’s not to say I’m not twisted.
“Advanced Creationism” class? Really, you need an advanced class?
Modern creationists don’t deny the existence of dinosaurs but believe that God made them, and all animals, on the same sixth day that he created man. In fact, Ross’s only real beef in the fossil hall is with the 30-foot lighted column that is a timeline marking 630 million years of geology. As a young-Earth creationist, he asserts that the vast majority of the rocks and fossils were formed during Noah’s flood about 4,000 years ago.
I love it how the author(s) of Genesis decided to leave out the fact that A) there were GIANT FUCKING LIZARDS walking around pre-flood, and that B) Noah just sort of ignored them in carrying out God’s command to “to bring into the ark two of all living creatures, male and female.”
I reject your reality, and substitute my own!
*sighs at James D*
I take it you still haven’t completed those reading assignments I gave you last year? Tut tut, James. Your report is months overdue.
I read one of them Bronwyn, still doesn’t change my opinion. Just like someone said earlier “because God did it” is not enough of an explanation; well neither is “because it evolved”.
And B, the Bible is just the story of man’s relation to God. It just summarizes everything else. It’s not supposed to be ‘the book on the history of the universe’. The first 3 sentences may cover billions of years. For the sake of things like “the Tree of Life”, “the 10 Commandments”, “love thy neighbor”, and “do God’s will”, etc … what good are dinosaurs?
“because it evolved”
You think that’s the only evidence presented by evolutionary biologists and geologists?!?!?! Holy schmoligans.
James–I was specifically critiquing the literalist interpretation. It takes a special kind of willful reality editing to produce the logical contortions Dr. (sic) Ross goes into to make the existence of dinosaurs consonant with literal reading of Genesis.
(That said, I don’t buy a metaphorical reading of Genesis either, but that’s rather beside the point.)
I keep it real differently from how y’all be keeping it real.
James D, You misunderstand what science is. The fact that science doesn’t have an explanation for how everything started in the first place doesn’t mean that “things appeared magically out of nothing” it simply means we don’t know. Where science is willing to admit “we don’t know” religion says “God did it” as if that means anything different from “we don’t know”.
It doesn’t take faith to admit ignorance, which is the basis of science: we don’t know, but we are going to try to find a consistent explanation.
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick.
Let me see, how about “God” is not a fact but an article of faith, whereas evolution–i.e. organismis changing over time–is a fact?
“Chance, you pose these questions above like you aren’t already preaching the choir here”
Granted, but that’s not exactly unusual for many people on this blog to do, or on most blogs for that matter.
What a waste of an article. These things happen all the time, it’s hardly news. The real story is that these kids are in supposed biology classes but they know absolutely nothing about the theory they’ve driven three and a half hours to criticize. I might forgive it for a homeschool group, but college?
I disagree with Radley, the killer paragraph is this:
She was expecting an ape. 196 million years before any ape-like creatures ever existed.
You know, what I don’t get about YEC…
4,000 years ago was 2,000 BC. We have many, many historical records from that time. There’s nothing about a giant flood.
6,000 years ago was 4,000 BC. We have historical records going back further than that.
So… what? Were those records just planted there?
I don’t get it.
“Why should we be afraid to test our worldview against reality?”
Umm…EPIC FAIL!!!!
Captain Obvious here.
The Book of Genesis didn’t mention dinosaurs (giant lizards) because scientists had not yet discovered dinosaur bones. That exclusion (combined with the discovery of dino fossils) should have signaled to everyone that the book is a bunch of hooey and make suspect the whole religion.
Captain Obvious awaaaaayyyy!
Fundie: It’s true because it’s in the Bible and it’s in the Bible because it’s true.
Drug warrior: Drugs are illegal because they are bad and they are bad because they are illegal.
Coincidence? I don’t think so…..
The Flying Spaghetti Monster created you, me, and everything else. And if you don’t believe that, then you are certainly facing eternity in a pizza oven.
May you all be touched by His noodly appendage.
Ramen.
May nonbelievers find eternity in hell, where the beer is stale and the strippers have STDs.
*genuflects*
Raaaaa-mennnnnn
Heh.
I like the way he stated that his world view and reality are two different things.
Exactly. As if his own brain is trying to tell him he’s an idiot.
Actually, there’s a creationist answer to all them dinosaur bones — God put them there to test our faith. It’s called the “omphalos” theory (meaning ‘navel’ in greek) and it originates in the mid 19th century, i believe.
So God put fossils here to try to get us to believe one thing, and the Bible [or whichever holy book] to try to get us to believe another, and we go to Hell if we pick the wrong one? It seems to me the question is not whether God created us, but whether he’s worthy of worship regardless.
The real problem here is that scientists put on a very confident face to the public while things aren’t quite so unified. As a scientist myself working in molecular neurobiology, I’ve encountered many scientists who are starting to question the evolutionary theory. As we uncover more information concerning the intricacies of cellular biology, some holes are becoming apparent.
But perhaps the fundamental question that I’ve seen these scientists asking is one of universal origin: did the universe have a beginning or has it always existed? If the universe has existed for all eternity, we would expect life to be dead by this point due to the constantly increasing entropy of the universe. If the universe had a beginning, what caused it to enter into existence? Even if we say that a cosmic singularity exploded the universe into existence, we still have the question asking where did the matter come from to begin with (we cannot have this explosion if matter does not exist). While most scientists agree that the universe had a beginning, they cannot really explain how the beginning was set in motion (essentially, nothing…nothing…nothing…and *poof* all the universe exists). It begs the question, how do we get something from nothing? We know that vast amounts of matter do not spontaneously come into existence from nothing. Sure, a scientist can say “well we don’t know and at least we have the balls to say it”, but that is no more noble nor testable than a creationist saying “according to my beliefs, God can create matter out of nothing”. Can any scientist test any hypothesis about the origins of the universe? Of course not (not reliably). And yet scientists then scoff at creationists when they offer up an explanation (even if it is just as untestable as their best theories).
Believe me, I’ve seen this little war going on for quite a while now, and I’ve been on the “front lines” in a way. This is an argument that will not be settled for many years to come. Oddly enough, something that strikes me as strange is that many “scientists” or people opposed to creationism hurl the most vehement insults they can muster at those who do believe in creationism. Richard Dawkins, for example, says that “it is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).” I think this one quote sums up all of the comments posted thus far, and it is a shame that so many have resorted to name-calling and insulting people (which, in many cases, is quite unwarranted and unfitting). Can I choose to believe what I want? I am not going to foist my belief onto you or anybody else…if somebody approaches me to discuss it I will do so happily, but I never seek people out to demean their personal beliefs. If me believing in creationism has no effect on your personal life or rights, why can’t I believe it? I’ll close with some quotes:
“If a book be false in its facts, disprove them; if false in its reasoning, refute it. But for God’s sake, let us freely hear both sides if we choose.” -Thomas Jefferson
“The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.” – Louis Pasteur
“The visible marks of extraordinary wisdom and power appear so plainly in all the works of the creation that a rational creature, who will but seriously reflect on them, cannot miss the discovery of a Deity.” – John Locke
If Dawkins is right, then what can we say about these great minds other than “those poor deluded fools; look at their insanity and wickedness”?
What gets me about YECs is that it’s not just evolution that they’re against – being a YEC requires denial of just about every science.
It’s not just a minor disagreement with the pet theories of a few obscure scientists, either. If YEC is a tenable position, then every single thing we know about physics is wrong.
Also, BP and Exxon/Mobil sure have been slow in adapting the YEC model to petroleum drilling.
JSB,
You make some interesting points, and make me feel guilty for my glib comment above. For now I only have time for a partial response…
I flip a coin, then put it back in my pocket before anybody can see which side landed up. Sally Scientist says she doesn’t know which side landed up. Carl Creationist says it was heads. Are both explanations equally worthy of respect?
I have to say I completely agree with JSB. I’m no YEC but I think you’re drinking the same kool-aid as a YEC to believe in evolution. I mean I could ask as many questions about evolution as about creationism. Why did sex evolve, how did the sight, hearing and feeling evolve? I could go on and on and on. In the end, isn’t being a libertarian all about letting people choose what they want to believe in. Does it really matter if these people choose creationism over evolution if they lead productive lives?
I recently attended a lecture at my church (I’m an atheist that attends church ;) given by Michael Dowd aka: The Evolutionary Evangelist and author of Thank God for Evolution. He’s an example of a Christian who is not limited to absolutist literal interpretations of the bible.
While I don’t share his faith or beliefs, his is a more rational mindset than that of the literalistic evangelicals at sites like Rapture Ready.
These people are nucking futs. Most believe that Jesus will return in body, in their lifetime. A recurring topic of debate is whether Barack Obama is actually the antichrist, or just a precursor to the antichrist.
Which would you rather have in a position of influence in government — Someone who “believes” in evolution, or a YEC fundamentalist that prays every night for the end of the world to come tomorrow?
Now consider that the Bush administration had weekly chats with Ted Haggard and was the largest employer of graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University School of Law, where you too can get your law degree by reading only one book.
roy,
Yes, the Christian God is a trickster…in fact, his name is also Loki.
JSB,
I like this. They question the current theory…therefore Creationism must be true. I’m sure you’ll want to hide behind, “I didn’t say that!” but that is the implicit conclusion many creationists want to convey.
So what? A hole in a theory does not mean the competing theory has to be true. Further, this is not an either/or scencario where we have:
Evolution vs. Creation
It is one theory of evolution vs. all other possible theories of evolution. Note, the notion of creation Creationists put forward is not really a valid theory.
Regarding creation and the universe and evolution:
Great job with the Red Herring, mate! Evolution has very little to do with how the universe got here. See evolution and evolutionary theory works like this:
We assume the existence of a universe with life in it (after all we are living in said universe), so how do we explain the diversity of life, the fossile record, etc.
Besides that rather trivial assumption (trivial in that it doesn’t pertain to the question evolutionary biologists are trying answer) there is little other connection. But mad props for the ol’ college try. But tell the guys at the Intelligent Design Club you should try a better trick next time.
Yes, but lets look at the two sides: On one side we have facts and data. These lead to imperfect theories, but that is the nature of science. On the other side we have religious faith (not just simple faith like how most people have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow) and nonsensical attempts to explain away the facts and data above.
It is insulting in its bluntness. It is a fact that organisms evolve. It is observed. How do you describe a person who denies a fact? Ignorant, stupid or insane pretty much covers all the bases.
Yes, of course. I’m also free to think you a fool for hold what I consider to be a foolish belief. Isn’t the gambler free to believe that since he has had 10 losses he is now due for a win? Isn’t he also foolish for not realizing that the independent nature of the gamble he is taking doesn’t mean he’ll win on the next throw of the die, turn of the wheel, or flip of the cards? Its a two edged sword you’ve grabbed onto there buddy.
And in response to your quotes I’ll leave you with this one from Kenneth R. Miller,
In my experience, the idea that a god created the universe, and thereafter the universe behaved as indicated by science, is not very hotly contested. Obviously we atheists don’t agree, and most scientists would say it’s unscientific (some scientists believe it anyway), but how many people really get worked up about it? The heat comes in only when god is posited as an influence afterwards, contradicting logically consistent explanations offered by biology, geology, archaeology, and so on. I haven’t read Dawkins, but I’d caution against judging a group based on one outspoken member of the group. Or should we see all religious people as we see Jerry Fallwell?
The theory of evolution has holes. Of course it has holes; science isn’t done yet. Creationism has holes too; how and why did God create the universe? Where did God come from? Why did he give us vestigial tails? So scientific and creationist explanations have that in common, but that leads to a big difference between them. The scientific approach exposes its own holes and (often) offers ways to close or shrink those holes. We have quantum mechanics because we found the holes in classical physics. We have classical physics because we found the holes in what used to pass for common sense. We have string theory because of the holes in quantum mechanics, and a giant headache because of the holes in string theory. On the other hand, creationist explanations gloss over their own holes and tout faith as a substitute for closing those holes. That’s why creationist explanations are not explanations, but instead facades over missing explanations. It’s not because science is guaranteed to reveal an answer to every question (or guaranteed to get everything right once an answer is posited), but because science is an honest effort to reconcile observable facts, instead of mere wand-waving while claiming that no reconciliation is needed.
Heh.
I’ll be impressed with Liberty University when they build a full size Ark out of Beaver Wood and float off on it.
I mean, come on. Most people have trouble putting a shelf up straight, but this one randomly picked guy and his 2 sons managed to build a 450 foot long barge with no structural metal in it that could survive a global flood event.
The U.S.S. Nimitz probably couldn’t survive that.
Hell, the U.S.S. Constitution, (Old Ironsides) is only 204 feet long. Could you and 2 of your buddies build that? Why not?
Hell, I would think it would be all Noah could do to fight off the Dinosaurs trying to eat his flowers. (They were vegetarians, you know.)
3 sons, sorry.
Whew! a third of the earth couldn’t have been populated if there were only 2! What was I thinking?
And which son would have been the missing one? The black guy, the jew, or the caucasian?
Ooo! Ooo! I Know! The sons that populated asia and the americas were missing. I guess they built their own boats.
You know, there might be some factual inconsistencies in the whole Ark story…
We know that vast amounts of matter do not spontaneously come into existence from nothing.
As a matter of fact, we do not know that. Nobody knows that.
Sure, a scientist can say “well we don’t know and at least we have the balls to say it”, but that is no more noble nor testable than a creationist saying “according to my beliefs, God can create matter out of nothing”.
No, it isn’t. Acknowledging the limits of one’s knowledge is completely different than asserting one’s own belief as fact. Dawkins et al. are not mocking valid scientific skepticism, they (we) object to the utterly false equivalence being asserted between an untestable article of faith and an incomplete and imperfect scientific model based on observation.
And JSB, you grossly misrepresent Dawkins’s sentiment w.r.t. Jefferson, Pasteur, and Locke. Dawkins’s first explanation for why people don’t believe in evolution is ignorance. Of course Jefferson and Locke were ignorant of ideas which were not created until after their deaths, and while Pasteur may have been exposed to the idea of natural selection (I’m just not sure) it would have grossly predated what we call “evolution” today.
The fact that JSB has a minus 7 karma just shows the bias around here …. Thanks for your response JSB, sorry you wasted your time.
Uh, this is not a test.
James D,
Yes, we have a clear bias to scientific method and reality here.
Why does Karma even matter? It doesn’t affect visibility of comments, you can’t pay your ISP with it, and your significant other won’t be impressed by it. If you see a comment you don’t like; take two minutes to explain why. If you can’t explain why, why would the rest of us care that you don’t like it?
Bible thumping theocrats in congress:
A fundie’s fear of evolution is inversely proportional to their irrationality.
The happy ending to the theocratic Oklahoma legislator’s gaff.
42% of US citizens believe that the what the fuck? Maybe this is an example of the Bell Curve utilised to express I.Q.? “All Creationists, please queue to the left, PLEASE QUEUE TO THE LEFT!!!”
Fuck it — let’s get drunk!
I am truly the voice of reason.
In fact many of the early natural scientists whose work lead to modern physics, geology and biology were deeply believing Christians. Their problem was that they kept finding things that could not be reconciled with a literalist intepretation of the Bible. They were left with a deeply uncomfortable choice – either believe in the Authority of the Text or say, “No, the Bible is wrong on this. It cannot have happened that way.” It is a tribute to their courage and integrity that they made the latter choice.
Drats, couldn’t resist commenting.
I think that evolutionists do themselves no favors when they claim that all science hinges on evolution. That is not true, all science rests on the premise of repeatability.
Belief in repeatability seems to be an element of faith, that is more likely to exist in the theist than atheist. However, it seems unreasonable to deny atheists the right to believe in repeatability. :-)
In this debate, as all creation-evolution debates, there is much insulting of intelligence, and attacks on straw man arguments that are not currently strongly held in the educated of the opposing camp.
Claiming that evolution is a family of possible theories, and that you have to believe in one of them to be rational, but young earth creationism is just 1 theory which can fail on any one point seems remarkably disingenuous. Christian creation science, if allowed the same latitude as evolution, is an evolving (pun intended) set of possible explanations of evidence based on a underlying assumption that the Bible is true.
In answer to an analogy above, the analogy I would use is
a coin lands and is subsequently tossed in the ocean. One person says they don’t know the result, the other has a book which they say Bob helped write, which says Bob was the coin thrower, and it landed heads up. You can argue with this on many levels, but it is not a completely unfounded position.
Even if we assume that evolution is basically true (by which I mean old earth origin-of-life evolution), science as we know it would not grind to halt if that “fact” was not taught to anyone, and they only used the results of repeatable experiments. The fact that many disciplines tie their rationales somewhat loosely to OEOOLE (!) is irrelevant to the practise of those disciplines.
The truth is origin-of-life/the universe debates are completely irrelevant to real science. You can’t repeat it, you can’t prove it, it’s just theory and religion (on both sides).
Get a grip, your anti-theistic bias is showing.
Peter, you clearly have no comprehension of what a ‘theory’ is.
Let me edumacate you!
There are 3 quintessential layers of scientific inquiry.
The first is “Hypothesis”
A hypothesis is what the layperson would call a theory. It’s a reaction to an observation… a partially baked concept that could explain something that you see.
For example… It appears to me that water flows downhill. It would be, therefore, my HYPOTHESIS that water always flows downhill.
Or… It might appear to a Priest that prayers are always answered. His HYPOTHESIS is that prayer is good and useful because they are answered.
The second is ‘Theory’. A theory is a BOATLOAD harder than a hypothesis. To qualify for scientific theory, a hypothesis must contain usefulness, testability, and discountability. I.E. It must be useful, testable, and able to be proved wrong.
For example… the theory that lead can be converted into gold must contain why it’s useful (Duh! Gold!) testability (Ok… how do we do this?) and discountability (Whoa! What conditions would make this impossible?)
So far, the hypothesis that lead can be turned into gold has NOT been elevated to a scientific theory because those conditions have not been met. This is despite astounding amounts of effort by people including Sir Issac Newton.
The theory of evolution, on the other hand… meets those requirements. It’s useful (Woo! Knowledge of teh before times!) testable (Experiments are done every day, baby!) and falsifiable (Show the evidence of a Cambrian Rabbit and it’s over, baby!)
The third is a ‘law’. This is a tiny aspect of a theory so demonstrated as true that it’s no longer questioned. For example, if an object is dropped on earth, it will accelerate at the rate of 32 feet per second every second.
The sad part of the article is not the creationist, but the terrible state of American reporting. There used to be good reporting in this country’s newspapers, but not anymore. Maybe the death came about with the celebrity journalist, or maybe some other time, but it seems to me that journalists are getting their degrees from the same type of schools as creationists.
On the creationists, I don’t care what they believe one way the other. I do care when they try to inject their beliefs into science classes. Maybe the readers of the Agitator do not believe there should be such a thing as public schools, but we do have them, and creationism does not belong in science class. If the creationist is happy to lie for his or her god, that is between them and said deity, but keep it out of the schools.
Christian creation science, if allowed the same latitude as evolution, is an evolving (pun intended) set of possible explanations of evidence based on a underlying assumption that the Bible is true.
…which is why it is NOT SCIENCE. The underlying assumptions of science are themselves based on OBSERVATION.
It is not a subtle distinction.
Where to start? No, evolution is a fact. Evolutionary theory is the attempt to explain the observed facts and the process of how the facts come to be. And the current neo-Darwinian theory isn’t the only theory. For example, there is the work of Lynn Margulis with endosymbiotic theory. Initially it was rejected and heavily criticized and is not generally accepted, and it was not part of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. So Peter you are simply just wrong.
No you actually have a book written by Paul, George, Joe, Frank, Walter and maybe a few people you don’t know. It has gone through numerous translations form an initial set of languages most of which are now dead. Bob never actually wrote a book, and the people writing claimed to have known Bob.
Okay I’m not trying to be a jerk, well not a big one anyways, but are you seriously just not aware of the fact that evolution is fact and doesn’t deal with the issue of origins of life or are you being deliberately obtuse? Organisms change over time. We’ve seen in the field, in the fossil record, and in the laboratory. And evolution assumes the existence of life and seeks to explain why it looks the way it does. The issue of origins is more or less a seperate question.
Serious question: we are not to teach facts because it makes some people whose faith is, essentially weak, upset?
Your anti-science bias is showing. Seriously, science can look at non-repeatable events. After all, anything not in the laboratory is essentially non-repeatable since you can rarely if ever recreate the exact conditions from observation to observation. Alot of physics, meteorology, and even some parts of biology cease being science if we adhere to your strict view of repeatability.
Very eloquently stated, JSB; I’m sad to see that it appears many readers have rejected your thoughts out of hand.
I also find it remarkable that a sizable number of commenters seem to hold a religious faith in science to do something science by definition cannot do: explain the unobservable… while at the same time heaping ridicule upon another religion.
Whoops…the following,
should read as,
I reject them because they aren’t fact based, employ faulty logic, and engage in rhetorical slight of hand. As for rhetoricla slight of hand you do so yourself,
I can have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow. Why? Because it has risen every day for the 41 years I’ve been alive. I have a very large data set that sets the probability of the sun rising tomorrow damn near 1. That “faith” is based on a large amount of empirical evidence and an understanding of celestial mechanics of our solar system.
Now, a person can also have faith in something despite a lack of empirical evidence and even a lack of an underlying theory. Case in point: religions.
Now, to equate the two versions of “faith” is, IMO, a rhetorical slight of hand. Yes I have faith in the scientific method in discovering that what we don’t know given enough time. But that is because science has had so many successes in doing just that.
As for the unobservable, it is outside the realm of science. If God or some other phenomenon is truly unobservable science is silent on that matter. Anyone who claims otherwise is being…uhhmmm…misleading is a nice way to put it.
Woog,
It depends on what you mean by “explain the unobservable”. It’s pretty ordinary for science to work with things that can be observed only indirectly, like gravity. You can’t see, taste, hear, or (oddly enough) feel gravity, but you can observe patterns in the physical world which are best explained by gravity. That’s also how we came by the theory of evolution; there are observable facts that are best explained by evolution. So it’s not really necessary to directly observe evolution in action to say with great certainty that it’s real.
Fortunately, though, scientists have directly observed significant parts of evolution. Speciation has been observed and even recreated in the lab. Natural selection of traits within a species is now so routine it’s not even contested. You can see the mechanisms underlying evolution — like mutation — with a microscope. It’s true that scientists have not created life from non-life, but neither have they created gravity from non-gravity.
Your statements suggests that you’re putting an impossible, and unnecessary, limit on the explanatory powers of science. It’s only sensical if you define “unobservable” so strictly that “what goes up must come down” is on equal truthiness as “God threw an apple at my head”. Under that definition, the computer you’re using to comment today came about by luck, because the science which purported to explain electromagnetism, polymers, semiconductors, ore refining, and the gravity holding it to your desk was all unjustified.
And why do you dismiss so many of the responses to JSB as rejecting him out of hand? I see several attempts to take him seriously and respond in kind. It’s sad to see he hasn’t responded, presumably because he has other things to do. Come to think of it, so do I.
So far, the hypothesis that lead can be turned into gold has NOT been elevated to a scientific theory because those conditions have not been met. This is despite astounding amounts of effort by people including Sir Issac Newton.
Actually, lead has been turned into gold – in minute quantities in a particle accelerator, but your point remains valid.
Try googling “Synthetic Life”. Several groups of scientists using different approaches are tantalizingly close to creating life from scratch. Paradoxically, the real “intelligent design” of a life form may prove beyond any doubt that evolution through natural selection is in fact real, since that will allow for the lab testing of variables not currently possible.
(Some claim to have already created synthetic life, but I believe they “just” built a genome and stuck it into a cell -I wouldn’t count that myself).
Creationist weighing in here: This whole thing is sad. In the end, it matters not whether God brought all this around through evolution or not, He is still the creator and use whatever means He wants to bring it around to its desired end. To quote a previous poster, the anti-theistic bias here is overwhelming.
Flame away.
Yall are criticizing a PhD in neuroscience from Case Western Reserve. It ain’t like this guy is an idiot. Granted there are probably some here, but I’d be curious to know where are all yall’s PhDs in science from ye who babble on with such authority?
I’m not one to get in to a scientific debate, I don’t know crap about science. However, the philosophical underpinnings between the two camps have to be realized. It takes as much faith to believe in evolution (I would say more) as it does in creationism. If you can’t even acknowledge that, then rational and intelligent discussion will not even begin to take place.
I’d be curious to know where are all yall’s PhDs in science from ye who babble on with such authority?
Mine’s from The University of Arizona. Postdoctoral training at NIH.
Which doesn’t make me an authority on biology so much as someone who knows firsthand that having a PhD doesn’t necessarily inoculate one from profoundly unscientific thinking, particularly where matters of faith are concerned. As Dr. DeWitt demonstrates.
One doesn’t need a PhD (or frankly, even a freshmen chemistry course) to understand the difference between the scientific method (observe, hypothesize, test, observe, revise hypothesis, test, revise, observe, etc…) and creation “science” (assert the existence of a Creator, look for data that supports assertion).
“Time spent arguing with the faithful is, oddly enough, almost never wasted”–Christopher Hitchens
I’m starting to wonder.
“Argument from authority” is a logical fallacy, not an aspirational goal.
roy–Exactly the point I meant to make, but much more succinctly made. Thank you.
Nope, so the remaining choices are even less appealling.
So how can you judge the merit of the arguments here?
No, far less faith actually because those of us who believe in evolution have this stuff called evidence. The fossil record, speciation events that have been observed in both the field and lab. We know that organisms change over time at a genetic level.
We don’t have to acknowledge as true something that simple is not true.
roy said, “Fortunately, though, scientists have directly observed significant parts of evolution. Speciation has been observed and even recreated in the lab.”
No one questions the matter of mutations occuring in living organisms. The problem with your above assertion is that you imply it fits in with the macroevolutionary viewpoint of living creatures mutating from lower forms to more complex and able forms.
The unnamed lab experiments you refer to I can only assume to be the ones producing mutated fruitflies with additional wings, etc. The results of that experiment, applied logically, *harms* the hypothesis of macroevolution as the mutated fruitflies were unable to function, thus were not the “fittest” for survival.
I’m not aware of any solid science shown to advance macroevolution. As such, it annoys me that a handful of lab results are misapplied and held up as “proof” that “science” has spoken, waving them around like any other religious icon while loudly proclaiming any person holding a contrary opinion to be stupid and ignorant… all while blind to the parallels of their own behavior to that which they ridicule.
Woog,
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Sorry for not naming experiments previously, I was working from vague memory. You can find a list of speciation events here. The list includes both speciation events believed to have happened naturally, and speciation events which were directly observed or man-made.
The development of fruitlies with stunted wings was mutation without speciation, but I see your point. However, you’re mistaken in your reasoning of what it means for evolutionary theory. By happy coincidence I stumbled across a web page recently that happens to directly address your point. Basically, stunted wings are potentially beneficial to a fruitfly, just not to the fruitfly in the niche is currently occupies. So your point only addresses “fitness” as too narrowly defined to be relevant. One might as well say that getting taller as we grow up is harmful because we don’t fit in car safety seats any more, or that the development of a brain is harmful because it requires so much oxygen.
You make want to spend an afternoon reading that site. It directly addresses a host of common creationist arguments. The writer is occasionally too snide, but for the most part he’s alright.
Even if we accept your fruitfly wing point, there have been more clearly beneficial mutations, such as sickle cell anemia (beneficial to people in malaria-ridden regions, though the downsides have been more prevalent lately as malaria is beat back), and mutations reducing human vulnerability to HIV and AIDs. Both those are discussed on that same page, with footnotes. Even the creationist organization Answers in Genesis largely concedes this point here, though they hedge and suggest that individual mutations must be beneficial in all environments to be consistent with evolutationary theory.
That is part of evolution. Thus, by your admission, although in not so few words, evolution is a fact.
Macroevolution information. Further, the process that biologists posit for microevolution is precisely the same process at work in macroevolution. In fact, if a cat gave birth to a dog we’d have evidence against evolution and in support of creation. And a link for information on speciation–i.e. macroevolution.
That is not what constitutes a speciation event. You are either being deliberately misleading or are unaware of what you are talking about. For example,
This is simply just wrong. Stunningly wrong.
Probably because you haven’t looked, IMO.
I think you are looking in the mirror when you wrote the above.