236 Comments

1. ShrinkWrapped:

Intelligent Design can appropriately be taught in a course on religion or philosophy, perhaps even as part of a course on Mythology. The fundamental problem with teaching it as science is that it doesn’t propose any tenets which can be tested and the sine qua non of science is the testable hypothesis. Anything that can not be tested, even in theory, cannot be considered science.

Aug 2, 2005 - 1:18 pm 2. ed:

It can’t even be considered a theory. A mistake Roger makes in the original post.

Aug 2, 2005 - 1:30 pm 3. Pat Curley:

I’ve always felt that this was a nothing issue, seldom worth the ink (err, electrons) expended on it. The pro-evolutionists seem to relish the fight every bit as much as the anti-evolutionists, but at the end of the day, does it matter at all what somebody believes on this topic? Hinderaker, who’s a pretty bright guy, says he doesn’t believe in evolution. That does not seem to be holding him back any in life or in the blogosphere.

Aug 2, 2005 - 1:38 pm 4. m.g.:

Check out the Discovery Institute, which I believe has been leading the fight for intelligent design. For all I know, the place may be full of fundamentalist types, but at a quick glance, it doesn’t seem to be inhabited by a bunch of Fred Flintstones. Sample from a Bibliography of Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Publications link off its home page:

“Critics of the theory of intelligent design often claim that design advocates don‚Äôt publish their work in appropriate scientific literature. For example recently on March 23, 2005 Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, stated in USA Today that design theorists “aren‚Äôt published because they don‚Äôt have scientific data.” Other critics have made the more specific claim that design advocates do not publish their works in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as if such journals represented the only avenue of legitimate scientific publication. In fact, scientists routinely publish their work in peer-reviewed scientific journals, in peer-reviewed scientific books, in scientific anthologies and conference proceedings (edited by their scientific peers)and in trade presses. In fact, some of the most important and groundbreaking work in the history of science was first published not in scientific journal articles but scientific books, including Copernicus‚Äô De Revolutionibus Newton‚Äôs Principia, and Darwin‚Äôs Origin of Species the later which was published in a prominent British trade press and was not peer-reviewed in the modern sense of the term. In any case the scientists who advocate the theory of intelligent design, have published their work in a variety of appropriate technical venues including peer-reviewed scientific journals, in peer-reviewed scientific books (some in mainstream university presses), in trade presses, in peer-edited scientific anthologies, in peer-edited scientific conference proceedings and in peer-reviewed philosophy of science journals and books. We provide below an annotated bibliography of technical publications of various kinds that support, develop or apply the theory of intelligent design.”

Aug 2, 2005 - 1:52 pm 5. Katherine:

ìHinderaker, who’s a pretty bright guy, says he doesn’t believe in evolution. That does not seem to be holding him back any in life or in the blogosphere.î

I am sorry to hear that. That being said, I doubt that he would suffer professionally or personally if he also preferred Ptolemaic to Copernican view of the Solar System. Unless of course he was a professional astronomer or a space engineer.

Other bright, successful people believe in ghosts, UFOs, homeopathy, human activity responsible for ìclimate changeî, omnipotence of CIA, and 5,000-year-old Earth. Does not make any of it true.

Aug 2, 2005 - 1:54 pm 6. Syl:

You know, I’ve observed cats for a long time and have found many human qualities in them. I’ll not go into detail, that’s for another time and place, but I’m not anthropomorphizing. In fact I think the concept of anthropomorphizing is ultimately narcissis….oh shoot why did I choose two words I can’t spell…

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that we see human qualities in animals, not because we’re projecting but because we actually share those qualities with other mammals. We have origins in common.

The only reason human females don’t lay eggs is because we’re more closely related to possums than to ducks.

Take that, Bush!

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:03 pm 7. Katherine:

Make it: ìhuman activity PRIMARELY responsible for ìclimate changeîî.

(Bastard Preveev is still holding up in that cave in Waziristan. Send guns. Keep the bloody lawyers. And donate money to Roger and Wretchard.)

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:06 pm 8. Syl:

It’s the genome, stupid!

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:07 pm 9. Syl:

Um, that was the last statement of my earlier comment…not responding to poor Katherine who got in between. LOL

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:08 pm 10. syn:

Try to keep an open mind.

Our modern day tendency to rely purely upon Scientific Theories as the gateway to all that is Proven Intelligence has given us a false sense of human superiority.

“As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension and man began to lose control of it.” Vaclav Havel

In other words, we are losing our humanity because we intellectually believe ourselves to be the ultimate proven superiors on everything unanswered.

Of course, Science will never be able to prove one daunting theory thrown around these days, that being, Secular Humanists are smarter, wiser and more human than all others.

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:08 pm 11. flenser:

Isaac Newton, the greatest scientific mind of his time, and one of the greatest of all time, had a number of rather unconventional beliefs.

http://www.cftech.com/BrainBank/OTHERREFERENCE/BIOGRAPHY/Newtonian.html

And don’t even get me started on the followers of the Rev. Thomas Bayes. Man, what a bunch of cultists!

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:13 pm 12. Syl:

Syn

Humans can have both. A rational mind AND a connection with every other living creature on the planet.

We are all earthlings and all related.

Perhaps the seed was planted by some being or drifted in from space (which doesn’t answer anything) but once that string of DNA formed, the rest is history.

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:28 pm 13. Richard Bennett:

Our modern day tendency to rely purely upon Scientific Theories as the gateway to all that is Proven Intelligence has given us a false sense of human superiority.

You certainly don’t get a sense of human superiority from the creationists; quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve known monkeys that were smarter than the guys at the Discovery Institute. Their whole program relies on ignorance of the scientific method and a lot of charlatan speculation, and it’s all rooted in the belief that the godless materialism of Marx, Darwin, and Freud makes our children gay liberal feminist devil-worshippers. But even devil-worshipping is a religious expression, and they don’t get that, or that Darwin has precious little to do with Marx or Freud.

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:31 pm 14. JPS:

Syn:

“Try to keep an open mind.”

I do (try, that is). But as P.J. O’Rourke put it, “I believe in things that can be proven by reason and experimentation, and believe you me I want to see the logic and the lab equipment.”

I’m a scientist, though by no means an expert on this topic. I’m not going to get snotty about people who believe in intelligent design. But I have zero obligation, in the spirit of open-mindedness, to consider it a contending theory on an equal footing with currently accepted theories of evolution, which is what teaching it in schools would strongly imply.

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:32 pm 15. chuck:

And don’t even get me started on the followers of the Rev. Thomas Bayes. Man, what a bunch of cultists!

A posteriori, I compute a high probability that you are looking for a fight

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:41 pm 16. Silicon valley Jim:

Although I’m a big fan of the President, I think that he’s wrong on this. Intelligent design, for reasons noted well by others above, is not science.

Having said that, I’ll go on to observe that I would be far less concerned by the teaching of intelligent design along with evolution than I am by “bilingual” education (which nearly always means unilingual education in Spanish, virtually guaranteed permanent economic underclass status to the students), “whole-language” reading (some “educators” still insist that buying Hooked on Phonics is a terrible thing to do to your child), or than I was by “new math” (yes, it’s possible to derive the arithmetic of natural numbers from set theory, but it’s an abominable way to teach the arithmetic of natural numbers).

It’s worthy of note because the President said it, but, even if it were implemented, it would be far from the worst thing about our public schools.

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:42 pm 17. Richard Bennett:

Right, ID is not even a theory, let alone a competing one. It’s simply a conjecture that there may be an invisible force manipulating the data that by its very nature we can never observe, measure, or test.

This isn’t science, it’s at best a sort of poetry.

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:43 pm 18. flenser:

chuck

Just checking if charlie is awake. Guess not.

If the theory of evolution was revealed to be completely false, what actual science would be affected? It’s not quite in the same league as the General Theory of Relativity, is it?

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:46 pm 19. Richard Bennett:

Evolution by natural selection is the single unifying theory of biology, flenser. If you’re willing to do away with biology, we can afford to dump it.

I believe the universe and all forms of life were created by a Giant Pink Bunny, and I want the schools to teach this as a competing theory. The Giant Pink Bunny wasn’t very smart, which is why we have AIDS, tsunamis, and Arianna Huffington. I think it explains much more than the “Jesus did it” theory.

Are you with me?

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:51 pm 20. Rick Ballard:

As a human I find myself incapable of entertaining ontological concepts that do not incorporate anthropocentristic heurism as the definitive approach to the resolution of any question that I am capable of posing.

Truepeers – Kevin – did I get it right? Totalitarian secular rationalism is the only the only ‘Scientifically Approved’ response, right?

We must learn to set aside all thoughts of how vast the universe is and what the totality of the insignificance of human existence within a larger schema might be, right?

On to greater scientific ‘proofs’!!

Scientific proof = CW cubed, until abandoned.

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:51 pm 21. Terrye:

I saw that Glenn Reynolds was all excited about this too.

My God, what a total waste of time issue.

The president just said that it should be left to local school boards and that students should know what the debate was about. B.F.D.

When I was a kid people who believed in continental shift were considered crazy [when all you had to do was look at a map of the world and do the jugsaw puzzle thing], dinosaurs were just big lizards and had nothing to do with birds, there were only nine planets and anyone who said different was wacko and craters were caused by volcanoes not asteroids. you betcha.

It seems to me that the scientific community is not as open to ideas as it likes to think it is.

I don’t know that I believe entirely that man evolved from ape like critters but I don’t believe that I came form a rib and a hank of hair either.

But it really pisses me off when people can not even talk about somehting like this without getting all ideological about it.

It is like the Schiavo thing when an agnostic like me can not feel squemish about starving a brain damaged woman to death without being called a “right wing evangelical”. And now this.

It is like some witch hunt. Throw her in the pond and if she drowns she is not a Jesus freak. They walk on water you know.

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:52 pm 22. mcg:

The once chairman of the electrical engineering department at the University of Texas was a creationist of the young-earth variety.

And the dude was friggin’ brilliant. Many a haughty evolutionist who thought they’d be able to take that backwards religious nut down a peg or two quickly found themselves humbled by how well he acquitted himself. He was a very gracious and kind man who quite enjoyed civil debate.

I don’t know what has become him, but it was clear his views didn’t slow him down. Though of course, evolution and creationism don’t tend to have a significant impact on the field of electrical engineering

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:54 pm 23. mcg:

Throw her in the pond and if she drowns she is not a Jesus freak. They walk on water you know.

Actually, Bush does walk on water. Only when the New York Times reported on it, the headline was, “Bush Can’t Swim.”

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:56 pm 24. Katherine:

Syl,

We humans share enzymes with other eukaryotes going as far as yeasts. That is why the research done on worms, yeast and Drosophila is relevant to development of therapies and drugs for humans. We can measure the rate of genetic drift by looking at the changes in the DNA of the shared genes.

I think that main misunderstanding of the evolution comes from the fact that is it commonly taught as if was a linear process: the fish evolved into amphibians, amphibians evolved into reptiles etc. Evolution did not happen in a straight line; it can be better represented as a multi-branched bush with majority of the branches leading to evolutionary dead ends.

We did not evolve from apes ñ we simply share a common ancestor with them. That is a profound difference.

Our biological relationship to all other living beings does not mean that we need to reject God (how all this all started is anybodyís guess), or give us license to abandon morality. As moral animals, the only ones (as far as we know) capable of distinguishing good from evil it is critical for us to strive toward the good and reject the evil.

Incidentally, I personally think that the many ìprogressivesî are ìforî the evolution only because enough conservatives are against it. Otherwise you would not see them assuming such anti-scientific attitudes as hysterical opposition to genetic engineering.

PS. I will NOT forget the genome thing!

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:57 pm 25. Jamie Irons:

I mean no disrespect to anyone’s religion, least of all the president’s.

But first of all, neither “Intelligent Design” nor evolution is a theory.

As has been pointed out above, no conceivable experiment could falsify the “theory” of “intelligent design.” Therefore, it is not a part of the human endeavor we call “science,” and not a theory.

Evolution is a fact. More than a hundred years of effort have provided not a single counter-instance to the fact of evolution. Everyday medical experience supports the fact of evolution in such non-controversial phenomena as the appearance in pathogens of drug-resistant strains.

If there is “intelligent design” in the universe, it might be more promising to look for it at a still deeper level, like particle physics or the large-scale structure of the universe (two sides of the same coin, I am told).

Believers might be heartened by Kenneth Miller’s Finding Darwin’s God. Miller effectively destroys the intelligent designers and all other anti-evolution arguments that have so far been put forward, but manages to remain a devout Catholic.

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 2:57 pm 26. Byron00:

The recent gains of the creationism/ID movement stand as a monument to a miserable job of public education by the scientific establishment.

Ignoring creationism has proven to be a terrible strategy; it has to be confronted.

By all means it should be covered in science classes, in the sense that it should be set out and exposed as the junk science that it is. Kids need to be innoculated against this nonsense, and there is no better forum for accomplishing that than the science classroom itself.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:02 pm 27. Bostonian:

Terrye: “It seems to me that the scientific community is not as open to ideas as it likes to think it is.”

Indeed it is not. I have read a lot of the history of scientific discovery, and there’s an inescapable theme:

People who call themselves scientists have ignored and denied physical evidence time and time again, when that evidence goes against theory.

It is easier to carry around tidy theories in your head than to carry around the physical observations represented by those theories, but it’s the observations that are real, not the theories.

In the case of ID, as I understand it, nobody is talking about physical evidence, so this point is somewhat tangential to the ID debate. But it also matters because of this: the important bit about science is to understand the process, what it takes to understand the universe and make accurate predictions about it. And I doubt very much that our schools do any good at teaching that anyway, simply because so few people really really get it.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:03 pm 28. Richard Bennett:

The once chairman of the electrical engineering department at the University of Texas was a creationist of the young-earth variety.

I think his name was Patterson. He died and went to hell.

Jamie Irons makes an interesting point. ID isn’t just wrong as an attempt at science, it’s also a heresy according to standard Christianity. God doesn’t have time to manipulate day-to-day events in his creation, and to say that he does is to sin. Or so I’m told.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:03 pm 29. mcg:

Nope. Wasn’t Patterson; that’d I’d remember. You, on the other hand, are apparently an asshole.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:04 pm 30. flenser:

Terrye

You just have to take it all with the right attitude. Indifference goes a long way in solving lifes problems. And the ability to laugh at people who take themselves too seriously is indispensable.

Richard

If the theory were shown to be junk tomorrow, how would that impact the existing scientific field of cell biology, to pick one example.

My understanding is that current cutting edge biology is crossing over into physics in some ways, as we drill down to the molecular level. It all seems like fascinating stuff, but its dependence on the theory of evolution escapes me.

If is a real life scientific theory, what tests might we conduct to verify it?

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:05 pm 31. Richard Bennett:

There was a guy in the math departemnt named James Wall who refused to teach blacks. They said he was brilliant too.

And yes, I am an asshole.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:05 pm 32. Rick Ballard:

Now there’s something I can’t argue about.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:07 pm 33. Patrick Tyson:

No surprise…

http://slate.msn.com/id/1006378/

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:07 pm 34. Richard Bennett:

Cell biology – which is mainly about chemistry and physics – wouldn’t be much affected flenser, but mutating viruses and other organism and reproductive behavior don’t make any sense without selection.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:08 pm 35. Terrye:

Jamie:

I don’t pretend to be an expert on this but there are people that can believe in evolution in nature and still not accept as fact the idea that there is not some higher power who had a hand in our existence.

If I remember correctly Deists believed that God created the laws of nature and allowed them to take their course.

But in this, as in the debate on embryonic stem cell research, much is not known and it seems to me that just attacking someone’s views on the grounds those views may be based on their religious or moral beleifs is not fair.

For instance, ed made a good point the other day in regards to embryonic stem cell research. He said that in twenty years and millions of dollars of research there has been no real usable results. Now in twenty more years if that is still the case and the debate fires up again will people be able to doubt or question the research without being accused of being anti science? Or too religious or whatever?

The president said it should be left to local school boards. Should he interfere?

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:10 pm 36. flenser:

Jamie

“As has been pointed out above, no conceivable experiment could falsify the “theory” of “intelligent design.” ”

I’m drawing a blank as I try to think of experiments which would falsify the theory of evolution. Can you help me out?

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:11 pm 37. flenser:

Richard

I don’t dispute that, but “not making sense without selection” is not quite the same thing as “requiring the theory of evolution”. There is a rather large gap there, don’t you think?

A virus mutating into another virus is a qualitatively different thing than a dog mutating into a fish, for example.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:16 pm 38. flenser:

Looks like another fun discussion is under way, but I need to go.

Later, all.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:17 pm 39. Richard Bennett:

I’m drawing a blank as I try to think of experiments which would falsify the theory of evolution. Can you help me out?

Put some bacteria in a Petri dish, let it grow, and apply a quantity of penicillin sufficient to kill 95% of the bacteria.

Take your survivor bacteria and let it grow and repeat the penicillin treatment at the same dosage.

If the results of the second treatment are the same as the first treatment, evolution by natural selection is false.

Now what happens when you do this?

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:18 pm 40. Katherine:

Jamie,

ìMiller effectively destroys the intelligent designers and all other anti-evolution arguments that have so far been put forward, but manages to remain a devout Catholic.î

I was brought up in a very Catholic way and, as far as I know, the Roman Catholic Church has currently no problem with the concept of evolution (they go into complicated mental gymnastics on the subject of ensoulment).

Terrye,

ìThe president said it should be left to local school boards. Should he interfere?î

As far as I am concerned local school boards can institute teaching of flat Earth ìtheoryî, if this is what the parents desire. Market will sort the chaff from the wheat. That is also evolutionary process.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:23 pm 41. mcg:

There was a guy in the math departemnt named James Wall who refused to teach blacks. They said he was brilliant too.

OK, I see. So you’re comparing someone whose personal beliefs had a direct and negative impact on the execution of his job to someone for whose beliefs did not to so, but who was willing to discuss them outside of the classroom, even with those who were antagonistic to them.

Sounds sensible to me.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:23 pm 42. Richard Bennett:

Flenser, evolution doesn’t say that a dog (I typed that “god”) mutates into a fish. It says that over time, dogs develop characteristics that help them reproduce more effectively, such as a toleraance for little old ladies or annoying human infants. If you take two litters of puppies and put them on separate islands with no other dogs and then check back in a million years you’ll find some interesing things have happened. One island may have dog blogs, for example, and the other could be stuck in Old Media, running Purina ads over and over. You never know.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:24 pm 43. flenser:

With respect, Richard, this is akin to noting that the descents of people in sunny climes will have larger amounts of melanin. Or that we can selectivly breed for baldness.

That is not at issue. What is is whether or not selection can lead, not to a different strain of bacteria or virus, but to a different species of life.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:28 pm 44. Terrye:

Today I heard that the ACLU does not even believe in searching bags at the airport, much less racial profiling..what has this got to do with anything?

The ACLU is so rigid in its belief system that it can not even allow debate on the subject when lives are at stake.

I see that kind of rigid thinking in this debate and nobody’s life is hanging in the balance.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:30 pm 45. Jim Bass:

The issue is how our kids’ time is put to use at school. People rightly get concerned about religion being taught in school. But those same folks have no problem with all the self-esteem crap that functions like a secular religion.

We now have phony 8th grade “graduations” as kids move from junior high to high school. We have DARE pushing out arts and music education. We have “abilities awareness” day complete with special assemblies. My daughter loved the latter.

But when Memorial Day arrived I asked her what the holiday signified. (She’s going in 8th grade, has straight A’s). She had no idea. None. Imagine, a holiday designed to honor the memory of those who died for our country and the school system can’t bother to teach the students about it. There’s ideology behind that omission, just as much ideology as the fundamentalists want to impose.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:31 pm 46. mcg:

Now I remember; it was John Cogdell. He had a Ph.D. from MIT and was a professor at U.T. for about 35 years. Funny beard, but a good guy.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:37 pm 47. chuck:

Last time we had this discussion, Charlie(C) classified ID as metaphysics rather than science because it was not falsifiable. I have no problem with teaching metaphysics *as* metaphysics: there are mysteries that seem beyond the grasp of science and fall into the category of faith, and I see no reason to not discuss or teach such topics. Science, on the other hand, deals with the knowable and demonstrable. That is its power, and it advances *because* it is driven by evidence rather than belief. Indeed, I would posit that the knowable universe is far stranger than anyone could imagine without being guided by the evidence.

Mystery has its place. There is no reason to castrate thought and feeling and play strictly by the numbers. But mystery is no substitute for a good lawyer in drawing up a contract, nor is ID a substitute for evolution by natural selection.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:41 pm 48. mcg:

What I’ve always found interesting about young-earth creationism, BTW (as someone who rejects it) is that it requires microevolution to take place to support its claims (specifically, to get from the Ark to the full diversity of current animal life). And not only that, it has to happen far faster than any naturalistic version of same.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:42 pm 49. Katherine:

Chuck,

This is singularly well put.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:45 pm 50. Richard Nieporent:

As a physicist, let me voice my complete agreement with Silicon Valley Jim and Richard Bennett. Intelligent Design is not a theory. A scientific theory requires the ability to be able to make predictions that can be tested by experiment. Intelligent Design advocates attempts to use the lack of a theory to validate their belief. Basically, what Intelligent Design does is to state that it is impossible by mere change for complex systems to form on their own, thus there must be a creator. In other words if you cannot show the mechanisms by which a complex system is formed, then Intelligent Design must be true. It’s funny but that is the same logic that primitive people used from time immemorial to claim the existence of their gods.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:47 pm 51. ElMondo:

“It seems to me that the scientific community is not as open to ideas as it likes to think it is.”

In all due respect, of course it’s not. It’s not supposed to be. What science does is provide a framework for analyzing those ideas, not simply provide an inbox for concepts that are new. You don’t simply accept an idea right off the bat, you analyze it, you see how it fits with other established versions, and you test it’s validity and veracity. That’s science. It’s a process. Dismissal by scientists of a given new concept is not the final judgement of the concept, it’s merely a challenge to apply scientific method to it in order to determine it’s viability (Note that I’m not saying “prove” or “disprove”; such finality is rarely achieved in science, and isn’t the point of science to begin with. Science only dares answer to possibility and probability; it’s only humans analyzing the results of science that talk about something being proven or not).

You mentioned continental “shift” (I think you meant “drift”, right?) and it’s true that Wegener’s idea was not initially believed, especially since he was a meteorologist and not a geologist and couldn’t explain what forces were behind that phenomenon, but you have to also remember that it’s people in that same discipline — geology — that after study, gathering knowledge, considering phenomena they noticed from other disciplines (such as climatology and paleontology; continental drift resolved longstanding issues in those fields), and plain considering the alternatives that finally accepted his theory as valid. They did it in the face of evidence, and not for any other reason. Science provided a framework for them to notice that continental drift provided a lot of answers for things like mountain ranges, fossil evidence of climatic differences, earthquakes, volcanoes, etc., and also provided a framework to determine that continental drift wasn’t contradicted by other observations. Did it provide the final answer? Believe it or not, no. The original objection — What could the driving force behind what’s now called “plate tectonics” be? — still stands, oddly enough, although currently there are likely answers (such as: convection currents in the upper mantle). But the whole point is that even though the doubters’ original objection is still unanswered, the science of geology has come around to embracing a concept those doubters doubted in their time.

The scientific community is definitely not automatically “open” to new ideas. It’s not their job to be.

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:57 pm 52. Rick Ballard:

Chuck,

Well done.

“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your

philosophy.”

Aug 2, 2005 - 3:59 pm 53. Richard Bennett:

In other words if you cannot show the mechanisms by which a complex system is formed, then Intelligent Design must be true.

That’s exactly right. There are gaps in our knowledge. Science aims to close these gaps by discovering the mechanisms at work, while ID would have us all stop discovering and drop down on our knees, genuflect and cry “hallelujah”, like the tribals in some bad movie about cannibals in New Guinea.

ID is theology, not even metaphysics and certainly not science.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:01 pm 54. Silicon valley Jim:

the Roman Catholic Church has currently no problem with the concept of evolution

Absolutely. In a theology class in a Catholic high school in 1965 (taught by a Dominican priest, so Thomas Aquinas was the philosopher beyond question), I was taught that the Catholic church has no disagreement with the theory of evolution, provided that the theory does not extend to the evolution of the human soul. Since the human soul is not within the purview of science, or, in other words, science has no need of the hypothesis of a human soul, there’s no problem.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:05 pm 55. Patrick Tyson:

The Times They Are A-Changin’…err…A-Evolvin’ (hint, hint)…

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/catholic/schonborn-NYTimes.html

Dictionary.com definition of a deism:

The belief, based solely on reason, in a God who created the universe and then abandoned it, assuming no control over life, exerting no influence on natural phenomena, and giving no supernatural revelation.

Amen. I’m a deist.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:27 pm 56. Ari Tai:

re: ID. I don’t know folks, this discussion sure sounds like other arguments I’ve heard where a statistical sample of beliefs (of the unwashed and/or the “experts”) is thought to imply a truth, v. “this is (just) what a majority of X believe.”

Some of the dogs and cats I’ve seen sure look designed. As do a lot of flora that I eat. And then there are those trademarked pigs with an extra set of ribs. Seems to have happened after their exposure to humans. Some in just the last few decades.

The magic of even a proto-DNA/RNA/… emerging out of a provident soup and electrical static sure sounds like a zillion monkeys at keyboards regularly producing a Romeo and Juliet. 14 billion years across many billions of suns doesn’t seem like near enough to improve the numerator. To say nothing of a reliance on the anthropomorphic principle.

Too bad Popper isn’t still around.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:29 pm 57. Rick Ballard:

“To say nothing of a reliance on the anthropomorphic principle.”

What? Are you suggesting that there is more than can be determined by an anthrpocentric heuristic? My God, man, that’s heresy!!

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:35 pm 58. Terrye:

ElMondo:

Of course I meant continental drift.

And years ago when I took biology menopause was treated like a disorder, not a natural process. It is all a matter of perception.

My point is not that scientists are supposed to believe any theory that comes along, but that they do tend to believe theories that turn out to be false.

I am not so much arguing this theory, as I am pointing out the fact that people are always looking for something to bitch about and make an issue out of and blow out of all proportion.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:41 pm 59. RiverRat:

This is the only direct quote from Dubya

“I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought,” Bush said. “You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.”

Can someone explain to me (or yourself) where the word “alongside” appears in this quote?

The leftard hack wrote “alongside”, not Dubya.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:46 pm 60. Richard Bennett:

“Alongside” is a summary of the position Dubya clearly stated (as much as he ever clearly states anything.) Dubya believes we were all created by the Baby Jesus, and he’s said so many times.

The MSM didn’t misquote, they accurately summarized, so deal with it and stop acting like a whiny little girl.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:51 pm 61. Rick Ballard:

Dammit, RiverRat, Glen Reynolds already built the strawman upon which this discussion hinges.

He’s a law professor and has something to do with the Internet. Who the hell are you to drag actual facts into the discussion?

PS – Thank you for your dedication to the work of the SwiftVets. There are always those who remember.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:53 pm 62. Tom Jedrzejewicz:

As has been noted here, there is LOTS of ideology and pseudo-religion nonsense prattled about the public education system.

One of the reason that ID and creationist types are so intent on getting their points of view mentioned officially is that evolution is so frequently used to argue against the existence of God. Lest some think this is nonsense, when I was taught evolution in high school it was pointedly mentioned how it HAD to have taken more than 7 days, so the Genesis accoutn must be incorrect.

ID is compelling, and I believe it, but it is not provable. That we cannot see how the mousetrap evolved does not prove that it could not have evolved, only that we can’t figure out how it could have.

I don’t think it should be taught as a “co-equal” theory with evolution, but it should be noted, perhaps as a side-bar in the textbooks, so as to eliminate the hostility to religion prevalent.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:56 pm 63. Rick Ballard:

Shoot, Richard, you don’t need to make a proffer of additional facts, We (or at least I) accept your original self-analysis.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:58 pm 64. chuck:

Flenser,

What is is whether or not selection can lead, not to a different strain of bacteria or virus, but to a different species of life.

The mechanism of speciation was a big topic back in the 1940’s when the Neo-Darwinian synthesis was under way. It is still a topic of research, if only because the timescales generally exceed the human lifespan, indeed, the span of modern science. And the process is not simple, since the initial population needs to be segregated in someway to prevent constant mixing. Even so, DNA sequencing provides strong evidence of evolutionary relationships between species as does the morphological evidence provided by fossils. Perhaps someone more up to date can speak to its current status.

Ari Tal,

14 billion years across many billions of suns doesn’t seem like near enough to improve the numerator.

Only if you consider it extremely unlikely in the first place. As we are not currently in a position to look for life on the planets of other stars, or even in most of our own solar system, the probabilities are hard to figure. My own guess is that the emergence of life is fairly common. Fourteen billion years and the planets of many billions of suns is a number of seconds and molecules so large that it is impossible to comprehend.

Aug 2, 2005 - 4:59 pm 65. Rick Ballard:

chuck,

Doesn’t chance always work when you can’t comprehend the metric of design?

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:03 pm 66. Richard Bennett:

Gee, Ballard, you tossed off that term “metric of design” as if it meant something.

I’m impressed.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:06 pm 67. mcg:

Fourteen billion years and the planets of many billions of suns is a number of seconds and molecules so large that it is impossible to comprehend.Yes, but the final probabilities themselves could themselves be so small that it is impossible to comprehend. Your statement here reminded me of Michael Chrichton’s talk humorously titled, “Aliens Caused Global Warming”:

Key quote:

The problem [with the Drake equation which purports to predict the likelihood of life on other planets], of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be estimated. The only way to work the equation is to fill in with guesses. And guesses-just so we’re clear-are merely expressions of prejudice. Nor can there be “informed guesses.” If you need to state how many planets with life choose to communicate, there is simply no way to make an informed guess. It’s simply prejudice.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:08 pm 68. mcg:

(To be fair, Ari Tal’s conjecture that 14 billion years is too small is subject to the same criticism.)

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:09 pm 69. mcg:

More from this talk:

As a result, the Drake equation can have any value from “billions and billions” to zero. An expression that can mean anything means nothing. Speaking precisely, the Drake equation is literally meaningless, and has nothing to do with science. I take the hard view that science involves the creation of testable hypotheses. The Drake equation cannot be tested and therefore SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that the Koran is the word of God is a matter of faith. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief. SETI is a religion.

Of course this seems off-topic, except that it’s about an idea that purports to be scientific when it is not

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:10 pm 70. richard mcenroe:

Intelligent design is just a front for “creationism”. Check out Skeptical Inquirer’s “Creationwatch” Link …

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:11 pm 71. Rick Ballard:

mcg,

Yes, but Crichton’s words “It’s simply prejudice.” are as full of truth as Shakespeare’s.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:13 pm 72. Richard Bennett:

This is typical. The theory of evolution by natural selection says nothing about the origins of the first living cell, but creationist inevitably shift all these discussions in that direction.

Darwin didn’t offer a theory of the origins of life, his subject, and that of all evolutionary theory, is speciation.

The first cell could have come from the Sears catalog for all evolution cares. It’s just not relevant.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:14 pm 73. mcg:

I should correct myself. In the first quote above I inserted the editorial that the Drake equation “purports to predict the likelihood of life on other planets.” This is not quite true; rather, it attempts to predict the number of planets with life intelligent enough to communicate across space.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:15 pm 74. chuck:

Richard,

There is no need to be snarky. Gee, if I wanted to go that way I might use the following quote:

Dubya believes we were all created by the Baby Jesus, and he’s said so many times.

Really, believe it or not, no one I know of claims that Baby Jesus created us. Nor, I suspect, does anyone *you* know of, unless you want to get into deep arguments about the trinity. So what’s the point of making stuff up, besides the thrill of a good insult. It just undercuts your otherwise reasonable arguments.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:17 pm 75. mcg:

Yes, but Crichton’s words “It’s simply prejudice.” are as full of truth as Shakespeare’s.

Rick, I’m not sure what you mean here. Well, I know what you mean, I just don’t know why. Are you claiming that we can actually compute defensible values of Drake’s equation? I frankly can’t see how. There are far too many sources of uncertainty. We can pin down the astronomical numbers, perhaps, but not such terms as f_l (”the number of Earth-like worlds on which life actually develops), f_i (”the fraction of life sites where intelligence develops), f_c (”the fraction of communicative planets”), or L (”the lifetime of communicative civilizations”).

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:18 pm 76. Jamie Irons:

Terrye

I don’t pretend to be an expert on this but there are people that can believe in evolution in nature and still not accept as fact the idea that there is not some higher power who had a hand in our existence.

Terrye, I just can’t argue with you, girl.

Besides, I agree with the two propositions in the above statement after the word “but,” and as to the first part, I know you’re just dissembling, because you have a common sense and beyond common sense kind of expertise on every subject that comes up here in Roger’s place, as near as I can discern!

flenser,

As to your questions about experiments testing the fact of evolution, they are myriad; whole books are full of them (check out any university biology library). But your challenge is effectively and compactly answered by Dr. Miller’s book, cited above.

chuck

Yeah, what Katherine and Rick Ballard said about your post.

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:23 pm 77. Patrick Tyson:

Yes, but Crichton’s words “It’s simply prejudice.” are as full of truth as Shakespeare’s.

Particularly these:

FOOL: The reason why the seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.

LEAR: Because they are not eight?

FOOL: Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:23 pm 78. chuck:

Richard,

The first cell could have come from the Sears catalog for all evolution cares. It’s just not relevant.

Nonsense. People are interested in the origin of life and have attempted to extend selection and evolution to the pre-biotic molecular level to account for it. Really, to claim otherwise is to insult a number of researchers. Darwin may not have been concerned with such things, but Darwin was not the last biologist.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:23 pm 79. mcg:

Heck, people have even extended selection and evolution to applied mathematics (look up “genetic algorithms.”) I hope I will be forgiven for having considerable disdain for the topic. Evolution has a fine track record in the biological sciences, and I wish it would just stay there.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:26 pm 80. Fresh Air:

Chuck–

Richard evidently doesn’t dig relgious types. Go figure.

You are right that origins matter too. To me, the strongest argument for a creator is the sheer inability of science to posit a theory of causation that can rewind the Big Bang to T- 1 m/s. The only explanation I can come up with is the existence of a creator that stood (stands?) outside time. No other explanation works in a post-Newton world.

Obviously Jesus came a bit later.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:32 pm 81. Katherine:

ìEvolution has a fine track record in the biological sciences, and I wish it would just stay there.î

mcg,

I ask no more.

Now, if we only could keep the ìrelativismî, ìuncertainty principleî and ìchaos theory î strictly within the physical and mathematical sciencesÖ.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:33 pm 82. mcg:

Indeed, given the fanciful theories of quantum soup, multiverses, and the like, it would seem that atheistic cosmologists and theologians share a common nemesis: the infinite.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:34 pm 83. mcg:

Katherine, you quite clearly know exactly what I mean, and I agree with your choices as well.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:35 pm 84. Rick Ballard:

Jamie,

“Terrye, I just can’t argue with you, girl.”

Well yeah, ’cause she’s on topic, on point and right at about the same percentage as Camay is pure. In addition, there’s the “bands or blades” final rebuttal. I sure ain’t goin’ there. I just hope the haying crews have provided some entertainment (in the visual sense, of course) this season.

mcg,

Nope, I’m only saying that ontological speculation should be tempered by a realization that the universe is probaly not antropomorphically centered.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:37 pm 85. mcg:

OK, I see. Well, I don’t, yet, but I will in a few minutes.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:40 pm 86. Katherine:

Mcg,

I recommend large helping of your favorite poison. After a couple of tumblers, all will become clear. I think

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:44 pm 87. timmah!:

“Now, if we only could keep the ìrelativismî, ìuncertainty principleî and ìchaos theory î strictly within the physical and mathematical sciencesÖ.”

I wholeheartedly agree on relativity and uncertainty. I cringe every time I hear some airhead butcher these beautiful theories.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:49 pm 88. Rick Ballard:

mcg,

Ontological speculation based upon “what we know” are matters of minor interest to those dealing in metaphysics. I’m sorry for not making explicit my indifference to anything involving metrics in this area. I’m very limited in my ability to engage on the metaphysical level and even more so wrt presumed measurables.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:49 pm 89. Terrye:

Jamie:

it is not my intent to dissemble.

If I said I believed in an alien life form many of the same people making fun of Bush for whatever it is they think he said would also laugh at me.

But if life could just happen here and just evolve here..why not on Planet X?

I am just saying that I am getting tired of people picking fights over stuff that really does not matter all that much. People will always disagree on these things. All Bush said was let the locals decide and debate is good.

If people disagree that is fine, but I have seen things in my life that can not be explained that easily and I am not arrogant enough to assume I have all the answers.

But I also know that I am not a biologist either.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:53 pm 90. Kyda Sylvester:

I do not accept as fact that modern man is the product of the evolutionary process because it can not be demonstrated. There are far too many gaps in the fossil record and the transitional forms that Darwin was certain would be uncovered as research progressed are extremely rare (Darwinian evolution requires intermediate forms between species). Today’s extensive fossil record shows stasis of millions of years duration in some species and the fully formed sudden appearance without ancestral fossil record of others. Modern man appears to fall into the latter category.

I’m not necessiarly interested in having “intelligent design” taught as an alternative theory to evolution (and, yes, the descent of man is very much theory, not fact). I just ask that educators make it crystal clear that, at this particular juncture anyhow, the evolutionary process can not demonstrate the origins of homo sapien (nor many other species) on planet Earth.

Aug 2, 2005 - 5:57 pm 91. mcg:

Rick, no apologies needed. I don’t blame you for using big words It’s funny, if you ask me what the words “ontological” and “anthropomorphic” mean I can tell you, but for whatever reason it just took me awhile to dial in the meaning of your full sentence.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:03 pm 92. Katherine:

ìIf I said I believed in an alien life form many of the same people making fun of Bush for whatever it is they think he said would also laugh at me.î

Terrye,

Youíd be surprised how pseudo-scientific, crystal twirling, astrology and UFO believing, Gaia-worshiping some of the anti-Bush ìprogressivesî can be. We are talking about people with degrees from major universities. And not social-science degrees, either.

Regarding life evolving on other planets, we just donít know, do we? And, because of the limitation of time/space, we are not likely to find out any time soon, unless some helpful breakthrough in warp technology will come along. So far all we know is that some meteorites carry traces of organic molecules on them; some amino acids and even RNA, as far as I remember. Thus, it is possible to speculate that some sort of carbon-based life actually exists/existed/will exists somewhere else in the Universe. It is frightfully huge place after all, and lots of life-allowing conditions can conceivable occur.

However, as far as we know our biosphere is quite unique, so we better make sure that it stays viable and we remain a part of it.

Save the Earthlings.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:17 pm 93. Katherine:

Rick, mcg,

I still think drinking helpsÖ. (muttering in my glass).

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:24 pm 94. Rick Ballard:

“it just took me awhile to dial in the meaning of your full sentence.”

Yeah, that happens to me, usually within the first hour after I’ve typed it. Sometimes.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:29 pm 95. Richard Bennett:

mcg, you’re mistaken if you think Ballard is saying anything meaningful – he’s just stringing words together for no particular purpose but to impress himself.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:30 pm 96. Katherine:

Richard Bennett,

Why do you have to be so disagreeable?

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:32 pm 97. Terrye:

Katherine:

I am with you here.

Hey, I heard there is evidence of frozen water on mars.

The Home Planet.

I read some really strange stuff about the Sumarians and Planet X.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:33 pm 98. syn:

Fresh Air explained my premise far more eloquently than I.

Still waiting for 400 years of scientific research to explain the evolution of that first life cell from which we and our ape ancestors were created. Where did it come from and how did it evolve into an entire planet perfectly formed into such a precise and rational existance?

I recognize this is perhaps a trivial question however, if Darwin is correct in his theory that man evolved from apes how is it possible we humans have the ability to comprehend Shakesphere yet apes do not? Why did man evolve into such complex yet rational creatures despite The Darwin Premise that apes evolved before humans evolved? Given Darwin’s premise should not apes be far more advanced than humans? Perhaps the apes gave humans that extra superiority cell or something?

I don’t know, I am only human. Maybe we should be asking apes from where humans came after all, we came from them…according to Darwin.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:38 pm 99. Jamie Irons:

Kyda

There are far too many gaps in the fossil record and the transitional forms that Darwin was certain would be uncovered as research progressed are extremely rare (Darwinian evolution requires intermediate forms between species). Today’s extensive fossil record shows stasis of millions of years duration in some species and the fully formed sudden appearance without ancestral fossil record of others.

Actually, that there are gaps in the fossil record, huge gaps, I do not find at all surprising.

What is surprising to me, given the geologic violence in Earth’s history (so evident here in my beloved Kah-lee-fooorn-yah) is that there are any non-gaps at all in that record, let alone that the record is as complete as it is.

I think the real number line is the only more or less linear* “object of study” in science that has no gaps, and can be shown to have none, in principle, as it were.

Charlie? WichitaBoy? Help me out here.

Jamie Irons

*And the fossil record is in some rough sense “linear,” a “time line,” wouldn’t one say?

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:41 pm 100. Rick Ballard:

So Richard, the ontological basis of of your speculations reside in an area outside of hubristic anthrpoocentric speculation? You have answers based upon “scientific reason” that account for all phenomena?

How very interesting. I would have imagined that the world would have proclaimed you a scientific genius without parallel at this point.

But it hasn’t, has it?

Circumscribe your thought process as you wish, but I don’t believe that you have an answer to anything of particular interest.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:41 pm 101. Kyda Sylvester:

Frankly, Katherine and Terrye, I have to snicker at the idea that this vast universe, big banged into existence and expanded ad infinitum, has as its sole raison d’etre the evolution of…us. Either there’s got to be more to this picture or it’s the biggest cosmic joke ever.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:42 pm 102. Katherine:

From my previous post:

ìI think that main misunderstanding of the evolution comes from the fact that is it commonly taught as if was a linear process: the fish evolved into amphibians, amphibians evolved into reptiles etc. (..)

We did not evolve from apes ñ we simply share a common ancestor with them. That is a profound difference.î

Syn:

ìMaybe we should be asking apes from where humans came after all, we came from them…according to Darwinî

QED.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:43 pm 103. flenser:

Rick

I think you are having a little too much fun here.

Chuck

Re; evolution vs selection.

Selection is not something science came up with recently, of course. Farmers have used this for thousands of years in breeding livestock and crops.

Some very impresive results can be obtained from managed selection, aka breeding. The modern horse is largely the result of ID by man over the centuries. All the various breeds of dogs, from Shitzu’s to Iriah wolfhounds, are the result of deliberate selection.

Similar examples are noted upthread for the development of drug resistant strains of bacteria.

But this a red herring, since selection has been known about, if poorly understood, for a very long time.

Within the basic template of “dog” or “horse” there is considerable scope for modification, by suppressing or accentuating different characteristics. What nobody has done, or knows how to do, is use selection to come up with something which is qualitativly different.

If science could, by the process of selection, begin with a line of horses and end with a line of unicorns, that would be strong evidence that evolution might also occur naturally. If the strain of bacteria evolved into something other than bacteria, that would demonstrate something other than the well established process of selection at work. But nobody has any idea how such a thing could be done.

The whole “theory of evolution” hitches a ride on the scientifically sound process of selection. But simply because the latter is valid does not mean the former is proven.

The “theory of evolution” is more accurately termed a “hypothesis of evolution”. That would give it a neccessary degree of seperation from the more respectable theories in the hard sciences.

Charlie will be upset he missed all this excitment. We have not had a busy thread since The Subject That Dare Not Be Named.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:44 pm 104. dtlc:

“ISLAM AND EVOLUTION”

Its hillarious. A must read at http://satire.myblogsite.com/blog June 12, 2005 entry

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:44 pm 105. Jamie Irons:

syn

Why did man evolve into such complex yet rational creatures despite The Darwin Premise that apes evolved before humans evolved? Given Darwin’s premise should not apes be far more advanced than humans? Perhaps the apes gave humans that extra superiority cell or something?

Respectfully, I think you are confusing evolution with “progress.”

There is no necessary connection between the two, and “evolution” not rarely moves backwards, from the point of view of what we humans might consider progress.

This confusion of ours is a very old one.

The late, great evolutionist and popular expositor of evolution, Stephen Jay Gould, has a wonderful book (I think it’s called “Wonderful Life”) on the Burgess Shales, which is a superb account — among other things — of the beautiful blind alleys into which Life wanders.

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:49 pm 106. flenser:

Kyda

“I have to snicker at the idea that this vast universe, big banged into existence and expanded ad infinitum, has as its sole raison d’etre the evolution of…us. ”

Whats all the “us” stuff. We are but a source of food and shelter for the true purpose of it all; the domestic cat.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:50 pm 107. Katherine:

Kyda,

Existence of the Universe has nothing to do with ìsole raison d’etre the evolution of…usî. All I am saying is that as far as we know (and we know very little) we are the only life within our point of space/time continuum. So, we better try to stick to it.

Why the Universe exists, I have no idea. Neither I know why we are here. God? Blind chance? Take your pick. I am mostly interested in physical phenomena; metaphysics and theology are quite beyond me.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:51 pm 108. Steven Mitchell:

Break the government monopoly on public education and the issue goes away. … Along with all those other related problems that I believe I’ve mentioned a few times.

Scientists would be a lot more persuasive on this question if they weren’t trying to sell us junk science on things like global warming and getting into turf fights over anthropology. However much *science* may be about theories and facts, *scientists* are human beings–and like the rest of the humans, all too prone to lie through their teeth when it suits their agenda. That they often know better just makes them slightly more likely as a class to fall into the partisan jerk camp instead of the useless idiot camp.

That said, my issue isn’t so much with real scientists as the people that worship at the altar of science. Most people are honest about most things that they really know. So most scientists are only guilty of not rocking the boat when the science cultist go wacky. Since I don’t always rock the boat in my own line of work, I can hardly blame them for that.

That is why I’d like to see the average citizen really try to learn some real science, instead of getting preached to by a public school teacher reading out of a Sierra Club-vetted textbook. I was fortunate enough to have real science teachers instead of that nonsense. Many are not so fortunate.

Fix education, and the problem goes away.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:59 pm 109. Rick Ballard:

“I think you are having a little too much fun here.”

Ontological speculation isn’t supposed to be fun?

I wish I’d known.

Science has so many answers. I wish it knew the question.

Aug 2, 2005 - 6:59 pm 110. chuck:

flenser,

What nobody has done, or knows how to do, is use selection to come up with something which is qualitativly different.

At the risk of pissing off mcg, I will bring up genetic algorithms. Go to link, and scroll down to the evolution of machines entry. True, this is only a simulation, but it shows the possibilities. It is quite amazing what can be achieved with sex, mutation, selection, and vast amounts of trial and error.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:00 pm 111. Richard Bennett:

If science could, by the process of selection, begin with a line of horses and end with a line of unicorns, that would be strong evidence that evolution might also occur naturally.

Science did, by the process of selection, start with the line of wolves and end up with the Jack Russell terrier. Try and mate a wolf with a Russell and see what happens.

And science started with the line of Aurochs (Bos taurus primigenius) and ended with the lines of Hereford cattle and the Indian Zebu, independently. And science started with the North African Wild Cat and ended up with Fluffy.

Some crazy German zookeepers tried to reverse-select the extinct Aurochs from is successors, with mixed results, by the way.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:11 pm 112. mcg:

Well, if I’m being played, then I at least hope the music is good.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:13 pm 113. mcg:

Now you’ve done it, chuck! Seriously, my problem is this attempt to put lipstick on a pig, the pig being “random searches”, and the lipstick being a new name “genetic [or evolutionary] algorithms.” I mean, sometimes, random is the best you can do, but let’s just call it for what it is, eh?

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:15 pm 114. flenser:

Back in the real world, the Schmidt/Hackett race is a nail-biter. Possibly heading to a recount.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:18 pm 115. Richard Bennett:

Ballard, I was a philosophy major before I got interested in computers and invented certain aspects of the technology that carries your spew from your screen to mine, so your mangled prose doesn’t impress me. I’ve blown my nose on better reasoning than you’ve demonstrated here. The human mind is the instrument through which we apprehend the world, and whether you formalize in scientific or in religious terms, the mechanism is the same.

As I don’t believe the Almighty calls you on your cell phone to give you the 411, your insults don’t amuse me.

The true narcissist is he who believes himself created in the image of God.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:18 pm 116. Jamie Irons:

flenser

If science could, by the process of selection, begin with a line of horses and end with a line of unicorns…

Nature appears to have done better than that, as in the bear-like land creature that (IIRC) gave rise to the sea lion.

The theory of evolution (that in my view explains the fact of evolution, and leaving aside epigenetic phenomena and genetic drift for the moment) rests on three pillars:

(1) Mutation (novel and heritable variability) in the genome of creature X.

(2) Competition for limited resources among representatives of creature X (and others).

(3) The preferential survival of those alleles (of the genome of those X’s) that confer some advantage (some heightened “fitness”) in the struggle entailed in (2).

So the selection you rightly emphasize, flenser, is only part of the story. Why would one accept selection, but not the element of struggle/competition and the “survival of the fittest”?

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:19 pm 117. Patrick Tyson:

The true virtue of this thread is that no serious advocate of intelligent design has posted.

Kyda, are you the The X Files fan?

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:23 pm 118. Tom O'Bedlam:

This debate has been around for centuries. ID is simply a species of a more general argument called the “teleological argument.” Several centuries ago a man named William Paley observed that the world was at least as complicated and interlocking as a watch, and argued that it was absurd to believe that a complicated mechanism like a watch could come to exist spontaneously, by chance. “Where there is a watch, there must be a watchmaker.”

The empiricist philosopher David Hume took Paley on in a book called “Dialogues on Natural Religion.” The general philosophical consensus has been for several centuries that Hume cleaned Paley’s clock — or watch, if you prefer. I am one who agrees with Hume.

I greatly admire Bush. I think it’s entirely possible that he will later be evaluated as belonging to the first rank of presidents, right below Washington and Lincoln. But it is unfortunate that he has weighed in on this.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:25 pm 119. Jamie Irons:

Katherine

I am mostly interested in physical phenomena; metaphysics and theology are quite beyond me…

Ah, those physical phenomena. Such as put me in mind of crawl spaces and fine wines!

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:26 pm 120. Terrye:

Jamie:

A friend told me once that Stephen Gould made science fun. I have read some articles of his, but I think I should read more. I am really dumb about this stuff.

I have to admit I worry more about the future of social security than I do evolution. It seems not enough people feel that way however.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:27 pm 121. Fresh Air:

Richard Bennett–

As someone who has been reading Rick Ballard’s posts on this site for two years, I take great offense at your sneers. I’ll wager that a fast Javascript poll would show Ballard’s popularity running ahead of yours on this site by about 200-to-1.

You come in here with your supposedly powerful intellect and about all you can do is rattle a few teacups and knock over a couple of strawmen, and all the while toss off insults like the Prince of the Blog.

Your manner is obnoxious, offputting and unseemly. The people on this blog get along very well and can disagree vociferously without such intemperatre slurs.

I don’t know where you came from, but please return there, at least until you can show better manners.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:31 pm 122. Jamie Irons:

flenser

For some reason I keep hounding you.

Charlie will be upset he missed all this excitment. We have not had a busy thread since The Subject That Dare Not Be Named.

name it. Just give me a hint.

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:34 pm 123. chuck:

Here’s an interesting response that I turned up while searching on Felis Sylvestris Cattus.

Hi TC. You pose some interesting questions (if I’m understanding your post). To wit, why do scientists accept ToE (and/or abiogenesis), but not ID? After all, both can be said to rest on a speculative foundation, right?

However, there are substantial differences between current scientific thought and research, and ID. My biggest problem with ID in all it’s manifestations is that no one has been able to describe the basic observations from nature that led to ID as the default hypothesis. I don’t mean “prove ID”. I mean the fundamental observations that make ID at least as, if not more, reasonable an explanation than ToE.

Here are a couple of very generic examples of why scientists think that the ToE is a pretty good theory:

1. As an example of coevolution, a scientist observes the existence of an orchid with an extraordinary 30cm-long nectary (Angraecum sesquipedale). His default explanation for the depth of the nectary is evolution. He predicts that, if evolution is true, an insect will be found that specializes on this plant – and only this plant. Twenty+ years after his death, entomologists discover a moth that does in fact specialize on the orchid (Xanthopan morgani praedicta), with a 30cm-long tongue.

2. If natural selection is true, specific environmental niches should require similar adaptations, even if the organisms are radically different. Selection pressures are going to be similar and the problems these organisms face are going to be analogous, therefore phenotype will be similar. This is precisely what is observed. Just a few examples: marsupial thylacines (e.g., Thylacinus cynocephalus) and placental grey wolves (Canis lupus) who are predators on small and medium herbivores; marsupial bandicoots (Macrotis lagotis) and placental desert hares (e.g., Lepus townsendii) who are grass-eaters with similar desert (long ears) and saltatory adaptations; there are innumerable other examples.

3. If natural selection is true, there should be significant variation even within genera in response to differential selection pressures. One example is the golden fer-de-lance (Bothrops insularis) of Quemada Grande (off the coast of Brazil). Although all Bothrops spp. are highly toxic, the golden lancehead is one of the most poisonous snakes in the world. Why? Because on Quemada Grande there are no mammals, so the golden lancehead is forced to subsist on birds. Normally, a lancehead (an ambush predator) will strike its prey and then follow the doomed animal by scent. Since birds – even mortally wounded birds – fly away, the normal tactic isn’t effective. Therefore the toxicity of the golden lancehead has, through NS operating over time, increased to enable the species to kill its avian prey almost immediately.

4. If life evolves by descent with modification, the evidence should be recognizable in inherited genetic material – including errors. Retrogenes are molecular remnants of a past parasitic viral infection. Retroviruses, such as HIV and HTLV1 (which causes a form of leukaemia), make a DNA copy of their own viral genome and insert it into their host’s genome. If this happens to a germ-line cell the retroviral DNA will be inherited by descendants of the host. Again, this process is rare and fairly random, so finding retrogenes in identical chromosomal positions of two different species strongly indicates common ancestry. There are three different instances of common retrogene insertions between chimps and humans. Within the Felidae (cats), the standard phylogenetic tree (based on the usual morphological, biochemical etc features) has small cats diverging later than large cats, with the blackfooted cat (Felis nigripes) being the first of the small cats to diverge. All small cats, from the jungle cat (F. chaus), European wildcat (F. silvestris), sand cat (F. margarita), to the common house cat (Felis cattus) etc. share a specific retroviral gene insertion. In contrast, the cat lineages that diverged before the small cat lineage (lion, cheetah, and leopard) and all other carnivores lack this retrogene.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:36 pm 124. Jamie Irons:

Forgive me. TypeKey and me really botched that last one. Once again, with feeling:

flenser

For some reason I keep hounding you.

Charlie will be upset he missed all this excitment. We have not had a busy thread since The Subject That Dare Not Be Named.

What was “The Subject That Dare Not Be Named”? I mean, you don’t have to name it.

Just give me a hint.

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:37 pm 125. Richard Bennett:

Like I said, Freshie, the true narcissist is he who believes himself created in the image of God, and that’s Ballard’s self-description.

(But old Wankette had the quote of the day on this subject: “Teaching [ID] as “alternative” to evolution is a little like teaching “magic” as an alternative to physics.”)

While Mr. Ballard may have entertained many in the past, I can only judge what I’ve seen, and I find it to be pompous, self-absorbed, and essentially vile.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:38 pm 126. Jamie Irons:

chuck @ 7:36 PM

Great stuff. I love it!

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:42 pm 127. mcg:

Richard, I for one am fully convinced that I am made in the image of god. Unfortunately for me, that god is Buddha.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:46 pm 128. Jamie Irons:

Mr. Bennett,

You are being extremely unpleasant.

The true narcissist is a person who lacks empathy, and who responds to any perceived slight with uncontrolled rage.

Please behave yourself.

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:48 pm 129. flenser:

Ah, the rough and tumble world of the blogosphere.

Jamie, my friend, you are free to hound me as you see fit.

I cannot reveal The Subject That Dare Not Be Named. But it rhymes with “ray carriage”.

Now, the evolutionary ramifications of …, no, best not go there.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:50 pm 130. Richard Bennett:

Irons, I was made in the image of God and you are in no position to criticize his creation. Please shut your yammering yap and leave the discussion to the grownups.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:54 pm 131. Zelda:

I just wanted to say that I think if religion as a social science were not treated with such contempt, this wouldn’t even be an issue.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:54 pm 132. Jamie Irons:

Terrye

I was kidding you when I accused you of “dissembling.”

You said: I am really dumb about this stuff.

Terrye, I do not find you “dumb” about anything. I am constantly amazed at how you get at the heart of the matter, no matter what we’re discussing.

(Must’ve come somehow from dealing with all them cows!)

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:55 pm 133. chuck:

Geez, Richard.

You had a few interesting things to say, then nothing but insults and slurs. When you run out of ideas and information so quickly, one begins to wonder if there was really much there. We aren’t going to fall to our knees and worship your godhood, you know, unless you can produce a few good miracles.

Aug 2, 2005 - 7:57 pm 134. Jamie Irons:

…and you [Jamie Irons] are in no position to criticize [God's] creation…

With this I wholly concur.

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:01 pm 135. Richard Bennett:

Hows about a nice plague of locusts chuck, or would you prefer to be covered in boils? I have little patience for heretics and infidels, being made in the image of God and all. And watch those poly-cotton blends, we’re having none of that.

Carry on, I’m going back to Nirvana now.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:02 pm 136. klrfz1:

Richard Bennett:

Wait, do me Professor Bennett. Insult me, too. I want to be part of this discussion.

One time I was looking through a telescope at a cluster of galaxies and I paused to wonder how there could possibly be a creator of all that I saw. Since I have been the recipient of God’s mercy, since I have felt the power of God in my own life, since I am much happier now that I am no longer agnostic, I came to realize a prolonged quest for an answer would be just another mistake. I decided to merely have faith without understanding.

I was hurting more than you are. I lashed out irrationally, many times. I hope you will someday be as desperate as I was. Desperate enough to consider that you may be wrong.

Sorry I don’t have anything to say about ID. Never read a word about it.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:09 pm 137. JeremyR:

There’s basically two issues here. Evolution, and the cause of it.

The fossil record does seem to indicate that evolution takes place (other than some big gaps), but it tells us nothing about the how.

In order to know the how, you’d actually have to see evolution in process, observe it actually happen. That’s never been done, at most you just get adaption, not a new species. Which isn’t evolution. So as I see it, both random chance and IDM as to the why of evolution are nothing more than guesses.

Which is the better guess? I dunno. But food for thought:

Will Wright, the creator of the game “The Sims”, has a new program coming out called “Spore”. It’s basically a modeling of the universe and evolution on a very small scale. He’s also using some very innovative techniques to do, where the program doesn’t actually contain the premade world/universe, but simply the rules to create it. (Much like the original computer game Elite, was able to have 1000s of working, newtonian solar systems on one 360k floppy disk)

Now, given that the universe is finite, and that computer processing power doubles roughly every 18 months, there will come a time that when we as humans will be able to create a duplicate of the universe. (And just being able to duplicate Earth and faking the rest probably within the next 1000 years)

Anyway, here’s a link to the Wikipedia article on Spore:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spore_(game)

“The earliest computer games were severely limited by memory constraints, forcing things like levels to be generated algorithmically, proceduarly, on the fly: there simply wasn’t enough space to store premade levels and artwork. Today, most games include (measuring by memory space) thousands of times as much data as algorthmic mechanics. For example, all of the buildings in the large gameworld of Grand Theft Auto were individually designed and placed by artists.

Because the Spore gameworld is procedurally generated, it can be as large, varied, and detailed as it needs to be without an expensive team designing each element individually. Because of this malleability, users’ creatures will react realistically to a wide range of customizations.

In Wright’s first public demonstration of Spore, he created a tripod creature in the creature evolution editor. The game then figured out how a lizard with three legs and a prehensile tail should walk. Wright then showed several more pre-made creatures which moved realistically, despite their exotic design.”

There’s no real difference between how Spore works and how our universe works. While it doesn’t prove the IDM people are right, IMHO, it proves that they could be right.

Is their opinion the obvious or correct one? I dunno. But what would one of those critters in the spore game think – are they creatures of pure chance, or is there someone that created them? If they thought the former, they’d be wrong on several levels. Since there is the player, Will Wright, the programmers, the programmers of the OS the game runs on, the makers of the computer hardware (and the designers), etc.

The random chance theory would have to say that all of that just spontaenously appeared. Which seems far more dubious to me. Possible. But it boils down to, who wrote Hamlet? An infinite amount of monkeys, or Shakespear?

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:10 pm 138. flenser:

Jamie, in your capacity as a professional psychiatrist, would you say that “social liberals” tend to be rather angry people? Does being “socially liberal” actually entail being constantly mad at the world? Seeing injustice and oppression everywhere?

Leading the witness, I know.

Schmidt declared the winner in the Ohio Congressional race, by about 2%.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:12 pm 139. Terrye:

Jamie:

Thank you Doctor.

I think that if we are on the subject of Bush and education it should be remembered that Bush did support the No Child Left Behind Act and while Teachers Unions might not like it, there is evidence of improvement.

I heard Democrats were complaining that Bush cut money to education. Not true. Democrats always confuse a lack of increases with cuts. I think it was Catherine that spent one evening here discussing NCLB with quite a bit of first hand knowledge.

If people want to know what Bush thinks of education those are the kinds of things they need to look at. Not vague references in an interview.

time for bed.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:23 pm 140. Jamie Irons:

flenser

[As a psychiatrist] would you say that “social liberals” tend to be rather angry people? Does being “socially liberal” actually entail being constantly mad at the world? Seeing injustice and oppression everywhere?

To be honest, flenser, I don’t know. Having most of my close friends in Berkeley, I know a lot of liberal people, and almost all of them are fine and decent human beings, in their personal relationships.

In the sphere of abstraction and ideas and politics, however, many seem to be constantly angry. But my observations are, to be truthful, of limited value and generality.

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:26 pm 141. chuck:

flenser,

More on the election results. I don’t know what they mean, but it must have been a fairly nasty campaign.

Terrye,

Powerline had a graph of educational spending from the Heritage Foundation, link.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:29 pm 142. Rick Ballard:

When reason lacks, and wit won’t, turn to the authority channel.

Your self description was entirely apt, Mr. Bennett. Enjoy yourself to the extent that you are able.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:33 pm 143. flenser:

Jamie

Thanks. I found that distinction useful. And now you point it out, I can see the truth in it.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:43 pm 144. Rick Ballard:

Jamie,

I know a bunch of Berkeley libs too. I would agree 100%. Anything but politics and “the way things should be” and they’re fine. Lots of volunteers for remedial work in that group and I respect them for it. They do better than a number of conservatives that I know closer to home.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:50 pm 145. mcg:

Now, given that the universe is finite, and that computer processing power doubles roughly every 18 months, there will come a time that when we as humans will be able to create a duplicate of the universe.

Uhh, no, we won’t. Because that would require a computer larger than the universe itself.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:55 pm 146. Kyda Sylvester:

More on the election results. I don’t know what they mean, but it must have been a fairly nasty campaign.

It means the Republicans stole another Ohio election.

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:57 pm 147. Kevin P:

Roger:

I don’t know if the “truepeers-Kevin’ was directed at me but I never change my tag, unless I am on a site where i think I might get hacked and Roger’s is not that kind of site so I don’t worry about that.

As a conservative Christian I stay out of this fight. My ability at math and science is limited and I don’t go down that road. The Hebrew word for days can be translated as both a 24 hour period and as an extended period of time so there is no theological problem per se with evolution unless it is used to try to say that evolution has proven the abscence of God.

Both sides of this debate have politicized this debate. Since it would take me decades to study a subject that I have notalent for I never claim one side or the other. Since the Hebrew translation allows for a non 24 hour translation the idea of evolution doesn’t trouble me much.I do believe in God and I do believe that he created and the designed the earth and mankind and whether he did it in a instant or over many billions of years makes little to no impact on me personally.

I seem to remember that Gould, a staunch Darwinist, wrote in one of his final books that some of the accepted Darwinian arguments needed to be shifted in the light of new evidence. He was not saying that he was a creationist, he was just posing some questions. And some in the scientific community pilloried him because they say he was aided the I.D. Argument. This is where science sometimes wanders into dogma. Just from the historical record I have no doubt that certain scientific “facts” that are accepted today will be proven wrong or incomplete. Will evolution be one of them? I doubt it and I do not care. As far as I know there are still open questions about the creation of life, how it came about.

As far as what should be taught I firmly believe in local control over what is taught. If communities want to include the argument that there is an element of design in the creation of life then that is their choice.

Kevin Peters

Aug 2, 2005 - 8:59 pm 148. Rick Ballard:

mcg,

Maybe we could assign the problem to the ID folks working on the “can an omnipotent being create an object which it cannot move?”.

They’ll work something out.

PS I don’t game anyone.

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:00 pm 149. mcg:

Well, I for one think that God’s got himself a WICKED tricked-out PC, and I can’t wait to sit at the keyboard and take ‘er for a spin. That is, if he’ll create an account for me. Dell ain’t got nothing on that one.

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:02 pm 150. mcg:

Oh, and as for your little conundrum, I’ve really never considered it much of one. The answer is, of course, no.

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:10 pm 151. Kevin P:

Rick:

If you got the impression that I was accusing you of anything I wasn’t. I just didn’t know what you were saying. If I offended you in any way I apologize.

Kevin Peters

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:11 pm 152. Rick Ballard:

Kevin,

Since I wrote the post, I think it would be OK to refer to me. You’ve presented a very decent apologia for staying out of the debate. When two faiths contest it is always reasonable to watch, rather than leap in. It’s not as if faith in human reason has never been in the arena with faith in God before. Time will provide the answer, if not in this world, surely in the next (or not based upon the vehemence of your argument in contra).

Best to trust Pascal in these matters (even if he was perfidiously French). Or, alternatively, one might trust the ego. Surely, no one has been led astray by the perfection of the human id.

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:17 pm 153. Rick Ballard:

KP,

I was composing while you responded. We share a wavelength so I could not be offended by what you write.

If I should offend, feel free to correct me as I would feel free to chastise you if you erred. But you haven’t and I doubt that you shall.

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:21 pm 154. flenser:

chuck

“It is quite amazing what can be achieved with sex, mutation, selection, and vast amounts of trial and error.”

Well, if thats what the evolutionary process requires, who am I to fight it?

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:30 pm 155. Patrick Tyson:

JeremyR wins the prize for most amusing post.

For anyone who might actually want a fairly comprehensive reading list on the arguments for evolution and against intellegent design I recommend this guy’s Free Republic page (scroll down) and links…

http://www.freerepublic.com/~patrickhenry/

This was the last subject to which I devoted much serious advocacy and I still read the related threads at freerepublic.com from time to time to see what the latest “arguments” coming from those who can’t bring themselves to just say “God created the fossil record and free will and intelligence and such to test our faith when he created the world some X thousand years ago” and leave it at that.

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:33 pm 156. Rick Ballard:

flenser,

I’m definitely not too thrilled with the third and the second might be problematic but I sure could get behind the first.

Just saying.

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:35 pm 157. Katherine:

Jamie,

From cold damp caves to crawl spaces with wine?

It may not be an evolution, but it certainly is progress.

Aug 2, 2005 - 9:50 pm 158. Jamie Irons:

Katherine

From cold damp caves to crawl spaces with wine?

It may not be an evolution, but it certainly is progress.

When the crawl spaces are lead-lined, one has both evolution and progress!

Jamie Irons

Aug 2, 2005 - 10:04 pm 159. Katherine:

Terrye

” A friend told me once that Stephen Gould made science fun.î

I tried reading him. I don’t like him. My tastes run toward style of Steven Pinker of the ìHow the Mind Worksî http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393318486/102-3432185-1276911?v=glance and ìThe Blank Slateî http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0142003344/qid=1123045197/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-3432185-1276911?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 fame. Not only excellent scientist, but very amusing writer.

If you are interested in studies about observable process of speciation, I recommend ìThe Beak of the Finchî http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/067973337X/qid=1123045318/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-3432185-1276911?v=glance&s=books&n=507846 by Johnatan Weiner.

But then I am a hopeless Darwinist.

Jamie,

Right-o!

Aug 2, 2005 - 10:06 pm 160. geoffb:

ID and Creationism both seem to imply a God who designed the universe to mislead humans. A universe filled to the brim with “red herrings”. Interlocking mutually renforcing “red herrings”. A universe built as a lie. That would make God very close to the definition of the devil, “The Father of Lies”. I believe in a God that created the universe but not one who created it to deceive and mislead us. Science is the means we use to discover what the universe is made of, when things happened, and how they work. Religion is concerned with why we are here. In my life I need both.

Aug 2, 2005 - 11:24 pm 161. Pixy Misa:

I seem to remember that Gould, a staunch Darwinist, wrote in one of his final books that some of the accepted Darwinian arguments needed to be shifted in the light of new evidence.

Gould was far from a staunch Darwinist; he was a one of the creators of the theory of Punctuated Equilibria, a significant shift from classical Darwinism.

Just from the historical record I have no doubt that certain scientific “facts” that are accepted today will be proven wrong or incomplete.

We know for certain that Evolutionary Theory, Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics are all incomplete.

They are also – as far as they go – absolutely rock solid.

If one day they are shown to be “wrong”, it will be in the same sense that Newtonian Mechanics is “wrong”, that is, they are extremely accurate in all but a limited set of circumstances, and will form the general case of a new and broader theory.

They’ve all been tested extremely thoroughly. They’re not “wrong” in the everyday sense of the word, but neither do they explain everything.

Aug 3, 2005 - 12:36 am 162. WichitaBoy:

JeremyR,

Sorry, but a few of your facts seem to be wrong. The latest thinking in physics is that the universe isn’t finite, that renormalization is only a first-order approximation.

Moore’s Law is no longer active in the form stated. Graph the latest processing speeds as a function of time if you don’t believe me.

About a year ago a pair of physicists calculated the upper bound on the number of computations possible in any technological civilization, bounded by the known expansion of the universe and the known speed of light constant. The idea is that since the universe around you is expanding and since you can’t send messages faster than light, eventually your computers will slip so far away from you that you can’t communicate with them and then you can no longer compute. The limit turned out to be a mere 10^120, far too little to even begin to replicate the universe computationally. (I believe the estimate of the number of fundamental particles is 10^80 or so. The number 10^(2.1◊10^343) is sometimes given as the estimate of the number of different ways all the particles in the known universe could be randomly shuffled at each moment in time since the universe’s creation.)

In a different universe, subject to different constants, this result would be different.

Aug 3, 2005 - 1:02 am 163. Pixy Misa:

The limit turned out to be a mere 10^120, far too little to even begin to replicate the universe computationally.

Necessarily so. You can’t simulate the Universe unless you have a computer at least as big as the Universe.

Which doesn’t leave anything over for you to have a cup of coffe while you wait for the program to compile. No good.

Aug 3, 2005 - 1:13 am 164. Joseph (formerly Samuel):

Look up “common sense” in a dictionary and you will find a picture of Terrye. The fact is like her I am Agnostic (used to call myself an Atheist but finally realized that unless I knew for sure their was no God how could I be a true Atheist?)

Belief in a higher being a makes sense if religion and science are both put in proper context. Ignoring one or the other (science or religion) on some level is choosing ignorance, something I would never recommend. (This is why I moved myself from the Atheist column to Agnostic). Now I will say if Agnostic translates into indifference on the part of those who claim such title, then that is to our own detriment for the term “to be damned” is simply to say we don’t make progress and are incapable of such progression, this by the way can happen in Religion, Science, Politics and wherever we close or not exercise our minds.

One important point I want to make about Religion is that many original words from the original Hebrew are inadequately and/or improperly translated into English. Take the word creation and the event “The Creation”, the true meaning in the original Hebrew context is different then most might realize. One might think from the translation that creation is like making something out of thin air or out of nothing, yet the true meaning is more akin to “organizing the elements” or “putting matter into order or context”.

The simple fact is it is foolish to think religion and science are somehow competing ideas that undermine one or another. This is like saying language runs counter to math or that all things are temporal not spiritual, at a minimum it shows a propensity to neglet things we hold prejudice toward. The real point about truths is they are constant principles that to us mere mortals are as puzzles to which we hold very and I mean very few pieces. The fact is like evolution, religion has never been “disproven either”. Disproving is a silly threshold. Evolution has never ever been proven either. Every found evolutionary “missing link” has been proved either a hoax or remains easily as arguable as the concept of religion itself. To me “Adaptation” is certainly a no brainer, but the crossing of species? When has it been proven beyond theory? When has such a theory proven more full of evidence then religion? The fact we see evidence though fossils, or the fact that a Platypus has a bill like a duck doesn’t mean it ever quacked like one. The real question is what does it take to prove something to the prejudicial mind? The flip side is seeing non-believing doctors scratching their heads after specific cases where all hope was lost yet faith, prayer and religion inspired the cure of disease and illness at rates and levels beyond what is scientifically explainable? Does this disprove science? No more then fossils disprove God! Sure a cynic can call this a simplistic means of achieving hope, one that isn’t based in reality but it is nonetheless helpful, but this is a cynical explanation by one who didn’t actually experience or show the faith so how do they know? I will tell you that to the people the miracle occurred to it is a hell of a lot more real then that fossil that someone thinks prove birds once were reptiles.

My take on this is that truth is what man is in need of and in search of. Truth is not partial to religion or science, it is only we imperfect mortals who are. The people with the best shot of figuring all this out are those unencumbered by the prejudices that damn the progress of ones own learning. One thing I have learned is that people with the most to teach me are those that respect and rationalize both science and religion equally and understand that true religion and science support each other. Science is to temporal things as Religion is to spiritual.

Another thing that gnaws at me is Albert Einstein in his later years saying he had become convinced that intelligence had to be behind the organization of life, nature and our existence… isn’t that what the original Genesis in Hebrew implies? This makes me ponder what I had to overcome to vote for Bush. It was akin for me as accepting the plausibility of Religion because he incorporated faith and belief in his decision making and came to higher levels of truth then the secular group I hang with that is for sure. Just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean it is false. One of the silliest things people do in this world is conform truth and it’s plausibility to our own limitations and it matters not whether in Religion, Politics or Science, it is the same, it is silly and it is damning.

Aug 3, 2005 - 2:54 am 165. Terrye:

Joseph:

Good morning.

I think we should remember when reading scripture that those words were written by people with no real concept of science. Obviously they were not going to come up with any belief system via their existence on the planet that was going to be believed on face value by most modern people.

now that is a sentence.

I still think there is an awareness, a spirit that binds us together but I don’t begin to understand it and this is faith. But in what exactly I can not say.

And faith and science were never meant to be the same thing. Faith is humility.

Aug 3, 2005 - 4:34 am 166. Syl:

“Youíd be surprised how pseudo-scientific, crystal twirling, astrology and UFO believing, Gaia-worshiping some of the anti-Bush ìprogressivesî can be. We are talking about people with degrees from major universities. And not social-science degrees, either. ”

As with all beliefs, it’s a matter of degree of intensity. We can imagine many things but to go from imagining to belief one has to, er, believe that just because we can imagine it it must be true.

Odd, isn’t it, that we didn’t start imagining the aliens from other planets until we learned about planets. Humankind seems always to have been able to imagine an ‘other’, though, to explain cause and effect and to hopefully control that process…no matter the level of scientific knowledge. It’s just that as the knowledge becomes more specific, so does the specification of this other. Magic came before science. Science explained Magic, so the Magic morphs. But, still, there is always an other.

To me our ability, as humans, to imagine things we’ve never experienced is far more interesting than any discussion of whether there is a deity or not and what role he plays/played which is simply a consequence of our ability to imagine it in the first place.

I mean, we wouldn’t have art at all if we couldn’t imagine. I think, therefore I am. I imagine, therefore you are.

Aug 3, 2005 - 5:23 am 167. Rick Ballard:

“And faith and science were never meant to be the same thing.”

A perfect encapsulation of why I would argue against the inclusion of IT within any part of public school curriculum. I agree with the President vehemently concerning leaving the matter to local option but accreting another matter of faith to a curriculum currently bogged down and doing a fairly poor job desn’t make much sense.

Public schools would do for faith what they’ve done for civics or social studies.

Blech.

Aug 3, 2005 - 5:33 am 168. Joseph (formerly Samuel):

Terrye

I think we should remember when reading scripture that those words were written by people with no real concept of science.

I guess I must not understand this point or perhaps dissagree. Many prophets were very learned in math and like things, some were astrometers (in the scientific sense, study of the universe) and inventers. The fact is this is why they were often viewed as heretics and killed. The more things change the more they stay the same. If their is such thing as prophecy and revelation then they are based upon principles every bit as much scientific as religious. I strongly maintain that every miracle could be scientifically explained where it not for our limitations in doing so and I would never presume the religious to not understand this. In the end are not our own limitations determinative to our own faith, knowledge or lack thereof? I would never assume Abraham to have no real concept of science because tradition clearly says otherwise. Moses and Joseph (one of the 12 sons of Israel) were very learned people. All three of these people spent years in Egypt and tradition states they were not averse to the math and science and the like and if anything Abraham taught the Egyptians much concerning Astrology. Let science try to explain proven successful miracles and healings based on religious faith, and let Religion justify creation and evolution, in the end they will find they are on common ground is my point.

If their is a God and we are created in his image shouldn’t that mean a hell of a lot more then the sentence alone? I would imagine if their is a God then that person is not only the greatest leader of religion but also the greatest scientist ever for as Einstein implied he is the very intelligent being who created the Universe and order to all things, this would also include the principles of Atonement and the means for redemption. I am one who believes Abraham would have told Einstein… “It took your whole life to figured that out?” But all this leads me to this…

–

Rick

I have come to believe in school choice for this very reason. Let localities and those most interested in their own children effect the process. Lastly, for heaven’s sake can’t that poor child read a Bible on the bus without being told to put it away and then rebuked and lectured on some perverse rendering of the principles concerning the separation of church and state?

Syl

Yes the real point is to learn and progress, but I get as embarrassed by the wacko secularists as I am sure religious believers get embarrassed by their fanatics. People who claim exclusivity or finality to their positions turn me off, period.

Aug 3, 2005 - 7:17 am 169. Joseph (formerly Samuel):

Terrye

I meant to add the following take on your statement that faith is humility. I would say that faith is not humility, rather requires humilty. The best definition I ever heard on faith was that it is “hope in things not seen, but true”. That leaves room for science and religion does it not?

Aug 3, 2005 - 7:24 am 170. Roy Lofquist:

I. I believe the correct terminology is not “anthropomorphic” but rather “anthropic”. The anthropic principle, first formulated by Barrow and Tipler, has Strong, Weak and Final variations. This principle posits that the many physical constants of the universe are so precisely attuned that even a slight variation (on the order of a thousandth of a percent) of any one of them would produce a universe that can not produce carbon based life.

II. The biggest red herring in all of history is the assertion that “a thousand monkeys sitting at typewriters would eventually produce all the works of Shakespeare”. In fact, they couldn’t even produce “WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE”. There are 27 letters, the alphabet and the space, on the specially designed typewriters. There are 19 letters in WS. There are 27^19 = 1.57 * 10^27 combinations. That is, 1 followed by 27 zeros. The five billion years of earth’s existence figures out to 1.57 * 10^20 seconds. Thus, it would take an average of 5 million monkeys typing one letter a second since the beginning of the earth to type “WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE”. Please view all assertions of random combination in light of the fact that they are based upon this terribly erroneous assumption. I won’t even attempt to calculate the combinations of the complete works as my computer is incapable of calculating 27 ^ 100,000’s.

Aug 3, 2005 - 8:03 am 171. AlanDownunder:

2/3 of the US doesn’t accept evolution. W is probably not just pandering but numbered among those 2/3.

He’s saying it’s for the states and school boards, but he’s also saying ID should be taught side by side with evolution.

What 2/3 of the USA, and probably W, don’t know is the following –

1. Science makes no claim to ultimate or total truth. It just keeps coming up with better and better disprovable theories to explain natural phenomena.

2. Young earth creationism (Biblical literalism) is a scientific theory because it says things that make it capable of disproof. It has been disproved because the world has been observed to be aeons older than literalists claim the Bible says it is. The invention of ID is an implicit admission of this disproof.

3. Evolution is a scientific theory because it says things that make it capable of disproof. It has not been disproved despite the fact that just one contrary observation (as opposed to assertion) is enough to disprove it.

4. ID is not a scientific theory because it says nothing that could make it capable of disproof. It is all undisprovable assertion, which is just not science. It is creationism in a lab coat pretending to the non-scientific that it is science. Young earth creationism is scientific but wrong. ID is not even scientific.

5. Mainstream Christianity sees no conflict between divine creation and evolution. Millions of devout Christians, myself included, accept evolutionary theory. (for the specific meaning of “accept”, see point 1 above)

6. You can’t teach what science is (tentative and disprovable) without teaching what it is not (dogmatic and undisprovable). That is why it is ridiculous to say that ID should be taught side by side with science. It just isn’t science. Teach ID in bible class (if its inherent dishonesty doesn’t also offend there as well – creationism is way more honest and up front).

7. W’s support for ID as science is part of his Global War on Rationality. He demeans Christian faith which needs no scientific validation. He talks bad science AND bad theology.

8. I fear there is a pinnacle-of-creation conceit at work here. Many in the US accept all science except evolution – much of that 2/3 majority. This is a kind of human exceptionalism that heavily overlaps with US exceptionalism.

Aug 3, 2005 - 8:25 am 172. Paul Snively:

Just a few observations: first, I write software for a living, and without going into a lot of detail, Genetic Algorithms are an extremely useful tool for tackling problems that just can’t be realistically tackled any other way, e.g. they’re NP-complete. Genetic Algorithms are emphatically not a misapplication of the ideas behind Darwinian evolution.

Second, as I’ve written before, the arguments in physics and cosmology over whether the nature of the universe is teleological or not are not settled—far from it. The best writing on the subject that I’m aware of remains The Anthropic Cosmological Principle and The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God, and the Resurrection of the Dead, which is the most comprehensive explanation of Tipler’s Omega-Point Theory currently available. Next on my list to read is the father of quantum computing, David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes and Its Implications. Deutsch writes: “I believe that the omega-point theory deserves to become the prevailing theory of the future of spacetime until and unless it is experimentally (or otherwise) refuted.” For those who want a quick overview or references to more current writing on the subject, an excellent summary page on the Omega-Point Theory can be found here.

Aug 3, 2005 - 8:51 am 173. RogerA:

Who was this guy Richard Bennett and why was he so unpleasant?

Aug 3, 2005 - 9:01 am 174. Steven Mitchell:

It’s an old joke but true: You don’t need math to disprove the million monkey thing. The internet provided an example of why it was false.

I don’t want religion taught in science class. I also don’t want politics and philosophy and economics taught there–especially the secular materialists type that is all too often preached in such classes. I’d be very happy to leave science class strictly to science. (I think most teachers would as well.)

Among other things, that means that you’ll have to explain why recycling doesn’t work. Recycling is based on nothing but faith and misdirection, but somehow no one ever gets excited about it.

I wouldn’t mind philosophy actually being taught in schools–or even introduced in literature and history where it makes the most sense to discuss it. Except I don’t trust the public school to teach it.

Paraphrasing Chesteron again (that insidious habit), it’s not evolution I object to but evolutionists. At least the garden variety form that doesn’t really understand evolution, but thinks that he has a good stick to beat religion with. Somehow they always seem to have some very strange and uninformed ideas about how human nature actually works.

Aug 3, 2005 - 9:01 am 175. timmah!:

“I would say that faith is not humility, rather requires humilty.”

I would add that the true scientific spirit requires humility as well. A scientist remembers that a theory can never be proven true. At best it serves for a time.

Aug 3, 2005 - 9:10 am 176. Michael Hammer:

I believe the first reference to the number 10^120 was published in The Corner on NRO. Google: “jonah goldberg infinite monkey business”.

The number had three errors: speed of light is 10^8 not 10^5. The writer didn’t add up his own numbers correctly. The writer kept the speed in Km instead of converting to meters. The writer used a hard gamma ray (10^-18m) as the smallest measurement in the universe with any meaning. He should have used a planck length which is 10^-35m. This would bring the maximum number of trial available for anything to 10^140. The writer was, also, not to take away from his general point, a bit too flip.

I have it on good authority that the writer apologises for these transgressions.

Aug 3, 2005 - 9:28 am 177. Michael Hammer:

I believe the first reference to the number 10^120 was published in The Corner on NRO. Google: “jonah goldberg infinite monkey business”.

The number had three errors: speed of light is 10^8 not 10^5. The writer didn’t add up his own numbers correctly. The writer kept the speed in Km instead of converting to meters. The writer used a hard gamma ray (10^-18m) as the smallest measurement in the universe with any meaning. He should have used a planck length which is 10^-35m. This would bring the maximum number of trial available for anything to 10^140. The writer was, also, not to take away from his general point, a bit too flip.

I have it on good authority that the writer apologises for these transgressions.

Aug 3, 2005 - 9:29 am 178. Michael Hammer:

Some further thoughts and leaving out supernatural explanations.

I believe in evolution if you mean by that that we can see our physiological antecedents in other, older species.

I also believe in intelligent “design” because I see humans doing it every day.

Now, we have to consider two issues. Firstly, how do we explain the origin of the species? When Darwin first speculated that random mutation operating through natural selection explained the origin of the species there was not enough knowledge to assess the probability of this being possible. As mentioned in a previous post, we now know the maximum number of trials available for Darwin’s theory of the origin of the species to have any reasonable chance of success.

Further, because of advances in microscopy, we now have a fair estimate of the number of components that comprise an organism. With these two numbers in hand we can calculate the probability of success. And the chance of success using the old theory of the origin of the species? Zero.

You can argue that what we know about the universe is very incomplete so the numbers are suspect but the fact remains that we could take all of our variables an increase there factors by a trillion each and we still wouldn’t even come close to having a break-even chance of creating a new species. Not to mention that if the state of science were out by such a big number then science has no claim to know anything but, then, sometimes I’ve been known to be flip.

Secondly, creative intelligence exists. You have it; I have it. What has been singularly lacking in the intelligent design v. evolution debate is the question of the evolution of intelligence. Are we to consider intelligence the sole perogative of humans? Does anyone seriously think is true? If intelligence is information processing, then it would be quite plausible to postulate microbes as intelligent. I think it is fair to say that all living things are, to one degree or another, intelligent. Does anyone disagree with this?

Next, all living things are comprised of matter. The configuration of matter in life forms has the capacity for information processing. Going further, no configuration of matter can have this ability without the individual particles having a latent ability to do the same.

Next, the universe is entirely comprised of energy and matter and each is converible to the other. What came first? Not matter; it couldn’t create energy because it lacks the power to do so. Therefore, energy creates matter. But energy cannot impart something that it does not possess. Therefore, energy has the latent capacity for information processing.

If one were define God as the aggregate of all power and intelligence then energy and all of its manifestations would qualify. Energy starts out as latent intelligence and evolves to become manifest intelligence. So, in that sense, we are the sons and daughters of God. Maybe the intuitions of the ancients was not so far off the mark, after all.

We use the term “energy.” We can say what it does but we cannot say what it is. Not anyone. And what is it’s purpose? Ours is not to know. To me, it is only important that we do our part by acting according to our evolved nature. Unless you something that I don’t, all humans are creatures of biology and only of biology. All we have to do is act accordingly.

Aug 3, 2005 - 10:17 am 179. Syl:

Joseph

All I’m saying is I don’t know. I just find the debate itself misses the point that humans have this ability to imagine things that don’t exist. I’m not saying a God does not exist, I don’t know that.

Just the mere fact that we have imaginations is fascinating to me. And I suspect, if there is a god, it is nothing at all like we imagine.

Aug 3, 2005 - 10:20 am 180. Davebo:

Give me a freakin break Simon and spare us all your mock outrage.

Unless of course you can point me to your post where you dog Bush for saying he wanted CREATIONISM taught in public schools. Responding to any of the half dozen times he said so.

You bought it and we own it. It’s a little late to whine about it now.

Aug 3, 2005 - 10:42 am 181. Bostonian:

Davebo, geez, what got your knickers in a twist?

If you read this blog regularly, you would see that the primary focus is the GWOT, not every statement ever made by GWB.

And I highly doubt he ever said creationism should be taught in schools. Drop-in visitors like you tend to play fast & loose with the facts anyway (speaking of mock outrage).

And it’s childish to expect that supporters of the president have no quarrels with him anyway.

Aug 3, 2005 - 11:01 am 182. Kevin P:

Roger:

I will start by repeating the fact that I am not qualified to judge the science behind the evolution discussion. I am religous and tend towards a more orthodox outlook. I have read some of the ID books, Johnson who attacks it more from a philosophical,non-science standpoint, and Hugh Ross and the book “Darwins Black Box.”(this was long ago and I have forgotten the author and I am not sure of the title.) I enjoyed Johnson but I wouldn’t consider it science, I look at it as a discussion of science. Hugh Ross’s book, “Beyond the Cosmos” was filled with so much math that by the time I finished the book I had a guess about what he was trying to say but my knowledge of advanced math is so limited I can’t say whether his point had any merit or whether it was ‘junk science.’ he is a very smart man and I heard him speak and he semms to be a good man. But when it comes to the science I just do not have the equipment to say good or garbage.

The debate seems to be about k thru 12th grade science teaching. I think the best solution is to let the local communities decide and let the market place decide.If their is no future in the ID movement the market will weed it out faster then the bloody political fight that is going on. The level of biology that is taught in many High Schools is at the beginner level and for those students that are going to make a carreer in Science they will get the facts soon enough. From what I can tell the ID theory tends to attack evolution and has not produced a final or complete explanation.

There is politics on both sides of the argument and this is where it gets sticky. Science should be left alone but scientist should also make sure that they don’t trade their knowlege in a particular area and use it to promote political solutions that are not hard science solutions. The ID people should act the same way.

The global warming argument is a classic example. I have read the arguments from both sides. The science is truly over my head and since there are extremely brilliant men and women, from a scientific standpoint, who stand up, list the facts and figures, and come to opposite conclusions. For my fellow math and science challenged bretheran we are put in a very difficult spot. I know I could not argue with either side and not come out looking like a fool.

The danger I see is when scientists use their knowledge of the issue and attach it to the political solutions that are not scientific, that are not knowable, and then claim that somehow the Kyoto treaty is no different then what temperature water boils at.

The treaty is flawed because China and India are not properly involved. They have created a scientific and inclusive economic plan that doesn’t work because they, through no fault of their own, don’t properly classify India and China economically. If a scientific theory that uses weights to come to their conclusion factors in a 100 pound unit and a 200 pound unit and states that they are actually 25 pounds and 50 pounds then even a math retard can figure out that the theory is flawed. Yet when some of the scientists that are trotted out to argue for Kyoto they speak as if Kyoto is simply a math equation and that if you have problems with it you are a moron who is trying to claim that 2 plus 2 equals 10. They abuse their trust when they try to pass off subjective political solutions as hard science.

I found this thread very interesting and civil except for one person and even his initial postings helped me a touch with my limited knowledge of the issue. Thanks guys.

Kevin Peters

Aug 3, 2005 - 12:05 pm 183. Richard Bennett:

I found this thread very depressing because it reminded my how many morons there are in the world. I’ve come to the conclusion that the Romans were right on the question of Christians and lions.

Bush is behind ID because he’s a Biblical literalist who accepts the Genesis account of creation (the one where light comes on Day 1 but the Sun waits until Day 3, you know) and all the nonsense about The Rapture. Anybody who accepts the Bible as anything more than an odd collection of myths and fairy tales is insane, of course.

ID is not a scientific theory, it’s a propaganda tool invented by the fundies at the Discovery Institute in Seattle to move the nation’s children away from a scientific understanding of the world toward a fundamentalist position. They’re explained their agenda here, in the Wedge Strategy document:

The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the WestÔøΩs greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences.

Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art

The cultural consequences of this triumph of materialism were devastating. Materialists denied the existence of objective moral standards, claiming that environment dictates our behavior and beliefs. Such moral relativism was uncritically adopted by much of the social sciences, and it still undergirds much of modern economics, political science, psychology and sociology.

Materialists also undermined personal responsibility by asserting that human thoughts and behaviors are dictated by our biology and environment. The results can be seen in modern approaches to criminal justice, product liability, and welfare. In the materialist scheme of things, everyone is a victim and no one can be held accountable for his or her actions.

Finally, materialism spawned a virulent strain of utopianism. Thinking they could engineer the perfect society through the application of scientific knowledge, materialist reformers advocated coercive government programs that falsely promised to create heaven on earth.

Discovery InstituteÔøΩs Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies. Bringing together leading scholars from the natural sciences and those from the humanities and social sciences, the Center explores how new developments in biology, physics and cognitive science raise serious doubts about scientific materialism and have re-opened the case for a broadly theistic understanding of nature. The Center awards fellowships for original research, holds conferences, and briefs policymakers about the opportunities for life after materialism.

This is not a joke, and this has to be taken seriously.

Science education in the US is in serious trouble, and this ID nonsense is calculated to make it worse. It cannot be allowed into the schools, and every effort must be made to fight it.

If that means some people are going to be offended, so be it.

Thank you and have a nice day.

Aug 3, 2005 - 12:45 pm 184. Kevin P:

Richard:

Your comments have nothing to do with anyone being offended. As one of those stupid Christians who you have decided should be killed rather then infect your world I am not offended by your words rather I am scared that someone with your bitter and violoent attitude would ever achieve influence on the leaders of this country. I am not a proponent of ID and I have admited that my knowledge of science is limited. If you had differences with any of my words then you could address my thoughts rather then plot my destruction. There are many of the posters here that agree with your knowledge of evolution and do not think ID should be anywhere near a science class yet they seem to be able to discuss the issue without the bile and venom that spew from your keyboard. You are probably correct on the science yet you are sorely lacking in the fields of basic humanity and civility.

Aug 3, 2005 - 3:25 pm 185. timmah!:

Kevin, I found this discussion http://www.socialaffairsunit.org.uk/blog/archives/000522.php of the overreaction of Darwin fanatics entertaining and enlightening. Ad hominem invective (moron! christer!) and appeals to authority (1,000,000 experts! 5,000,000 journals!) await any challenge to the theory. This betrays a religious rather than an empirical sensibility.

Aug 3, 2005 - 4:02 pm 186. mcg:

Patrick: Just a few observations: first, I write software for a living, and without going into a lot of detail, Genetic Algorithms are an extremely useful tool for tackling problems that just can’t be realistically tackled any other way, e.g. they’re NP-complete. Genetic Algorithms are emphatically not a misapplication of the ideas behind Darwinian evolution.

On the contrary, Patrick. There are a variety of approaches to tackling combinatorial or NP-complete problems, and genetic algorithms are but one. In some cases, you can approximate or relax the problem somewhat to produce a problem that can be solved efficiently. In others, a custom heuristic will get you close, sometimes provably close, to the right answer.

What’s left over are problems which are basically resistant to any sort of intelligent search. So the alternative is to search randomly. And genetic algorithms are basically just a prettied-up version of a random search. And thanks to the fact that you’re forced to abstract the processes of mutation, selection, and recombination, you’re left with a random search that is often far less efficient than one without all that cruft.

Furthermore, people’s love affair with Darwin colors their judgement; and as a result, the first thing people think of when they see an optimization problem that looks tough is, “hmm, let’s try a GA”. I’ve even seen instances where genetic algorithms have been applied to problems which were not combinatorial at all, and could be solved efficiently and globally.

I should be kind and say that there are some combinatorial problems out there that somewhat naturally lend themselves to the genetic abstraction. Alas, that is the case less frequently than many of its proponents would like to believe. And no matter how you slice it, it’s still just a pretty way to add some helpful randomization to what is necessarily an attempt to do an exhaustive search—as with simulated annealing or Tabu searches.

Aug 3, 2005 - 4:37 pm 187. mcg:

I found this thread very depressing because it reminded my how many morons there are in the world.

Sigh. Indeed, Richard, I just have no idea how you can take it. How so many people who were created in the image of You could have gone so far astray must baffle you.

Aug 3, 2005 - 4:43 pm 188. mcg:

You know how some people claim that some of the most outwardly homophobic sorts are in fact resisting the homosexual tendencies in themselves?

Wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it applied to Christophobes like Richard Bennett as well.

Aug 3, 2005 - 5:05 pm 189. Rick Ballard:

mcg,

This is what I was talking about. Hayek did a further explication in The Counter-Revolution of Science. Not exactly cutting edge stuff wrt being the latest but it is interesting to watch the ID people use a material collectivist tactic. I wonder if they realize the genesis of their tactic.

Aug 3, 2005 - 5:23 pm 190. Richard Bennett:

Probably not.

Aug 3, 2005 - 5:32 pm 191. Richard Bennett:

mcg, are you saying I want to have sex with Jesus?

I can’t say that I’ve ever entertained that fantasy, but Mary Magdalene seemed pretty hot, and the Song of Solomon was inspiring. But with Jesus dead and buried, it’s pretty academic.

BTW, can you imagine what sort of a world we’d live in if Augustus Caesar had only had a few more lions?

Aug 3, 2005 - 5:35 pm 192. Katherine:

Augustus?

Are we talking about the Julius Caesar Octavianus, the Divine Augustus who died in 14 AD?

I thought that prosecution of Christians (especially feeding them to the lions) started in 64 AD. At least that is what Tacitus says. But I wait to be enlightened.

Aug 3, 2005 - 5:58 pm 193. mcg:

No, Richard, I’m saying that I will be one of those least surprised the day you announce you’ve a had a road to Damascus moment.

And if the Romans had more lions? They would have all been kept quite fat—and the gates of Hell would still have not prevailed.

Aug 3, 2005 - 6:47 pm 194. mcg:

Richard, if it’s any consolation, I’m sure that there are quite a few Christians today praying for you. You may prefer they not waste their time, but look at it this way: since you won’t get your wish that they be eaten by lions, at least this will keep them too busy to cause trouble at those school board meetings.

Aug 3, 2005 - 6:52 pm 195. Richard Bennett:

Yes, Katherine, that should be Nero, not Augustus. Augie was too busy persecuting the to worry about the early Christians, who were called the most illiterate and ignorant people in the whole Roman Empire.

Aug 3, 2005 - 7:06 pm 196. Richard Bennett:

Augie was down on the Bacchanalians, that is.

mcg, I hope you’re right. Our religious people are among those unable to deal with the pace of change in our world. They hope to turn back the clock to that Golden Age in the past, before science and medicine, when everyone was happy, nobody was ever sick, and nobody died of old age.

Sigh.

Aug 3, 2005 - 7:09 pm 197. Katherine:

I thought so, Richard.

I agree with you about the merits of the Theory of Evolution, but we occupy alternative Universes if our opinions of modern Christianity are to be considered.

If it is any consolation, I would not like to see YOU to be fed to the lions, no matter how much I may disagree with you on some subjects and how rude and unpleasant you chose to be.

I speak as fully informed Agnostic.

Aug 3, 2005 - 7:21 pm 198. Kevin P:

Richard:

Your narrow minded bigoted attempt to pigeon hole all christians into a single simplistic stereotype sound less like a man of science and more like those Christians who stereotype all men of science as Nazi like monsters who run experiments on humans to feed their demented delusions of God like power. You don’t seem to realize how closely you resemble the people you despise.

Kevin Peters

Aug 3, 2005 - 7:43 pm 199. thibaud:

Richard Bennett plays rough. He also argues with impeccable and IMO irrefutable logic, and has clearly demolished the rather shallow arguments of the poster whom so many here are eager to defend. Frankly, I find refreshing his highbrowed, principled, you might say, Hitchensian, contrarianism.

In fact, the stakes in this matter are enormous, at least from my family’s point of view. I survived twelve years of Catholic schools; my wife survived seventeen years of Communist schools. We will not burden our children with such unreason and dogma as was pushed on us. Living in the Bible Belt and watching the advance of the know-nothing “creationists” is thus deeply troubling.

It’s also infuriating to think that such nonsense will take out yet more time from a science curriculum that is already ludicrously simplified and that lags far behind what students in Russia, India and much of East Asia are taught. The average Russian student is two-three years beyond elite US students in math and science matters; elite Russian students do what in this country is considered college-level math and science at the same age that our students are struggling to learn basic algebra.

The stupid and infantile approach to hard subjects taken by US schools is bad enough; that we now also have to worry about religious nonsense polluting those classes is appalling. And no, I don’t want lefty indoctrination, either. The absence of lefty idiocy does not compensate for the presence of fundamentalist religious idiocy. Ni Marx ni Jesus.

Aug 3, 2005 - 9:25 pm 200. thibaud:

From my prespective it’s not clear what in Rick B’s comments on this thread seems worthy of such strenuous rescue efforts from so many here, unless it’s simply a matter of taking pity on a Roger’s Place Regular when he’s attacked by a relative newbie. As if Cheers’s Nommy or Cliffie were made to look silly by one of Fraser’s former classmates from grad school who dropped by.

Which raises a question for mah fellow denizens of Roger’s Place. Do you come here more for reassurance and camaraderie, the comfort provided by familiar voices expressing familiar and unthreatening points of view, or for intellectual stimulation, even if that means getting your chops busted from time to time by someone who’s cleverer and better educated on the issue at the hand?

I wouldn’t go to my favorite pub for intellectual stimulus, partly becauses pubs serve alcohol and I’ve found that it stimulates not the intellect but the less-than-better angels of our nature. But blogs are another matter. No alcohol’s served and, with all due respect, no really meaningful relationships can be severed, so I’m not sure, really, why people take them so seriously. (Andrew Sullivan wrote me a nasty email response once. I cried for a week. not).

After four years of surfing blogs, I’ve noticed a very definite tendency in nearly all political blogs toward uniformity of thought on topics that provoke intense emotion among the participants, with harsh treatment for those who dissent from the club .

For ex, if I go to Brad DeLong’s liberal site and suggest that Bush’s torture policy is while mistaken not worth three hundred plus NYT articles, or if I go to a conservative site and argue that Bush’s torture policy, while criticized in hysterical terms, is nonethless dumb, wrong and coutner-productive to the war effort, I in both cases will attract not respectful, reasoned responses but snark and sneers and vitriol of an order far worse than what poor Rick B has suffered here at the hands of Mr Bennett. For that matter, I’ve been on the receiving end of more than a few snarky and vitriolic posts on this very site from Mistah Rick himself. No blood, no foul, no big deal.

Another thought: are blogs just a thinking person’s sanitized version of e-dating (or maybe dirty chat)? Or is something like real understanding advanced by blogs? If the latter, then we should welcome Richard Bennett with open arms. More, please.

Aug 3, 2005 - 9:35 pm 201. Kevin P:

Thibaud:

Many of the posters agreed with RB’s science arguments. I quickly went through his post and out of the 22 or 23 posts he wrote about 8 were arguments about the topic. I don’t know enough science to judge but many of the posters that do know agreed with you that his arguments were correct. Rick is a big boy and he can defend himself. So many of RB’s post’s were strictly verbal attacks and weak and ignorant theology arguments. Attacking the ID arguments are part of the package so the I know monkeys that are smarter then the folks at the Discovery Institute gag is part of the rough and tumble. But dreaming of dying christians and the narrow minded slurs were not informative and not much more then a spitting and name calling fest. Your last two points were arguments and thought out. Whether someone likes your point or not they make a point, they explain your reasons, and they stay away from the “your ugly and your momma is fat” territory.

I am a Christian but I don’t base my faith on the ID argument as far as trying to verify God through science. Some of the post’s that were strongly Darwinian Science were interesting for a non science person and some of RB’s post’s i include in this category. But many of his post’s were simply anti-christian bashing, which is fine if you simply want to swing elbows but it had nothing to do with evolution.

When he was discussing the science he was interesting. When it came to name calling he was childish. So many of his post’s did not increase anyones “understanding” of the issue.

Aug 3, 2005 - 11:20 pm 202. Pixy Misa:

Now, we have to consider two issues. Firstly, how do we explain the origin of the species?

Genetic variability and natural selection.

When Darwin first speculated that random mutation operating through natural selection explained the origin of the species there was not enough knowledge to assess the probability of this being possible.

Of what being possible?

As mentioned in a previous post, we now know the maximum number of trials available for Darwin’s theory of the origin of the species to have any reasonable chance of success.

Success? What are you talking about?

Evolution is a fact. New species arise. We know that.

The Theory of Evolution tells us how it happens.

Further, because of advances in microscopy, we now have a fair estimate of the number of components that comprise an organism.

Well, yeah.

With these two numbers in hand we can calculate the probability of success.

Success of what? Evolution isn’t about success. Evolution is about adaptation.

And the chance of success using the old theory of the origin of the species?

What are you talking about?

Evolution happens. Probability one.

The Theory of Evolution is our attempt to explain how it happens.

I think it is fair to say that all living things are, to one degree or another, intelligent. Does anyone disagree with this?

Yes.

Single-celled animals aren’t intelligent in any meaningful sense of the term. Nor are plants or fungi. Flatworms, yes; they can learn. Anything more complicated than that, yes.

Energy starts out as latent intelligence and evolves to become manifest intelligence.

That’s nonsense. Intelligence is a process. It’s not energy. And energy can’t evolve.

We use the term “energy.” We can say what it does but we cannot say what it is.

It is what it does. Energy is the ability to do work. If you require any more definition than that, you’ve abandoned science for metaphysics.

And what is it’s purpose?

It doesn’t have a purpose. It’s energy.

Aug 3, 2005 - 11:33 pm 203. AlanDownunder:

Bostonian posted this about GWB:

And I highly doubt he ever said creationism should be taught in schools.

which set me googling.

From the first hit I found:

Another is the statement of Texas Governor George Bush, who last week in New Orleans declared, “I believe children ought to be exposed to different theories about how the world started.” Bush campaign spokesperson Minday Tucker followed up, saying “He (Bush) believes both creationism and evolution ought to be taught. He believes it is a question for states and local school boards to decide but he believes both ought to be taught.”

Aug 4, 2005 - 12:11 am 204. Richard Bennett:

KevinP, don’t be such a crybaby. We both know that Christians aren’t going be nourishing any lions in the USA any time soon, unless said felines are NFL stars from Detroit. Get a grip.

thibaud, you’re too kind.

Aug 4, 2005 - 12:53 am 205. Orson2:

I’m sure Richard Bennett (above) is using hyperbole when he calls Biblical literalism “insane.” Still, the reaction he has I also share, that is, I don’t grasp how the non-scientifically minded, like Bush, can go though life without all of the unintegrated, mythical awareness simply driving out the rational components. In other words, a habit of epistemological integration – to me, to Richard – feels as if it must remain in perpetual conflict with Faith and mysticism.

It takes a lot of different peoples to make up a world. I guess that’s why Desmond morris called it “The Human Zoo.”

Elsewhere, Silicon Valley Jim quotes: ‘the Roman Catholic Church has currently no problem with the concept of evolution.’

Jim reply’s with assurance:

“Absolutely. In a theology class in a Catholic high school in 1965 (taught by a Dominican priest, so Thomas Aquinas was the philosopher beyond question), I was taught that the Catholic church has no disagreement with the theory of evolution, provided that the theory does not extend to the evolution of the human soul. Since the human soul is not within the purview of science, or, in other words, science has no need of the hypothesis of a human soul, there’s no problem.”

This is easy comfort that misses what’s going on here. Now, the late biologist Francis Crick – co-discoverer of the DNA helical structure – proposes, with co-author Christof Koch, a challenge for scientists to help test a theory of physical basis of consciousness.

http://www.economist.com/science/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4221513

Supposing it’s successful, some will argue that human conscousness and “human soul” are the same, and the Church will have to debate this discovery. Thus, the past history of conflict between science and religion, at least temporarily (although likely longer), will at some point recommence.

This is why history is valuable. Times may change but people don’t in their wish for simplicity and certainty. And thus, even the barbaric inhumanity of the Islamist’s beheading sits close beside our finest human achievements. One crotchety conservative, Malcolm Muggeridge, titled one of his books “Trousered Apes.” Indeed, we are.

Now, getting back to Bush, consider AlanDownunder’s comments: “W’s support for ID as science is part of his Global War on Rationality. He demeans Christian faith which needs no scientific validation. He talks bad science AND bad theology.”

As a University of Washington forest ecologist said earlier this year, about certain land managment changed sponsored by the Administration: “Just because Bush wants it doesn’t mean it’s bad.”

If Bush thinks ideas’s should be talked about in education, few American’s will disagree. But if Bush believes science ought to include the teaching non-scientific ideas – then there will be a public rhetorical fight! And properly so. (Although, Bush may be just doing his verbal best to ‘payback’ an important Evangelical constituency by performing a simple rhetorical service. After all, most education is the state’s and localities concern; the feds have very little influence with it, so Bush jeopardizes little in the dog days of August by talking up the subject.)

But there are useful places where ID ought to be discussed beyond literature or mythology or Sunday Bible study: history and current events, for example.

Or better yet: should courses in science versus non-science be offered? I once read a brief study showing that even science education (ie, majoring in a science at the college level) doesn’t make one more knowlegeable about the difference; one simply knows more facts! Not how to tell science from non-science.

And therefore we ought to find more empathy for Bush and others who compartmentalize their knowledge sets. Many years of concern about teaching “logic” or critical thinking skills have not dimminished Americans’ appetite for a hodgepodge of the reasonable and irrational.

Perhaps we want to be tantalized with the mysterious? – always. If so, the truely existentially courageous are those willing to live without it.

Aug 4, 2005 - 1:22 am 206. Steven Mitchell:

“Still, the reaction he has I also share, that is, I don’t grasp how the non-scientifically minded, like Bush, can go though life without all of the unintegrated, mythical awareness simply driving out the rational components.”

You may believe or disbelieve in the concept of Original Sin. It’s almost all a matter of faith. (There is certain circumstantial evidence on the matter, but not likely to sway anyone unless they already have some faith.) That’s “mystical awareness”, if you want to call it that. However, many of the consequences of Original Sin, or the lack thereof, are predictable. They aren’t testable in a scientific sense, but they are certainly testable in a manner that most police detectives would consider rational. You can’t prove or disprove them, but you can make useful deductions and predictions.

But I’ll try to explain how it works without relying on either science or religion overmuch. First, what you call “unintegrated, mythical awareness” is rarely such. Usually, it’s some tiny bit of mythical awareness that is then supported *and* developed by reason and experience. It’s not the same as “gut instincts” but the gut will serve by way of example.

A businessman thinks that widget X will be the next big thing. He has his “reasons”, but they aren’t anywhere near provable in a scientific sense. At best, he has a lot of circumstantial evidence that he thinks he understands because of his experience.

So our businessman pushes for the design, development, and marketing of X. He might eventually be called an idiot or a visionary, but either way, from the outside it appears irrational. Why do people help him so much? Well, some people have found that his gut is reliable. So they don’t understand it, but they can make all kinds of rational decisons based on the thought that, “if he is correct, we should do A, B, and C.” If our businessman lets his gut drive out his “rational components” on all that other stuff, he will not generally be successful.

Of course, that’s a crude example. And the crux of the problem is always where you draw the line. The problem with people that worship at the altar of science (as opposed to people actually practicing science) is that they try to draw the line where everything rational *is* science. For example, they want to claim all of mathematics as science. It isn’t. Mathematical logic is its own beast, and useful in a host of things that may or may not depend on scientific theory.

At the same time, for political reasons, you have real scientists letting people call themselves “social scientists” and other such nonsense. Very little done by a social scientist is really science, and to the extent that it is science, it’s not unique to “social science”.

And let me suggest that maybe if the public schools were not so generally hostile to philosophy and religion, then people wouldn’t care what was taught about evolution. The thing that really galls many religious folks is that it seems that an advocate that happens to teach in a science class is allowed to be a snot about religion, but no one is allowed to say anything positive about it–even in, say, English class while studying the Scarlett Letter. (Not that the Scarlett Letter is the first place you’d see something positive about religion, but I have known English teachers to sneak in a respectful but neutral discussion of region using that book.)

Aug 4, 2005 - 7:05 am 207. Michael Hammer:

Ah, Pixy,

What am I to do with your post? I just hope that I can point you in the right direction.

E=mc2

You might ponder that equation.

Good luck.

Aug 4, 2005 - 8:02 am 208. Kevin P:

Thibaud:

The post’s that followed RB latest drivel are a perfect example of the difference between advancing the discussion and simply repeating the now stale lion analogy. I never claimed that lions would soon be unleashed upon Christians. I simply stated that his hatred of Christians goes beyond the normal back and forth, even heated discussion that can be interesting or enlightening. This has turned into a pissing contest that is no better then watching 2 drunks go at it. I will leave the field to RB so he can get back to the topic of evolution rather then explore his ability to take the lion analogy and beat it to death. Richard, we all know you think Christians are drooling morons who have never left the 9th century. If you want to keep going in that direction at least freshen up your cliches.

Aug 4, 2005 - 9:36 am 209. thibaud:

Orson,

I don’t grasp how the non-scientifically minded, like Bush, can go though life without all of the unintegrated, mythical awareness simply driving out the rational components

Why so? Pepole compartmentalize all the time, and successful people especially balance all sorts of intellectual and emotional contradictions.

As to Bush’s evangelical faith, it came to him relatively late in life, in early middle age. I think it’s fair to locate the emotional valence of his conversion in the intersection of his efforts to overcome alcoholism, save his marriage, and carve out a relationship to his father that involves the usual son-father rivalry along with a desire to make good in the one sphere where he has undeniable brilliance: managing political relationships.

It would appear to me that his evangelical faith has undeniable therapeutic benefits but also allows him to create a successful political and professional identity that is completely independent of his father. There may also be some psychic satisfaction for the former wastrel son in using precisely that evangelical support– electoral and emotional– to exceed his father’s achievements. Recall that it was the hard right whose lack of strong support did in Bush pere in ‘92.

All of which makes it entirely logical that a man who is so intuitively sharp, and exceptionally gifted at the chess game of politics, would latch on to the creationist wagon.

That’s a pity. Ultimately it’s not the Democrats but your children and mine who are going to suffer the consequences. Looks like daddy’s not going to have too much time for blogging: I’ll have to scramble to earn the extra $20,000+ (actually, $30,000 in pre-tax income) needed each year for private school tuitions. And drive the kids many miles each day to reach the only secular private school in the region. What madness.

Aug 4, 2005 - 10:25 am 210. thibaud:

Kevin – agree totally that the lions ‘n’ tigers ‘n’ Christians stuff is offensive and by now exceedingly boring.

Richard – I liked your posts better when you were talking about petri dishes and the like.

Aug 4, 2005 - 10:27 am 211. Frederick:

Kevin P.

“This has turned into a pissing contest that is no better then watching 2 drunks go at it.”

Yes. Mr. Wizard and William Jennings Bryan at the Monkey Trial Bar, with cliches and insults instead of fists and broken beer bottles. A discussion of complicated things on a level of, at best, college freshmen who already know everything. Religous bigotry. Boasting about being rude. It’s embarrassing just to read it.

Aug 4, 2005 - 10:30 am 212. chuck:

Pixy Misa,

It is what it does. Energy is the ability to do work.

Technically speaking, this is not the case. Thermodynamics deals with the distinction and entropy comes into play. I’m picking nits here, I know.

Orson2

Perhaps we want to be tantalized with the mysterious? – always. If so, the truely existentially courageous are those willing to live without it.

I would argue that a sense of the mysterious drives all the best scientists. It is interesting to read physicists talking about physics back in the 1920’s, their nostagia for the interplay of philosophy and mathematics at the time is tangible. Dirac’s early papers on quantum mechanics in the Proceedings of the Royal Society capture some of the flavor, as does his introduction to his book. Those who live without a sense of the mysterious, even if they are highly educated and highly intelligent, are unlikely to have a deep motivation to discover new things in the world.

Aug 4, 2005 - 10:36 am 213. Steven Mitchell:

“I’ll have to scramble to earn the extra $20,000+ (actually, $30,000 in pre-tax income) needed each year for private school tuitions.”

Or you could home-school, as my family does. It works out about the same financially if one spouse does not mind staying home.

The schools are already on a sharp decline. What gets taught in a high school science class is irrelevant to a place that spends the preceding years neglecting reading and math for self-esteem exercises.

Hmm, break the government monopoly on public education. It’s the only solution that makes both you and me happy. And we get a lot better return on our tax dollars.

Aug 4, 2005 - 11:32 am 214. Richard Bennett:

I don’t actually think “Christians” are drooling morons, KevinP. Pope John Paul II said there’s no conflict between evolution and church teaching, going as far as to declare that evolution by natural selection is “more than a theory” because it’s supported by so much evidence.

As far as I know, none of the major protestant sects has a problem with it either; the Episcopalian church (within which I was raised) certainly doesn’t. To find the hostility to evolution in particular and science in general it seems that one has to go the snake-handling and faith-healing congregations, and I would submit that their members aren’t among the most educated members of our society. That’s just a fact, and you can make of it what you will. The Catholic Church tends to regard them more or less as heretics, of course.

It’s interesting to point out – and nobody has done this – that even the Discovery Institute is opposed to teaching ID in the public schools. They maintain that the notion is insufficiently developed for exposure to young minds.

So who are we to dispute the will of ID’s creator?

Aug 4, 2005 - 11:49 am 215. Kyda Sylvester:

I assume that most here would agree with Stephen J. Gould that evolution is fact and natural selection is a theory postulated to explain that fact. Darwin tells us that evolution requires transitional forms and he fully expected evidence of those forms to be discovered as research progressed. However, the existing fossil trail is quite remarkable for its paucity of transitional forms (I believe in the plant kingdom, there are zero examples of such forms).

To explain both this lack of evidence and also the long periods of stasis combined with the sudden appearance of new species (not something Darwin expected certainly), Gould and others theorized that speciation occurs relatively quickly and in small, peripherally isolated groups and thus one would expect the fossil record to be sparse. I’m afraid I don’t find this entirely persuasive.

I, in my admitedly limited intellectual capacity, have a difficult time understanding why it is that these particular fossil records are the ones consistently absent over time. Does this not bother anyone else? Would it not be accurate to say that a strict adherence to evolution without any allowance for some kind of intelligent design requires more than one “leap of faith”?

Aug 4, 2005 - 12:12 pm 216. thibaud:

Home schooling is a bad joke. Like telling someone who’s disgusted with the ridiculous cost, bureaucracy and inanities of our health insurance system to go treat himself with herbs and potions.

I can deal with all sorts of stupidity in the schools, but this latest assault on reason and high standards for our kids needs to be halted in its tracks, before it gathers any more momentum.

Aug 4, 2005 - 12:41 pm 217. chuck:

Kyda,

However, the existing fossil trail is quite remarkable for its paucity of transitional forms (I believe in the plant kingdom, there are zero examples of such forms).

Kyda, you might like to read up on this. link.

Aug 4, 2005 - 12:50 pm 218. Steven Mitchell:

thibaud, I’ll be sure and tell my son starting the 7th grade–who just ranked in the 96th percentile on his math achievement test (roughly entry college level)–that he’s getting a joke education.

“Reason and high standards”? I really do wish you sincere and abundant luck in getting that particular barn door closed. I happen to think that the horse is long gone.

It’s a shame that you must fund (via taxes) what you consider such nonsense and then raise the private school money yourself. It’s an equal shame that I have to fund what I consider such nonsense and then deal with a single income. At least my wife gets to spend lots of time with the kids. The problem is not in our respective solutions. The problem is that we don’t get to opt out of nonsense.

Aug 4, 2005 - 12:53 pm 219. thibaud:

SM,

Why do you assume that my family does not also rely solely on my income? Home schooling is not an option for us, and is a disastrous option for our society.

For starters, my wife is not a teacher. We pay people good money in my town to perform that service for our children. We have enough time and other burdens on our little household as it is without having to assume a role that is not for us to assume.

Also, despite my love of explaining things to my boys and my deep love of analysis of history, literature etc, I can think of no surer way to alienate my boys from a subject than for his father to become a pedant to him. I’m friendly to my boys but I am not their friend; I enjoy explaining things to them but I am not willing to become their sole teacher.

Perhaps your wife is gentle and tolerant and a perfect teacher; neither I nor my wife is. We’re fairly perfectionistic and would make awful teachers. This is one reason that our advanced society makes use of that old principle known as division of labor.

Finally, you neglect the examples I mentioned of other, far far poorer countries from Russia to China whose students are now running rings around ours in math and science. It is simply disgraceful that this country cannot provide its children with a first-rate education in the hard subjects that more than any other attribute will determine our and their success in the next half century. Though your son’s results may please you, your proposed remedy is not realistic for most individual American households or for our democracy generally. We need to slay this dragon, not run away from it.

Aug 4, 2005 - 2:15 pm 220. Richard Bennett:

Lots of home-schooled kids are being taught young-earth creationism as we speak. Mr. Mitchell, and that’s very sad.

Aug 4, 2005 - 2:17 pm 221. Frederick:

Steven Mitchell:

“…I’ll be sure and tell my son starting the 7th grade…”

I keep hearing stories like yours. One of the best arguments for home schooling, aside from those about the higher quality of education, is that the products seem to be so much more mature and better able to interact easily with adults. As to the public schools, I am sorry to say that I have come to share your view. Arguing about what should be included in a high school biology class for bored kids somewhere seems to me to be like arguing about whether the library on the Titanic had the right books. The American public schools were a 19th c. idea, for an America that mostly consisted of small towns where the teachers were neighbors. They now seem to have evolved into what is, in essence, a prison system where those guilty of the crime of being young serve their time. The lowest common denominator is the standard, and that standard has gotten very low. Homeschooling now seems to be beginning to evolve into a new form of community group schooling. There are lots of problems to overcome, but America’s strength has always been its ability to create new institutions to replace those that don’t work. Your son is lucky. In retrospect, I wish that we had homeschooled our three.

Aug 4, 2005 - 2:31 pm 222. chuck:

Thibaud,

Where do you stand on vouchers? My own sense is that the educational establishment is so entrenched, from teachers colleges, to the unions, to the bureaucracy, to the textbooks, that vouchers may be the only way to introduce competition and choice into the system.

Aug 4, 2005 - 3:38 pm 223. Steven Mitchell:

Mr. Bennett, not nearly as sad as what goes on in our public schools in the name of education. What passes for religion/theology training in this country is worse than a joke. I’m not talking about religious indoctrination. I’m talking about the actual study of what religions teach (studied from outside, if you will). It explains much of the ignorance displayed about, for example, Southern Baptists as they actually are versus how they are portrayed.

I happen to know a *lot* of kids that are home schooled. Many of them are taught some form of Creationism–but here is the key thing: Very few are brainwashed into it. They are taught it same as any other subject. And all of these subjects are taught critically–that is, how they learn is as important as what they learn. For some reason they seem well equipped to go to college and major in pre-med, mathematics and physics and economics and any number of things. If home schoolers turn out to be slightly less well represented in biology circles–well I’m sure the nation will survive with the efforts of others. That said, home schooling is hardly uniform. I even know some kids that are taught Creationism that do very well in biology and will probably work in the field. It’s good to learn how to apply skepticism, but not so good to become a confirmed skeptic.

That is because home schoolers nearly always, regardless of their religious (or lack thereof) stripes, think it important to teach dealing with ambiguity and paradox. Or you can call it the more negative “compartmentalize”, as I believe Thibaud used earlier. It’s the same skill that lets a person try to do a good job working at a government agency even when they think that maybe the government should not do what the agency does. The knack to do this is critical in modern life–and sadly lacking.

Thibaud, “It is simply disgraceful that this country cannot provide its children with a first-rate education in the hard subjects that more than any other attribute will determine our and their success in the next half century.”

I agree, except it has nothing to do with “cannot” and everything to do with “will not”. But home schoolers aren’t the cause of this–that assumes that only a public monopoly of education can work, and anyone that isn’t involved is part of the problem. From my vantage point, home schoolers are part of the solution. It puts pressure on the establishment to clean up its act. Without this (and other) pressure, I do not see how education will ever get any better. In the meantime, a few more kids get a good education than would otherwise be the case.

Also, my wife will be the first to tell you that she is not a saint. She is not trained as a teacher. But you seem to have missed my larger point. The home school suggestion was flippant. The larger suggestion was not: *Why* should you, as a taxpayer, feel that the schools are so rotten that you must look around for an alternative? What is it that stands in your way? It isn’t home schoolers, but the NEA.

If my kids could go to the public school I went to as a kid–not the building, but one with those kinds of teachers–they would go. My wife would be thrilled. Unfortunately, there isn’t one of those around here any more. Instead, we get people too caught up in “whole language” and “new math” crap. A person reared on that might as well be taught Creationism as Evolution, or the other way around). They will not actually understand any of it anyway.

BTW, Thibaud, I’m not intending to pound you so much on this. It’s merely that you latched onto the home school bit and seemed to ignore the public education monopoly bit. Given your statements about religion, we probably don’t agree about how public schools should be run, where one of us made “education dictator for life”. But that’s only a problem if we are forced to fun a system that eats all the education dollars and energy without actually giving very much back.

I’d actually like to see something a lot more ambitious than vouchers or charter schools or marginal relaxation of public funds for private/parochial schools. Rather, I’d like to see the whole concept of K-12 education broken up such that advancement was by subject rather than grade.

Frederick mentioned 19th century public schools. Actually, most of them started as what we today we call private or community schools. They were totally supported locally. They were incorporated into what became the public schools, which is also when their long decline began. (Many think the decline started in the early 1960’s. It only accelerated then.) Anyway, one of the reasons they worked so well, despite so few resources, is that it was possible for a student to advance in one subject and not in another. If 9-10 year old (today’s 3rd grader) did fine in reading but didn’t know his multiplication tables yet, they didn’t split the difference and promote him, thus putting him even further behind in math. Nor did they outright fail him, and squash his desire to read by making him repeat stuff he had already mastered. *This* is why home schooling works, despite all the obvious drawbacks. My son is “only” grade level in some of the verbal categories. In the public schools, he’d be doomed to no more interesting math until they let him take Algebra in 2 or 3 years.

Finally, another reason that those prairie schools worked so well is that they were always small. I’ve rambled on too long here to say why I think that matters, but suffice it to say that while small and large schools both have problems, the small school problems are things we can overcome. After about 60-90 students per grade level, a school inevitably suffers compared to an equally well led small school. And economy of scale means squat if you don’t actually accomplish the goal of the enterprise.

Lots of smaller schools would allow diverse specialization that would make a lot of things possible. For example, you, Thibaud, if you decided you wanted your kid to know about religion (even if not believe it), could send him for a year to the local school that taught some theology. You wouldn’t be stuck with your present choice of none or full blown parochial school. Or you could decide not, and pursue something else important. The important thing is that you would be deciding, not the school board or the teachers’ union.

Aug 4, 2005 - 3:41 pm 224. Kevin P:

Roger:

Home schooling is not the solution for everyone. But the home schoolers are not a threat to the Public School system. They are a direct result of the failings of many, not all, public schools. For those parents who do opt for Home schooling there is a growing network of teaching material and group functions that reduce the isolation and socialazation problems.

If anyone thinks they are a problem there is a solution. Return more control to the local communities to control their school districts. One of the main reasons that homeschooling has exploded is the inability of local parents to control the direction of their local schools. Many local school districts have limited ability to mold their curiculums so even the option of running for school boards brings limited results.

Give more hiring/firing power to principles,State and federal governmnets should test for results but let local elective boards make the majority of decisions. You will see more parental involvement and help lessen the frustration that has sparked the home school fire.In theory homeschooling has no greater effect then private schools on the Public School system. I have not heard too many calls for the elimination of Private Schools and they were around when our public school system was thriving.

Are there examples of home schooling disasters? Sure, but no more then the public school horror stories. From what I have read homeschoolers have done better then their public school mates and certainly no worse in some areas. Would it be better if parents did not feel the need to ditch the public school system? Yes, but that is a example of how badly some of the public school systems have dropped. Would I reach for this alternative? Only if I felt desperate, as a last resort. The fact that more and more parents are choosing this drastic solution says more about the problems with our school system then it does about the parents who choose this option.

Aug 4, 2005 - 4:41 pm 225. Richard Bennett:

My kids went to a parent co-op public elementary school in Silicon Valley. This was before charter schools, but this kind of school would be considered a charter school today. Each parent was required to spend 4 hours a week in the classroom, to take a certain number of field trips, and to help with the school play, a big production. They learned math from a lady with an advanced math degree from a British university, art from a professional graphic artist, computer programming from another professional (yours truly), and so on down the line. Schools of this type ensure that you have subject-matter experts with above-average intelligence and a vested interest in the kids learning stuff and learning it well. They also prevent any one parent from going too far off the deep end with their personal fixations.

If every kid goes to a public school or a legitimate private school, we stand a chance of seeing to it that each subject is taught by an expert with above-average intelligence; if every kid is home-schooled we don’t. Not only do we consign three-quarters to the junk heap right off the bat because their teacher/parent is a dolt, we consign most of the rest to it in most subjects because the teacher/parent doesn’t know it all.

Home schooling is an efficient remedy for the lack of discipline in the public schools, and for the disruption caused by the children from single-parent families who bring big emotional problems to school. But it’s not a solution for low academic levels and crappy teachers.

You dudes rightly point out that union teachers are a problem and that school decision-making is too centralized. Teachers will tell you that damaged children are also a problem, as are religious fanatic parents who can’t stand sex ed, discipline, homework, and evolution. In Washington State where I now live home schooling is huge, but friends married to teachers tell me that they have to do a lot of remedial work with failed home-schooling experiments – kids who can’t read at age ten and so forth.

If we’re going to keep on home schooling, we have to test kids to make sure they’re learning and not just memorizing Bible verses or passages from the Koran. There’s a fine line between a home school and a Madraasa, and I’d rather not get too close to it.

Aug 4, 2005 - 4:55 pm 226. Kevin P:

Roger:

I don’t want anyone to think that I am praying for the melt down of the public school system. My sister is speech therapist who works in the public school system in L.A. County. She works with autistic children. My uncle taught high school biology in L.A. and my aunt taught gradeschool in L.A. also.

My uncle was a fantastic teacher. He was named State biology teacher of the year in the seventies. But as he neared retirement he complained more and more about the butting in of beareucrats from Sacramento who did not know what they were doing. They would waltz in,or the school officials with sacramento’s marching orders, and make demands that my Uncle knew would not work. And in case anyone thinks he is some sort of religous fanatic he is agnostic with atheist leanings and has a big Darwin metal tag on his Volvo. He had constant conflicts and towards the end often just ignored directives and taught things his way. The best teachers in the system often were ignored.

Aug 4, 2005 - 4:58 pm 227. chuck:

There’s a fine line between a home school and a Madraasa

Oh Richard, fine comment up until the end. You just can’t help yourself, can you.

Aug 4, 2005 - 5:13 pm 228. Katherine:

Richards,

You describe very good solution (the coop) to the problem that public schools become.

But apart from breaking Teacherís Union a la Regan I do not see how this could happen on a large scale. In meantime, people who want decent education for their kids will either try the home schooling or will spend a fortune on private schools.

I simply do not see enough public will for some radical solution that may actually work. I only see demands for more taxpayers money.

Aug 4, 2005 - 5:30 pm 229. Kevin P:

Roger;

The co-op school idea is a perfect example of parents taking control of their kids education. There is a growing co-operative trend within the homeschool movement.

When the public schools reform themselves the homeschool movement will shrink.I believe most states require testing for their home school students so the worry about “Madrassa’s” is more about a particular outlook on life rather then a actual problem.

The market will eventually eliminate or promote the home school movement. If the test results and the college entrance statistics are worse then the public school results it will die out. If they are equal or better it will grow.I don’t see home schooling as the ideal. Good public schools will almost always be the better solution. I see it as a reaction to a major problem that isn’t being handled.

Aug 4, 2005 - 6:03 pm 230. Richard Bennett:

Katherine, the teachers’ union isn’t the barrier to co-op schools, we employed union teachers and they loved the school. The barrier to large-scale deployment of this model is actually parents and politicians, the other two legs of the three-legged education problem.

From what I’ve seen, teachers are not the largest part of the problem, and not all of the demands of their union are unjustified. In Texas, where teachers don’t have collective bargaining rights, teachers and underpaid and schools suck. In California, where they do have collective bargaining, teachers are overpaid and schools suck. So I don’t think the sucking nature of public schools is on account of strong unions.

Curriculum is highly politicized now. In CA, they a state Education Code that’s thousands of pages long, passed by the legislature like any other law and binding on districts. There’s a lot of crap in this code, but it’s the law and they have to follow it.

But the biggest problem, in my experience, is parents, who are either disinterested in the whole thing or overly obsessed with making sure nobody is mean to little Chauncey. Until we get a better class of parents, schools are going to continue sucking.

Aug 4, 2005 - 6:24 pm 231. klrfz1:

Wow, you suckers are still goin? Get a life, Bennett!

Aug 4, 2005 - 6:45 pm 232. Katherine:

Richard,

Perhaps when kids who do not make progress will start failing instead being promoted to the next grade things will improve?

I still think, like many other posters here, that public funding of schools ñ at least the way that it is structured now – is stifling any meaningful reform. And you are right; it will take an effort on everybodyís part to bring about the change. But all I hear today is: give me more money.

Aug 4, 2005 - 7:03 pm 233. Kevin P:

Richard:

Parents who don’t care are a huge problem, as well as those who sue at the drop of a hat. To add to your comment on the politicized nature of California schools you can add the text book process, which has become a huge business, and when you mix money and politicians quality usually suffers.

The good teachers are frustrated and the poor ones stay in the system too long. There is no simple solution but I think if contol is shifted from Sacramento and D.C. back to the local districts you will start to see more parental involvement. There is no excuse for parents who ignore their kids education. But with the extensive regulations from Sacramento the principles are limited in their options to handle problems. Some parents just don’t care. Some are tired of being ignored and being told there is nothing that can be changed. Those are the ones who often try Home Schooling.

Some parents in California are using novel ways to get around the equal money per student state spending regulations. They are forming not for profit corporations that raise money to replace the programs that have been cut. It is legal but not quite following the spirit of the law, a law that was suppossed to insure that all schools were equal but did not achieve the desired results. Suprise, Suprise.

Aug 4, 2005 - 7:16 pm 234. thibaud:

Steven M,

Yes, I support vouchers. Agree completely that the public school monopoly is a large part of the problem, given the endemic corruption in big cities (where the schools are the juiciest patronage/slush plum going) and the tendency of our current “educationist” mindset toward absurd expenditures on non teaching-related salaries and other items.

However, as Richard pointed out, parents are a huge part of the problem. To put it more precisely, the culture of the home is the msot important determinant of the child’s educational performance, and the cultural status of most American homes is abysmal. I’d wager that most American homes contain more porn videos than books that have actually been read. Even in supposedly elite homes you find as many TV sets as bookshelves.

Vouchers won’t make more than an incremental difference here. Only when this country replaces the culture of the Big Shtoopid with the culture of learning, when the role model ceases to be JayZ and Britney and becomes what the Russians call the intelligent, or man of science and culture, will we see any fundamental improvement.

My solution? Lift all curbs (aside from normal security ones) on immigrants with an advanced technical or science degree. Bring in a million families of fiercely pro-learning scientists, engineers, technicians, doctors etc from all over the world.

Aug 4, 2005 - 7:52 pm 235. Kevin P:

Thibaud:

That is the insanity of our immigration policy. We allow millions of immigrants in every year but somehow anyone who suggests that we should be selective and picky about who we give citizenship to is called a racist. I’m am not talking about rich vs poor.I am not talking about skin color. Some of our greatest success stories with recent immigrants are people of color. I am talking about the vast number of hard working immigrants who want to come here to become Americans, not just pit stop semi-citizens.

We will always get a large percentage of our immigrants from the poor South and Central American countries. And that is natural. Most of them want to work. But the thought that we can have open borders with no sense of control or selection is absurd.

In my younger days I took a college Chemistry class with 6 Vietnamese refugee’s who grasp of English was extremely limited. They all got A’s and if they spoke English or if I spoke Vietnamese I could have used them as tutors. That kind of energy and determination would be a blessing for this country. But there has to be some sort of control. Both parties are ignoring this huge problem that could be turned into a huge asset with some common sense.

Aug 5, 2005 - 11:50 am 236. Steven Mitchell:

I’m sure that this topic is dead. But on this off chance that someone returns or reads this far, I want to note that the following statements by Mr. Bennett bear no resemblance to actual reality. It’s better to get your home school facts from somewhere other than teachers:

“… Not only do we consign three-quarters to the junk heap right off the bat because their teacher/parent is a dolt, we consign most of the rest to it in most subjects because the teacher/parent doesn’t know it all.”

That number is made up. Home schooling failures are way south of 10% (depending on the study). No matter how measured, home schoolers always outperform public school students.

“Home schooling … it’s not a solution for low academic levels and crappy teachers.”

Anyone with a brain can teach early reading and mathematics through long division. The success or failure of schooling beyond that point is almost always based on the motivation of the child *to teach himself*, aided by the parents as needed. Guess what, “real” teachers don’t know it all either. The advantage that many home school parents have is that they understand this.

A parent cannot hope to match a truly excellent teacher. A parent can, and often does, exceed anything else.

“… but friends married to teachers tell me that they have to do a lot of remedial work with failed home-schooling experiments – kids who can’t read at age ten and so forth.”

The percentage of public school high school graduates that cannot read (upwards of 30% in some years and places) is orders of magnitude above the home school failure rate. Anecdotes are not data.

That said, one of the things that home schoolers around here hammer repeatedly is that it’s important to know when to quit. Home schooling *usually* becomes more difficult the older the child gets. Many people can’t hack it past 9th grade, where specialization of teaching does become an issue. Others find difficult the middle school shift from the basics to a more expanded curriculum. The older the child, the more he has to do himself, with less return. Obviously, no one home schools college.

Finally, there are plenty of people that should *not* homeschool. It requires a lot of work and discipline.

“If we’re going to keep on home schooling, we have to test kids to make sure they’re learning and not just memorizing Bible verses or passages from the Koran.”

There may be an exception somewhere, but every State I know anything about requires testing. Sometimes home schoolers get considerably more testing than public school kids. Sometimes they get the same.

“There’s a fine line between a home school and a Madraasa, and I’d rather not get too close to it.”

This is just stupid, ignorant, and insulting. I’m sure that out of the 1,000,000+ home school kids, there are niche cases that walk up to and past the Madrassa line. I can find you some public schools that are drug dens or sports factories. Anecdotes are not data.

Aug 8, 2005 - 12:20 pm

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