OUCH!! At that pun, there is only one response:
Cheers!
Posted on 04/19/2006 3:57:51 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A new article in PLoS Biology (April 18, 2006) discusses the state of scientific literacy in the United States, with especial attention to the survey research of Jon D. Miller, who directs the Center for Biomedical Communications at Northwestern University Medical School.
To measure public acceptance of the concept of evolution, Miller has been asking adults if "human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals" since 1985. He and his colleagues purposefully avoid using the now politically charged word "evolution" in order to determine whether people accept the basics of evolutionary theory. Over the past 20 years, the proportion of Americans who reject this concept has declined (from 48% to 39%), as has the proportion who accept it (45% to 40%). Confusion, on the other hand, has increased considerably, with those expressing uncertainty increasing from 7% in 1985 to 21% in 2005.In international surveys, the article reports, "[n]o other country has so many people who are absolutely committed to rejecting the concept of evolution," quoting Miller as saying, "We are truly out on a limb by ourselves."
The "partisan takeover" of the title refers to the embrace of antievolutionism by what the article describes as "the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party," noting, "In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all included demands for teaching creation science." NCSE is currently aware of eight state Republican parties that have antievolutionism embedded in their official platforms or policies: those of Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas. Four of them -- those of Alaska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Texas -- call for teaching forms of creationism in addition to evolution; the remaining three call only for referring the decision whether to teach such "alternatives" to local school districts.
A sidebar to the article, entitled "Evolution under Attack," discusses the role of NCSE and its executive director Eugenie C. Scott in defending the teaching of evolution. Scott explained the current spate of antievolution activity as due in part to the rise of state science standards: "for the first time in many states, school districts are faced with the prospect of needing to teach evolution. ... If you don't want evolution to be taught, you need to attack the standards." Commenting on the decision in Kitzmiller v. Dover [Kitzmiller et al. v Dover Area School District et al.], Scott told PLoS Biology, "Intelligent design may be dead as a legal strategy but that does not mean it is dead as a popular social movement," urging and educators to continue to resist to the onslaught of the antievolution movement. "It's got legs," she quipped. "It will evolve."
"And that assumes degraded DNA is not recycled, which of course it is.
Darn! You took the words right out of my mouth. ;)
Nice bit of swashbuckling, but "reasonable doubt" is not the same thing as "disproof"...
Cheers!
OUCH!! At that pun, there is only one response:
Cheers!
Not what I was saying. Proof beyond reasonable doubt is proof.
Once again, if the possibility of miraculous intervention doesn't provide reasonable doubt in a jury trial, why would you consider the possibility of miraculous intervention in explaining natural phenomena?
Dinner, I'll reply later.
Science is important to evolution but there sure are an awful lot of branches of science where evolution does not even come into play. None of the chemistry, physics, oceanography, limnology, astronomy, or meteorology courses I took were even remotely dependent on evolution or an understanding of it. In some of the courses in was mentioned breifly but it sure wasn't the basis for it and a *proper* understanding of it was not required. It's a good thing too, with the way I'm finding out that evolution is being taught in public high schools.
Interesting observation.
Let's be truthful; you don't like evolutionists because we challenge your dogmatic religious beliefs.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I am an evolutionist, but I don't like fellow evolutionists.
Why? Because they are bullies.
They defend government schools that FORCE evolution on resistant children and demand that other tax payers pay for this forced indoctrination. They are those who are least likely to advocate vouchers or tax credits and freedom of choice in K-12 education.
Synopsis: Since divine revelation is claimed, it would (if true) trump other considerations. The canonical objections to this are (as you noted in an earlier post) "how do I know WHICH God" of "anyone can claim a "god", how can you tell the difference". These both arise from the inability of the scientific method to differentiate between unfalsifiable claims; and the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a wonderful satirical illustration of the principle. The answer to this is that there are portions of human experience which for one reason or another are not susceptible of examination by emprical, falsifying methodologies. To distinguish between them, other, more subjective methods must be used. Note by the way that although empiricism, through the means of falsification, provides a way to whittle down errors, this does not necessarily mean that other forms of acquiring knowledge MUST yield incorrect results; but it does mean that they are more liable to do so, having no "internal" correction mechanism. Look at my oft-quoted chestnut about the Physics Today article where the lawyer won a car-crash lawsuit by saying "...everyone knows the laws of physics are obeyed in the laboratory, but not in rural New Jersey." This lawyer and the conclusion of the jury were incorrect; but it does not follow that ALL jury decisions are incorrect. It's just that when you use scientific, empirical methods you can "tell for SURE" that something is wrong.
Which brings us back to your question about a jury trial:
In the case of a criminal jury trial, the rules are that the defendant must be presumed innocent, until proven guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt."
Call that placemarker 1.
Think of the vernacular, the common parlance, say in a sporting event "a miracle comeback". We know that Miracle Comebacks happen--look at the #&#@!! 1969 Mets beating my beloved Orioles in the World Series, or the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team kicking Soviet ass.
By that definition, "miracles" happen--they earn the sobriquet "miracle" because they are rare.
Call that placemarker 2.
In a jury case, "reasonable" doubt is rather a nebulous phrase...Some things may actually happen, but they happen rarely enough that one discounts their occurrence with "other things being equal". ECREE and all that.
Call that placemarker 3.
But a jury trial (saying whether something is LIKELY to have happened) is not the same thing as science and/or empiricism, where you are trying to come up with a concise self consistent model of what "did" happen (subject to revision according to new experimental evidence).
Here, the miraculous refers not to what is "likely" or "common" or "reasonable", but introduces in addition the element of extra-natural, "super"-natural entities. This complicates matters in several aspects.
1) First, since "by definition" (so to speak), the supernatural is "super" natural, it is by its essence not subject to the type of tests, verification, and refinement the way a construct within a model may be tested. Think of this as "how many angels CAN dance on the head of a pin" ? It's harder to come up with a consensus answer which can be falsified or verified by experiement when you can't even agree on what signal is unambiguously that of an angel :-)
2) Second, since (by common agreement, reputation, what have you) the supernatural entities are "sentinent" (whatever THAT means!), you don't know for sure whether they are playing fair, or whether they are subject to uniform rules of behaviour on an individual instance-by-instance basis. There is some analogy here to psychology as "cargo cult science". Or to the line on the Murphy's Law poster that "under the most rigorously controlled conditions of humidity, temperature, and pressure, the organism will do as it damn well pleases!" :-)
3) Third, the concept of the supernatural, and its impingement (infringement?) upon the orderly, predictable, natural world, works against the entire ansatz of the empirical method -- "uniformity of causes in a closed system". And more's the pity, it violates BOTH of the tenets at the same time: and inconsistently. First the supernatural opens up the system: and if the supernatural agent under consideration has any choice in the matter, it can either interfere or forbear, without prior notice, in any given situation. So you don't even get a useful fudge factor or cosmological constant out of it. :-(
4) Finally, the three points above would completely RUIN the supernatural as any form of efficacious MODEL or reason, rationale, cause of things. (*)
But there's the rub. I don't happen to think that Judaism/Christianity came about, or were designed, as an attempt to "explain" a confusing world. The language and the stories related in the Old Testament are primarily talking about how God is concerned with human behaviour, rather than "why does water freeze when it gets cold" or "why are their seasons?"
(*) BTW, there is a confusion of language: "because" can refer to "cause and effect" (he got wet because it was raining) , or it can refer to a "motivation" or "grounds" (he got wet because he forgot his umbrella). There is some analogy here to the French savoir vs. connaître. Science is based on observation of phenomena under controlled conditions, and deals with specific fact knowledge. Religion is based upon experience, authority, or revelation, and deals with "acquaintance" knowledge. Religion is not INTENDED (so to speak) to address the types of questions asked by science. In other words, it is not based upon EVIDENCE; but upon TRUST. And we all know there are such things as charlatans; but that does not mean that anyone who trusts is necessarily incorrect.
Finally, one last point about jury trials: miracles are commonly assumed to be at the behest of God or Angels (The Good Guys). Part of the credulity about an accused criminal getting off by a miracle is that the net effect of the miracle would be to harm someone (the victim) or to enable a bad guy (the criminal) to prosper. Both of these activities are antithetical to how God is "supposed to" act, in the common everyday view of things.
Cheers!
Like when I sent that last post to myself, intending it for you ;-)
No, it wasn't something I ate, either. I'm prepping for a weekend Mountain Bike trip with the Boy Scouts and got called into 4 different conversations and several different phone calls...
Cheers!
Methinks she doth protest too much
They defend government schools that FORCE evolution on resistant children and demand that other tax payers pay for this forced indoctrination.
We also 'force' math on the poor dears. You don't object to that.
Nobody is forcing high school kids to take biology, They can take shop, if they prefer. What they can't do is neglect to learn about the central paradigm in biology and still claim they've taken biology.
Uh huh. So you keep saying.
However, unlike many who are evolutionists, I would never advocate that the government FORCE evolution on other people's children. I would NEVER threaten another parent with police or foster care action if they refused to send their children to a government school in which it was taught. Neither would I threaten a fellow citizen with the sheriff's auction of their home or business if they refused to pay for it.
You think it's wrong to force people to pay for the war in Iraq if they object to it?
It is evident you are so ignorant about the educational system in the US that you are unaware that per-pupil expenditures vary widely by state and district:
These are the actual numbers, not your link's half-assed math.
Sounds like fun. I was a patrol leader, way back near the dawn of time.
I'm not really sure I'm understanding your point here. If you are noting that, say, an astrophysicist mapping distant galaxies has no 'need' for a cladogram of reptiles, or that a geologist prospecting for petroleum has no 'need' for quantum mechanics--well, the point is obvious. But that is simply a reflection of the vast bulk of solid information we have accumulated about the material world. Perhaps 500 years ago, a 'natural philosopher' (as scientists were then called) still had a reasonable prospect of mastering the volume of knowledge. But now, of course, the volume alone of knowledge simply demands specialisation; it's the limitation of our own brains, not the nature of science, which demands this.
More significant, IMHO, is the basic unified nature of science and its methodology. One may (in fact, must) choose a specific discipline in which to work, but one cannot choose only some parts of the scientific method for that work, and that is why science is ultimately 'seamless.' For a crude analogy, consider an orchestra: every musician in it can play at least one instrument, some can play several, none can play all. The flautists have no "need" for the cellists' portion of the score, but all play according to the same methodology of music. And they cannot do otherwise.
I think this point--the fundamental unity of science--matters, for several reasons. Some critics of ToE appear to view Darwin and his work as an aberration and an assault on some particular forms of religious belief, and that if Darwin can be "refuted," then the 'threat' of science to those particular varieties of religious belief will go away. But this is flat-out wrong. Darwin could never have formulated his ToE without the advances Lyell had made in geology--advances which alone demonstrate that there had been no global deluge as described in the Bible and Koran. In turn, Darwin's ToE led to an understanding of the fossils which has played back into further advances in geology. If anyone doubts this, then I would ask them to kindly indentify a single oil company that employs Biblical scholars in lieu of geologists to find petroleum!
Indeed, I doubt if there is a branch of science which doesn't conflict with literal readings of every religion's scripture some way or another (linguistics, for example, includes a branch of diachronic analysis which shows there just couldn't have been a Tower of Babel in the literal sense). But does this mean that science is thereby "denying God?" I don't think so at all, though it does indeed rule out some fundamentalist tenants of some religions. For the adherents of those fundamentalist views, I suppose one really only can say they have a right to simply ignore science if it creates too many conflicts for them. What they do not have a right to do is endeavour to change the nature of science to shield a set of minority beliefs.
There's one final point maybe lurking in all this. I think there is a lot of misconception in the air about that nature of science. Science by definition is materialistic, it cannot be otherwise--but that is not at all the same as a necessary endorsement of materialist philosophy; it simply states that any 'non-material' domains, if any exist, are simply out of scope and unaddressable by science. I don't understand why this is a problem to anyone. Asking science to be anything other than materialistic is the same dilemma Bogart pointed out to the thugs beating him up in Petrified Forest (I think), something along the lines of "I know the kind of goons you are: first you knock my teeth out, then you kick me for mumbling!"
I basically agree, but with two caveats:
[1] Adherents of any religion probably make the same claim about their own beliefs. I don't think Hindus or Buddhists or anyone else would claim to hold the beliefs they do on the strength of their explanatory power about the physical world, but of their 'spiritual'--and social-- significance.
[2] Why are some Christian, Jewish, and Islamic fundamentalists so insistent that one must accept Biblical accounts of the physical world (e.g. creation in six days, global deluge, &c.) literally, and that to fail to do so undermines the spiritual and moral teachings of the Old Testament. And it isn't just an OT issue. One of the Americans I particularly admire is Thomas Jefferson. He was a strong adherent to the ethical teachings of Jesus, but as a rationalist rejected the supernatural elements of the Biblical accounts (he edited a version of the NT from which miraculous elements were removed on the grounds they defied credibility). Whether one agrees or disagrees with this particular endeavour (it is, in any event, rather singular), it strikes me as at least a valid approach. No matter how the world came to be, murder is a moral evil. If Noah never existed, rape would still be evil. Jefferson held that Christ's ethical teachings were compelling whether or not he ever walked on water or raised the dead. But we have all certainly seen fundamentalists of a number of religions who would regard Jefferson as a dangerous heretic on these grounds.
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