Evolution and intelligent design Life is a cup of tea

How should evolution be taught in schools? This being America, judges will decide

HALF of all Americans either don't know or don't believe that living creatures evolved. And now a Pennsylvania school board is trying to keep its pupils ignorant. It is the kind of story about America that makes secular Europeans chortle smugly before turning to the horoscope page. Yet it is more complex than it appears.

In Harrisburg a trial began last week that many are comparing to the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925, when a Tennessee teacher was prosecuted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Now the gag is on the other mouth. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in public-school science classes was an unconstitutional blurring of church and state. But those who think Darwinism unGodly have fought back.

Last year, the school board in Dover, a small rural school district near Harrisburg, mandated a brief disclaimer before pupils are taught about evolution. They are to be told that “The theory [of evolution] is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence.” And that if they wish to investigate the alternative theory of “intelligent design”, they should consult a book called “Of Pandas and People” in the school library.

Eleven parents, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, two lobby groups, are suing to have the disclaimer dropped. Intelligent design, they say, is merely a clever repackaging of creationism, and as such belongs in a sermon, not a science class.

The school board's defence is that intelligent design is science, not religion. It is a new theory, which holds that present-day organisms are too complex to have evolved by the accumulation of random mutations, and must have been shaped by some intelligent entity. Unlike old-style creationism, it does not explicitly mention God. It also accepts that the earth is billions of years old and uses more sophisticated arguments to poke holes in Darwinism.

Almost all biologists, however, think it is bunk. Kenneth Miller, the author of a popular biology textbook and the plaintiffs' first witness, said that, to his knowledge, every major American scientific organisation with a view on the subject supported the theory of evolution and dismissed the notion of intelligent design. As for “Of Pandas and People”, he pronounced that the book was “inaccurate and downright false in every section”.

The plaintiffs have carefully called expert witnesses who believe not only in the separation of church and state but also in God. Mr Miller is a practising Roman Catholic. So is John Haught, a theology professor who testified on September 30th that life is like a cup of tea.

To illustrate the difference between scientific and religious “levels of understanding”, Mr Haught asked a simple question. What causes a kettle to boil? One could answer, he said, that it is the rapid vibration of water molecules. Or that it is because one has asked one's spouse to switch on the stove. Or that it is “because I want a cup of tea.” None of these explanations conflicts with the others. In the same way, belief in evolution is compatible with religious faith: an omnipotent God could have created a universe in which life subsequently evolved.

It makes no sense, argued the professor, to confuse the study of molecular movements by bringing in the “I want tea” explanation. That, he argued, is what the proponents of intelligent design are trying to do when they seek to air their theory—which he called “appalling theology”—in science classes.

Darwinism has enemies mostly because it is not compatible with a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Intelligent designers deny that this is why they attack it, but this week the court was told by one critic that the authors of “Of Pandas and People” had culled explicitly creationist language from early drafts after the Supreme Court barred creationism from science classes.

In the Dover case, intelligent design appears to have found unusually clueless champions. If the plaintiffs' testimony is accurate, members of the school board made no effort until recently to hide their religious agenda. For years, they expressed pious horror at the idea of apes evolving into men and tried to make science teachers teach old-fashioned creationism. (The board members in question deny, or claim not to remember, having made remarks along these lines at public meetings.)

Intelligent design's more sophisticated proponents, such as the Discovery Institute in Seattle, are too polite to say they hate to see their ideas championed by such clods. They should not be surprised, however. America's schools are far more democratic than those in most other countries. School districts are tiny—there are 501 in Pennsylvania alone—and school boards are directly elected. In a country where 65% of people think that creationism and evolution should be taught side by side, some boards inevitably agree, and seize upon intelligent design as the closest approximation they think they can get away with. But they may not be able to get away with it for long. If the case is appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, intelligent design could be labelled religious and barred from biology classes nationwide.

A worldwide flood would leave the bones all jumbled up. Indricotherium would be mixed with small sauropod. Elephant would be mixed with triceratop. Compsagnathus would be mixed with chicken. Mososaur, whale and megaladon would be jumbled together in death
=======

No, not at all. Q woldwide flood would result in all things that breathe air thru the nostrils being dead, some would sink to the bottom and get covered with mud, intact, others would get busted up.

A worldwide flood some 4,000 or so years ago can be studied very well by archaeology--no need for fossils, paleontology, geology, radiometric dating, etc.

Archaeology of this time period relies on artifacts, physical anthropology, sedimentology, radiocarbon dating, etc. There are some real advantages. Fossils are rare, but archaeological sites dating in the 4,000-5,000 year range are common worldwide, and generally quite simple in their stratigraphy. At this time period we are generally dealing with soil layers, not rock layers; in some cases we can date a site in fine increments extending back many thousand years.

My particular field is the archaeology of the western U.S. In this area there are probably many hundreds of thousands of archaeological sites, of which (a wild guess) ten thousand or more have been examined in some reasonable detail over a period of 100+ years. This should be a perfect venue to test for a global flood.

So, what do we have? No large-scale flood in the 4,000-5,000 year range, or anywhere close. It's simply not there.

[Look, do you actually want to learn anything from the evidence, or are you just making your excuses?]

The point is that there is no such thing as an objective observer. The observer can never be sure that his observation corresponds to objective reality. It's a real philosophical problem that no one has been able to solve. Logical positivism was the latest attempt - it was thoroughly refuted and discredited. If you have solved it, then please enlighten us all because all of the great thinkers in history have failed.

So it's b) "making excuses". That's what I figured.

Look, you can practice philosophical Onanism all day long about how we can "never be sure" that our observations or conclusions "correspond to objective reality" -- lord knows some philosophers spent a lifetime at such pointless navel-gazing. But so what? Yeah, we *might* be wrong. If you're going to agonize over that little doubt to the point where it paralyzes your mind, and makes you unable to draw conclusions from even the most careful examinations of the real world because you're wringing your hands over the obvious fact-of-life that you *could* be mistaken to some degree through "subjectivity" or other form of error, then you're even *more* wrong than if you had taken a stab at figuring things out, and you'll *stay* wrong.

You say, "It's a real philosophical problem that no one has been able to solve." Sure, there's no "solution" if you insist on achieving absolute certainty, total perfection, complete infalibility in your reasoning. That's impossible. So why waste your time trying it?

But people *have* solved this "real philosophical problem", by realizing that being so anal as to insist upon perfection, upon ironclad *proof* of correctness, is itself the actual problem. So chuck it. Instead, people realized that the *actual* goal was to achieve knowledge that, while not necessarily complete or perfect, was at least correct *enough* to work anyway. They found that there were methods which could be used to build and refine a body of knowledge which was reliable, usable, and effective. Even if it wasn't necessarily "the" truth, it was close enough to get the job done -- and could be further refined as necessary if parts of it were found to be defective in some way.

This realization first because widespread around 1650, and the people who began working out the methods which produced reliable knowledge were at first known as "natural philosophers", and later as "scientists". And their methods of deriving knowledge, testing it for reliability, weeding out subjective bias, and seeking out new directions in which to search became known as "the scientific method".

And it has worked fantastically well. It has produced more successful, useful knowledge about the Universe in a few hundred years than philosophy, religion, magical incantations, and all other attempted methods of controlling the Universe had managed to achieve in a hundred thousand years. It has enabled mankind to do things which not long ago were considered sheer fantasy, in the realm of pure magic: We can fly through the air, we can speak instantly to people on the other side of the planet. We can have discussions with people we've never met, in places we don't know (hi!). We can watch the Earth from the sky and watch hurricanes crawl across the oceans. We can peer inside the human body as it operates without cutting into it. We can walk on the Moon. We can store and replay sights and sounds for all time. We can control the lightning and make it do our bidding. We can cure diseases, mend limbs, restore sight, extend lifetimes. All this and much, much more that would have been pure sorcery, complete impossibilities, only a few lifetimes ago.

You say, "If you have solved [the 'problem' of being 'sure' that our knowledge 'corresponds to objective reality'], then please enlighten us all because all of the great thinkers in history have failed." No, they haven't failed at all. The "great thinkers in history" have developed science. And it has succeeded beyond any of their wildest dreams.

Can we "be sure", can we *prove* that the knowledge learned via science is perfectly in accord with "objective reality"? No, but then we've found that there's no need to. Science does not deal in "proofs". It doesn't need them. Only fools insist upon certainty, upon absolutes, for there are none to be found in this world -- not even in religion, because there are no guarantees that your chosen religion, or your chosen interpretation of your religion, is a right one, or a misguided mistake. The only "certainties" to be had, for those who can't live without a complete lack of doubt, are the false "certainties" of adopting a belief without "proof" and then just utterly refusing to entertain any notions that it could possibly be in error. We've all certainly seen our share of that kind of mindset in action.

But if it's *real* knowledge you want -- the kind that, if perhaps not 100% correct (and there'd be no way to be sure even if it was), is at least within close enough proximity to "the" truth to *work* as if it's "the real deal", then science is the way to acquire such knowledge. It's a collection of tried-and-true methods, and the resulting body of reliably-obtained knowledge, which have been tested, validated, checked, rechecked, and cross-checked against that *objective reality*, and uses the reality -- the real world -- as the final arbiter of which methods and which knowledge *fits* when measured against the yardstick of reality itself.

Atomic Theory may not be "objectively true" -- in reality matter may not "really" be made of atoms. But it *behaves* as if it is, and it responds to our manipulations as if it were, and that *itself* is real. It's real, useful, practical knowledge about reality.

Sure, that's not "proof" of "correspondence with objective reality", but it's a *damned* convincing demonstration of being "close enough" (and the size of "enough" can even be precisely quantified, like +/- 0.3%). This is the way of all science. It can't be "proven" once and for all, but it *works*, it *fits*. And that's actually more valuable than any "objectively true" knowledge if it happens to be useless.

You can handwave all day about "subjective error" if you want, but while it paralyzes you from drawing any conclusions about anything, I'll be drawing conclusions from the evidence and using them to achieve real-world results, and validating them by cross-checking with independently produced other results, and verifying by basing further predictions on the findings, then performing tests to ensure that those predictions match the results of the tests. After all that, *could* all the verifications and cross-checks "just happen" to come out the right way by accident or through coincidentally matching "subjective errors" at every step? Okay, it's *possible* -- but that would hardly be the smart way to bet, would it?

...and when those results match *other* results produced indpendently by other researchers, and fit like a jigsaw puzzle with *other* findings, in an entire internally-consistent body of knowledge with parts that fit and interwork smoothly like a Swiss watch, and... Well, you get the picture. Just how desperate does one have to be to try to handwave away the entire field and all its evidence by lamely mumbling about "the observer can never be sure..."?

Keep clinging to that if it helps you sleep at night. Meanwhile, the rest of us will keep doing science and adding to the store of tested, reliable, useful human knowledge. You're welcome to keep your eyes closed if it scares you, or uncomfortably challenges some of your favorite preconceptions. But don't try to poison the minds of schoolchildren by filling them with misrepresentations and propaganda and pseudoscience. Most of them want to learn how the Universe *actually* works, not cling to how they'd *like* it to. And those open-minded students who will follow the evidence wherever it leads are the ones who will do great things for humanity someday. Don't stand in their way.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.