Posted on 06/25/2007 5:18:09 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
Right from the get-go, there on a sign at the entrance to the Evolution exhibit at the Field Museum, real science takes a stand:
"Evolution is one of science's best-supported theories."
Perfect. A profound truth flatly stated, without a hint of equivocation.
Why this pleases me so much, I'm not sure. What did I expect from one of the world's great natural science museums? A diorama of Adam and Eve tossing Frisbees to dinosaurs?
Evolution is, to be sure, one of science's most solid theories, right up there with the theory of gravity, and about this there is zero controversy -- among scientists.
But step outside the realm of real science and rational thought -- step instead into that parallel world of pseudo-science and faith before reason -- and you might pick up a different impression.
You might even come to believe, swayed by the junk science and misinformation of religiously motivated critics, that evolution is one absurdly crazy idea -- c'mon, men from monkeys?
You'd be wrong, of course. You'd be on the same side of history as the biblical literalists who mocked Copernicus and Galileo for saying the Earth revolves around the sun.
But what the heck. You could still be president.
George Bush himself says the study of Intelligent Design (biblical creationism dressed in a borrowed lab jacket) has a place in science classrooms.
I've often wondered about that. Is the president pandering to the religious right? Could be. Or is he just profoundly ignorant for a Yale boy? Also entirely possible.
And then there was that debate on TV a couple of weeks ago among the nine men running for the Republican nomination for president. When the moderator asked them to raise their hands if they ''didn't believe in evolution," three hands went up -- Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado.
I was stunned. I was mortified.
I turned to my son and shook my head and said: "Jesus. ..."
Next time those three bright boys come through Chicago, they had better visit the Field Museum.
Look for natural explanations "We're a natural history museum -- we're not a seminary, we're not a religious organization," said Lance Grande, senior vice president and head of collections and research at the Field Museum. "Our job is to look for natural explanations for complex phenomena." Grande was walking me through the museum's new Darwin exhibit, which runs through the end of the year, and the museum's permanent Evolution exhibit. Both shows represent an effort by the museum to champion the scientific foundations of evolution -- natural selection and genetics -- at a time when evolution is under political and religious assault.
Polls show that at least 40 percent of Americans reject evolution, believing that life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.
But Grande said he doubts that most people have seriously thought the issue through.
"There's a huge number of the population that really doesn't care," he said. "So they go to a spiritual adviser. It's not as though they've looked at the evidence and decided evolution is wrong."
All the same, I said, the Field Museum must have anticipated a backlash when it mounted its Evolution and Darwin exhibits.
Grande nodded. "Let me show you something," he said.
Debating an ID man Back in his office, Grande printed out a remarkable 10-page document that, until now, he'd shown only to colleagues. It was a copy of a debate he had carried on by e-mail for about a week in fall 2005 with a defender of Intelligent Design. Scientists are usually loath to debate the Intelligent Design crowd, largely because it's impossible to reason with zealots. But this particular man, a retired elementary school science teacher back East, struck Grande as thoughtful, earnest and -- perhaps best of all -- cordial.
The teacher, whom Grande asked me not to name or quote directly, offered the central ID concept of "irreducible complexity" -- the idea that some things found in nature, such as the human eye, are simply too perfect, too complex, and composed of too many otherwise useless parts to have evolved from anything else. The entire eye could only have been "designed" all at once by an "intelligent" force. You know, like maybe God.
Grande's reply was to point out that every time proponents of ID resolve a mystery of nature by crediting an "intelligent designer," they create a scientific "dead end."
"We already know that there is a theological explanation available for any unresolved question about nature. But that is not science," he wrote. "In science, we need to investigate what needs investigating, not what we have given up on by considering it unexplainable by natural causes. ... Once something is accepted as of divine origin, it is no longer an issue of science. It has become something else."
To another argument made by the teacher -- that the personal religious convictions of many famous scientists over the centuries means God has a place in science -- Grande replied: "Just because religion has been accepted by various scientists through history, this does not make science out of religion. It only means that in addition to having an interest in science, many scientists have also had religious beliefs."
And that, in fact, was Grande's overarching message in the e-mail debate: Science is science, and religion is religion. They are not necessarily in conflict but belong in different realms.
"Even in schools where religion is taught," he wrote, "religion should be taught in religion classes and science should be taught in science classes, and comparisons of the two are a job for philosophy classes."
Evolution predicts the future Darwin's theory of evolution explains and organizes much of what has come before. But like all established theories in science, it also has predictive powers -- it can tell us what comes next. Scientists are hard at work on a vaccine for avian flu, for example, because they can confidently predict it's just a matter of time before the deadly virus mutates -- a form of evolution -- and jumps species from birds to humans.
"The theory of evolution," Grande says, "benefits a society interested in improving."
Tom McNamee's "The Chicago Way" column runs Mondays.
mailto:tmcnamee@suntimes.com
I don’t agree that 40% believe life has existed in its present form since the beginning of time.
40% reject the argument that random chance caused it all.
“40% reject the argument that random chance caused it all.”
Probably much more than 40% reject the argument that random chance caused it all, as most people who believe that evolution is a well founded theory do not believe that it proceeds through random chance.
Certainly Darwin did not believe so, but pontificated on how natural selection was the actual mechanism.
Interestingly enough it's barely been a century now since Einstein questioned the theory of gravity and came up with something entirely different.
Even now there are physicists working on more advanced theories of gravity.
The current theory of evolution, if it's no better grounded than the theory of gravity, is definitely one doomed puppy. (Bwahahahahahahaha)
Reporters should learn something before they write nonsense.
“A diorama of Adam and Eve tossing Frisbees to dinosaurs?”
“But step outside the realm of real science and rational thought...”
“...swayed by the junk science and misinformation of religiously motivated critics...”
“...it’s impossible to reason with zealots.”
Macro-evolution is a fairy-tale for the mathematically challenged.
"....But this is not science."
Hokum. In the life sciences, "Science" starts with the assumption that Darwinian evolution is the explanation for any unresolved question about nature.
Yeah, once my office pc is powerful enough to make basic observations and calculations about the stuff in my house it will conclude that my DVD player evolved from my VHS player, and my microwave oven from my toaster!
This theory of evolution requires faith and adherence to a belief system. Exactly what they are ridiculing Creationists for doing.
Like most people, and I suspect the three candidates mentioned, I cannot answer a blunt “Do you believe in evolution?” question.
Define your terms and I’m glad to answer it.
Do organisms change over time and sometimes evolve into other species? It seems very likely.
Is this process completely unguided and random? I don’t believe that it is.
Do I believe in evolution?
Not according to the extremist atheist evolutionists.
Meanwhile, lots of fundamentalists consider me a heretic.
Bingo. Most people really don't give a darn and have never bothered to look into the evidence because they're too busy with other things in their lives. Unfortunate, but that's the way humans work.
Its opposing “theory” is a part of the best-selling book of all-time. No news person can claim that title for themselves...
Probably because no other area of science is being attacked to regularly by people who offer even less evidence supporing their own theory.
Not at all. We've always having all the creationists say "X poof! turned into Y one day totally randomly." It's necessary to clear the field of these straw men. Educating people about the way evolution really works is necessary to even begin a discussion.
It should be attacked; if Darwin himself were around, he’d recognize the gaping holes in evolution and work on correcting them. Right now, with their circle-the-wagons approach, these “scientists” are making evolution look like global warming.
This is an important point, one that the writer should have kept in mind before composing this article. If he had, he would not have set up a false dichotomy between "real science and rational thought" on the one side and "pseudo-science and faith before reason" on the other.
The truth is, one can accept the theory of evolution and yet believe that God created the earth. There need be no conflict, not even a philosophical one.
This journalist could have written a truly useful article showing how one can be both a scientist and a religious believer. Instead, he has written a not-so-subtle dig at religious people. What a wasted opportunity.
Do you have clear proof of one species evolving into another species?
But none of these “scientists” are interested in doing that.
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