Evolving Double Standards

National Review ^ | April 01, 2004 | John West

[Junior]

Bubba, the world rests on the backs of four great elephants, who in turn stand upon the back of a giant turtle. From there, it's turtles all the way down...

[Tribune7]

But the strangest part of the website, by far, is the section that encourages educators to use religion to endorse evolution.

This is one big reason why I'm an evo-skeptic. The proponents seem to use techniques more akin to marketing or propaganda than detached science.

What would be the big crisis in the advancement of knowledge if the idea was doubted that every living thing descended from the same cell via undirected events?

[Junior]

There are numerous reasons why DI doesn't "do" science.

[Sinner6]

Just remember the turtle moves.

[Ichneumon]

You are the one who inserted the story about the Iroquois turtle myth in an attempt to discredit via absurdity rather than try and refute or even discuss any of cowgirls's comments. Instead, you chose to use a lame aside.

Nothing "lame" or "absurd" about it. He's making the perfectly valid point that there are thousands of religious creation stories out there, and any argument for including one as an "alternative" explanation to evolution can equally be applied to all.

[Junior]

Well, yeah. There are "philosophers" that claim the turtle walks on the bottom of the crystal sphere in which the Sun, Moon, planets and stars are embedded. Like a giant hamster wheel, this causes the sphere to rotate around the Earth and accounts for the rising and setting of the above objects.

Of course we know that such "philosophers" are heretics. It's definitely turtles all the way down.

[Dimensio]

We did not evolve from nothing which is what the textbooks say happened. No textbook says that we "evolved from nothing".

Please try to develop at least some understanding of evolution theory before you try to attack it.

[Ichneumon]

But, of course, darwinism/secularism/materialism/socialism is not a religion,

Correct.

it is a philosophical worldview consistent with the scientific method; hence not covered by the First Amendment's Establishment clause.

Also correct.

That only applies to grubby fundamentalist Christians.

Incorrect -- it applies to the other kinds too, as well as to other religions.

[Dimensio]

D'oh, I screwed up my formatting. My post should have been more like

We did not evolve from nothing which is what the textbooks say happened.

No textbook says that we "evolved from nothing". Please try to develop at least some understanding of evolution theory before you try to attack it.

[VadeRetro]

Disappointing that National Review can't see through the Discovery Institute, which will never discover anything except that the latest real discovery needs a rebuttal.

[PatrickHenry]

Disappointing that National Review can't see through the Discovery Institute ...

Disappointing, but not surprising. I once went a-Googling to see if I could find Buckley's views on evolution. He's ambivalent at best. Surprisingly, this debate took place a couple of years after the Pope's public announcement on evolution: PBS's Firing Line creation/evolution debate.

[Ichneumon]

Just remember the turtle moves.

BLASPHEMER! We StationaryTurtletarians denounce your cult of false prophets, and call upon the Great Tortuga to furiously smite those who would spread these heathen lies, and cast them into the Frogpond of Everlasting Fire(tm).

And please visit our website on "Scientific Turtleism", which has nothing whatsoever to do with our religious beliefs, honest, and is only a purely objective review of the overwhelming evidence for the existence of a giant Earth-supporting T*rtle, which cannot possibly be denied unless you're a deluded member of the vast antiT*rtle conspiracy.

[Junior]

If creationists cannot get the simple things right (such as what exactly the theory of evolution covers), what makes you think they can tackle more complex issues?

[Junior]

One need only point out that modern religions are simply perversions of the one true religion, "Turtleism." For instance, the concept of "hell" as a region of the dead beneath our feet is simply a corruption of "shell" which, because of its relationship to both the Earth and the elephants, is also beneath our feet.

So, to the heretics, infidels and non-believers I say, "Go to Shell!"

[balrog666]

Just remember the turtle moves

The Big Question is: Is the turtle male or female? This might become even more acute if we sight another turtle.

[VadeRetro]

Sounds like our side was very effectively represented in that one, anyway. The ID all-star team plus Buckley took it on the chin.

[Junior]

The Big Question is: Is the turtle male or female? This might become even more acute if we sight another turtle.

When worlds collide...

"Baby, did the Earth just shift for you, too?"

[PatrickHenry]

"Baby, did the Earth just shift for you, too?"

WARNING! Adult cosmological content: Click if you dare.

[Heartlander]

Is everyone happy that the NCSE is mixing religion with science and using our tax dollars? Is this OK because it is your religion?

Gravity Constant = 6.6739 10^-11m³kg^-1s^-2
Neo-darwin Constant = humans arose from happenstance void of intelligence and design?

Neo-darwinism is essentially garbage all the way down with many turtles as just part of the equation. It’s kinda’ funny isn’t it? Garbage all the way down and here we stand on all of it… Garbage all the way down! What a crazy belief system. LOL! Hey let’s make fun of it. Nah, it wouldn’t be right to make fun of someone’s religion or set up a straw man to tear down. Let’s see if we can keep religion out of science:

The National Association of Biology Teachers [NABT] in their 1995 Official Statement on Teaching Evolution stated the following:

"The diversity of life [all life] on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments."

It took seven years of prodding from conservative groups before they revised the statement. According to the NABT's executive director, the change was made ``to avoid taking a religious position'' that might offend believers. The two words that were removed from their statement were; 'unsupervised' and 'impersonal'. These two words made the NABT's statement religious and faith-based. To illustrate, change the words to 'supervised' and 'personal'. Either way, both statements would be outside the purely 'material constraints' that science now (ironically thanks in part to Darwin) currently imposes. Their statement boldly claimed that there was no intelligent cause (force, etc.) behind mankind and all existence.

Anyway, let's look at a college textbook and see what it has to say on the subject:

According to Douglas Futuyama’s widely used college textbook Evolutionary Biology(1998), Darwin’s “theory of random, purposeless variations acted on by blind, purposeless natural selection provided a revolutionary new answer to almost all questions that begin with ‘Why?’” Darwin “made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous,” and thereby “provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanism and materialism” that is now “the stage of most Western thought.”

Well, we can't use this because it is a religious statement. I guess we should look at a required/recommended reading book for college biology:

"Paley's argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong. The analogy between . . . watch and living organism, is false. All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in the mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparent purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.
The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (p. 5)
-Richard Dawkins

Another religious statement? Hmmm… The National Association of Biology Teacher's, college textbooks, and required/recommended reading material.

Maybe it's just human nature (human nature? Humans - intelligent -- nature – stupid </Frankenstein mode>)...
If things that people detest exist in religion i.e. --- dogmatism, conceit, mockery, intolerance, and power-obsession, --- why would we not expect to see it in science as well?
Especially when science becomes religion.

[general_re]

I'm having real trouble putting this under any heading other than "be careful what you wish for". This looks remarkably like creationists reaping what they have sown, and once I stop laughing my butt off and wiping the tears from my eyes, I'll probably suggest - once again - that religion doesn't belong in the science classroom. Whether anyone will take that to heart and learn anything from this episode remains to be seen.