Posted on 12/03/2005 6:18:54 AM PST by Right Wing Professor
If this is so then why are those who would expose such "grave weaknesses" directing 99.99% of their effort toward pushing the debate in front of high school students, and into other such popular and political venues where there can be no possible decisive result; and only 0.01% of their effort toward making their case before the professional scientific community, for instance with original scientific research?
Don't you realize how utterly bizarre and ahistorical the behavior of antievolutionists is in this respect? No group of scientists who sincerely believed they possessed a superior new theory, or a compelling refutation of an existing theory, would ever, or have ever, behaved in this way.
A scientist pushing a new, fringe, controversial, etc, idea will seek to recruit working scientists, or at least advanced science students likely to soon begin a research career, who can help develop and advance his ideas; NOT high school students, or even college students taking intro-biology to fulfill a course requirement, who can contribute nothing!
A scientist who sincerely believes that his new ideas have real scientific merit wants other scientists in the end to notice, consider and test those ideas. Therefore such a scientist will NEVER attempt to force adoption of his ideas in secondary school and introductory curricula, knowing this can only INCREASE hostility toward them in the scientific community, as it will appear to be an attempted "end run" around the process of peer review.
It is no more or less of a response than you would see towards a widespread, politically powerful movement to teach astrology as a serious discipline in public schools.
You've got that exactly backward. As a theory of universal common descent, "Darwinism" required rejection of spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from non-life as a mundane or normal process of nature). Clearly if living things are continually coming into existence, then all living things cannot be related only by biological reproduction. Spontaneous generation, in contrast, was accepted and incorporated into the previous and competing evolutionary theory of "Lammarkianism," and was also accepted by many pre-Darwinian creationists.
Theories that take scientists years of hard work to learn, and which have taken centuries to test and refine, they are able to see through in seconds; all it takes is a quick trip to one of the creationist websites.
And the rapier-like wit of some the debaters! Stunning. Some examples:
Underdetermination (of the Quine-Duhem sort) makes evolutionary theory per se immune to falsification by the finding of a Precambrian rabbit. Which is more likely: that the rabbit found in what we thought was a Precambrian stratum is actually Precambrian, or that the stratum is not actually Precambrian, or that there was some anomaly that allowed this rabbit (which lived long after the Precambrian era) to become embedded in this Precambrian stratum? A certain view of evolutionary history (or certain proposed phylogenies and taxonomies) might be falsified in this manner, but not evolutionary theory per se.
A case could be made in support of evolutionary theory as an inference to the best explanation, no matter what the fossil record looked like.
-A8
Bump your post.
It's a turf war, pure and simple. Fear. They fear they'll lose the freedom to openly ridicule their own students, fear a loss of prestige, loss of postion--perhaps even loss of money, lest a grant find its way into the ID crowd.
You can get a pretty good idea how their students are treated by the way they behave here.
Pasteur did nothing of the sort. Dariwnists do not attack Edward Jenner. You need to re-read your History of Medicine text.
This happens most often with pediatricians, who have one of the wussiest medical organizations.
You might be surprised to know that virtually no doc is happy about this--and you might be surprised how many docs, at least in the past, used to pack heat under the white coats in the ER.
Here's a clue about all medical organizations--they are made up of the doctors who are dying to get away from clinical work--they don't want to see patients. So, they try to find a related job in admin, business or politics. Most docs hate the politics part, so they don't pay much attn to it. And there's always that power trip--"I get to tell other docs what to do."
Well, no. They don't have much authority--except in setting standards of care. That's why you find docs asking questions they don't really want to ask--they fear someone accusing them of not providing proper standard of care.
Don't take these orgs as representing anything other than busybodies who don't like doing real doctor work.
So, when Hare Krishna's try to get "transcendental meditation" into the public school curricula, we shouldn't fight a "turf war" against them?
Likewise we shouldn't fight a "turf war" against radical environmentalists who substitute scientific ecology with ideological environmentalism?
Indeed whenever curricula is reworked by ethnic, ideological or other "affinity" groups, we should simply stand aside?
Or is it only FOR YOUR AFFINITY GROUP that we should stand down? (Thought so.)
Nope. There are no such critical flaws, and ID's biggest proponets have said that it is scientific only in the sense that Astrology is scientific. It claims design can be detected, but has been unable to say how, refuses to say by whom they were designed or by what mechanism the design was implemented, and every now and then assures the true believers, wink wink, the designer is God.
You think we haven't figured this stuff out?
Evolutionary theory is necessarily founded on the assumption that the universe has always existed (not in the Einsteinian sense, but the Newtonian sense). Evolutionary theory needs a forever universe in which to have sufficient time for random chance to do its magic.
Utter and complete rubbish. Evolution incorporates the known age of the earth - approximately 4.5 billion years.
It was the work of Einstein and modern physicists that destroyed the forever universe piffle and conceit of the evolutionists. The spectacular COBE results have since confirmed the existence of a cooling universe that was infinitely hot and dense less than 20 billion years ago. The forever universe is no more. That's a development that evolutionists desperately wish had never come along.
This appears to be a product of your fertile imagination. In general, estimates of the age of the earth have increased with time, not decreased.
You're a true cultist. No matter how often your arguments are proven to be completely speciioous, you won't question your belief system.
ID theory honestly and straightforwardly proffers by way of analogy that the best inference we can make about the existence of life is that an organizing intelligence set the initial conditions and devised the plans necessary for life to arise and evolve to the levels of present day complexity. It is the most logical and rational way, based on our observations, to explain how we got to where we are in less than 20 billion years.
Except that we have absolutely no evidence any such process ever happened. One might as well say, that because the Panama canal and Suez canals exist, and it's the only example of a channel between two bodies of water we've ever seen to form, that all channels on the earth must have been dug by humans. What piffle!
Evolutionists, on the other hand, quite clearly name and identify their organizing deity. It is none other than Chaos. Sadly for them, Chaos is only adequate to the task in a universe other than the universe that modern physics has disclosed to us.
Crap.
You obviously fail to understand JudgemAll's post
When teachers feel free to jeer at a student's religious beliefs...well, you're going to have trouble in your playground. Those students have organized to challenge and hector, and the teachers themselves are not behaving in a very attractive manner.
We've seen totalitarianism several times this century. It's not hard to recognize here.
Are you really suggesting that the theory of evolution matches one or more of these definitions?
Dogma: a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proofBelief: any cognitive content (perception) held as true; religious faith
Faith the belief in something for which there is no evidence or logical proof
I've read your post five times now, and I still have no idea what you're saying (although I did pick up some bizarre ranting about scientists not deserving to live). Please rewrite it in English.
I was taught evo as a dogma. "The embryos have things that look like gills, therefore we are descended from fish." Poor teaching, sure, debunked--but the student is always at a disadvantage. At the time, I didn't really care except to get my grade, but I knew that I was being fed hokum as fact. If it had been taught as a model, which of course would have worked very well, there wouldn't be many out there who resent the kind of impositions of dogma where dogma does not belong.
Now, the evos are howling because the IDs want a listen. Many who aren't IDers, but simply doubt the overreaching claims of evos, enjoy the frightened dismay of those same evos.
What I'd suggest is developing a respectful case that evolution must be taught, but for the best reason--it is a vital paradigm for understanding the structure of life. You can do this without snarling at the religious.
And resist all temptation to ridicule a student who expresses doubt about "descendance"-- there is absolutely nothing unreasonable about a doubt--and no teacher should react with emotion when a doubt is expressed.
You'd better read up on exactly what Pasteur's famous experiment did, in fact, demonstrate. It had nothing to do with the origin of life.
Yep.
QUOTE: "...science is said to be religiously neutral, if only because science and religion are, by their very natures, epistemically distinct. However, the actual practice and content of science challenge this claim. In many areas, science is anything but religiously neutral; moreover, the standard arguments for methodological naturalism suffer from various grave shortcomings. .." Methodological Naturalism? ~ Alvin Plantinga
*
MORE: ".. Since science is not a system of thought deduced from first principles (as are traditional metaphysical systems), and that it deals precisely with objective experience, science is not, nor is any theory of science, a true metaphysical system. ...
However, the claim is sometimes, and more plausibly, made that evolutionary theory, along with some other scientific theories, functions as a kind of attitudinal metaphysical system." Ruse, M: 1989. The Darwinian Paradigm: Essays on its History, Philosophy and Religious Implications, Routledge.
Ruse also describes what he calls "metaphysical Darwinism" -- Ruse, M: 1992.Darwinism. In E F Keller and E A Lloyd eds Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University Press. -- (as opposed to "scientific Darwinism") which is indeed a metaphysical system akin to a worldview, and which has expressed itself in numerous extra-scientific philosophies, including Spencer's, Teilhard's, and Haeckel's, or even the quasi-mystical views of Julian Huxley. .. ~ John S. Wilkins (talkorigins)
"Origin of man now proved. -- Metaphysics must flourish. - he who understands baboon would do more toward Metaphysics than Locke." - Darwin, Notebook M, August 16, 1838
This is Quine's and Kuhn's point. But some theories provide a better explanation of the observations than do others. Many scientific hypotheses are abandonded not because they are falsified, but because a better hypothesis shows up. Sometimes the fit between a theory and the observation is so poor that the theory is essentially falsified; those are the sorts of theory that are said to have been falsified and/or are falsifiable. But for others, the losing theory or theories are not falsified, just out-performed. And in some cases, there is no clear winner.
Think of the historical sciences for example. They often do not generate testable predictions that allow decisive falsification; they may generate only expectations based on hypothetical determinations of results (i.e. what we would expect to find) given known rules and the particular case posited by the theory. In that situation theories compete abductively, not by deductive falsification via modus tollens.
-A8
Looks like another moron is about to join your VI list.
I agree. But evolutionary theory is broader than Darwinism. In other words, a rejection of Darwinism would not ipso facto be a rejection of evolutionary theory.
ID, on the other hand, as it has no constraints whatsoever on it's causative agent (the alleged intelligent designer), would be able to handle any and every sequence of fossils imaginable. No matter what.
I agree.
-A8
"Origin of man now proved. -- Metaphysics must flourish. - he who understands baboon would do more toward Metaphysics than Locke." - Darwin, Notebook M, August 16, 1838
Why did Darwin mention Locke in connection with metaphysics? What does Locke have to do with metaphysics? :)
If you were right, all the slow learners in class, the ones who just couldn't absorb the material, would be up for Nobel Prizes. That's ID. Asking the same questions over and over for at least the last 10 years and ignoring the answers.
By the way, this is one of the worst articles ever in support of Darwinism.
Truman used to say he didn't give 'em hell; he gave 'em the truth and they thought it was hell.
Although I agree with you about our second amendment rights (see my home page, the top line is the same as your tagline), I have to say that in this case, however belated, the support of the AMA is both welcome and important.
The last thing I want is a creationist doctor as in the Baby Fay episode.
Of course the bottom line is the fact that we wouldn't even be having this "debate" if the people who have the God-given responsibility for their own children's education, were allowed to send their children to the school of their choice (religious, or otherwise).
Instead we have allowed powerful special interests in "the government" (which our Constitution was put into place to protect us from) to usurp the parent's responsibility and enforce their own agenda-driven ideas on the rest of us.
This has to stop. Parents must insist that they have the right to educate their own children in the schools of their choice.
As far as I'm concerned, Cyber Schools (on-line learning) are the only way to go because one has access to the best teachers in the world from which to choose.
Parasitic government unions need to go. They're destroying our government, just as they destroyed the steel, airline, and automobile industries, etc. Union-backed bureaucracies destroy incentive and attract lazy, incompetent, mediocrities who can't compete in the real world - yet they get paid as much or more than those who excell in their work.
As in, perhaps, like a theory? That is what evolution is, a model (or theory). That is what I learned it as, and the limited teaching I did, that is what I taught it as. One of my favorite fields in grad school was "modeling," that is, working with hypotheses and theories.
Now, the evos are howling because the IDs want a listen.
No, not because they "want a listen," but because they want to undermine the very foundations of science. This is very well expressed in the Wedge Document. The goal is clearly not to improve science, or to improve the theory of evolution, but, as the document states: "Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies." Just what do you think they mean by this?
What I'd suggest is developing a respectful case that evolution must be taught, but for the best reason--it is a vital paradigm for understanding the structure of life. You can do this without snarling at the religious.
What I would suggest is that the religious cease their attacks on science. But, since that does not appear likely, perhaps scientists should start fighting back even more than they already do.
No, no, no - don't you see? When they argue, it's legitimate discourse. When you disagree and try to rebut, it's snarling bigotry. See how that works? Notice how clever it is to rule your argument illegitimate on its face?
I believe it is simply unethical--but the temptation to "sell" one's POV when an audience is captive is hard to resist.
If evo-teachers had disciplined themselves to talk as scientists should speak, in language heavy with qualifiers and "mights" "likelihood" "best possible explanatin" "plausible" "meets the minimum particulars"--they wouldn't be dealing with this challenge. Instead, they're playing catchup because too many of their own gave in to bullying.
Actually, I have seen some our arguments on these threads dismissed as being inadequate just because they contain too many qualifiers.
When we pay college profs a whole lot more than we do now, it will be possible to have a large enough pool to select for highly skillful teaching as well as knowlege of subject. I had a whole lot of truly obnoxious folk teaching me in college...but so long as they knew their stuff I was ok with them. Scientists, especially, do not suffer fools gladly and often are at least mildly afflicted with Asperger's syndrome, giving them few social skills.
As for k-12 teachers, they are not the to half of any college educated group. Few have a good understanding of the science they teach (for instance having students do "experiments" that are clearly demonstrations with right answers).
Those of us living in the real world, wthout an agenda to destroy science and replace it with theocracy, accept the limitations and work to improve, not re-define and destroy.
CarolinaGuitarman: "Why did Darwin mention Locke in connection with metaphysics? What does Locke have to do with metaphysics? :)"
Ahhhhh ... probably because he knew that metaphysics was one of Locke's main interests. Duh:
My family is littered with MDs who don't like the AMA...which is irrelevant to the point I made.
Try re-reading for content.
Indeed? I had to look it up...
Social impairments
2.2 Narrow, intense interests
--WOW, that's really on the money! That probably covers single-issue FR posters.
2.3 Speech and language peculiarities--sneering condescension?
You like the support of an org that basically has no support, I guess is the point you wanted to make?
Scientific organizations from various fields are beginning to enter the debate against ID. ID is living on borrowed time as an academic alternative to evolutionary theory. Those trained in scientific matters will inevitable win debates involving science. The inmates cannot be allowed to run the asylum.
Pot, meet kettle. Nice jab, but not an answer.
Read something a little more discursive on the subject.
Nope.
Try again if you like.
uh, yeah. I don't understand how it answered the question.
Spoken like one who either didn't comprehend the implications in "the answer", or is deliberately playing dumb.
Still playing stupid? Here's the quote from the other thread:
"Do you now realize that it does not necessarily have anything to do with the supernatural?"
Matchett-PI: "That depends upon which "scientist" you talk to, now doesn't it. LOL"
You missed the succeeding sentence in your quote.
These must be considered separate to the scientific theory, and are often in contradiction to the actual scientific models. Taken from the same quote of John Wilkins as above
Rather changes the meaning of your quote.
It's unethical to change the meaning of a quote. How many others of your quotes are similarly presented as disingenuously?
" Still playing stupid? "
No, that's your gig, and you're doing a fine job of it!
Now, in what way is Darwin challenging Locke's metaphysics? :)
What is the relevance of the quote you keep posting from Darwin?
I hope you're right. What worries me is that the alienation of the GOP from science will entail the long-term ascendancy of leftism in this country, with all that that entails.
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