Asymmetrical Information

I am reminded of a cartoon I saw years ago, where one aboriginal is talking to an anthropologist, while another native laughingly says to another "He's telling him the one about how the hippopotamus god made the world out of oyster shells".

Jane, why not just stick with the part where he said that the federal government shouldn’t be determining curriculum for schools and that it was a local matter?

Creation of a universal system of school vouchers would let this debate evolve into a moot point.

This raises a knotty ethical question: Do we teach the kids Larry Kroger's theory about how the entire Solar System is an atom in the fingernail of some giant being? Or would we be depriving them of the life-deepening experience of getting stoned in college and coming up with it themselves?

I hava a friend who prays to Zoltar (who lives in the pond behind his house).

The post is pretty snide.

This has occurred to me with some frequency as I've gotten older.

Virtually every religious system in the world postulates a life beyond this one. Every religious system in the world has a creation story. Am I the only one who's grown a little weary of the smug rationalist who's discovered on his/her short time on this earth that generation after generation of humans were actually full of BS?

Where did those stories come from? Was the past really just the dark, superstitious outpost of stupidity that the modern intellectual spoofs? Could it be that the ancients knew things we do not know?

Given the almost universal belief in God or gods, one has to assume that this belief serves a crucial purpose in human psychological and social development. Perhaps, the fact that these beliefs are universal should give us some pause.

The modern over-educated, hyper-intellectual human who resides in the major cities of the U.S. and Western Europe is a rather boring breed. There is something just plain vaporous and empty about the outlook of such a person.

My late wife was born in a grass hut on the edge of the Pacific Ocean in the Philippines. By contrast, her emotional and spiritual life was brilliant and emotionally fulfilling. She not only knew that every object on this earth... even those that Westerners believe to be inanimate... played a spiritual role in the battle between good and evil... she proved it to me in the practice of our lives.

Something is getting lost in the modernization, standardization and over-intellecutalization of humans. Might be a good idea to ponder it.

The posts are snide because the posters only see what they want to see. Actually, I think Jane trips over herself. First, she offers her own shot at creationists, then states, "The contempt those self-identified illuminati display for those with a more traditional brand of religious belief is cruel self-parody." Snide posters, please take note. Ditto, Jane.

If the point of the post is that some secular evolutionists are as obnoxious as some holier-than-thou creationists, this is well established in the earlier thread under the 8-2-05 post.

The better point--that teaching non-scientific creation theories or beliefs in the public schools is a bad idea, but probably not fatal--is sound. My only caveat is that the scientific community still has a few pretty important unanswered questions and, truth being what this community supposedly values over all else, they should tell the truth and say so.

As one of the "boring" and "vaporous", I'll offer a thought: yes, the Republic rolled along for hundreds of years with creation taught in school. But that was before the advent of the modern sciences, including the life sciences, that have changed our lives beyond measure since 1776, or even the Scopes trial. The life sciences depend -- absolutely, fundamentally, inescapably -- on evolution, holes or no. Enjoy those prescriptions that improve your quality of life, and keep your grandmother alive? Thank Darwin.

And just as Jane's point is that God was taught forever in our past, Stephen's is that belief in God is everywhere. I'm sorry, but neither "that's how we've always done it" nor "everybody else is doing it" is quite enough for me.

I don't believe that evolution rules out the existence of a creator. I am hoping there is one, because I think it would be pretty cool. But nothing whatsoever proves the existence of a creator. And my life isn't too boring and vaporous for me.

To believe in the invisible, I need evidence. God, care to weigh in on this one?

"One of the things that irks me is that most of the people I know who believe in evolution believe in it on the same basis that most creationists I know (yes, I do know some) believe that the world was created in six days: because their friends and family, and a couple of authority figures they respect, believe it is so."

Oh, give me a break, "Jane". Do you believe in the fact the earth revolves around the sun, and not vice versa, because you, personally have conducted astronomy experiments?

The whole point of a scientific body of knowledge is that we can build on thing that have already been proven -- like evolution -- and make scientific progress, instead of covering the same ground over and over.

Creationism was wrong years ago, and it's still wrong in its new "Intelligent Design" clothing.

Con.A:

I imagine you mean "undiscernible" rather than "invisible," or else you're missing out on a whole lot of good food and such.

But there's a matter of perception here. To many of us, God is discernible in the pieces of the world: the meshed simplicity and complexities of the genetic code, the interconnectedness of life, the absolute freakin' wonderfulness of plate tectonics (my favorite subset of geologic study), the order of a nautilus shell or a galaxy - and the sights and sounds that strike us as "beautiful," and the ways in which bad things that happen to us sometimes end up having good effects that we couldn't possibly have predicted and wouldn't ever have expected. It's perfectly possible to to look at all these things and not discern God, but it seems to me that discerning God in such things is just as valid a perception. (I would add that IMveryHO the validity of the perception of God does rest on the perceiver's willingness to accept the science of these things. To say that God went to the trouble to create all this evidence of natural processes and natural laws but doesn't actually use the natural processes and laws to accomplish God's ends - well, that seems duplicative...)

I'd be a lot more excited about the "oh no, they're going to be teaching religion" argument if said proposed teaching was going to interfere with education. It can't, because the schools are already engaged in random indoctrination and no education.

To put it another way, given the dog's vomit status quo, it's hard to get concerned about a new chunk.

OK, let's try to reduce this to a level that an egghead can understand.

The New York City schools are a nightmare of disciplinary problems. Middle class parent who have any sense do not send their kids to the public schools.

Instead, they send them to Catholic schools, where discipline is enforced by resort to traditional religious teachings.

And, it works.

My parents, and my grandparents both reported that their schools had no disciplinary problems. The reason for this was traditional religious discipline enforced with the teaching of religious doctrine.

Now, eggheads, try to get your noodle brains around this. Which is more important? That everybody should know that Santa Claus does not exist? Or, that humans should abide by those practices that work?

And, as usual, I expect no answers that actually relate to what I said.

Joe:

The difference between an evolutionist and a person who accepts the theory of evolution, I think, is that the evolutionist believes so wholeheartedly in evolution that s/he will brook no challenge of it. Apparently it used to be entirely accepted (and I'm talking about "in the 20th century") that human beings had 48 chromosomes. People believed it. But when more and better data made it clear that humans have 46 chromosomes, people relinquished their now-unsupported belief and subscribed to the new, better supported one. If anyone had said, "Humans have 48 chromosomes, it's proven, and that's all there is to it!" they'd have been wrong. For that matter, if they'd said the same thing but with 46 instead of 48, they'd have been right about their facts but wrong about their metaknowledge.

The theory of evolution, as science, should never be immune from examination, by any comer. Some alternatives can be disposed of rather more quickly than others. But really, divine creation can never be disposed of entirely, because an omnipotent God could create the world we see today, with fossils in the ground and an orderly progression of microfossils in strata and radioactive isotopes ticking away in rocks and animal and plant forms that appear to be related to one another, and furthermore S/He could then start using natural selection to introduce favorable mutations within species and even provide evidence of near-speciation in tiny critters. Occam's Razor doesn't slice it, but there's no way to prove it didn't happen that way.

P.S. Which is what makes creationism not-science.

Am I the only one who's grown a little weary of the smug rationalist who's discovered on his/her short time on this earth that generation after generation of humans were actually full of BS?

Ah, the argumentum ad populum fallacy. An oldie but a goodie.

Here's a simple truth: no matter what you believe about the origins of life, the universe, and everything, the overwhelming majority of all the people who've ever lived would have thought you were full of shit. So, just a suggestion -- why not try figuring out what's actually true, instead of just following what the people in your immediate surroundings believe? No matter what you choose to believe you're going to be at odds with most of the world, so you might as well make an effort to actually be right.

Now, eggheads, try to get your noodle brains around this. Which is more important? That everybody should know that Santa Claus does not exist? Or, that humans should abide by those practices that work?

That's funny. My mother went to a non-religious school, and it didn't have any serious discipline problems. More recently, I went to non-religious schools, and those didn't have serious discipline problems either. Going further back, my grandparents went to non-religious schools and those didn't have any serious discipline problems either, or at least none that my grandparents would admit to.

So, if you'll permit an "egghead" to respond to your questions with a question of his own: since both the "competent staff + discpline" approach and the "competent staff + discpline + myth and superstition" approach both seem to work, what's the basis for believing that the "myth and superstition" bit is a necessary part of the program?

And if you'll permit a follow-up: if in-school religion is needed to keep the kids in line, how come Japan's school kids are so much better-behaved than ours?

Jane,

Your comments regarding hardline materialism are one of those observations that on their own justify the blogosphere. You said something quite eloquently that I had unsuccessfully been using sarcasm to imply for a couple of months. Well done.

Contributor A,

If I understand your comments right, what your suggesting is that your view is that evolution is superior to any of those dogmatic religious views, regardless of whether evidence supports it or not, eh?

I acknowledge that many "evolutionist" arguments are out-and-out wrong and motivated by very unappealing sentiments. But consider the argument presented by the ID folks:

1. Scientifically speaking, there are a few holes in the evolutionary theory of the origin and diversification of life.

2. It's good science for science teachers to pount out some of the shortcomings of the reigning theory, and good policy to get our kids into the habit of questioning the conventional wisdom.

3. And of course, it's also good science for us to keep an open mind about alternative theories that might become more plausible if more problems were discovered in the existing theory.

Which are all fair points so far as they go. The problem with this argument is not that "God comes next." The problem with this argument is that none of its proponents give a damn about the falsifiability of the evolutionary hypothesis, or methodological problems in studies of population genetics, or statistical differences between punctuated-equillibrium and gradualist models.

They're looking for information that supports the conclusion they've already reached, and that's not science. Suppose that ID-ers' objections about the absence of intermediate forms in the fossil record motivated a reserch institution to fund a successful search for "the missing link". Would the ID-ers be happy or sad about that?
Who's chiding these people for being hypocritical?

There are some problems with the evolutionary model, yes, but those problems are centers for active debate and research. They're where the theory grows and changes. They're also focused on distinctions so fine that they're only really accessible to graduate students -- certainly not the kind of thing you can "dedicate a few classes to" in a high school biology class.*

Let's consider a parallel example. The Big Bang hypothesis - that the universe exploded into being about 15 billion years ago - is a fairly recent idea. Most scientists who published from the mid-seventeenth to mid-twentieth centuries, including Newton and Einstein, believed that the universe was infinite in both space and time. It is fraught with theoretical difficulties -- a successful resolution will require us to solve (literally) the most difficult scientific puzzle of all time. It also requires scientists to flatly contradict a number of religious doctrines, most notably Eastern belief systems that hold that the universe is infinite. Why are there no ID people complaining that scientists are using a buggy theory to speculate about traditionally religious matters in this instance?

*The net effect of those classes, of course, is to suggest "It's okay to think evolution is all bunk. If you don't like evolution then there's plenty of room for you on the ID side of the line." Modern evolutionary theory, is supported by literally hundreds of thousands of supporting journal articles in disciplines ranging from geology and astronomy to pharmacology and thermodynamics. Intelligent Design is supported by preachers and PTA members, and supplies NO ANSWER WHATSOEVER to thousands of questions answered compellingly by evolutionary theory (like "why do whales have finger bones?" and "why is the human eye built backwards?"). There is no parity between them. Why should we imply that there is?

Jane, you're spot on. There are few things sillier than the religiously fervent evolutionist who won't even consider holes in the theory out of fear that the lend credence to creationist views.

Scientists and realists need to be confident enough in the process of discovery to hold the holes in their theories up for examination and criticism. That process is what makes scientific inquiry a hell of a lot more reliable in explaining the world than your average cleric. You're never going to convert those who have their eyes closed to truth, but if you're honest, the rest will come to trust you. While evolution probably takes up a total of 2 hours in the typical K-12 curriculum, and is fought disproportionally through the court system, how we approach it is a great litmus test for how we approach other consequential scientific questions of our time: CFCs, global warming, eugenics, cloning, nuclear power... Do we want issues decided by political correctness and feel-goodism or would it be better to act on facts we can actually establish?

I venture that most of the kids of those parents who really care about ID education are already getting it in Sunday School. The real complaint should be that such parents are paying for public education but getting knowledge they don't wish to pay for. The solution is called tuition to the school of your choice. Speaking from childhood experience, the lessons being taught in Sunday School/Vacation Bible School, etc. tend to be very weak in religous theology and heavy on David Slew Goliath, and the plots of such other well known Bible stories. I can't recall one teacher using a Bible story to warn against bullying, discuss what experiences would happen to you in Heaven, discuss what made Methodists different from Baptists or Lutherans, or explain the existence of Dinosaur fossils. Thus, most adult people who encourage or allow you to talk about religion with them know squat about the tenets of their faith, the characteristics of their Supreme Being, or why other denominations are incorrect. Suggest you religious types do a better job educating yourself before
proselytizing the informed non-religious.

To believe in the invisible, I need evidence. God, care to weigh in on this one?

I created the World in six days, then on the seventh day I rested.

Been gettin' grief for it ever since.

Satan is the landlord now. Ask Him.

Too much of the above is bomb throwing, not reasoned, or even heated, debate. Creech doesn't really know what religous people do and do not know/believe, and the lack of discipline in public schools is not due to a lack of religous instruction (rather, it is more of a public vs. private education phenomenon and, secondarily, an issue with significant socio-economic overtones). Get a grip.

The real complaint should be that such parents are paying for public education but getting knowledge they don't wish to pay for. The solution is called tuition to the school of your choice.

I don't wish to pay for any childrens' education at all, because I don't have kids. Does your "tuition to the school of your choice" plan involve me (and other childless taxpayers) getting a full refund on that part of my tax money?

The problem with "school choice" is that every school choice plan I've seen still involves a bunch of people who aren't participating in the program to help pay for it. How can *that* be right, if making a Creationist parent pay for a scientific education is wrong?

Dan: of course. Pay only for goods and services you use.

McK: Sorry, I'm only referring to most religous lay people I know. A distant cousin, PhD in Theology, teaching in a seminary, and of Baptist faith, knows much more stuff but can't describe Heaven or Hell, why Baptists are correct and Presbyterians aren't, what is the benefits of prayer, etc. "Just have to believe" is his fall back answer.

Strictly speaking Science doesn't reallly have a dog in this fight. Modernism? Absolutely, but not Science. My understanding of the scientific method is that its response to ID is basically: "Well, it could be divine intervention. And, if you're willing to pony up some verifiable, testable, replicable evidence that its divine intervention, I'll be happy to say that it is.".

yous guys start too far up the evolutionary ladder...start with electons,protons,neutrons...ya think they came into spontaneous existance..??

imagine the complications built into those particles to allow the universe of life around you..but since no one in a bibical position every saw any of them,religion is silent on the basic building blocks..

Cheers to all on this lively discussion. Too bad it can't proceed without using derogatory invective like "smug rationalist" and "egg head" intead of sticking with the otherwise well-reasoned and crisply stated points being raised.

That said, I find the suggestion that accepting the idea of evolution -- and the theory of natural selection -- makes one irreligious to be absurd. I go to church regularly (a main stream denomination, fyi), served as a trustee for seven years (chairman for three) and have attended and taught Bible study classes. There is nothing in my religious credo that conflicts with anything that science might discover. However, if there is something in your religious credo that a scientific discovery would overthrow, well, so much the worse for your credo. One narrow take on the religious experience does not make one the spokesperson for religious faith in general any more than one moslem terrorist evinces all that one and a quarter moslems believe.

Re: Parochial education. There's no doubt but that an indisciplined school is a horror show. I once worked briefly for the Board of Ed in NYC and had the chance to visit a number of them, but most were not nearly as bad as I was expecting. A few were absolutley outstanding (e.g Stuyvesant High and Fashion Insititute of Technology, a specialized high schoool). What made the good ones so good IMHO was the quality of the leadership -- simply superb administrators who could probably run any kind of ship well but happened to choose schools. The schools were highly disciplined but religious reference points had nothing to do with it. The "big stick" for these schools, as indeed for private schools, Catholic or not, is that they could always ask students to leave. The regular public schools normally don't have that luxury, with the result that teachers have to spend an inordinate amount of time with the perpetual trouble-makers while self-starters educate themselves and the middling types just drift.

There's no doubt but that a disciplined society -- one that respects the rights of others and post-pones gratification -- will tend to prosper, even when it is almost bereft of natural resources. (Scandania and Switzerland come to mind). The key, though, is orderliness and self-control, not whether a certain sectarian belief holds sway. Only a tiny fraction of the Scandinavian population would think of attending church, but neither are their societies cesspools of poverty and crime. You want to see poverty and crime, spend time in a country where the houses of worship are bigger than the banks.

I'm sympathtic with the poster who mentioned his wife's having grown up in grass hut in the Philippines, a woman who sees Christian spirituality in every object, animate and not. Rationalistic materialism often seems a pretty thin gruel by comparison. Perhaps that's the great undone work of philosophy, reconciling an existentialist view with the psychological yearning for deeper meaning.

I reconcile it for myself by seeing the work of science as revealing the handiwork of the Creator, not limiting it. Research is for us what prayer and meditation was for the medeival monks -- a way to get closer to the Almighty. An atttiude of reverence for the wonder of DNA is not misplaced.

That said, I find the charge hurled at the science-oriented that they smugly insist that what they know is the "truth" to be a little misplaced. In science, all conclusions are provisional, awaiting revision as soon as more convincing evidence or a more insightful explanation comes along. What it is not open to -- and can never be open to -- is a tautological assertion that the answer to a scientifcally stated question is an ancient religious doctrine. That's not smugness, it's openness.

start with electons,protons,neutrons...ya think they came into spontaneous existance

I realize you were kidding, but it is interesting to note that there are, in fact, subatomic particles that spontaneously appear out of nothing and then vanish again. Interestingly, that this happens was predicted by theory long before it was actually observed (and, indeed, since it was considered to be absurd that something could appear out of nothing, the fact that theory predicted it was initially seen as a flaw in the theory).

There are some interesting blurbs about the phenomenon at http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/research/warp/possible.html#vac. This phenomenon has Big Bang implications as well, of course.

Creech -- I'd be fine with allowing Creationism to be taught in schools if I didn't have to pay for it. But realistically speaking I will have to pay for it, because no politician is seriously proposing sparing me that tax burden.

Interesting splinter argument: funding free public education or free 'education for the public' if you want to go the voucher route. Dan and Creech say pay only for goods and services that you use. That's what they do in Mexico past the 6th grade--may be good in theory, but perhaps not so good if you want a literate, skilled workforce and the kind of country that workforce produces. I'll match my f_________ school tax bills against most folks. One of my kids went to private school from 7th grade forward and both went to a private university on my nickel. I am fully up to speed on the pain associated with paying for one system and using another. However, I do use the public education system, and I use it everyday. Most of us do as well.

First, I hire literate employees at a cost that does not reflect their direct charges for their education. Second, the taxes I pay for other useful, if not essential, government services, e.g. police, fire department, national defense, etc. would be even higher if the labor cost of the government workforce included reimbursement for privately funded education.

Third, less directly, a fair argument can be made that a civil society based on capitalism works better with free education because it makes one of the essential ingredients to upward mobility part of the standard mix--at least in theory. Again, look at Mexico. So many people down there are doomed from the get go, in large part because they do not have the education and skills to make anything out of life. Mexican society and the economy is highly stratified and there are huge resentments on the part of those on the outside looking in. Someday, those resentments may explode into major civil unrest. They have a lot of that down there already.

Universal education--even with the uneven results produced by our screwed up public education system--makes the notion of equality of opportunity, as opposed to outcome, one of the single largest fairness factors in America. It makes for a more civil and stable society. I won't argue that the system is sound, because it isn't, but the concept is.

Publius, I am not trying to ruin your day, but I agree with your entire post.

That's what they do in Mexico past the 6th grade--may be good in theory, but perhaps not so good if you want a literate, skilled workforce and the kind of country that workforce produces.

Of course, if you want a literate, skilled workforce, you probably ought to teach them science, not primitive religious superstition. There's no argument for publically-funded education that does not also double as an argument against teaching creationism, unless "most of the people want it and you can't outvote them" counts as an argument.

II Timothy 3:1&7 "This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." I found this site totally by accident; but maybe God wants you to have a few words of truth. All the knowledge that mankind needs is in the Bible. God even told us that the world was round in Isaiah 40:22 about 700 yrs before Christ.

Where does Jane get you people? This is an incredibly lucid and well-informed debate.

> Science doesn't have a dog in this fight.

True. Clever. It seems like the people who object to ID here, are objecting to teaching Genesis along side natural selection. I agree that that is a bad thing to do. It violates the separation of church and state to teach Christianity as a way of explaining the world.

It seems like the people who don't object are saying that it's pretty ridiculous to teach how-we-got-here, and not expect to encounter questions of who and why. If the state legislates the answers no one for no reason, they are teaching atheism.

I agree with President Bush, that where there are things that need to be discussed, we should discuss them.

I can't imagine how you go about teaching science in a moral or social vacuum. It's impossible.

Dan, it is unlikely that an educated but religous workforce would be any less productive or skilled than an educated, aetheist workforce. The fight over teaching ID--which I agree should not be taught as a science and probably should not be taught at all--is unrelated to either the quality of public education or the propriety of universal taxation to publicly fund education.

As an aside, while I don't consider people's religions to be "primitive superstition" and don't see any benefit in goading people who are religous, or people who are not, for that matter, the fact that there are religous people out there seems to be an issue for you. What is the point or benefit of insulting people?

Dan, it is unlikely that an educated but religous workforce would be any less productive or skilled than an educated, aetheist workforce.

We're not talking about religion versus atheism; we're talking about ignorance versus education. The theory of evolution is not anti-religion; it is only anti-ignorant-religion. There are plenty of religions in the world (such as that of the Episcopal Church, which I was raised in) which have no problems with the theory of evolution. The only religions which have a problem with evolution are those which teach that willful ignorance of reality is a good.

If the state legislates the answers no one for no reason, they are teaching atheism.

No, they're teaching that there's no evidence that a god created the universe. That is not the same thing as teaching atheism, unless you believe that a god can't be a god unless he is responsible for creating the universe. Humans have worshipped plenty of gods who weren't creditted with the creation of the universe.

Let me put it another way: if saying "there is no evidence that gods were involved in the creation of the universe" is the same as saying "there are no gods", then it must logically be true that there are no gods. Because the first statement is completely true. There is no evidence for gods. That doesn't mean it is factually true that they don't exist -- only that it is factually true that there's no evidence they exist.

Leaving aside differing views on whether "there is no evidence God created the universe", for the state to teach such a notion, the First Amendment will have to repealed, rewritten or reconstrued. Sorry, that notion is not neutrality toward religion. Worse, its picking an unnecessary fight. Some people obviously believe as Dan does, others believe there is lots of evidence that God exists--and among these folks, there is wide disagreement as to what that evidence is. There are members of both groups who think the others are out of their minds. The right and the wrong of it don't matter. The state has no business teaching a religous perspective and no business commenting on anyone's religion in any form or fashion. It is not the state's job to validate anyone's religous or non-religous views.

A big straw giant suffering in this thread. An evolutionist who won't tolerate questioning of the theory! Now that is a type thick on the ground in research institutions everywhere.

Religion is fantasy for the credulous. Truly, there is no there there. Does it help explain reality? Does it generate further lines of inquiry? Do you go to a doctor or a faith healer? Do you fly in planes designed by engineers or by the faith based?
Sigh.

Leaving aside differing views on whether "there is no evidence God created the universe"

Why should there be differing views? If there's evidence, let's see it. That would end the debate. And where was this "never mind the evidence" attitude when you were pretending to care about the origins of amino acids and prokaryotes? :)

for the state to teach such a notion, the First Amendment will have to repealed, rewritten or reconstrued.

The Constitution forbids (a) establishing a religion and (b) restricting the free exercise of a religion. Neither of those clauses prevents the government from saying "X is true", regardless of how many relgions think X is false. They just can't ban those religions from saying "X is false".

Furthermore, the statement "there is no evidence that God exists" doesn't contradict mainsteam Judeo-Christian theology, which holds that belief in God is a matter of faith, not proof. There is even a popular school of thought that it is vitally important that there NOT be proof of God's existance, as that would render faith meaningless.

A final note -- most Christians think of Creationism as primitive religious superstition, too. Not in America, because America has a disproportionate number of fundamentalists, but in the world at large Creationism is viewed, by Christians, as an embarassment to their faith. My parents are deeply religious, as are most of the members of my family, and their reaction to "Intelligent Design" is similar to the reaction you might have when a friend of yours gets drunk and starts making an ass of himself in public. They think that it makes Christians look like a pack of scientifically illiterate dolts, and they resent that fact.

The previous "dan" at 08:48 PM isn't me, by the way. :)

Dan,

No offense but you're sounding an awful lot like an agnostic/atheist's equivalent of Elmer Gantry. I have to get a bit of...clarification on some of the points you seem to be making:

>most Christians think of Creationism as primitive religious superstition, too. Not in America, because America has a disproportionate number of fundamentalists, but in the world at large Creationism is viewed, by Christians, as an embarassment to their faith.

Em, care to provide any evidence on that one? It sounds awfully Eurocentric. There are, after all, Christians outside of North America and Europe.

>Why should there be differing views? If there's evidence, let's see it. That would end the debate. And where was this "never mind the evidence" attitude when you were pretending to care about the origins of amino acids and prokaryotes?

Well, there is evidence that contradicts the classical view of Darwinism. That doesn't seem to be stopping you from ignoring it. How is it scientific to hold onto a model when data contradict it? (By the way, I'm not an advocate of ID. I just find too many advocates of evolution, treate the idea of acknowledging what science doesn't claim to know as an affront to their worldview).

There are, after all, Christians outside of North America and Europe

Sure, but the majority of them are Catholic, and the Church has accepted the basics of evolution and "Big Bang" cosmology for years.

Well, there is evidence that contradicts the classical view of Darwinism

I'm not even sure what you mean by "classical Darwinism", so I'm not sure if I believe in it or not. If by that you mean that Darwin's original theory has been modified in light of later evidence, than certainly that is true. Science isn't religion; scientific theory is allowed to change when evidence shows it to be incorrect. But if by that you mean that evidence contradicts the current theory of evolution accepted by pretty much all biologists, I'd like to hear what that supposed evidence is.

the [Catholic] Church has accepted the basics of evolution and "Big Bang" cosmology for years.

The situation is actually somewhat more complex. From an article in the July 9 New York Times that is, alas, now in pay only archives:

An influential cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, which has long been regarded as an ally of the theory of evolution, is now suggesting that belief in evolution as accepted by science today may be incompatible with Catholic faith.

The cardinal, Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, a theologian who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, staked out his position in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Thursday [July 7], writing, "Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not."

Schoenborn's argument was similar to one made by Alex Tabarrok:
http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2005/06/theism_versus_e.html

Badically, Tabarrok says that if you believe in a God who answers prayers, who is a force in human history, who can be "an ever-present help in time of trouble," it is incongruous to believe that He/She/It created the universe, then just let it run for 15 billion years or so, until a few thousand years ago when He/She/It decided to get involved again in a big way.

> Furthermore, the statement "there is no evidence that God exists" doesn't contradict mainsteam Judeo-Christian theology, which holds that belief in God is a matter of faith, not proof. There is even a popular school of thought that it is vitally important that there NOT be proof of God's existance, as that would render faith meaningless.

This is really an odd thread and forum, where as time passes, the people I disagree sound more and more reasonable, not less and less.

> A final note -- most Christians think of Creationism as primitive religious superstition, too. Not in America, because America has a disproportionate number of fundamentalists, but in the world at large Creationism is viewed, by Christians, as an embarassment to their faith. My parents are deeply religious, as are most of the members of my family, and their reaction to "Intelligent Design" is similar to the reaction you might have when a friend of yours gets drunk and starts making an ass of himself in public. They think that it makes Christians look like a pack of scientifically illiterate dolts, and they resent that fact.

Well, they should have a thicker skin. Fundamentalists exist in all beliefs, whether they are religious or political. It's part of the spectrum. I don't think that it's an embarrassment, and I think that it's better to allow a person to have their beliefs. If you want a person to change their mind, you have to start by accepting the state of mind they are in.

Of course, there are some things that I think are flat out wrong, but Creationism is not one of them.

Well, they should have a thicker skin.

Excuse me, but it is the fundamentalists who are trying to use the government to force their beliefs on others -- not my parents. If fundamentalists were merely ignoramuses that would be one thing, but they're a large, well-organized pack of ignoramuses with a solid track record as enemies of science, free inquiry, and individual liberty. So why, pray tell, should I live and let live? Why should I pretend their beliefs are worthy of respect when (a) they have nothing but contempt for mine and (b) their beliefs are, in fact, at direct odds with reality?

Dan,

First of all, my apologies for the earlier snarkiness. I had mistaken the other poster (dan) for you, and was responding accordingly. That said, spontaneous generation of even primitive life runs into probability problems, even with the large sample as a mitigator. The obvious analogy is the million monkeys - million typewriters-million years experiment. The probability of actually producing the collected works of Shakespeare turns out pretty low unless they're typing at an incredible rate. Experiments hypothetically reproducing this phenomenon (granted over smaller time periods - runtime issues) using random character generators don't produce mu ch in the way of cogent pages of text, let alone the collected works of Shakespeare. My understanding is that its recognized that this analogy works pretty well. The probability of life forming spontaneously turns out pretty slim if we assume pure randomness and constant laws of physics. Now does this necessitate divine intervention? By no means. All it means is that pure randomness seems a pretty poor explanation for the origination of life and until it can come with a better explanation of the process, science doesn't claim to have an answer as to how this happened.

On the other hand, the Republic struggled along pretty well for 200 years with creationism (and bible verses!) being taught right there in the classroom.

Perhaps your situation was different, but neither creationism nor bible verses were taught in the public classrooms where I went to school and they were not taught in the public classrooms where my kids went. So I would be inclined to say that for at least the last 40 of those 200 years, the Republic struggled along just fine without creationism in the classroom. Why did it disappear? Because we let the science community tell us what was useful to teach in the science classes. Why should it reappear now? What does it add to the teaching of science?

I find the argument that it should be there because biochemists' theories of how life arose are currently incomplete to be inadequate. I acknowledge that we cannot explain how the jump from "inanimate" elements to self-replicating molecules inside a cell membrane occurred; 100 years ago we couldn't explain what DNA was; 50 years ago we couldn't explain a lot of the protein chemistry that we design drugs around now.

My understanding is that its recognized that this analogy [the million monkeys] works pretty well.

First off, I recommend checking this out: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html. It gives a good overview of the probabilities involved.

But to address your point: the million-monkey problem (MMP for short) is widely cited by creationists, but it is actually a really lousy analogy for abiogenesis and evolution. The MMP describes a scenario that has no iteration, no selective forces, and which is completely random. Abiogenesis was an iterative process, not perfectly random, and experienced selective forces. An overview:

Iteration: abiogenesis involved many steps, some of them extremely likely to occur, some less so, and some unlikely. Metaphorically speaking, the first actual life wasn't Shakespeare randomly generated from scratch -- it was the complete works of Shakespeare randomly generated from a list of every sentence Shakespeare ever wrote.

Selection: once the first replicating molecule was achieved, selection (and thus evolution) entered the picture. This has the effect of rewarding the "right answers" -- ones which assist replication -- and punishing the "wrong answers" -- ones which harm replication.

Randomness: the laws of chemistry are not random. DNA, for example, is composed of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and hydrogen. These elements combine according to certain basic rules, not randomly. Another example: all life is based on only 20 amino acids.

If ID is to be taught in schools maybe it would be better served by creating a standard philosophy class in high schools, which is where the theory belongs. Science is by definition objective and based on observations of the natural world, and I don't know many scientists who actually believe in anything; for most of them reality is an amalgm of facts and best hypothesis that is subject to change with the publication of new data. As far as sprituality goes, the faiths embraced by scientists are as diverse as any other group and may or may not enter the arena when a scientist is discussing evolution, therefore lending the appearance that the individual is an atheist and an 'evolutionist'(?) when reality may be quite different. For myself evolution in biological systems and otherwise, which I studied quite extensively, forms an overarching order in the world that can be quite beautiful and Toaist in nature. In addition, I adapt my spirituality to include what we can observe of the natural world,in essence only following through with this overarching order.

> Excuse me, but it is the fundamentalists who are trying to use the government to force their beliefs on others -- not my parents.

They're not the only ones doing so. In fact, they've been the target of such "force" themselves.

You don't get to complain about tactics when the other side adopts the same tactics that you've been using against them.

They're not the only ones doing so. In fact, they've been the target of such "force" themselves

That's a load of crap. Telling somebody the empirical truth is not forcing a belief on them.

What are the holes in evolutionary theory that concern Jane?
Human language and our brain tease us with why questions. Maybe they are memes. Why am I alive/ Why is there a universe? How did it come to be? Is there a purpose for all this? Is there a special purpose for my life? These are valid questions. However, pragmatists point out that humans have often preferred self-serving answers to these questions, saying things like God is on our side, God will help fight our war, support our government because our leader is right with God, etc.
Some say that their holy scripture has answered all these questions. There are many holy scriptures and they say different things. Why should we believe that one of them is right and the others wrong?
Science is a process, which tries to answer specific questions. Individual scientists all make mistakes. Lord Kelvin for example said that X-rays must be fraudulent. They seemed too strange to believe in them. However, science has a validation process different than “trust me, God gave me the answers”. Mistakes are eventually excised. As Einstein said, “Science can only ascertain what is, but not what should be”. We humans are interested in both questions, but they call for different approaches.
Scientific knowledge is impressive but incomplete. I’m a neurologist and neuroscientist. Professor Behe’s claims for inexplicable complexity omit the most complex known structure in the universe, the vertebrate brain. I say vertebrate brain instead of human brain because some animals have bigger brains than humans do, although they seem to have less capability than our brains. If we look at multicellular life forms, we see a continuum of “computing power”, neurons or brains. Birds like crows have more intelligence per mg brain than any mammal. There may be neuronal cell types unique to humans and chimps. I don’t see a qualitative difference between the human brain, the whale brain and the chimpanzee brain. I don’t know what accounts for the marvelous human language faculty, but I think that science can answer that question someday.
The origin of life is not included in evolutionary theory. In the 19th century, scientists figured out that all living things are made up of cells, and the great physician Rudolf Virchow stated cells come only from other cells, i.e. spontaneous generation of life couldn’t be demonstrated in the laboratory. Nobody knows how life arose on earth, what was the first living thing. Everything that I know and can test tells me that the first living thing was one-celled. Recently, Craig Venter reported the synthesis of synthetic bacteriophage (viruses which infect bacteria) from chemical solutions. Maybe this will be like the cold fusion reported by Pons and Fleischmann, i.e. not reproducible, and therefore scientifically invalid. The scientific process can handle that. Suppose that it is reproducible, does that mean that Venter has created life in a test tube? Well, viruses are not cells and can only reproduce inside cells. Suppose that someone creates a living bacterial cell in a test tube (I think that it’s feasible). That would not explain how life arose.
There are gaping holes in neuroscience, areas of ignorance. Even if they are all answered we still have questions of value. What should be? What is my obligation to my neighbor? my child or grandchild? What is the good life? Could I recognize it if I bumped into it? These are worth discussing but they are not scientific questions. They also require some sophistication to discuss in a productive manner. Do our schools teach wisdom and sophistication?

All sciences have holes. None have answered every question. That’s the nature of science. Better science won’t make us stop fighting and killing one another. I admire the teachings of Jesus and The Buddha that have come down to us. I have less admiration for organized Christianity and Buddhism.

Mckinneytexas: Your agreement made my day.

Re: Isaiah 40:22. It refers to the "circle of the earth." The passage does not "prove" that the ancients knew the world was "round" as we understand that term. Rather, it repeats the "common-sense" but nonetheless invalid view that the earth was disk-shaped, which it appears to be for anyone who looks down from a tall hill. Question: What would it have to look like so that it would look spherical?

See too Eccelesiastes 1:5, where the sun "rises and goes down, and hurries to the place where it rises." The sun "hurrying" around the earth each day is something else we no longer accept, so if that's proof that the Biblical authors knew it all, I rest my case.

Sidebar question: Why did one view of natural phenomena rather than another matter so darn much to the church hierarchy? I suspect that it had little to do with God or nature, but everything to do with earthly political power -- the church's power to command obedience and the legitimizing rationale for that power. I hear an echo of that in the thundering fundmentalist voices of today--spiritual talk but a distinctly political walk. Taking over school boards and rewriting curricula is a small part of a larger agenda.

That said, I don't see why ideas like "intelligent design" would be unfit for discussion in philosophy classes, as many posters have suggested. It is an intriguing idea in that it purports to use mathematical techniques to demonstrate that aspects of existence are inexplicable by rational means. As Dan has pointed out, the idea may be so fundamentally flawed that it collapses on close examination, but the examination is itself an educational exercise from which many would benefit. Somehow I doubt that putting ID up for an examination that would show its shortcomings is what the fundamentalists have in mind.

As a practical matter, shifting ID to the philosophy section suffers from the obvious defect that most high schools don't teach philosophy but they all teach biology. Perhaps a way to reconcile the views is to go ahead and posit that ID -- in the bio class -- is held to be a driver of evolutionary changes, and then go ahead and subject it to the same scientific scrutiny one would apply to any other scientific theory.

My own bio class (circa 1968) discussed the Lamarkian view that organisms evolved due to "an inner need to change." We were not poorer for the experience of exploring an exploded theory and seeing its shortcomings, but it would have been far different if the mandate had been to teach Lamark as "gospel."

Contrary to what a lot of fundamentalists assert, "Darwin" is not taught as gospel. As far as I know, scientists don't see Darwin in biblical terms. While there has been little change in the big picture of evoluton (which predates Darwin by at least 50 years), there has been plenty of change in Darwin's theory of evolution's underlying mechanisms.

An interesting book I'd recommend is "A Matter of Degree" by Prof. Gino Segre (UPenn), a history of the measurement of temperature. One of the more delightful aspects of this work is to see how even the real science greats of their era (Boyle, Newton, et al.) proceeded on erroneous assumptions that took centuries to bring to light. (The idea that heat was a substance ("flogiston") was once universal, for instance.)

We learn a lot more from studying mistakes than from studying successes, IMHO, but the time pressure to learn in scientific disciplines often rules out spending much time studying how previous scientists got it wrong. In a private e-mail, Prof. Segre said that this leads to the erroneous impression that science is one long road of triumphs over ignorance instead of the fits-and-starts path of multiple frustrations it actually is.

"One of the hardest things for my grad students to accept," he said, "is that most of what we know is probably wrong." In the end, all we have is the method, the scientific method of inquiry, not the "truths" that the method has uncovered so far. Those "truths" can always be overthrown, though it's less likely for some than others.
As long as ideas like "intelligent design" are subject to the method -- and not a substitute for it -- science shouldn't have much to worry about.

> Telling somebody the empirical truth is not forcing a belief on them.

Everything that's been pushed in public schools has been empirical truth?

The "Young Earthers" among the ID/Creationist crowd are only partly correct -- the Earth is indeed far younger than the 4.5 billion years the scientific types would have us believe, but it is also younger than the Biblical literalists believe. It was actually created only 14 minutes ago, including not only fossils and geological formations to deceive the rational heathens among us, but with fake memories and fake holy books to deceive the insufficiently religious. However, there's an expiration date only a few days or weeks away, so everybody better figure out who the real Lord(s) is/are and how it/they want its/their ass(es) kissed or they'll be in a world of hurt come the day of worldly expiration. A good start might be to start tithing to me to support my full-time researches into the matter. No, I don't have any answers yet -- hell, I've only been here 15 minutes (now) just like the rest of you! Do I look like a freakin' Einstein, let alone a Moses to you clowns??? But send me money, quickly...

Bob Snodgrass, Publius: Thanks for your insights.

Perhaps

- Professor Segre's grad students would have an easier time accepting that "most of what we know is wrong"

- one "Dan" would better distinguish evidence from proof, "empirical truth" from "current theory" and probability from certainty

- fundamentalist materialists and fundamentalist Christians alike would ignore fewer discomfiting aspects of reality

if science were taught in schools with a modicum of humility and honesty: a bit of its history and philosophy, a touch of Thomas Kuhn. The blundering path of scientific progress, the sorts of questions science can and cannot address, the difference in strength of evidence for falsifiable theories about events we repeat at will and hard-to-test surmises about what happened millions of years ago, the so-human temptation to acknowledge that all worldviews rely on unprovable assumptions--except mine.

If science were taught with more honesty, humility and context, perhaps ID would more often be considered thoughtfully and less often hurled at opponents.

one "Dan" would better distinguish evidence from proof

Let me put it this way: the theory of evolution has a stronger theoretical foundation, and more empirical evidence supporting it, than does the theory that you, Paul, personally exist. Does that meet the standard of proof? Maybe, maybe not.

The theory of evolution by natural selection is, at this point, as solidly proven as the theory that the Earth revolves around the sun. After a certain point, insisting that a mountain of consistent evidence cannot qualify as "proof" becomes a bit silly.

Dan,

No disrespect, but you really seem to be playing a very slippery game with evolution by natural selection and abiogenesis. When questioned on methodology, you hold out natural selection alone. When people are willing to give that point, you revert to both theories. I reviewed the site you suggested. Bluntly, I found the model heavily rigged (presupposition of the existence of complex proteins, extremely dodgy on experimental trials, making very strong assumptions about distribution of materials, etc.). Even more troubling is the obvious question that a competent 10th grader would ask - how is it that random processes are able to produce results that high-tech scientific equipment seems to fail at. Sorry, but technology doesn't really cut it here. We have the technology to replicated the conditions. Does any of this rule out abiogenesis? Not really. It does suggest, however, that aboiogenesis is an incomplete theory in need of revision. Personally, I find the idea of the schools filling those gaps with "Jesus did it" objectionable. But that doesn't detract from the fact that teaching "This is the truth and the gaps will go away." is essentially teaching the materialist equivalent of a creation story.

> Let me put it this way: the theory of evolution

Yes, but that's not the stance that Dan took when I pointed out that the ID folks were merely playing by the same rules as their opponents.

Public schools have been used for political indoctrination for decades. They have not restricted themselves to "empirical truth" as Dan would have it.

The only difference is whose ox is being gored this time. And, it's not like ID is going to make a big difference in the "quality" of the public school experience.

"First, I hire literate employees at a cost that does not reflect their direct charges for their education."

It doesn't? That money had to come from somewhere. You may be paying them more than you'd pay if they were charging for the cost of their education minus the taxes they didn't pay for public education thus far. Or you may be paying them less and someone else may be paying more in some other way. Those costs don't disappear just because the product isn't on the open market - if anything, they go up under those circumstances.

If people were paying the full cost of their education out of their own pocket, they'd tend to choose education that maximizes their return on investment, since people really hate to throw away money unless it belongs to someone else. Thus, the total cost paid would be smaller in relation to the benefit derived from the education itself in a completely private system than under our own.

And few of your employees (or their parents) would have spent their own money to learn Creationism in their science classes, and in consequence those that did wouldn't be able to get you to recoup that cost.

Now I seriously doubt that God ever got around to whispering an exact account of the creation of the world into anyone's ear (He seemed more interested in telling people how to stay off His shit list, when He bothered to talk to them at all), and it's a good bet that all existing accounts are either logical inferences from fossil and other evidence or pure fantasy. Of course the early Christians that compiled what we know of as the Old Testament from ancient Hebrew writings had no way of knowing that.

Of course if anyone unearths an ancient Hebrew document describing DNA, or the dinosaurs, or the human family tree, or mutation and natural selection, then an awful lot of people will have to revise their opinions a bit...

"My only caveat is that the scientific community still has a few pretty important unanswered questions and, truth being what this community supposedly values over all else, they should tell the truth and say so."Posted by mckinneytexas at August 5, 2005 01:07 PM

The above seems reasonable, no?
So I walked from my computer to the 'school book shelf' in my house and thumbed through our sons' public school earth sciences textbook.
And on every page, these phrases abound: "evidence suggests"..."possible to develop a theory"..."the most accurate method to date", "makes it possible to suggest", "astonomers believe", "may result in...".
No spittle-flecked atheist propaganda. No Darwin fascists. And plenty of acknowledgement of unanswered questions, it seems to me.

Bluntly, I found the model heavily rigged (presupposition of the existence of complex proteins, extremely dodgy on experimental trials, making very strong assumptions about distribution of materials, etc.)

Eh? You must not have read it right. It doesn't presuppose the existance of complex proteins. The discussion at that URL only presupposes amino acids (which is a safe presupposition, since we know they exist free floating in space. Or did god magically put them there too?). And claiming that it is "dodgy" on the experimental trials is simply dishonest; it provides footnotes with links to the scientific papers in question.

Even more troubling is the obvious question that a competent 10th grader would ask - how is it that random processes are able to produce results that high-tech scientific equipment seems to fail at.

I would answer him by pointing to the Rocky Mountains and asking him which can more easily produce them -- a man who spends a few years digging away with a backhoe, or a few hundred million years of rain, wind, and tectonic activity. Again, you are underestimating the power of natural processes when multiplied across astronomical numbers of molecules and billions of years of time.

And by the way -- you keep using the word "random", but you seem to think it means something other than what it does. Evolution is "random" in the sense that it is unguided. It still obeys physical laws; it is "random" in the sense that the Earth "randomly" spins on its axis and orange trees "randomly" produce oranges.

Yes, but that's not the stance that Dan took when I pointed out that the ID folks were merely playing by the same rules as their opponents

Who are these nameless "opponents"? People who support the teaching of the theory of evolution want science taught in schools. Pushing the lie that "there is evidence of intelligent design" is not "playing by the same rules", because no such evidence exists. The argumentum ad ignorantum fallacy that "I can't imagine how it could have happened naturally, so it must be God" is not evidence.

Playing by the same rules would be spending the time to FIND such evidence, build a body of scientific evidence and theory to rival that of the theory of evolution, and THEN ask that it be taught in schools as a credible alternative theory to the theory of evolution by natural selection.

>I have a theory that our cosmos is a third-grade science project for a multidimensional being beyond our ken who is named, for some reason, "Grimmet".

Sounds a little like Heinlein's story about Jonathon Hoag.

Dan,

The argumentum ad ignorantum fallacy that "I can't imagine how it could have happened naturally, so it must be God" is not evidence.

No, and neither is the "Well, I say it could have been this phenonmenon" evidence. That is the point I have been trying to make clear to you. Cite some replicable evidence of abiogenesis having happened. If you can't, claiming it as a scientific truth is more the angle of a charletan than a defender of science.

Jody makes the point that his son's books don't posit unequivocally. That is (a) consistent with my own reading and (b) as it should be. Honest scientists admit uncertainty on certain key issues, and honest Christians admit the many (very many) matters that make up their faith that can't be proved. The debate bogs down when debating a true believer on either side. Dan is a true believer. Feel free to correct me on this, but I sense Dan has nothing but contempt for people who just can't bring themselves to believe that once upon a time, the universe was compressed into some small, relatively speaking, unit and that unit was the only thing that existed until it blew up. After it blew up, given the passage of time, the results of that explosion managed, in our neck of the woods, to organize itself and then, in the process of that unguided organizational process, produced life from non-life that eventually evolved into sentient beings. There was no 'space' before the explosion, no time, no 'before' before the explosion, and no external force or influence that caused the chaos released by the explosion to order itself. Or, was the order contained within the pre-explosion 'unit'? How did it get in there? Why did the unit explode? On its own? For any particular reason, or did it just happen? Are we nothing more than the product of some cosmic roll of the dice? If we are, I am going to need a lot more than Dan’s say-so.

Dan asks, to attempt to paraphrase him, what evidence there is of a supreme being. A very limited recitation of proofs includes: (1) the fact of pure randomness and the notion of something being created out of nothing is inconsistent with the very objectivity (cause and effect; natural process) science rightly praises; (2) non-life to life—this and the earlier thread a few days back have added a few new terms to my limited vocabulary, my favorite being the ‘self-replicating molecule’—this is a concept that ought to be describable (not the SRM, but how the first one came to be). It isn’t, at least for the time being, leaving us with the same issue as in (1), i.e. we have to believe in ‘natural processes’ that are assumed to have existed but which cannot be described, much less proved; (3) on a completely different level, where are the genes for altruism, empathy, self-sacrifice, etc.? Why have any code at all, any concept of right or wrong? Is this just an extension of sapiens’ desire for order and certainty in our lives, some arbitrary construct?

There is a natural world and a near limitless universe. They came from somewhere. The evidence of the universe’s age is compelling The evidence that non-life preceded life is likewise. The how and why of it are the big questions. There are countless subsidiary questions as well. Too much happens in this world that can’t be measured and explained, whether its why people do the opposite of what pure self-preservation and self-interest would seem to require, or how it is homo habilus could remain virtually unchanged for 1.3 mm years, then over a very sketchily documented 160K years, result in modern man 40K years ago.

mckinneytexas,

Good post. I don't agree, but good post. In regard to homo habilus to modern man, there's actually a fairly reasonable natural explanation - dramatic environmental shifts. Essentially, there's some evidence that evolution works in fits and starts, which would make sense. Really advantages become really important in a crisis, when they don't dramatically make a difference otherwise. Nonetheless, thanks for reinforcing the point regarding the acknowledgement of uncertainty that I was trying to make to Dan.

Bill, thanks. Habilus to sapiens, if I get what the theory is, occurred in Africa. Are there documented environmental shifts in the last 200K or 500K years in Africa that did not occur in the previous 1mm or outside of Africa? Not challenging, just asking. If so, what were they and what is the analysis that equates X shift with Y adaptation equaling Z documented forward progress toward sapiens? Not looking for a graduate thesis, just the most global high points or some examples. Thanks.

No, and neither is the "Well, I say it could have been this phenonmenon" evidence.

It is a fact that it could have been abiogenesis, because we know for a fact that abiogenesis has a nonzero chance of happening. And we know for a fact that anything with a nonzero chance of happening will eventually happen.

We do not, on the other hand, know that gods exist, or *can* exist. This, despite five thousand years of searching for gods. That is why it is a lie to say that there is evidence for Intelligent Design.

Well, there you have it. I turn over my king, yield my sword and retire, vanquished, from the field of battle. Or not. If my faith on the faith side was as strong as Dan's faith on the non-faith side, I'd quit practicing law and go to a seminary.

mckinneytexas,

on a completely different level, where are the genes for altruism, empathy, self-sacrifice, etc.? Why have any code at all, any concept of right or wrong?

One possible answer is that the idea of right and wrong can provide a survival advantage. In fact, it may well be necessary for a very intelligent, social animal. Imagine a very intelligent animal with no sense of right and wrong, just a desire to "look out for number one." That species would NOT be successful. Intelligence is a much greater survival advantage when there is co-operation, and co-operation requires trust.

But how would a species get there? Well, parents who are willing to sacrifice some for their children are going to have more surviving off-spring who will carry those sacrifice genes. And sacrificing for relatives will also increase the chances of those genes passing on (the fancy name for this is "kin selection" or "inclusive fitness"). This may lead to people being primed to think, "I should look out for my family/band/tribe. It would be wrong not to." These families/bands/groups are more successful, leave more children, and spread the genetic predisposition for a sense of morality.

Another way that co-operation can be successful is if "I scratch your back; you scratch mine." But how do I know that you'll be the scratcher after you've been the scratchee? Well, if I think that you think it is wrong not to keep your promises, wrong not to get something for nothing, I will be more likely to do the (metaphorical) scratching in the first place. And it may be a survival advantage to be able to extend this across time and people: "I've generally been good to these people; I know they're not going to try to screw me. In fact, if I need help, some of them will be there for me." Of course, this trust could easily be abused, so there should be some way to get an idea of who is trustworthy, etc. The theories (often grouped as the not-terribly-accurate "reciprocal altruism) get very complicated.

James Q. Wilson, brilliant and a good writer, published a book in 1993 called The Moral Sense (more properly titled The Moral Senses), which asked, and tried to answer, many of these questions--and traced a philosophical lineage back to the Scottish Enlightenment of the 1700s.

mckinneytexas,

Are there documented environmental shifts in the last 200K or 500K years in Africa that did not occur in the previous 1mm ...?"

As far as I know, there are not. The story I find most plausible: Some time in the last 200,00 to 500,000 years, some individuals in one relatively isolated group of H. erectus had a few unlikely genetic changes that significantly increased their brainpower. Now, brains are tremendously costly (require about ten times as much energy as the same amount of muscle) so normally a bigger brain is not a good deal. But for this group in their circumstances at the time, it was (and there may have been something else besides a simple increase in mental capacity, perhaps a rejiggering of the brain to support a vastly increased moral sense). So the changes spread within the group, and eventually they were different enough to be a new species. The group expanded and eventually displaced the much more numerous erectus.

(This idea that change occurs in small, isolated groups helps explain the "punctuation" in the fossil record, and the fact that so few "missing links" have been found.)

>> The theory of evolution by natural selection is, at this point, as solidly proven as the theory that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Dan, you and I can quite readily observe and measure the movements of sun and earth during our lifetimes, and thus test our theories empirically. Unless you're a lot longer-lived than I am, neither you nor I nor most biologists are likely to observe the entire process of speciation directly. If you want to believe that the scientific proof for hard-to-repeat prehistoric bioprocesses is as solid as the scientific proof for ongoing planetary motions, feel free. Apparently we have different philosophies of science.

Let's not just assume that all good things we attribute to ourselves are necessarily rewarded by a survival advantage. Some of our virtues (morality?) may coincide with our successes, but that doesn't mean they caused them. Our immoralities might have been just as responsible.

Consider intelligence itself. Does it provide a survival advantage? Most would say yes, of course. So how do you account for the fact that all the anthropoid apes except us are endangered species, while monkeys -- far less intellignet than apes -- are a dime a dozen.

Clearly, being small by comparison with avilabile free food supplies is a plus. But even they tend to be gregarious, social animals, they utterly lack virtues such as loyalty, courage or fidelity. They almost never stand together to face a common enemy (which dolphins will, for instance), and their main survival strategy is profligate breeding. And guess what? It works.

I'm reminded of the Stephen Jay Gould observation that in evolutionary terms, your maiden aunt for endows the public library is an evolutionary failure, but the beer-swilling wife beater who has ten kids an evolutionary success.

I rather suspect that for most of its history, homo sapiens has led a marginal existence, just a step or two ahead of extinction. (That may be why ancient human remains seem so scarce.) Our genes have probably not changed appreciably in that time frame. Our IQ at birth may not have changed, though how one would prove this is a poser. What changed was the emergence of culture--agri-culture most prominently. Virtues like altruism must, I think, be derivative of culture.

>> Yes, but that's not the stance that Dan took when I pointed out that the ID folks were merely playing by the same rules as their opponents

> Who are these nameless "opponents"?

The folks who have been using the public schools to wage a culture war on folks a lot like the ID folks.

There are lots of things currently taught in public schools that don't have an empirical basis. Heck, there are lots of things that are in direct opposition to what little empirical evidence that we do have.

As long as the above is true, ID's "science failings" aren't grounds to disqualify it.

If you're willing to use the schools to wage a culture war on others, you can't very well object when they return the favor. You can't object to the absence of an empirical basis only when it is consistent with your beliefs.

In short, goose, gander.

"The folks who have been using the public schools to wage a culture war on folks a lot like the ID folks," writes Andy Freeman.

Er, what on earth are you talking about?

Do you honestly expect anyone to understand you when you start mumbling into your chest about "the folks" who are saying "things" to "the folks" who are like the other "folks"?

Virtues like altruism must, I think, be derivative of culture.

Well, yes, like language is derivative of culture--if you mean that what sounds I use will depend on what culture I grew up in. My culture uses the word "run" and a Spanish culture uses the word "correo" even though they express the same idea.

But the ability to speak and understand a language is, I think, prior to culture. A one-year old human will soak up language. A one-year gorilla or chimp will struggle and eventually (though the research is controversial) be able to use a few hundred words and a few grammatical forms.

I think altruism is culture-bound in the same way. Different cultures teach you to feel different obligations to different people. But the fact that you can be taught to put yourself out for anyone is the rock upon which that is built.

I'm frankly amazed that in the 21st century there are still people in the world who harbor doubts about natural selection. This is about the most solidly supported scientific theory of all time, and anybody who can't see that would probably have hard time opening a can of tuna, let alone posting a comment to a blog.

Most folks can find the relevant reference in a quoted posting, especially when said reference is in the quote. In fact, the basic {partial description} {request for elaboration} {elaboration} structure predates posting.

Nowt so queer as folks, I guess Andy:)

Creation of a universal system of school vouchers would let this debate evolve into a moot point

My tax dollars should not be used to fund religious education. And that is the ONLY purpose behind vouchers. b

that is the ONLY purpose behind vouchers

No it's not. Some people want vouchers because they don't want their children mixing with the other races, and some people want them because the public schools aren't cutting it educationally; some people hate unions, some people don't like the PC curriculum.

There are lots of reasons to like vouchers, worshipping the Baby Jesus is just one of them.

Where did those stories come from? Was the past really just the dark, superstitious outpost of stupidity that the modern intellectual spoofs? Could it be that the ancients knew things we do not know?

Probably not. I mean ancients thought the world was flat, the the earth was the center of the solar system, that the sun god drove his chariot across the sky etc. The fact is people have always tried to explain things that they couldn't understand as divine intervention. Years later, these theories are proven wrong as scientific learning progresses. As for the the common belief in another life, it is not hard to explain. People are afraid of dying and need something to rationalize it and make it not seem so bad. A common belief shared by a number of ancient peoples doesn't make it true. For example, Noah's ark type stories exist in many diverse cultures, but its pretty clear that the Biblical version didn't happen as Genesis records.

Please, for the love of God, close the comments.

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