With a few modifications for clarification, this is my comment on the Senate Site concerning Buttars Bill (BB).
BB: do not endorse a particular theory; and
The State of Utah and its Board of Education should endorse a particular theory. They should endorse the theory that the mainstays of the scientific community uphold, not the theories of fringe groups. If a fringe group is correct, then they will be able to show that scientifically and change what the scientific community believes, as so many other theorists have done in the past with other theories (including evolution). Since Creationism and Intelligent Design have not even come close to showing that their theories hold up scientifically they shouldn’t be considered on a par with evolution.
BB: stress that not all scientists agree on which theory is correct
Just what scientists are we talking about? I saw Dr. John Morris, from the Institute of Creation Research, speak the other day here in SLC at the local Calvary Chapel. He’s a geologists who wants you to believe concerning the origins of life and man just what the Bible says, which is a literal six-days of creation. His theories concerning the “origins of life or the origins or present state of the human race” won’t just wipeout evolution, but all of the earth sciences and most of chemistry with it. Geology as currently taught in class is practically a ploy of Satan, making people lose faith in the Bible. He’s out there trying to prove “scientifically” that his creation theory is correct, but he is only succeeding in proving his theory with pseudoscience.
Just because a “theory” has a good PR campaign to back it up doesn’t mean it is good science, nor should evolution be put into doubt just because pseudoscience says something different.
4 comments:
I am fascinated to find an apparently rational, non-hysterical individual willing to argue out the points of this issue.
This comment is not specifically directed at this post, but to the general thread of posts going back a month or so. A couple of things intrigue me.
One, you say below that Michael Behe is attempting to posit that the disproving of evolution is the same as the proving of intelligent design. I've read a lot of Behe and never heard that particular argument. What Behe says (and you quoted it) is that every time we see a complex design there was a designer. Every time. The inability of modern science to come up with empirical evidence to validate (to each other, mainly) the existence of a Designer in "natural" cases does not seem to me - or to many others - to constitute evidence that no designer exists.
Add to this the fact that no scientist has ever been able to prove that random mutations create 1) new species or 2) significant intra-species natural advantages seems to me to be grounds for calling the theory of undirected evolution into question. You apparently do not think so, but I am curious as to why.
Two, a point that I think most people miss on this subject is that ID does not dispute the existence of the fossil record, or even attempt to contend that evolution is not, in fact, happening. It is not tantamount to the Establishment of Religion. Most strict Creationists regard ID as the work of the devil even more than evolution. ID, as far as I can tell (and I am no scientist) confirms the existence of evolution, accepts the good science relating to it, and focuses its attack on the bad science - of which there is a voluminous plenitude - that threatens to turn evolutionary theory into its own religion.
To wit: we know that man evolved from apes. We cannot show you how this happened. We cannot make it happen. We cannot prove that it happened. We have so far been unable, in any experiment, to make even the smallest random mutation produce any significant advantage, let alone to demonstrate that new species may arise from such mutations. But we know, beyond any attempt at challenge, that this theory is correct. Anyone that says otherwise is a nincompoop.
This is bad science. ID substitutes the following: man may have evolved from apes. We can't prove it. We continue to try. We think this might be so, because there is a great deal of evidence that suggests that organisms change over time. Extrapolating from evidence that we actually do have, we can say for certain that every time we find a complex system, and can identify the method of its construction, we find that someone constructed it. We therefore consider this a likely possibility in this case.
Now, I know that there are thousands of people out there screaming bloody murder about the teaching of evolution. Frankly, I try to ignore them. What I find interesting is that in a government school, it is apparently unacceptable to admit that this theory might be wrong, and that there are other theories out there that also might be wrong, and that we are on about page 2 of a 127-page manual on how life works, so our conclusion that the butler did it is quite likely to turn out to be incorrect. There you go, kiddies. Lots of work to be done here. Help us do it.
Rational creationists believe that since God created the earth and put us on it, He's interested in helping us figure out how He did it. Science seems a good bet as a way to do that.
I will admit that a rational Creationist sounds oxymoronic, but there are actually quite a few out there, if you look. They tend to eschew public spectacle and especially "debates" with the irrational, but they exist.
Thanks again for your blog. I'm happy to have stumbled on it.
Cj
Cj,
Thank you for your comment.
Let me preface my response by saying that I do not think that evolution cannot be challenged, it is being challenged, and the fact that it has been challenged has added to its strength as a scientific theory. From the book I am currently reading, one of the things I’ve learned is that evolutionary theory is not set in stone. It has been and is being challenged, modified and refined based on new data and new explanations that are being developed all the time. To catch up on some of the current issues and questions scientists are trying to answer concerning human evolution you might want to grab this weeks Economist magazine, they have a special report on the subject this week.
Also, I understand that there are those atheists who use evolution to bolster their religious point of view, but that doesn’t make it a religious article of faith for atheism. Personally, I think evolution can be used by Christians just as easily to show many things about the nature and beauty of God.
And as for scientists not being able to prove that random mutations create new species, well, don’t knock’em to much, they haven’t had enough time to directly do so. It takes thousands of years of random mutations for a new species to evolve in say a mammal, scientists have only been observing for at most a couple hundred. But having said that, that doesn’t mean the evidence for it isn’t there. Just like some crime scenes there is evidence all over the place as to who committed the crime even if no one saw the crime itself actually being committed. Genetics and fossils I think show the reality of this.
You mention, “we can say for certain that every time we find a complex system, and can identify the method of its construction, we find that someone constructed it.” I disagree with this, at least in part, but I agree with in a different sense. In the sense that I agree with it I can say with the psalmist:
For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me
were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
(Psalm 139: 13-16)
I think we can find this kind of design/creation (just not scientifically) in the overarching big picture, i.e. God ultimately created the big bang, He created physics, He created evolution, etc., and with that God can be said to be the creator and designer of all that is. But will we find that God directly designed say the ‘irreducibly complex’ eyeball, no, I think we’ll find that God let evolution do that.
The term ‘complex system’ is relative, what’s complex to one may not be complex to another. In the 18th century the list of irreducible complexities was a lot longer than it is today. Many of that day’s ‘irreducible complexities’ have been reduced to something explainable and no longer even seem complex. To say that since we don’t know something, or can’t explain something yet, is evidence for intelligent design isn’t very good evidence for an Intelligent Designer or that it was constructed by someone.
I agree with you that we are on page 2 of a 127- page manual on how life works, and I think the theory of evolution allows us to continue reading. ID on the other hand I think has a kind of built in thought stopper in it – basically: If it looks complex, it must have been designed by something intelligent, nature couldn’t do this on its own. And that ends the inquiry into how nature actually did do it, and we stop reading.
Then presto! I don't think we have any serious areas of disagreement. Most everything I found in your post that bothered me boiled down to semantics, i.e. "no, I think we'll find out that god let evolution do that" to which I reply "but it was God that set the thing up. He created it. If I write a program that beats you in chess, it wasn't the COMPUTER that beat you, it was still me." Thus if God is the designer, He is responsible for the design's performance. But you obviously don't disagree with that.
You may be right that ID destroys intellectual curiosity; I've never taken it that way myself. If God gave me the mind to use, it would be a shame not to use it. Besides, I want to know how He did it. I want, in fact, to do some of these things myself.
Much of the argument in the evolution arena centers on the exclusivity of evolution and God. I've always been mystified by this. Why is it impossible - or even unlikely - that God is big enough to design the whole damn thing? My God is really good. I bet He could do it. This has, essentially, removed all my insecurity about the issue, and allows me to consider scientific evidence without feeling like it will destroy my faith. I recommend it to others, but without much success, I admit.
You mentioned in another post that you thought the ID community was using ID for proselyting purposes; I don't really think that's the case. I do think that the religious community perceives itself to be under constant fire from the education establishment asnd is genuinely seeking to prevent it from destroying the faith of its children. Not that I think the community would be opposed to converts, mind you, but I don't think anyone on that side of the debate really thinks they're going to get any from the teaching of ID, whatever that means.
And I admit that is a problem for me. What would the "teaching" of intelligent design consist of? What I would personally teach is science, as we understand it to date, acknowledge the gaps and confess that although there are many that believe man evolved from lower forms, there are a lot of others that don't think so and the debate rages even as we speak. We need more research. Anyone want to help out? I just don't see what else I could do, no matter what the curriculum said about evolution. And that's what I'd do, Buttars or no Buttars.
What would you do?
What a pleasure to have this discussion with you. Thanks for taking the time.
Cj
I thought about that, the idea that parents are trying to protect their kids from the error of evolution. Maybe for some, but I don’t think it’s what is driving the primary movers of ID in public schools. For instance, many of the biggest supporters of ID home school their children, so they are already well protected from public school curriculum (Example: Gayle Ruzicka of the Utah Eagle Forum according to the Deseret News, Eagle eye: Moral crusader Ruzicka wields 'phone tree', 11/4/04, “Her first six children attended public schools. The rest attended home school, with their mom as their teacher.”)
Also, Buttars is on the record, from the Deseret News:
Nor, [Buttars] said, is it of great importance for LDS students to hear the alternative theories because they get them in church, and more important, in seminary classes. It is important, however, to make sure that other students are also presented with the "divine design" solution.
"What about all of the other students" who may not receive additional religious instruction? Buttars asked. "They have to hear that evolution is fact without any other teaching." ('Divine design' should join evolution in biology, Buttars says, Deseret News, 6/7/05)
This doesn’t look like protection to me, this looks like proselytizing.
Plus, I just finished ID proponent, Phillip E. Johnson’s book, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, and he is definitely pursuing an evangelistic proselytizing strategy. Not just to convert individuals, but society itself. To turn the tide of materialism back to a culture more positive to his idea of Christianity.
Anyway, it’s good to hear that we can agree on many things, and peacefully agree to disagree on others.
As for what I think should be taught in high school science class, well, I think that what the Utah state school board’s current position statement says on the issue is just fine.
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