dk

I thing the basic tenents of science should be taught as doctrine and relative; as opposed to certain and binding. Mainstream churches reject basic tenents of science when they are jammed down peoples throats as exlusive, objective, deterministic and binding.

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

Coragyps

Oh, so F doesn't equal ma if you're a Methodist?

pz

Hmmm. Should we also reject religious tenets that are presented as exclusive, objective, deterministic and binding?

Personally, I find the observable fact that if I step out my office window I will plummet downwards at 9.8 m/sec*sec to be much,much more exclusive, objective, deterministic and binding than a religious claim that if I mow my lawn on a Sunday I will suffer horrible torments after I die.

Dr Rick

The above is part non sequitor, part strawman fallacy: scientific facts, theories, and hypothesis, which you refer to as "doctrine," are objectively predictive, testable, and verifiable.

On the other hand, if there is a problem with public schools teaching "objective as scientific" (you haven't shown that there is, of course), that is another issue not related to the scientific nature of evolution or the religious nature of creation

<strong> ...Strawman fallacy: Science advances and as it does, the "doctrines" change. That has nothing to do with the objectivity of the subject matter or the religious nature of creation.

<strong> That is just plain wrong, if you're referring to evolution: the evidence for it is reliable, verifiable, and objective.

<strong> Gibberish.

<strong> That is utter nonsense; religion in no way benefits science, and science often contradicts religion.

<strong> Nonsense; there is no certainty in science, and nothing should be irrefutably taught as such; not even evolution. However, evolution is the only scientific explanation for the diversity of life that we have on Earth, the evidence supporting it is overwhelming, and there is no evidence contrary to it. That is what should be taught.

<strong> More gibberish, and your not making a case for anything other than your own misunderstanding of science. Strange, irrelevant, and often ridiculous assertions that attempt but fail miserably to equate religion with science are not persuasive.

<strong> That's right; of course, no one's tried that on this thread, but it is right. Science is objective, but all that is objective is not science.

<strong> Completely irrelveant

<strong> What does this have to do with teaching religious beliefs such as creation in public schools and incorrectly calling them "science"?

Rick

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

Dr Rick

Science is not taught as certain and binding by anyone that understands science. Your post was just another strawman that has nothing at all to do with the science behind evolution.

<strong> Religious institutions oppose any teachings that contradict their own exclusive claims to authority, subjective and unverifiable truths, prejudiced values, and binding faiths.

<strong> What evidence supporting evolution is speculative, contradictory, and spurious?

Rick

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: rbochnermd ]</p>

lpetrich

There are oodles of counterexamples, though most of them are of microevolution. However, macroevolution has proved useful in understanding the organization of genomes -- a large number of genes in the human genome have been identified by comparing to other species, like mice and rats and fish. Yes, fish.

However, "goddidit" seems like an all-purpose non-explanation to me.

These are a completely separate problem, though I will concede that consciousness continues to be a riddle. However, much of the animal kingdom does have a limited amount of mental capability, and some species, like chimps, are almost human in some ways. And computers also have some amount of mental capability, even though computer-chip makers do not put any mind-stuff into their chips.

And how would one identify "intelligent design"?

???

Except that only Piltdown has anything to do with evolution, and it was very controversial during the time that it was "accepted". The first Piltdown find, in 1905, was widely dismissed as a composite, though the second one, in 1915, dampened that criticism by seemingly asking too much of coincidence. However, when hominid finds started coming out of Africa, starting with Raymond Dart's Taung child, they proved the opposite of the Piltdown finds. Instead of a humanlike brain and an apelike jaw, they had almost-apelike brains and humanlike posture. Though British paleoanthropologists continued to defend the Piltdown fossils, others became were much more skeptical. When the hoax was exposed in 1955, it was, in a sense, the final vindication of the composite theory.

(a lot of dk's bleating about the social sciences and the "Great Society"...)

However, the social sciences have tended to stay clear of evolutionary biology.

I think that dk is desperate for villains. I don't see what "cultural relativism" has to do with evolution. If anything, simplistic views of evolution would suggest just the opposite.

What's "folk evolution"? And why are "left-wing political radicals" and the like supposed to be so villainous? dk, you remind me of Stalinism, with its paranoia about supposed enemies of the people lurking everywhere (Stalin made Joe McCarthy look like a wimp).

And what are private schools and "Christian" schools like? Are they a bunch of inegalitarian anarchists?

What does that have to do with evolutionary biology?

Nazism was a fundamentally irrational ideology -- and not surprisingly a very incoherent one. Their economic policies might best be called expediency -- sometimes anti-business populism, sometimes sucking up to Big Business.

And laissez-faire capitalism is something that many right-wingers profess to believe in. I would not be one bit surprised if dk has been known to profess undying love of the "free enterprise system".

This is not typical "social science", but relatively hard biological science, involving finding the functions of different parts of the brain. By comparison, most social science treats the brain as a black box. This is not meant as a put-down; much successful "hard" science is done in a similar fashion.

Evolution has had a beginning: the origin of life.

It has a mechanism: variation + natural selection.

Its only "direction" is a side effect of its mechanism.

Why does it have to have a destination or a purpose?

That's a completely separate issue.

And how was it supposed to be that?


Much of which had had little connection with social science.

What did you expect it to do?

Nature/nurture is reasonably well-understood for many species. It is simply difficult to untangle in our species.

Beauty may simply be our experience of being attracted to certain sights.

And the metabolism of a cell is actually fairly well-understood, especially for bacteria. No special life-stuff is necessary. Although there are still gaps in our knowledge, a life-stuff of the gaps is a superfluous hypothesis.

Again, what's the connection between much social science and evolution?

Species-to-species transitional forms are known to exist, though they are very rare. And if the appearance of PE implies special creation, then it must be special creation of millions of species over geological time, each one not much different from some other species.

Mendel's work was on heredity, not evolution.And what is macroevolution supposed to be?

(a lot of dk's bellyaching about Margaret Mead...)

I do not care about Margaret Mead.

I'd be surprised if dk knows what dialectical materialism is supposed to be.

That was not the study of how diseases spread.

dk is sounding like a broken record with his hatred of the social scientists. What would make him happy -- sending all social scientists to Alaskan prison camps?

Evidence?

Why is divorce supposed to be a crime against humanity?

And what does that have to do with evolution?

And what do you think that "civil rights law" is? What would you prefer -- making black people ride in the backs of buses because they are supposedly descended from Noah's son Ham?

(lot of stuff snipped about Auguste Comte and Margaret Mead...)

Auguste Comte had had simplistic ideas of intellectual progress: theological -&gt; metaphysical -&gt; positive "real science". And late in his life, he occupied himself with concocting a "Religion of Humanity" that was essentially "Catholicism minus Christianity", as one critic put it.

But if it is so misleading, why are you using the term "evolutionism"?

It's necessary to biological science.
So Copernicus and Galileo were inspired to consider heliocentrism by reading the part of the Bible where Joshua tells the Sun to stop moving?

There is abundant evidence of what dk seems to mean by that in parasites. For example, Sacculina, a parasite of crabs, looks like a simple blob, but it has a free-swimming larval phase that looks much like crustacean "nauplius" larvae. For that reason, Sacculina is thought to be a simplified crustacean, most likely a barnacle.

The origin of life has NOTHING to do with the Big Bang.

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: lpetrich ]</p>

pz

It's far worse (from dk's perspective) than you say. Flies and nematodes have been even better sources of sequences that can be used to extract and identify genes in humans. And a lot of those fish genes were first found by comparison with Drosophila information.

scigirl

Well in my experience, that is the way science is taught. At least in grad school and med school...

scigirl

Edited to add - the first criteria is what I've experienced - science being taught as "this is what we think right now, because of this data."

The thing is DK, there's sooooo much evidence for evolution, that there just isn't a controversy or a "opposing viewpoint" supported by data in the scientific community. Now there are minor little battles about certain facets of evolution, but not about evolution itself. Many tenets of science are taught as "certain truth" because well. . . they just have a lot of data, and no other explanation exists to explain the data.

scigirl

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: scigirl ]</p>

dk

Hey Rick,

• rbochnermd: I thing the basic tenants of science should be taught as doctrine and relative; as opposed to certain and binding. Science is not taught as certain and binding by anyone that understands science. Your post was just another strawman that has nothing at all to do with the science behind evolution.
  dk: I am confused by my education then, all the science classes I took asked question then awarded points based upon a certain and correct answer. Lets see, at college I took 2 years of Chem, 2 years of physics, 1 year of INFE, 1 year of biology and a bunch of math.
• dk: Mainstream churches reject basic tenants of science when they are jammed down peoples throats as exclusive, objective, deterministic and binding.
  rbochnermd: Religious institutions oppose any teachings that contradict their own exclusive claims to authority, subjective and unverifiable truths, prejudiced values, and binding faiths.
  dk: You made a general statement about unidentified religious institutions and unidentified scientific tenants. Generally, cramming something down people’s throats meets with resistance. Whatever hostility you personally feel towards a particular religion has nothing to do with science. The hostility of many people towards science has nothing to do with their religion. I think you sell science short because of your hostility towards institutional religion.
• dk:Many aspect of evolutionary science is well supported by evidence, but much of the supporting evidence is speculative, contradictory, and spurious.
  rbochnermd: What evidence supporting evolution is speculative, contradictory, and spurious?
  dk: I don’t know, on the planetary scale there’s catastrophe verses gradualism; ice sheets from Greenland show wild temperature flip-flops, the discovery of extra-solar planets deconstruct existing planet formation theories, the absence of plate tectonics on Venus. On a macro scale astronomers find about 1/5 the matter needed to counteract expansion, tunneling hypothesis seems possible, and some have settled upon a static universe. The Hominid evolutionary lineage gets redrawn every decade, biologist debate whether viruses are organisms or life fragments, the dynamic processes contained in the cell continues to amaze and mystify. There are dozens of new theories put out every decade that need to be considered in context of the general theory. In fact the general theory of evolution has taken on such a giant proportion it resembles a jigsaw puzzle spanning billions of years loosely knit together by necessity, not evidence.

[ October 02, 2002: Message edited by: dk ]</p>

Doubting Didymus

I would just like to point out that none of these things have the smallest relevance to evolution in any way at all. I strongly suggest you read some basic introductory primers about evolution. Surprise! its got absolutely bollock all to to with astronomy.