Hugo Holbling

I hope i know slightly more than you understand the philosophy of science.

Thanks for making the same reductio ad absurdum as Nic, which he's already moved on from.

Thanks for engaging the idea, anyway. I don't propose the issue is cut and dried, but consider that meeting the creationists head-on may not be the best way to combat their ideas. Perhaps they would agree to designing part of a course that would also include evolution and run as comparative science, or somesuch. Hoping to keep it out of schools entirely seems sure to redouble their efforts, whereas such a compromise would benefit students and allow both sides the opportunity to stand on their merits.

At the very least, i hope you can appreciate why i think calling creationists fools and hoping they'll go away is a poor strategy, and has had poor results (hence this thread).

I don't propose it as a knock-down argument, but i'm trying to find a way around the current situation. This would give the students the chance to decide for themselves and to learn how to apply the lessons to other questions, such as some of those Oolon mentions.

It needn't be taken to that extreme. Nevertheless, what about the possibility that creationists want to take their "arguments" to high school and so that is the place to draw them into an impasse? I'm not suggesting you're making it, but i don't like the suggestion that high school students wouldn't be able to follow the ideas.

Perhaps, but creationists are not in agreement. What would you say is most important: a base level of knowledge in many areas, or an ability to distinguish between good and bad ideas? (I don't mean this to be read in the form of this next line...)

Can you say false dichotomy? Thanks for your input.

Thanks, Peter Soderqvist, for the Dawkins quote. He appears to have little problem with what i'm suggesting.

emotional

Kenneth Miller does an equally good job of criticising creationism without saying evolution means there is no God. If Miller can do that, so can Dawkins.



No, Miller and Haught don't want "God" to be brought into science. They're theistic evolutionists, and as such they say "God initiated evolution" or "God helped evolution", but they'd never propose it as a scientific theory. They just want to keep their cherished beliefs alive, and you can't fault them for that.



So Dawkins wants to make people "intellectually fulfilled atheists" (his words). That's his right, but many people don't want to become atheists. And when religious people take to heart his teaching that you cannot be a theist and an evolutionist both, they make a simple calculation of what to do and drift towards creationism.



Dawkins says some true things, and some untrue things as well. I approach Dawkins sceptically, just like I approach any teacher when he talks about matters metaphysical. I believe him that the course of nature is blind, but I don't believe that there is no purpose, or no life after death. It's his certainty about those things that maddens me. As a scientist he should know better than assert such certainty. It's more a trait of a religious preacher than of a scientist.



There are some nice theists out there, you should know. Theists who don't shove a Chick tract down on you. Theists who are ordinary people just like you and me, and are good friends to have. They just happen to refuse to buy into the atheistic, materialistic worldview, but otherwise they're quite "normal" (how to say this without sounding patronising). What Dawkins does is tar all theists with the same brush, and his rhetoric against theism only serves to make more theists of the cancerous type.

Harpy

What do you mean?

Scientist saying that religion is a load of codswallop based on ancient myths are responsible for fundy creationists. Is it not possible that the ignorant fundys of the christian right might have had a hand in it?

Dawkins does not believe in god/s because he sees no evidence for it. He believes that religion is a superstition that can not survive the light of science.

Evolution and the Old Testament are incompatable, F**k I think I may have just agreed with Dr Dino.

Science and Religion cannot be reconciled by honest men.

Peter Soderqvist

Soderqvist1: Dawkins' statement is reasonable in the context!

RIVER OUT OF EDEN, CHAPTER GOD'S UTILITY FUNCTION, PAGE 155
Theologians worry away at the "problem of evil" and a related "problem of suffering." On the day I originally wrote this paragraph, the British newspapers all carried a terrible story about a bus full of children from a Roman Catholic School that crashed for no obvious reason, with wholesale loss of life. Not for the first time, clerics were in paroxysms over the theological question that a writer on a London newspaper (The Sunday Telegraph) framed this way; "How can you believe in a loving all-powerful God who allows such a tragedy?"
The article went on to quote one priest's replay: "The simple answer is that we do not know why there should be a God who lets these awful things happen. But the horror of the crash, to a Christian, confirms the fact that we live in a world of real values: positive and negative. If the universe was just electrons, there would be no problems of evil or suffering"

On the contrary, if the universe were just electrons, and selfish genes, meaningless tragedies like the crashing of this bus are exactly what we should expect, along with equally meaningless good fortune. Such a universe would be neither evil nor good in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has Precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. As A. E. House man put it: For Nature, heartless, witless Nature Will neither care nor know.

DNA neither cares nor knows. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.
http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/Dawk...ooks/river.htm

Kimpatsu

Better by far that Miller drop the theistic nonsense. If Dawkins can do it, so can Miller.
Which is a rather daft thing to say, really. You don't need god to explain evolution, so why add the extra, unnecessary layer of complexity? Doing so violates Occam's Razor. In addition, if evolution is how god set about creating humankind, it was terribly sloppy. There are far better ways to create this insignificant anthropoid ape on a small blue rock at the fringes of an unremarkable galaxy.
God does like to make us feel small, doesn't she?
Yes I can, becasue it's an absurdity, for the reasons cited above. All they're really doing is clinging to cultural baggage that tells them they should "belong" to some religion. I'd rather support a football team, myself.
In other words, they'd rather cling to a lie (in Dawkins's words, a "mind-shrinking falsehood"), rather than embrace the truth. Go figure.
Such as...?
Why do you believe in life after death when there's no evidence for it? Do you believe in the tooth fairy as well? If not, why not? The tooth fairy is more likely than god.
So when I assert I'm certain that the heliocentric model is correct, even though it's only a theory, that maddens you too, does it? Or is it only biologicial certainties that get you?
This is nothing to do with whether they're good people; the issue is whether their claims are right. And they're not.
And quite, quite wrong.
Dawkins has some theistic friends, so I think it's you are are tarring him with a brush...

Harpy

Careful Peter you do realise that stuff like that is responsible for the rampant growth of creationism

Wounded King

So Hugo you think 10 minute is the amount of time that should be devoted to discussing Creation science? I agree entirely, I was prepared to give a couple of hours to it but your scheme sounds better.

I hardly think this is what the people who run Emmanuel College are proposing however.

Phoenixstar

This will be my first post here at this site

Now about equal time in classrooms for Evolution and Creation, I can tell you now that there is not anytime in science classes to add anything else as it is. I am a classroom teacher and I have a hard time getting through the material that we have now for my students. What we teach now has and is continuouslu being researched and backed up or refuted and changed accordingly. Creation science does not fall into this criteria, so it should not fall into the science class until it does.

Wounded King

Welcome Phoenixstar!

Would you like to add a personal attack on Duane Gish or Richard Dawkins while youre here?

Peter Soderqvist

TO EMOTIONAL

Life's Grand Design by Kenneth Miller
The real issue, therefore, is whether or not the "input" into genetic variation, which is often said to be the result of random mutation, can provide the beneficial novelty that would be required to produce new structures, new systems, and even new species. Could the marvelous structures of the eye have been produced "just by chance?" The simple answer to that question is "no." The extraordinary number of physiological and structural changes that would have to appear at once to make a working, functioning eye is simply too much to leave to chance. The eye could not have evolved in a single event. That, however, is not the end of the story. The real test is whether or not the long-term combination of genetic variation and natural selection could indeed produce a structure as complex and well-adapted as the eye, and the answer to that question is a resounding "yes."

The pathway by which evolution can produce such structures has been explained many times, most recently in Richard Dawkins' extraordinary book, The Blind Watchmaker. The essence of Dawkins' explanation is simple. Given time (thousands of years) and material (millions of individuals in a species), many genetic changes will occur that result in slight improvements in a structure or system. However slight that improvement, so long as it is a genuine improvement, natural selection will favor its spread throughout the species over several generations. Little by little, one improvement at a time, the system becomes more and more complex, eventually resulting in the fully-functioning, well-adapted organ that we call the eye. The retina and the lens did not have to evolve separately, because they evolved together. As Dawkins is careful to point out, this does not mean that evolution can account for any imaginable structure, which may be why living organisms do not have biological wheels, X-ray vision, or microwave transmitters.
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/evol/lgd/index.html

Darwin's Black Box (The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution) by Michael J. Behe
Reviewed by Kenneth R. Miller
http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/ev...iew/index.html