Dan sez:

"The fact is that there are thousands of credentialed scientists (of different faiths, and of nominal, or no faith) around the world who do not accept that sentence, neither in its parts nor in its totality. Many of these scientists have risked ostracism to challenge the scientific establishment on this alleged ‘foundational truth’."

The further fact you purposefully ignore is that there are millions of scientists of all stripes, and particularly biologists whose opinions hold most weight who *do* agree with biological evolution as normally presented.

Your argument is tragic. It is so risible "project Steve" was set up in order to give it the mocking it deserves.

Are you really as ignorant as runner? Runner cannot actually name any of these scientists or outline the (no doubt very particular) manner in which current understandings of evolution fail. Can you?

The "ostracism" of such few scientists as insist repeatedly on fundy literalism only exists to the extent that they let it affect their work. Behe, Demski and Wells hardly count.

Biological evolution is just one area where religion has to step further back. Get used to it.

Rusty

Have any of you guys read Polkinhorne aPaul Davies and Keith Ward?
Seewhat they have to say.

socratease

Dear david f,

>>science doesn't deal in truth. It deals with explanation for phenomena<<
Aren’t you replacing one undefined concept, “a scientific truth” (the authors do not speak of THE truth), with another, “explanation for phenomena”? Cannot biological evolution theories (there are more of them, as I understand it) be seen as explaining - the best way we can - (certain) biological phenomena”, hence disclosing “a“ truth about them?

I can understand your dislike of the concept of “scientific truth” defined as the source of all phenomena science investigates, but the existence of such truth (or physical reality) is often a tacit, working hypothesis of many scientists. There is a similar position in philosophy concerning metaphysics (c.f. Kantian “necessary truths”) vs explanations, including the suggestion to do away with the former (c.f. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations, OUP 1981) .

A scientist is in fact in pursuit of this “truth” without claiming he/she has attained it, or even can attain, grasp it, for principal reasons. Like in mathematics you can have a Cauchy, but not convergent, sequence in an incomplete metric space M that nevertheless converges to an element of the - often abstractly constructed - completion of that space M. For instance, the sequence {1/n} in the open interval M=(0,1) does not converge to anything within that interval, nevertheless it converges to the element 0 of its completion, the closed interval [0,1].

The difference between a scientist and a theologian - both in pursuit of their “truth” - is that the former does not think the “truth” his “sequence of investigations converges to” is within his/her grasp, belongs to his/her domain M of investigation, whereas (some) theologians do. [Apologies to readers unfamiliar with metric spaces and Cauchy sequences.]

This at least is how I see the “sequence of scientific explanations converging towards the unattainable scientific truth”, except that the variety of these explanations, scientific theories, is more complicated and intertwined than a simple one-directional sequence. Nevertheless, in physics they cannot by-pass Newton (or Einstein or QM) only explain them on a “higher level”, the same with Darwin within biology.

J S Mill asks why does any of this matter?

Contrary to what is sometimes said on these pages, people of religion are not in it just for money and power. Religion is said to be a search for truth. A lot of people enter the fields of science for similar reasons.

David f says that science doesn’t deal in truth. A remarkable claim!

Why does this matter? Because people are more than naturally curious and they want to know the truth. If science is not a tool for bringing us closer to truth, then I’m happy to give up on it right now.

The Clergy Statement above claims that ‘Religious truth is of a different order from scientific truth.’ That is a vague and plastic statement that needs a lot of unpacking. Different people (including Davidf) may want to try and interpret it.

But for my money, I reject the notion that knowledge and/or truth may be divided into ‘secular’ and ‘religious’. If something is true then it’s true. And if it’s not then it’s not.

As J S Mill said earlier, ‘I know it’s not quite that simple’, but in discovering truth we are enlightened and empowered to bring about a better life for us and our kids. That is the goal of both religion and science.

AJ,
What don’t you want taught in schools? I was talking about critiquing evolution. You don’t think that school kids should be taught the ability to critique?

If you were saying arguing with numbers is a fallacy, why do you spend your next few sentences engaging in it as if it wasn’t?

If you believe it is a fallacy, a crime for which Dan needs a rebuke, are you also now also going to reprimand Rusty for using this ‘numbers fallacy’ (as well as David Zimmerman’s Clergy Letter Project, or those of ‘Project Steve’)? Here’s your chance. Or don’t you believe that what is good for the goose is also good for the gander?

At the end of the day, I’m sure we’ll end up agreeing that just one person with a good argument is enough.

Davidf,
You say that we have to accept evolutionary theory or dispense with ‘most of modern life science’. Could you give one example?

DSM,

That there are 1000s of scientists (a fraction of 1%) that don't believe in evolution is more a statement of human frailty than proof.

That millions of scientists (and most clerics) understand that evolution is the only scientific explanation leaves the creationists in an ever dwindling pool of denial.

As far as your critiquing evolution, using a faith based mumbo jumbo to do so has no place in education.