A good little article on a fascinating topic. But I disagree that "nothing changes. That is also true." On the contrary, everything changes constantly, mind and matter are in constant flux, arising and passing away trillions upo n trillions of times a second. It doesn't affect Ruse's exposition, but "Please consider!"

Just this morning as I was about to drive my grand-daughter to her year 10 class at Darwin High School,I thought it appropriate on the anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth to raise the issue of evolution with her.

I have previously encouraged her to read some of Richard Dawkins works to counter the Creationists misinformation and was astounded that she had no knowledge of the person after whom our city was named.

That speaks volumes about the poor selection of library material in our schools ...Are they being influenced by selectors who still deny evolution ?

I was therefore relieved to be able to pull out my small volume of 'Origin of Species' and introduce her to the great man's work.

I agree the work can be embellished with modern knowledge and it's high time it was done.
Meanwhile I am pleased to be able to hold the work up to it's desperate detractors as untouched by the myth of creationism

There is no such thing as "Darwinism." That is an ideological term, generally used by biblical literalists to imply that acceptance of evolution is some sort of secular religion, comparable to communism. But even today, some nonreligious skeptics suffer from a compulsion to minimize Darwin's achievement. A piece in a special section on Darwin in The New York Times this week by Carl Safina, president of the Blue Ocean Institute, was headlined "Darwinism Must Die So That Evolution May Live." Safina argued that in "propounding `Darwinism,' even scientists and science writers perpetuate an impression that evolution is about one man, one book, one `theory.'" This sentence is a piece of undiluted codswallop. No scientist or decent science writer uses the term "Darwinism" in this fashion.

To talk of Darwinism is akin to referring to the laws of motion as "Newtonism" or Relativity as "Einsteinism". The great scientist, Darwin, recognised the role of natural selection in developing different life forms. That is an idea that is the basis of the life sciences of today. "Darwinism" is something else.

"Science never proves anything"

Gregory Bateson said that, (and I believe him). See 'Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, Dutton, 1979

Bateson referred to the exacting logical proof that is the tool of mathematicians and philosophers. And he goes on to say that "... the truth about what can be perceived or arrived at by induction from perception is something else again."

The author's care to state that Darwin's arguments for evolution were "a consilience of inductions", stemming from Darwins original observations and synthesis, is to me the centrepiece of his argument. Michael Ruse makes clear that the consilience is now far, far stronger than it was in 1859.

It's worth elaborating on the difference between orthodox organic evolution via well-explored mechanisms of gene pool changes, and other forms of evolution; say, of traditional languages and other information transfer systems, which fall outside the Darwinian model. "Mind and Nature" is very interesting in this regard.

The song has gone but the melody lingers on.

Darwin wasn't the first to suggest the idea of evolution - he was, however, the first to suggest it in a way that made people sit up and take notice. He also explained it in a way that made sense. We have a lot to thank him for in that regard, even if we've had to tweak his argument over time. I enjoyed the Volkswagen analogy, but it also made me think. My first car was a 1962 Beetle, and I was disgusted when I saw the new Beetle: I saw fundamental differences which led me to deny that it was a true 'Beetle'.

What would Darwin think if he saw what had become of his theory today? I'd like to think that, with his analytical mind, he would be proud of what he had created, and delighted at the changes that have taken place to improve and refine his ideas. At the end of the day, he would be able to see his work at the root of it, just as Ferdinand Porsche would see the new Beetle as a refined, comfortable and expensive version of his original work. As the author says - Darwinism (or Darwin's theory, for those who don't like the former term) is far from its 'sell by date'. It has just matured with age.

"In that work, he argues not only for the fact of evolution - all organisms are the descendants, by a slow, natural process, from just one or a few simple forms - but also he proposes a mechanism of change."

Natural selection and speciation may be facts, but universal common descent certainly is not. Contrary to Mr. Ruse's dogmatic assertions, the fossil record certainly doesn't provide the evidence to show that "all organisms are the descendants, by a slow, natural process, from just one or a few simple forms." Quite the contrary. The Cambrian explosion, in which all of the modern forms of life suddenly appeared with no apparent ancestors or precursors, seems to disprove this hypothesis quite conclusively. At least the late Stephen Jay Gould had the intellectual honesty to admit this problem (even if his attempt to explain the sudden appearance of fully-developed life forms in the fossil record with his bizzare theory of "punctuated equilibrium" only raised more doubts about evolutionary theory). Mr. Ruse, in contrast, won't even admit that there are any problems at all with his "just-so" Darwinian narrative.

Now, I'm not asserting that all of Darwin's theories are past their "sell-by" date. But Mr. Ruse's arguments certainly are.

Stephan Jay Gould was a dedicated evolutionary biologist, and never admitted any 'problem' with the essence of Darwinian theory.
His theory of punctuated equilibrium was merely an attempt to explain the observed phenomenon of evolution occurring at different rates at different times, and different places. It was never meant to be a rejection of gradualism, but rather an addendum.See this quote from Wikipedia:

"Punctuated equilibrium is therefore mistakenly thought to oppose the concept of gradualism, when it is actually a form of gradualism, in the ecological sense of biological continuity.[3] This is because even though evolutionary change appears instantaneous between geological sediments, change is still occurring incrementally, with no great change from one generation to the next. To this end, Gould later commented that:

Most of our paleontological colleagues missed this insight because they had not studied evolutionary theory and either did not know about allopatric speciation or had not considered its translation to geological time. Our evolutionary colleagues also failed to grasp the implication, primarily because they did not think at geological scales.[5] "
Both gradualism and punctuated equilibrium are largely consistant with Darwin,who wrote that:

"the periods during which species have undergone modification, though long as measured in years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which they retain the same form."

It is generally accepted that evolution is stimulated by a change of environment, and many people are currently of the view that the environment can change very quickly indeed, at least in geological terms.

All animals with backbones have a common ancestor.

That includes we humans, our primate ancestors and their mammalian ancestors, back into the age of reptiles, then back into the age of fishes.

Efrances says that "selection and speciation may be facts, but universal common descent certainly is not." This statement may well apply to Precambrian and Cambrian life, but the people who debate common descent most fiercely seem unconcerned about anything as prehistorical as events between 500 million years ago and 4.5 billion years ago.

They seem to insist that humans were created de novo, along with all the other fish, flesh and good red herring (as well as fossil-bearing rocks) about 4500 years ago. From that assumption, natural history which predates the date of creation (as determined by some person's interpretation of the Holy Bible) is either wrong or irrelevant.

My concern is that creationists confuse the realms of science-based theory and faith-based experience. My further concern is that they lobby to promote this confusion among the wider public by introducing creationist ideas into science classes, in secular and non-secular schools.

Interesting article.

Let us celebrate the great man. What brilliance to penetrate through the enormous complexity of nature, and see a theory with so few simple elements and with such enormous explaining and unifying power. Linnaeus produced a static system of similarity and difference of species. Using this static tool with great skill. Darwin showed the dynamic that underlies and explains it. His wisdom also made no claims as to the origin of life, but confined his inquries to explaining the origin of species. And remember Darwin did it without knowing about genetics, but nevertheless explicitly recognised and successfully controlled for the problem in his theory. His prescience has also laid the foundations for sciences that have not yet come into existence. And to top it off, he wrote in plain English for the educated general reader. A great, careful, humble, thorough, sophisticated thinker; and an example to us all.

"Not one piece of Darwin’s original argumentation stands untouched, unrefined."

I don't think that's true, and I suggest the following original propositions stand untouched and unrefined:
1. More members of a species are born than can survive
2. The members of a species have inherited differences
3. In the struggle for existence, the inherited differences can be and are decisive for survival and reproduction, and
4. Species originate from these inherited differences accumulated over long periods of time.

"In that work, he argues not only for the fact of evolution - all organisms are the descendants, by a slow, natural process, from just one or a few simple forms - but also he proposes a mechanism of change."

Darwin did not argue in Origin of Species that all organisms are evolved from just one or a few simple forms, did he?

I said on these pages last year that there would be a quite a hullabaloo with a few fireworks thrown in surrounding Darwin because of his bi-centennial in 2009. I was castigated by my atheist friend who said that there shouldn’t be any such a noise. He said that scientists aren’t like religionists who want to celebrate Christ’s birthday, and give such focus to a man. Science is only about logic and ideas. But here we all are paying homage to the good gentleman.

And all credit to him. His books did change the way we all think in a big way.

However, I won’t be celebrating. As others have said above, his ideas weren’t all that original. Darwin wasn't the first to suggest the idea of evolution. His ‘great achievements’, natural selection and speciation, were well noted and written about well before 1859.

The reason so many look to him with such messianic fondness was the philosophical ideas attached to his message. Many atheists’ comments were summed up when Dawkins said that Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. The creator God could now be removed from rational discussion.

I have no argument with speciation and natural selection. They are observable phenomena. My argument is attributing to these phenomena the capability to produce new design features. Darwin only tinkered with biological features that were already there.

I predict that no one much will be bothered much about his tri-centennial. As Philip Johnson once predicted, that Darwin’s ideas will one day soon go the way of other 19th Century thinkers, Marx and Freud. These two were also considered ‘scientific’ in their day but are now put in the category of outmoded philosophers.

Wing Ah Ling, actually he did. In the conclusion to "Origin" -Note: not 'transmutation'- "of Species", Darwin wrote:

"[P]robably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first breathed."

Dan, it's true his ideas weren't entirely original. However, no one had ever described the mechanism of natural selection in such detail. Remember, apart from his meticulous observations during the voyage of the Beagle, he spent decades ironing out his theory.
As to your point about "outmoded philosophers", I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Isaac Newton is still considered by many to be the smartest man who ever lived, despite his 'Newtonian physics' being largely superseded by Einsteinian Relativity.
As Newton put it, he 'stood on the shoulders of giants'.Equally, if Einstein were reanimated today, he would have to go to the back of the class on relativity, to learn, not to teach.
Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Marx and Freud all made major contributions to their fields of study, and should always be revered for their inputs, not denigrated because they didn't get it all exactly right the first time.
How could they, when advances in other areas contribute to their work? (Mendel on genetics for instance).
Perhaps here is the fundamental difference between science and religion. Science is an ongoing empirical process, where each discovery leads to another and another to create observable progress;
whereas in religion, one man got it exactly right 1500 or 2000 years ago, and there is nothing left to be said.

Grim is confusing faith-based experience with dogmatism.

One person may add to our humanity by their perception, words and actions. In the case of Jesus of Nazareth, a Palestinian Jew, his perception and actions have been passed down over millenia for each of us to make what sense we may of the story. If Jesus wrote anything, the texts no longer exist. His is a story that has been told and retold for its human and spiritual content. I expect it will still be remembered, long after Darwin's 300th birthday.

How it is remembered is another matter. I for one do not choose to confuse the man with the texts, with the churches, the states which identify in some regard as Christian nations, or the political parties which pursue policies which further their interpretation of one man's life, among other goals. It is often in the interest of such institutions to insist on a strict interpretation of texts.

At worst, a holy text is ground down into the dust of a very literal-minded story, full of gaps and contradictions, which must be accepted as is, damn the logic, on pain of exclusion from state and/or church.

Grim puts it that " ... in religion, one man got it exactly right 1500 or 2000 years ago, and there is nothing left to be said."

That is near the worst case. Religions, however, also evolve. At their core is information which is necessary and sufficient to their continuation, and arguably to human well-being.

It is a mistake to judge all religions on one's perception of dogmatic, authoritarian and literal-minded representatives of one sect.

Mr Ruse is a creationist nothing more really needs to be said.
For those who haven't followed this debate, What Ruse is saying is Newton was a looser, His Ideas about gravity have been tweaked, so therefore we shouldn't honour his achievement.
Now that is clearly silly and so is this article.
What Darwin did was give us a scientific give or how life went from simple to complexity we see today. The driver for this evolution is natural selection. Ruse tries some word play to try and justify his view and does a poor job at it. I would hope the moderators of this site will look to publish a mainstream view of Darwin’s work

Grim wrote:

One person may add to our humanity by their perception, words and actions. In the case of Jesus of Nazareth, a Palestinian Jew, his perception and actions have been passed down over millenia for each of us to make what sense we may of the story. If Jesus wrote anything, the texts no longer exist. His is a story that has been told and retold for its human and spiritual content. I expect it will still be remembered, long after Darwin's 300th birthday.

Dear Grim,

I think it would be an appropriate celebration for Darwin's 300th birthday to adopt a new Calendar. His 300th birthday should be 1 January 300 AD (after Darwin).

With respect, David f, I did not write that quote. It came from Sir vivor.
Kenny, I think you need to read the article to the end. Mr Ruse is definitely not a creationist; he's not refuting Darwin, merely observing that his theory has -appropriately- evolved.
Sur vivor, I thank you kindly for your gentle rebuke. I mentioned neither dogmatism or faith based experience (whatever that is). What I meant to convey was that whereas science texts are constantly being rewritten, added to, revised and sometimes thrown out, the Bible, Torah and Koran are treated in the exact opposite fashion.
The preface to my copy of the 'Celebration' version of the New Testament states in part:

"...In this way the entire Bible underwent three revisions,during each of which the translation was examined for it's faithfulness to the original language..."
I believe the Koran, in particular, is regarded as the literal words of Allah, as revealed to Mohammed, and therefore any changes would be blasphemy.
I realise this is all 'textual'; but I must ask: if you don't believe the texts (Gospel) about Jesus, where does your knowledge of him come from?
I'm not aware of any evidence of any culture adopting Christianity, that wasn't exposed to the texts.

<< As Philip Johnson once predicted, that Darwin’s ideas will one day soon go the way of other 19th Century thinkers, Marx and Freud. These two were also considered ‘scientific’ in their day but are now put in the category of outmoded philosophers. >>

I imagine that's Philip E. Johnson, born-again Christian and founder of Intelligent Design. Who better to cast a neutral, critical eye over scientific theory?

He's wrong, of course. Not just about science, but about history: Freud's theoretical work underpins modern psychiatry and is taught in every university; Marx is still the reference point for all social democratic political theory.

What Johnson is trying to say is that that their work is redundant because it been modified and reviewed over time. By that reasoning, the Wright brothers have contributed nothing to aviation because modern planes are so unlike the Wrights' prototype.

I appreciate your efforts to disguise Biblical fundamentalism as reasoned discussion, but you're not going to convince anyone that the sensible alternative to scientific enquiry is to throw up our hands, say "God must have done it", and march confidently back into the Dark Ages.

I have never read Freud, but I thought the situation was that he is regarded as the trail-blazer in the field of modern psychology, but on the other hand, that all of his main tenets are no longer current in psychology?

To describe Marx as a scientist is laughable. His entire political theory rested on his economics, and his economics has been refuted over and over and over again. He was first rejected in academe by the economics departments, even in the Soviet Union.

Without this basis, his survival in the other schools of the humanities is better explained by fashionability, and the legitimisation of their parasitism, rather than by any scientific explaining power it has. For example the reason he claimed his theory was 'scientific' was, cop this, because he purported to discover that the socialist order would supersede the capitalist order by inexorable historical 'law', without anyone actually doing anything about it.

If Marx laid the 'theory' underlying social democracy, this is nothing more than a spurious justification for legalised thieving. Majority rule can legalise it: it cannot make it good or practical. Perhaps anti-social democracy would be a more appropriate term.

One of the things I admire about Darwin was the chapter entitled Objections to the Theory. In this, he takes on board all the objections, follows their reasoning, and shows evidence and reason against them. All the objections that the Creationists raise, that I can see, were exploded in this chapter. The reason he took so long to publish, is that he spent 20 years assiduously collecting objections.

Darwin did not deal with objections by personal argument, as Marx did, nor try to ignore or misrepresent them, nor argue by assuming what is in issue: the universal methods of Marxians.

No surprise that even to this day true science can not support evolution. It does however give the god deniers a self righteous world view where they feel they don't have to give an account to their Maker. Missing link 5005 is bound to show up again among the fervent religous. It will however turn out to be another fraud. The big bang theory is the most ridiculous unscientific theory ever invented in perverted minds. It would be ultra amusing if it was not sending so many fools to hell.

i have a new theory. i think runner is the missing link.

The sound of panic and the need to resort to lying is very telling in runner’s post.

I just hope runner doesn’t go as far as some creationists do by sending hate mail and sometimes even death threats to prominent scientists - and presenters such as David Attenborough.

It’s just as I read one scientist say recently: These people know they’re idiots and don’t like being reminded of it.

150 years on and evolution remains completely untouched by Creationists - and they hate it.

Grim, You provide an example of the care taken to assure the faithful reproduction of biblical texts. I agree entirely. The Bible I have to hand says the text is "conformable to that of the edition of 1611 commonly known as the authorised or King James Version" - carefully revised after comparison with the original non-English texts.

But conservatism certainly pervades science. There is revolutionary change happening as we speak, in such areas as molecular biology, nanotechnology and quantum computing, but the steps from one change to the next are governed by a highly conservative review process. Scientific knowledge evolves and diversifies through a research and publication cycle which is governed by a conservative elite, represented by editors of scientific journals (among others), some more eminent than others.

Widespread application of technologies depends almost entirely on the engagement of major financial institutions, global organisations and corporations.

The conservatism of science is hidden from popular view, but it is prevalent and powerful. It is a conservatism of process, rather than a devotion to precise relay of prior texts. Galileo, Newton and Darwin were attentive to a method rather than to an exact wording. Today's scientists may use similar experimental methods with new tools.

It seems the scientific method offers itself up to scepticism rather than faith, and religious experience offers itself up to faith rather than skepticism, but both may suffer from dogmatists, either unthinking or scheming.

Grim, I meant no rebuke, and thank you for your graciousness. As for my belief in texts about Jesus, I reserve the right to choose symbol and metaphor rather than the literal word, where words fly in the face of common sense. As for faith-based experience, it may range from mystical enlightenment to another bet on the greyhounds.

Darwin's theory and the Christian religion provide conflicting views of the origin of species, simple as that. The only way they can be reconciled is to 'interpret' the scriptures to mean something other than what they are plainly saying.

There is no point talking to creationists about evolution. They are coming from an intellectually vicious mind-set. They start with the assumption that God exists, created the world and oversees it. They reject any fact or reason that tends to show otherwise. They don't care that they don't know who wrote the book of Genesis, they don't care that they don't know what his personal circumstances were, they don't care that they don't know what interest he had in the outcome, they don't care that there is not the slightest reason to believe that he knew what he is talking about.

The rational or scientific method is to seek objections to a theory as Darwin did, and reject the theory or the parts of it that don't fit the evidence.

The religious method is to reject the evidence if it doesn't fit the theory, and actively ignore and misrepresent objections, as the creationists do.

In this way, religious belief just keeps on popping up, like one of those punching clowns, forever proof against evidence. In this way too, the Marxists have more in common with the creationists than either has with Darwin or scientists.

Sir Vivor, I think we are -largely- on the same page; even though I am a nominal atheist.
I too, have great respect for (most of) the (alleged) teachings of (the legendary) Jesus. Please feel free to consult a small piece I contributed some time back:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=8048
Cheers, grim.

"Darwin's theory and the Christian religion provide conflicting views of the origin of species, simple as that. The only way they can be reconciled is to 'interpret' the scriptures to mean something other than what they are plainly saying."

In fact the Vatican's already on board.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/vatican-newspaper-backs-judges-support-of-evolution/2006/01/19/1137553712027.html

Creationists are denialists, pure and simple. Time to catch up!

How many times have we heard that the science is settled and that is all their is to it. These dogmas are common from people who can't validate their belief from true science. We have seen it with the hole in the ozone, global cooling, global warming, Y2k bug. Yea the science is settled only because you can't prove your pathetic theories which are full of holes. At least bible believing Christians are truthful enough to accept that we do believe by faith. Thankfully that belief is far more observable than the evolution myth/fallacy.

Bennie
You're quite right - mainstream churches (Roman Catholic, Anglican, Uniting etc) etc have long accepted evolution.
Two ideological fringes have a common interest in insisting that Christians take Genesis literally:

– Militant fundamentalist Christians, who insist on a literal interpretation of scripture as the only one permissible, and invent creationism and “intelligent design” in an effort to defend the indefensible

– Militant fundamentalist atheists, who find it far easier to attack this literalist interpretation as unscientific than accept the more complex, nuanced and symbolic interpretation of Creation that mainstream Christianity embraces.

Runner wrote:

"How many times have we heard that the science is settled and that is all their is to it."

Dear Runner,

I don't think any scientist would make such a statement. Any scientific theory is only provisional. If there is evidence that it is not a valid theory then it must be abandoned. However, there is no scientific evidence against Darwin's theory. If such evidence should appear in the future then Darwin's theory will be abandoned.

The biblical accounts of the creation are only Jewish tribal legends like the Aboriginal legend of the Rainbow Serpent. Most Jews and Christians do not take the Bible literally. They recognise that there is wisdom, beauty, legend along with a lot of other material in it. However, the Bible is neither a reliable history, a scientific text nor a moral guide. It is a book reflecting the thought and mores current to the time it was written when slavery, polygamy and other practices were accepted that are no longer accepted in current society.

It is mildly amusing to me that extremely religous people who deny science often do so via the medium of the computer, fruit of scientific endeavour and simply not possible without the progress of science thought through application of the scientific method. Biblical thinking produces not one iota of useful knowledge to help solve real-life problems or explain the world as it is. Darwinian theory is confirmed in a practical way every day in biology labs. Its reality or otherwise is not an issue - it works and therefore it is useful. The strength of science is that it can be elaborated endlessly. Each scientific idea is preliminary and tentative, the better to ensure that nothing becomes dogma. Everything can be disproved and active attempts are made to do so. This is enormously powerful because it finds out any weaknesses in our knowledge base and opens the way to them being rectified. It is the best way we have of ensuring that knowledge doesn't stagnate but is always vibrant and forward-looking and able to be made more nuanced.

Dear runner,

Could you please enlighten me as to what some of these "holes" in evolution are that you refer to? Could you also list one observation that makes creationism more observable?

I look forward to your response.

Hi Miranda

I agree that scientific method is powerful and effective, and has done much good for humankind. But I don’t accept that “Biblical thinking produces not one iota of useful knowledge to help solve real-life problems or explain the world as it is”.

Human existence is not just a scientific problem. Evolutionary biology can produce completely plausible and scientific explanations of why parents are heartbroken by the deaths of their children, why husbands cheat on their wives, why we fear to die, or why human societies go to war. But it can tell us little or nothing of what it means to be a human living in a world where these things happen. In my view, the Genesis creation accounts grapple with what it means to be human at this deeper level – moral consciousness, dependence/ independence and free will, the capacity to do harm, self-awareness and the fear of death. These are no less “real life” problems than the things science is good at, like curing disease or ensuring broadband access

Thanks for your point of view, Rhian, and of course you are right to point out those areas that science does not begin to explain. But in my opinion these very ideas of human-ness are simply not explained either by the bible. In my experience, religion only hampers the capacity of human beings to fully contemplate their own existence and to understand relationships and fears and a sense of ethics and morality because it begins from false premises. Never a helpful place to start.

Runner, runner runner. What are we going to do with you!lol. " Holes! What holes? When mans consciousness began, the need for mental sercuirty was the main key to survival and will be need for a time to come. But this fear we all have came from our 5 million year growth and as some can see, its now getting in the way some-what, and like some that have already said, its holding us back.

Build a little temple at home, and pray and have all the faith you like, but doesn't change the fact that Mr Darwin,s theory is the only one with any credibility and that's where the 20th century is going my friend and in the future this need for faith will be called something else.

Its Evolution! and how we were all programed can not be changed.

EVO

AdamD,
If you don’t like the sound of panic (especially amongst evolutionists), then don’t read the libel and name calling coming from Sancho and Wing Ah Ling’s second post on Sunday.

Sancho,
Thanks for crediting my post as ‘reasoned discussion’. It might be nice if we could all aim for the same.

Grim,
What was my point about ‘outmoded philosophers’?

I suppose that all scientists are philosophers to a degree because they are applying a certain method of thinking or reasoning to their research. Yet we tend to delineate ‘scientists’ from philosophers when they apply their theories to empirical data which can be put to the test with repeatable experiments.

I would class Marx and Freud as great thinkers whose ideas challenged our self perceptions. The world still reverberates under their influence. Yet as far as having practical testable applications, I think they have been found wanting. This is why I called them ‘outmoded philosophers’. Marxist theories, in the old communist countries and elsewhere, have been deemed as a failed experiment. I understand that Freud’s ideas are considered quaint, if not amusing, in the circles of most practical psychologists.

So for these, it is not that they “didn’t get it exactly right the first time.” The question becomes just what exactly, if anything, did they get right? Any philosophy is only as good as its explanatory power and usefulness is predicting events and machinations in the empirical world.

You raise the name Mendel. Mendel’s genetics hardly contributed to Darwin’s work. They challenged it. Whether Darwin’s naturalist ideas will withstand further challenges, I predict not.

david f,
>> no scientific evidence against Darwin's theory. If such evidence should appear in the future then Darwin's theory will be abandoned. <<

I do not think "abandoned" is the right word in connection with an established scientific theory. Newtonian physics was not abandoned but extended, at most superseded, by both relativity and QM, and none of them is going to be abandoned but probably “immersed“ into some wider theory - superstrings, loop quantum gravity or what. After all, Newtonian mechanics is still a useful model in many situations of practical mechanics, the same as the flat Earth model with its Euclidean geometry is a useful model for local cartography.

It is mathematics that tells you in what sense the Newtonian model represents a limiting situation for both relativity and quantum mechanics, and it is also mathematics that tells you that the usefulness of the flat Earth model corresponds to the locally good approximation of the ellipsoid by its tangent plane.

As I understand it, Darwin's theory has become as established as Newton's mechanics. Some new “scientific evidence“ can lead mostly to its expansion or modification, into e.g neo-darwinism as professed by Richard Dawkins, some parts of it superseded, never to abandonment. However, there do not seem to be on the horizon as revolutionary successors as relativity and quantum mechanics were to Newtonian mechanics. And I do not see anything that could play the role of mathematics which in case of physics allows you to bridge the "paradigm changes", though applications of mathematics to biology might still surprise us all.

[The situation is even more complicated when one considers various models (called religions, from the most primitive to the philosophically sophisticated, sometimes denigrated as “mental gymnastics”) of a reality in which the distinction between the objective and the subjective is blurred (like the distinction between whether a mathematician creates or discovers), a reality that neither our senses nor our instruments - or theories built on mathematical models - can reach.]

I wrote this knowing that david is a professional physicist; apologies to others.

Dear George,

I chose my words with thought. When I wrote abandoned I meant abandoned. Established scientific theories have included the existence of ether, the non-variability of the species, the atom as irreducible and the existence of phlogiston. All these were well-established scientific theories at one time. They are now abandoned. They were not modified or still applied to a limited extent. They were abandoned. Scientific theories may be modified, limited in application or abandoned no matter how well-established they are.

I see no prospect of Darwin's theory being superseded or abandoned at this time. However, any scientific theory is provisional, no matter how well established, to be abandoned on the receipt of new evidence. Even though I see no prospect of Darwinian theory being disproved to say it couldn't be would be exhibiting the dogmatism that runner wrote of.

Panicking? That was funny, please continue.

EVO

david f, neither you nor george have a snowflake's chance in hell of convincing runner. of anything. and for convincing runner, the point between you and george is irrelevant. but i would have thought george had a good point.

could, for example, newtonian physics now be proved wrong? yes, of course, conceivably. but it has predicted so much so well. at this stage it does seem quite literally on the order of sun-not-coming-up improbability.

the theoretical falsifiability of a scientific theory should be kept in context, with how successful the theory has been. in this manner, newtonian phsyics and evolution seems pretty much in the same boat.

Dear david f,

Actually I had exactly phlogiston and ether in brackets as exceptions ("theories" that were abandoned) but had to abandon them (no pun intended) because the post would have exceeded 350 words. I am no historian of science, and do not want to argue about the meaning of "established", but I believe that Newton‘s mechanics was more established than e.g. phlogiston “theory“.

All I wanted to say was that Darwin’s theory was comparable to Newton’s and not to, say, the dead-end theory of phlogiston.

Of course, any scientific theory is provisional until shown either as fertile, capable of further development (like Newton's, Einstein's, Darwin's, QM, irreducibility or other nature of atoms or particles) or dead-end (like phlogiston, ether). Actually, phlogiston or ether were artificial substitutes for unexplained phenomena (kind of "gods of the gaps").

Unexplained phenomena (or simply enigmas or paradoxes) in 20th and 21st century physics, arguably occur on a more mathematically treatable and less artificial “god of the gaps” level (David Bohm's hidden variable, multiverse or Everett's many-world, etc.), are consciously speculative, hence these speculative additions do not become that easily parts of established theories.

Yes, I believe that 21st century physics has become less likely to branch into dead ends that will have to be completely abandoned, also because of a more explicit use of (pure) mathematics. And I believe that also biology, notably genetics, will benefit from more use of some very abstract pure mathematics (not only statistics) including mathematics not yet discovered/invented.

Threads like this - that bring on the old stoush between sanity and creationism - are always fun.

Rhian suggests...

>>In my view, the Genesis creation accounts grapple with what it means to be human at this deeper level – moral consciousness, dependence/ independence and free will, the capacity to do harm, self-awareness and the fear of death.<<

The average episode of Neighbours, or Home and Away, performs pretty much the same function, I would have thought. Certainly, the scriptwriters believe so. Most serious literature throughout history, from Chaucer to Dostoevsky to Ian McEwan, tackles the same issues, basically because that is its function.

As do cartoons.

Season 4 Episode 18 of Family Guy gave us "The Father, the Son and the Holy Fonz", which satirized (or illustrated, depending on the strength of your atheism) the ability of religion to acquire any symbol, and weave a story around it to entrap the gullible/reinforce the faith. Genesis appears to fall into this category, given that it was put together entirely independently of any Christian influence, but later appropriated by that sect.

Evolutionary theory, which was the result of careful research over many years, is not a symbol, or a parable, or a repository of moral instruction. There is therefore absolutely no point in comparing it with any part of the Bible.

>>Human existence is not just a scientific problem<<

In a very real sense, it is.

Rhian makes a distinction between there being "scientific explanations of why parents are heartbroken by the deaths of their children, why husbands cheat on their wives, why we fear to die, or why human societies go to war" and "what it means to be a human living in a world where these things happen"

Having accepted that there are indeed credible evolutionary theories that show how we react to our environment, how are these different from "what it means to be human"? It seems to me that they are one and the same.

AdamD

You ask

'Could you please enlighten me as to what some of these "holes" in evolution are that you refer to? Could you also list one observation that makes creationism more observable?'

First the fossil record has never validated evolution despite many dishonest and fraudulent attempts to do so by 'scientist over decades.School textbooks have proudly displayed these frauds as you know. Darwin hoped that future fossil records would validate his theories. 150 years later we are still waiting. Discredited evolutionist such as Donald Prothero who claimed to have found transitional fossils are now an embarrassment to any honest scientist. Just like the modern day climate change priests who get predictions terribly wrong many still insist their dogmas are backed by science.

Secondly every scientist knows after hundreds of years of testing that contrary to Darwin's theory that life can not come from non living chemicals. Evolution has never had even a half plausible explanation for beginnings. Honest scientist who treat evolution as a theory agree with Dr. Robert Hazen who says " I make an assumption that life emerged from basic raw materials'

Assumption (faith if you like) is the starting point of evolution. In fact one big assumption which can't be backed by true science.

The thing that makes creation far more observable is that every 3 year old child can observe that where their is creation it follows that their is a Creator. Arguements may abound as to who that Creator is although it is infinitely more plausible than a silly outdated theory that men cling to in hope that one day they won't have to face their Maker.

Dan, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you about Marx, Freud and particularly Mendel; despite my own words earlier:

"What I meant to convey was that whereas science texts are constantly being rewritten, added to, revised and sometimes thrown out, the Bible, Torah and Koran are treated in the exact opposite fashion."

I would consider Lamarck and Becher to be better examples of theories to be thrown out. Certainly many of Freud's ideas may seem 'quaint' today, but he doesn't seem to be totally irrelevant:

"While of significant historical interest, many of Freud's ideas have fallen out of favor or have been modified by Neo-Freudians, although in the past ten years, advances in the field of neurology have shown evidence for many of his theories. Freud's methods and ideas remain important in clinical psychodynamic approaches. In academia his ideas continue to influence the humanities and some social sciences."
Wikipedia.

As for Marx, obviously this will always be a more emotive topic, yet I feel it takes a certain courage (In the Sir Humphrey sense of the word) to completely write him off at this precise point in history, when our current flavour of Capitalism is doing such a great job of self destruction.
As for Mendel, I really don't see how his work challenged Darwin at all.
Darwin's contention was that 'somehow' parents passed on their characteristics to their children. White parents tend to have white babies, etc.
Mendel's work demonstrated exactly how these characteristics were passed on.

Runner you appear to think religion and evolution are mutually exclusive. The vatican disagrees. Perhaps you have your own version of Christianity independent of the church's.

"the fossil record has never validated evolution"

Um, no. The fossil record has never invalidated evolution. Each discovery has either reinforced or expanded upon the theory.

"contrary to Darwin's theory that life can not come from non living chemicals."

Did Darwin really say this?
This is something science is readily prepared to admit it does not know, there being no evidence either way. Going on what can be rationally deduced, it was spontaneous under precise conditions. Do not forget Runner that Genesis was likely written by a mortal with less worldly education than today's average teenager. Or as you put it, with the intellect of a three year old.

What evidence is there that the ice ages never occurred? To put it another way, what plausible evidence is there genesis must be taken literally?

And why on earth do I try to debate rationally with a creationist?

Dear runner,

All scientists treat evolution as a theory, just as they treat gravity as a theory. Like gravity, evolution is both fact and theory.

The fossil record has helped validate evolution far better than Darwin could’ve ever dreamed. In fact, evolution was first vindicated when he was still alive with the discovery of the archaeopteryx.

The geologic column shows that the deeper we go, the more basic and primitive the life forms are. To claim that we are still waiting for fossils to validate Darwin’s theory displays a level of ignorance so astonishing it is beyond comprehension.

There are literally thousands of transitional fossils. That being said, you should be able to list for me thousands (or at least hundreds) of cases of fraud.

The only genuine case of fraud I can think of was Piltdown man. The rest of alleged frauds are actually creationist frauds.

Henry Osborne, the man who discovered the Nebraska man tooth, foolishly publicized it by submitting it to a popular magazine before submitting it to peer review. No other scientist believed it was the tooth of an early human and the ‘artist’s impression’ that featured in the magazine was not done by a scientist. No one could accurately draw a picture of an early human from a tooth and no scientist would attempt to.

Despite this, creationists like to claim that scientists were duped and that they drew an entire picture from this tooth.

I could rattle off a few other examples of the false allegations of fraud from creationists if you’d like? Claims about Peking man, Java man and Lucy are just a few that come to mind.

Well known Creationists will continue to lie and make claims they know are false so long as religious people like yourself continue to believe anything they say.

In regards to observing a creator, nothing you have said is objective and is therefore meaningless. The human body is so flawed and faulty that not even a human would consider it an acceptable design - let alone a god.

An epic fail all round, I’m afraid.

A few point I missed.

runner,

Abiogenesis and evolution are two different things. Evolution doesn’t attempt to explain how life began, it explains the diversity we see.

Dr. Robert Hazen says that he starts with the assumption that life emerged from basic raw materials because that’s only way science can work. Science deals with the natural world, not the supernatural.

One last point : Scientists have not been testing abiogenesis for hundreds of years. Abiogenesis is still a very new field of science. But yes, various stages of abiogenesis have been repeated and there is nothing yet to suggest that it is impossible.

But this all seems like such a waste of time (I didn’t actually expect a response to be honest). Anyone who could still reject such a solid and robust scientific theory in the 21st century is obviously not all there upstairs.

Runner,

Thanks for your ideas. I do have a few questions here: please don't take them as attacks, I'm just hoping for clarification.

A few other people have dealt with the "creating life" idea - did Darwin actually say anything about this? I'm pretty sure it's not in Origin or Descent, but perhaps it's in some minor work. It wouldn't surprise me - he was a pretty eclectic thinker who dabbled in a lot of topics.

My other question relates to "transitional fossils". Are they really necessary? As I understand it, they would be essential for Ussher or Lamarck's theories of evolution - in both, species constantly change to achieve purposes and reach perfection. Darwin's theory, though, deals more with mutations and favourable variations. This honeyeater has a longer beak than that one, so it survives and the other dies. That sort of thing. You wouldn't expect to see transitional "halfway" specimens because they either have it or they don't. Giraffes' necks don't gradually grow, in the Lamarckian way; rather, the longer-necked giraffes live while the shorter-necked ones die. Looking for the "missing link" between ape and man is more in tune with Ussher's "chain of being", as creatures get gradually more sophisticated as time goes by.

Darwin's theory is, like other scientific theories, impossible to prove. But the evidence supports its modern incarnations. I'd be interested in your views here - especially in terms of what transitional fossils we should be looking for.

Dear bushbasher,

Newtonian physics is wrong. However, for most applications with masses not sufficiently large to noticeably warp the space-time continuum and velocities not close to that of light the error terms are so small that they can safely be disregarded.

Dear George.

Mathematics and the sciences both use inductive and deductive reasoning. Mathematical deductive reasoning proceeds from a set of axioms by a series of logical steps to prove the hypothesis. When proven the hypothesis becomes a theorem.

In science deductive reasoning using other scientific information and theories sets up a hypothesis.

In the sciences there are only inductive proofs. In mathematics if the hypothesis holds in the first case and one can show that if it is true for the nth case for any n then it is true for the n+1 case it is true for all cases. However, in the sciences, we can only examine a finite number of cases. We cannot assume proof from a finite number of cases. Proof in every instance tried leads to the assumption that it is true in all cases. However, it must remain an assumption because there may exist a case in which the hypothesis is disproved. In science there is neither proofs nor theorems – only hypotheses that have not been disproved.

Evolution is a fact as shown by the fossil record of the disappearance of species and the appearance of new species. Darwinian theory provides a mechanism for the fact of evolution. This mechanism is natural selection. There can be and are other mechanisms. One is symbiosis. However, if there were an instance where natural selection could be shown not to work Darwinian theory would be disproved. Such an example might be found either in nature or by experiment. I cannot imagine how a researcher could set up such an experiment, but I can’t deny the possibility of a researcher setting up such an experiment. I regard the possibility as slightly less than convincing runner that he is wrong.

George, our disagreements are minor.

Miranda, thanks for your response. I’m not sure that Genesis is trying to “explain” human experience, at least not in the way a psychologist might. I agree that religion at its shallowest and most dogmatic can be a barrier to self-understanding and a sop to fears. But it has also provided a pathway to deeper exploration of self and of ethics, reflection on social values and wellbeing, and regard for others. Throughout history, most moral philosophers have had religious faith, and today a disproportionate number of charities were founded or are staffed by people with religious motivation. This does not prove that religion makes you moral, but it suggests that religion is not barrier to altruism and moral development.

I wonder if your argument is not somewhat circular – you presume that an ethics founded on faith is false because there is no God. A mirror argument, that ethics founded on God must be good because God is good, would equally assume its conclusion.

Pericles, I agree that our culture is continuously exploring the question of human values and existence, though I suspect that Neighbours and Home and Away will prove less enduring and influential than the Bible in this regard!

I also agree that evolutionary theory is not a symbol, parable or repository of moral instruction. But there are people who treat it as if it is, for example “social Darwinists” who see humanity as the pinnacle of evolution, and “survival of the fittest” as an analogy and justification for the benefits of collective and individual competition.

In answer to your final question, science can explain WHY we feel grief, pleasure, fear, love, hostility, affiliation etc. But religion explores HOW these are encountered subjectively, and how to live – socially, subjectively, ethically, spiritually, economically – in the world as we find it. I don’t claim that only religion can do this. Dostoevsky, and TV shows and cartoons, and economics, sociology, psychiatry etc also have much to contribute. But I don’t see religion as a rival of science or culture.

Bennie

'"contrary to Darwin's theory that life can not come from non living chemicals."

Did Darwin really say this? Yes check 'Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (New York: Appelton, 1901), 2:202-203 note.'
http://www.asa3.org/asa/PSCF/1995/PSCF9-95Newman.html

AdamD
The fossil record has helped validate evolution far better than Darwin could’ve ever dreamed. In fact, evolution was first vindicated when he was still alive with the discovery of the archaeopteryx.

You really must get up to date with the many scientist that know reject archaeopteryx as any proof of evolution. Evolutionist Dr George Gaylord Simpson was honest enough to say "The uniform continuous transformation of Hyracotherium into Equus, so dear to the hearts of the text book writers, never happened in nature.' This 'evidence' has been long discredited. Obviously you have not got up to date with the latest dogma. Many honest scientist know that their is a complete lack of evidence linking the various 'horse family' together.

You write

'he human body is so flawed and faulty that not even a human would consider it an acceptable design - let alone a god.'

Looking at anything man has made compared to God's creation makes your statement look nothing short of pitiful.

Otokonoko

'My other question relates to "transitional fossils". Are they really necessary?'

You seem honest in your enquiry. You would need to ask the evolutionist this one, I am sure you will get different answers especially by those honest enough to admit after turning up millions of fossils not one supports the evolution theory. Darwin himself hoped one day that fossils might validate his theory.

What makes me think it is so important to evolutionist is their continual dishonesty to produce transitional creatures to fill in the 'missing link. NewScientist and many other Science magazines would make our local rags look truthful if examined for continual deceit. If it was not so important to those desperate to deny the obvious I don't know why they keep making up lies.

david f,

We used to joke that Newton would not pass our first year exams in calculus, partly also because he did not have a clear distinction between mathematics and physics, although he contributed to the development of both (perhaps not unlike Aquinas who did not distinguish between philosophy and theology, although he contributed substantially to both).

If I understood you properly, you just wanted to point to this distinction, in particular that pure mathematics is not science, which, of course, I agree with. In particular, proofs in the strict meaning of the word, can only be formal, i.e. they exist only in mathematics (and logic, which in its formalised form has become just a branch of mathematics). Mathematics is built around deductions only; it is the mathematician’s reasoning, while discovering/inventing new results, that is both inductive and deductive. Induction in science appeals to experience and common sense, mathematical induction (as taught at high school) that you mention, appeals to logic. So here I do not think we disagree.

The applicability of mathematics, i.e. finding the appropriate mathematical model to serve as the backbone of a “mature“ - completed or still “under construction” - physical theory, is a complicated problem, nevertheless an approach that (so far) has been more fruitful in physics than in biology.

Perhaps also because of this formal clarity of mathematics (plus what Eugene Wigner called “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics”), it is easier to understand and accept - irrespective of one‘s background world-view - not only the findings but also the assumptions of modern physics starting with Newton, and continued by Einstein etc., than those of evolutionary biology that started with Darwin.

Runner, you seem to be able to quote every argument against evolution, but you cannot understand why evolutionary scientists should lie. You say:

"What makes me think it is so important to evolutionist is their continual dishonesty to produce transitional creatures to fill in the 'missing link. NewScientist and many other Science magazines would make our local rags look truthful if examined for continual deceit. If it was not so important to those desperate to deny the obvious I don't know why they keep making up lies."

Runner, my own understanding of science (I have a BSc in biology), leads me to believe that science is a collective pursuit of facts and ideas that can be reliably shared. "Scientific ideas" are testable by experimental method, and may also be shown to be false by the same method. If elements of the knowledge base of science fall short of the standard of admission into the BOSK (my own instant acronym - body of scientific knowledge), then they either do not make it into the "book", or their stay is indefinite but limited.

Theories such as organic evolution by the mechanisms of population genetics (OE) are always vulnerable to the fundamental truth that "science never proves anything" (see my first post - Friday, 13 February 2009 10:31:10 PM); but a steady accretion of evidence it OE's favour, over over 150 years, has made the current "consilience of inductions" in favour of OE a very sound, reliable and serviceable edifice. OE theory has evolved, and its foundations are neither more nor less sound than scientific method.

Languages, cultures and religions also evolve, but not by the same set of mechanisms as OE.

Runner, if you can offer no motive for scientists to lie about OE, to contribute repeatedly to a false BOSK, then what is the point of arguing that organic evolution is a myth concocted by purveyors of "continual deceit"?

Could you kindly clarify your issue?

Runner, I must say you are remarkably selective in your treatment of evidence.

"Did Darwin really say this? Yes check 'Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (New York: Appelton, 1901), 2:202-203 note.'
http://www.asa3.org/asa/PSCF/1995/PSCF9-95Newman.html"

I followed this link and waded through it, but could only find one relevant reference:

"Origin of life. Darwin himself wrote little on the question of how life might have originated. He did speculate that perhaps the necessary organic material could have self-assembled in a warm pond somewhere."

This seems a rather small hook to hang a very heavy coat on.
As for Archaeopteryx, I have found no evidence of "many scientist that know (sic) reject archaeopteryx as any proof of evolution."
All I could find were some rather wild accusations made by Fred Hoyle, which were rather easily disproved.
The latest evidence appears to come from China, linking archaeopteryx to more than 20 feathered dinosaurs -not including the deliberately forged "Archaeoraptor liaoningensis".
As for Dr George Gaylord Simpson, the emphasis in your quote should have been on the words "uniform continuous transformation". Simpson discovered the fossil evidence pointed to a rather more complex evolution, with 2 or 3 branches of horselike species co-existing; only one of which survived as the ancestor of the modern horse.
The evidence for evolution is so overwhelming it is no longer considered to be just a theory; not only by the vast majority of scientists, but also the more rational theists, including the Catholic and most mainstream protestant churches.

Runner, when you put up a reference, especially something like:
"Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (New York: Appelton, 1901), 2:202-203 note.", you really should check that is actually what the reference says, and you should probably check also who wrote it. Those pages were actually written by Professor Huxley!

http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?itemID=F1452.2&viewtype=side&pageseq=1

Your scholarship is exceedingly poor, I wouldn't even accept that from a high-school student.

To: All
From: Bennie
Re: Recent posts

You will NOT make a difference.

I and countless others before me have earnestly crafted genuine logical argument and wasted many valuable brain cells in an attempt to refute runner’s assertions. Should you take him more seriously than his replies warrant you too will, in time, develop a permanently furrowed brow and a recurring headache. If nothing else it does show altruism among us ill-destined heathenry is alive and well, as we strive to draw our fellow travellers into the post-enlightenment community to better appreciate the modern wonders that exist there.

If someone thinks G.W Bush is in fact a swell guy and that science is singularly responsible for all the world’s evils, rest assured they have not reached those positions through rational thought and thus will not be swayed by rational argument.

Personally I am convinced he is a naughty troll bent on leading us into despair, assigned to us by a mischievous and as yet unknown church.

So keep in mind: nothing is knowable; there are no absolutes independent of sacred writ. And remember, evolution – nay, science, all of it – is merely a “paradigm”

Dear Benny,

A paradigm? A paradigm is twenty cents.

Then there was the generous jockey who put two bits in his horse's mouth. That's because he had a quarter-horse.

The above is for those familiar with US coinage. Unlike me, runner is not a punner.

From one or a few simple life forms all life in its great diversity has arisen so we are related to mushrooms, bacteria, eucalypts and walruses. How grand a concept is evolution!

Life in all its forms is a unity. Who needs a supernatural when the natural is full of wonder? Darwin saw and spread his light.

Bennie,

I'm OK about giving Runner a bit more oxygen. He could be right.

For example, see:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=charles-darwin-confessions&print=true

" ... had not the Archbishop of Armagh, James Ussher, calculated in 1658 the Earth's age accurate to the day? Accordingly, God must have created our planet on the night preceding October 23, 4004 B.C. on the Julian calendar."

The mischief which can be had, though, when one sets an exact date, is not limited to the whims of the Bishop of Ussher and/or his(long since departed, I trust) cronies.

If creation could have happened then, if the Bishop convincingly argues that the world comes into being, something out created, of nothing (I confess, I don't know whether the Bishop was referring to the first day or the 7the day, but he has established a principle)lock, stock and Fossil Record, then there is nothing whatever to say that the univers was created 5 seconds ago, Lock Stock and Fossil Record, plus redshifted galaxies, uranium decay daughters, my email archives and this particular (and all other) internet sites and content. Not necessarily in that order of importance.

Note that I said "convincingly", not "correctly".

But runner could be right. Runner, is there a consilience of inductions you may offer, rather than just a lot of sniping at a well-accepted theory?

David F,
And it follows from your statement and the mechanisms of OE that some of us are more of the monkey and others of us are more of the mushroom. But we are all distant cousins of the broccoli. And the cockroach.

Grim,
Thank you for pointing out your website. I expect I will get back to it at some point in the future.

Runner,
If you expect me (and probably some of the other readers here) to take you seriously, you will need to cogently address the questions and replies put to you, rather than repeating the same assertions without otherwise arguing them. Naturally I would be pleased if you gave my question an articulate reply.

There’s not much more I can add to the good responses to runner’s last answersingenesis.org copy and paste job.

Well said everyone.

Dear runner,

The human body is far from perfect and I repeat, no human would consider it an acceptable design. The human body is riddled with flaws:

-Forearms that break far too easily when falling forward;
-Ectopic pregnancies;
-A shared passage for ingestion and respiration;
-The appendix, which can kill when infected;
-Retinal detachments;
-Weakness in the abdominal wall caused by the protrusion of testes that can later develop into hernias.

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

But if you are going to continue to make accusations of fraud and dishonesty, then you at least need to give examples. As it stands, the only apparent dishonesty in this thread, is your own.

And how could any sane town planner put a fun park in the middle of a sewerage plant?

Nicely said adam, divid.F yes the wonders are all around us and is far better than the ones in the mind. But I had an interesting thought just now that links two theories together.

In the big bang thread, I said black-holes will all join, suck everything back in again and BANG! it all starts again. I believe extremely hardy micro-organisms can survive this great event and may actually live upon the minerals in the rocks and then Mr Darwin's water pool theory just maybe the second ingredients to stretch one legs so to speak.

Where the first organism came from may never be known, but for me, life started here from volcanogenic vents and if just one of those little aliens likes its new surroundings, well, again! just look around you and tell me god created it. (lol. Sorry! the wave the magic wand thing is just too hard to swallow.)

I am going to figure all this out one-day.

I know its a long shot theory, but I feel the importance to speak the mind, cause I believe somewhere in a thought, the answer waits to evolve.

EVO

Continued.

Insects and plants have the strangest chemicals of all living things and they are extremely hardy as well and if we go all the way the food chain, the tougher they get. Primitive life can live in a nuclear power-plant and I can go on,on,on about other life forms in the most hellish places and they function quite well and multiply.

So as our own planet cooled, something thought it was paradise. So life in my opinion is spread right though-out the uniserve. Earth 6.5 billion V,s uniserve age 13.6! So some-where in conditions far different to ours, highly likely in my opinion.

Or like a said before..." Life just begins, in very special places.

Like this one!

All the best.

EVO

Grim is disgusting!

But, the planner was well ahead of present "economic rationalsists" - she/he obiously placed economy above ecological considerations.

Grim,
You say discussing Karl Marx is emotive. Then what about evolution? There aren’t many topics stirring the emotions more. Look at the emotive responses so far from the evolutionist corner:

Maracas calls creationists desperate.
Sir Vivor says they lobby to promote confusion.
Wing says creationists have a ‘vicious’ mindset, and actively misrepresent others.
Pericles refers to their insanity.
Adam says creationists deliberately lie and are not all there upstairs.
Kenny and Sancho use the words ‘creationist’ and ‘born again Christian’ as if they were insults by definition. Sancho threatening a return to the ‘Dark Ages’ (whenever that period was).
Even Davidf, who objects to loose ideological terms, throws around ‘Biblical literalist’ as if that meant something.

All this in a few days from one thread, following an article that hardly mentioned creationism.

Yet I can understand why. This issue touches the core of our being in how we view ourselves, our identity. Are we distinctly and carefully created in the image of the Almighty, or inherently one in essence with the animal kingdom? (I have little time for the middle ground, the view that says God chose a method of creating mankind that was so self redundant that he didn’t actually create anything.)

The issue also challenges our view of science, this wonderful tool that brought wonders and technologies unimaginable in other eras. Though magnificent in examining present day processes, at the moment of our identity crisis, is it capable of retracing our natural history? Has it found, or can ever possibly find the evidence to confirm our link to that past ancestor?

Natural history will always be debated and, unfortunately for certain empiricists, will always be philosophically rather than empirically driven.

As for Mendel, Darwin saw descent with modification as giving rise to butterflies, bananas and B Sc graduates, all from bacteria. Mendel demonstrated that variations within offspring were the result of genes, perhaps latent, but already present in the parents. Darwin was duly trumped by the discovery of genetics. So much that the Darwinist view had to be rearranged into what was newly dubbed Neo-Darwinism.

Damn, Dan. I scrolled down slowly through your post and thought: I like this guy(person), I like this guy(person)....and then you hit Mendel.
Please, read Darwin again. Read Mendel again. His original work with green peas and yellow peas was so basic, even a dummy like me could understand it.
Darwin would have loved Mendel's work. I'm absolutely certain of it.
We are not enemies. Cheers, Grim.

"Natural history will always be debated and, unfortunately for certain empiricists, will always be philosophically rather than empirically driven." -Dan

Only in blogs Dan, only in blogs. The rest of science is busy, far busier than you can believe, testing hypotheses with empirical studies, and evolution is guiding that research and quite fruitfully I might add.

As for the 'discovery of genetics' "trumping" Darwin, that's the funniest thing I have heard in a long time. Genetics, and especially modern genetics (i.e. after the discovery of the structure of DNA), has validated Darwin's core hypothesis. It's the mechanism that produces the variation that natural selection acts upon. He did hypothesise an erroneous mechanism (pangenes) that was fairly quickly refuted as it didn't fit observation), as here was very little understanding of the genetics of heredity at the time, but that doesn't/didn't invalidate the theory of natural selection.

A funny thing is that we now understand that there is some reason to believe that Mendel actually may have fudged his results (I say fudged, but more likely it was a selecting a 'clean' set of data that supported his hypothesis and ignoring those traits that didn't conform) just a little bit even though his basic hypothesis on the heredity of genes was mostly (but certainly not entirely) correct.

Dear Michael,

I totally agree with Grim when he says: “Darwin would have loved Mendel's work.” Mendel’s work would have helped Darwin to understand more about how his theory was at work. I’m not sure you understand what the study of genetics is, but as Bugsy mentioned, modern genetics and DNA help validate evolution. DNA even helps us to understand how life may have first arose.

Your list of posters in this thread (including myself) have made well-founded remarks/arguments (particularly the first three). If you have an issue with anything said in this thread, then please provide us with a response as to why anything that has been said is wrong. Describing the responses as “emotive” does not necessarily mean they are wrong. If that is what you were alluding to, then it’s a limp rebuttal at best, and a non sequitur at worst.

But if there is any emotion in my posts on this topic, then it comes from the concern I have for the children - who at no fault of their own - are being taught stupidity and are having an ignorant mindset ingrained into them when they are at their most vulnerable in life.

That, Michael, is child abuse - no matter how sincere the beliefs of the parents are.

Put it this way! If god made us all, then its fair to say that we are all( the human race ) aliens.

That would make sense with what man-kind has done to this planet.

Its true, No other living thing is like us, so where do we come from?

EVO

AdamD
>> ... children ... are being taught stupidity and are having an ignorant mindset ingrained into them when they are at their most vulnerable in life. That ... is child abuse - no matter how sincere the beliefs of the parents are.<<

Child abuse is morally abhorrent and illegal in Australia. So I presume you would want to not only outlaw RE - in public schools as well as private schools or churches - but prosecute and jail parents who dare to teach their children Christian (or of other religion) tenets, placing those children in institutions where they would be introduced into only officially accepted world views, deemed not to arrive at through indoctrination.

Well, I do not know how you would want to achieve this. Since I myself grew up in a Stalinist country, I can well imagine a situation where introducing children to any world view that contravenes the official one would be called indoctrination (then the official one was “dialectical materialism”, the one they could be indoctrinated into by parents was given a rather vague name “idealism”). However, even Stalinists would not have attempted to criminalise religious instructions provided privately by parents by calling it child abuse, because, presumably, they themselves were horrified of the consequences, (or perhaps just did not find it practicable).

One of my favourite Christians is a priest born in such a country, the son of a member of the Party Central Committee. He came accross Christianity as a teenager, was baptised at the age of 17, later secretly ordained a priest, earning his living as a teacher of, I think, biology and physics. He “outed himself” as a priest after 1989.

There are tolerant Christians, and there are intolerant ones, the same as there are tolerant adherents of an atheist world view and intolerant adherents of the same world view. Maybe indoctrination is somehow relevant here, I do not know; I am not that cock-sure of my own world view to use this term to denigrate those who arrived at a world view I disagree with or simply do not understand.

Good cover-up George! so lets all feed our children bull-sh@t! Its that the way your system works? is it?

EVO

George has had experience in living under state tyranny. I have not had such experience, but some of my family have. One of the characteristics of state tyranny is the inculcation of official views in a number of areas. One area is religion. It may be an official religion where there is a state church, and the precepts of that church are taught in the state schools. It may be an official atheism as part of an ideology which includes atheism. Both are wrong in my way of thinking.

I am an atheist. Most people are not. I do not feel it is child abuse for a parent to teach a child views that I think are wrong. It is child abuse to mistreat a child, not to show a child love and to deprive a child of the necessities of life.

Thomas Jefferson who believed in freedom of expression said, "Let error stand as a monument to truth!" Freedom of expression means the freedom to promote views that I or others might find loathsome. The freedom to say what agrees with the official view of the state is found in the worst tyranny.

Although I don't agree with some of George's views I feel it is tyranny to say that he shouldn't have those views, express them and promote them to the best of his ability.

In that I am in complete agreement with George.

As I said, there are tolerant as well as intolerant adherents of atheist world views. EVO2 provided here an example of the second kind while david f provided an example of an atheist of the first kind.

Dear George,

I find you response very presumptuous. You even go to the extent of asking how I would achieve my supposed goal of controlling what children are taught as though I wanted to do that, or even thought that it could be done.

I’m not suggesting that the government ban parents teaching creationism. Just because something is abhorrent, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it should be outlawed. The consequences of banning parents from raising their children to be ignorant would far out-weight the consequences of letting it happen, just as the perceived consequences of children accessing pornography online are far less dangerous than the consequences of government censorship - according most people anyway.

When I use the term “abuse”, I particularly have in mind the 80% of home-schooled children who are kept away from schools by their Christian fundamentalist parents in order to ensure they don’t learn anything that might lead them reject a literal interpretation of the Bible. Or these creation organizations that take children through museums and teach them to reject everything there; having them repeat statements out aloud to ensure that it's drilled into them.

This is child abuse because it is abusing the naivety of children and taking advantage of their young minds when they are in their prime.

Thanks for your response, George, but I don’t believe you have provided a very good reason for me to change my mind I’m afraid. Whether or not it should be outlawed is a side issue, it still constitutes abuse as far as I’m concerned.

It is a non sequitur to assume that the legal status of something (or the consequences of banning a said act) determines whether or not it is abuse. It is also a non sequitur to assume that because someone believes something is abuse, then they must want to ban it.

There are varying degrees of 'abuse'. It's not all black and white.

Grim,
You haven’t said (unless I’ve missed it) where you disagree with me in what I wrote about Mendel. Is it not true (perhaps I’m mistaken) that the term neo-Darwinism was coined in forced response to the world’s discoveries in genetics?

Adam,
You are right in saying that there is nothing inherently wrong with emotion. However, there is something wrong with an ‘argument’ that is nothing more than an outburst of emotion. The heart shouldn’t overrule the head.

Though the posts of yourself and others do contain some good thoughts, my contention that this topic is often overruled by emotion is only confirmed when you come back at me with talk of ‘child abuse’, of ‘vulnerable’ children being taught ‘stupidity’ from those of an ‘ignorant mindset’. This is a perfect example of an emotional outburst. You need to show what is wrong with something before you start labeling it ‘abhorrent’.

As for those posts containing more positive remarks, if there are any that challenge my contention, I could try and give my response. However, that could develop into a full on creation/evolution debate. I’ve been down that road before. I’ve argued for tens of pages. This is perhaps not the best place for a formal debate. And I doubt we’d settle the issue here.

However, I will attempt answering a few objections if you wish. Though I would certainly appreciate a lowering of the volume on things like ‘child abuse’ and other such nonsense.

Bugsy,
“Invalidate natural selection?” Who’s attempting that? I already said earlier that I agree that natural selection is an observable phenomenon. I also said that such observation was written about well before Darwin.

AdamD,
I admit, in the post I reacted to, you did not mention explicitly what you were describing as “indoctrination“ and “child abuse”. I just inferred - perhaps erroneously - from your other posts that you meant Christian, or even any religious in general, education. Sorry if I misunderstood you.

On the other hand, “abuse” may mean a couple of things, but “child abuse” means only one thing: an act, or series of acts, that is outlawed. If you did not want me or others draw that conclusion you should not have used the term: somebody who is “pro choice“ would not call abortion murder because it would follow that he/she wants it outlawed, since “murder” is a term reserved for an act that everybody agrees is a crime.

As for indoctrination, if used in connection with six-day-creationism, I would perhaps still not use that term, but would not object if somebody else did. However, I know that often even on this forum ANY education into a Christian world view (including mine) is being referred to as indoctrination. Apologies, if your opinion about Christian education in general is not that crude and rude. If I called education into a Nazi or Marx-Leninist world view an indoctrination, very few people would object. However, the reaction would be quite different if I called indoctrination ANY education into an atheist world view.

I do not understand what you mean by “creationists”. I like the definition where evolutionism is an ideology masquerading as pseudo-religion based on the scientific theory of evolution. Symmetrically I would call creationism an ideology masquerading as pseudo-science based on belief in an “intelligent designer”, whatever that means. So one can accept evolution without accepting evolutionism, and e.g. the Christian model of Divinity without accepting creationism: the two acceptances are compatible. In this sense creationists are “evolution-deniers”.

I agree, it is a disservice to a child to prevent it from learning English, maths, science (including evolution): it cripples it, makes it less able to exist in our society. Religion is only marginally related to this.

Neo-Darwinism is also known as "the modern synthesis"

Dan, you say that:
" Is it not true (perhaps I’m mistaken) that the term neo-Darwinism was coined in forced response to the world’s discoveries in genetics?"

Plainly it is true in your opinion, but what is the significance?

Genetics has provided a vast amount of solid scientific evidence to support the strength of organic evolution as a valid and very useful theory.

You and others may be interested in some of the details of the development of evolutionary theory in the mid-twentieth century. Theodesius Dobzhansky was a central figure in this transition. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_evolutionary_synthesis

Dobzhansky wrote an essay, published in The American Biology Teacher, March 1973, which clearly and firmly elucidates his understanding of organic evolution as a theory. It is titled "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution". It is available at
http://people.delphiforums.com/lordorman/light.htm

I agree with his opinions.

I would guess that, if you are a supporter of creationism or intelligent design , that your opposition to evolution is motivated by beliefs which may include the following:

(1) The words of the Holy Bible (King James Edition, say) are literally true.
(2) The world was created in 6 days
(3) Humans are a separate and distinct creation from other apes and other animals.
(4) Humans and other animals do not "evolve" by organic evolution or any other mechanism of change over time.

Is it the contradiction of these assertions (or others) that makes organic evolution an unacceptable theory, for you?

What is your personal objection to organic evolution?

There you go again, Dan. Either completely misunderstanding what is written or deliberately misrepresenting it. Darwin's core hypothesis was speciation through variation and natural selection. Not just natural selection only. To have variation, one must have a heritable mechanism that provides it. In the abscence of anything better at the time, Darwin hypothesised the existence of such a mechanism without understanding anything about genetics, once genetics had been discovered, viola! A complete theory.

Other people observed gravity before either Newton or Einstein wrote about it, so I don't really understand what that last comment was about. If you aren't trying to say that Darwin's theories were invalidated by Mendel, then what do mean by "trumped"?

<< If you don’t like the sound of panic (especially amongst evolutionists), then don’t read the libel and name calling coming from Sancho and Wing Ah Ling’s second post on Sunday. >>

Where did I libel or call anyone names?

And there is no panic, just astonishment and a bit of anger. Try to imagine how you'd react to people who agitate for ripping up the maths textbooks and teaching our childrend that 1+1 = 5, just because it fits in with their literal interpretation of a Bronze Age folk story.

You're asking us to destroy centuries of hard-won knowledge because it upsets you to realise the world isn't simple and you're not special to God.

The absurdity of religious fundamentalism is impossible to overstate, and attempts to put it on par with testable, observable evidence are insulting to those of us who are grateful to science for liberating us from backward theocracy.

To all members! How can you pin-point what is right or wrong when at this present time, mankind's new transitions is well under way right before our eyes? If man is now walking past the mind god, its obviously showing that evolution is its own conclusion! But like George has pointed out, the respect must be shown, or we have learned nothing.

With knowing the above, the tolerance of people, past or present, we must wait!

But personally, my children will learn that home is where the heart is, and that's the planet earth.

We can all talk which is right or wrong until the cows come in, and the basic fact is, the new will always replace the old and that's a fact.

If you cant prove to your children what you are saying, don't say anything at all.

You maybe causing more harm than good.

Remember! this is only my opinion.

All the best.

EVO

Sorry Dan, it is not true.
the term 'Neo Darwinism' was first coined in 1895, by George Ramanes; about 5 years before Mendel's work was rediscovered.
In the absence of any knowledge of genetics, Darwin felt bound to supply some theory for the means of inheritance of characteristics. At that time, the only person he knew of working in this area was Lamarck. Darwin therefore developed a theory of pangenesis, basically to incorporate Lamarck's theory, which we now consider to be quite wrong.
Ramanes rejected the pangenesis theory, opting instead for Wallace's contention that natural selection was all.
The term has been revived (or stolen) over the years, as more knowledge about genetics and molecular biology demonstrate an enormously more complex picture of evolution than Darwin could possibly have imagined.
The very latest research seems to indicate that viruses have played a far greater role in evolution than was previously imagined. Even if this proves true, it still *probably* will not threaten natural selection.
After a virus has altered a gene, natural selection will still determine whether the alteration will survive in the gene pool.
I think you may be thinking of evolutionary synthesis, rather than neo darwinism. That's another story, but suffice to say, natural selection is still considered the primary means of evolution.

Sancho,
Where did you call anyone names? You called Philip Johnson a ‘born again Christian’. It’s possible that Johnson may or may not refer to himself that way, but in the context that you use the term, you allege that he is less capable than others of neutrality or of evaluating a theory because he is a Christian. That is an unfair prejudice.

Sir Vivor and Bugsy,
The current article asks whether Darwin’s ideas are durable or whether they’re approaching a use-by date. I say more the latter.

In regard to Mendel and genetics, I used the word ‘trumped’ in the figurative sense of being surprised or overwhelmed. Darwin had taken a hit. So much that Darwinism had to be revamped into something else, something ‘new’, hence ‘Neo’-Darwinism. Voilà !

We seem to be in agreement that Darwin was ignorant of genetics. Through genetics we discover how traits are passed on from parent to offspring. Variation arises from genes reshuffling and recombining in the process of reproduction. However, if the genes are not there, present already in the parent, then how can they be passed on to the offspring?

Therefore the mechanism of heredity does not provide the capability to produce new design features. Variation in eye colour, length of beak, number of feathers on a wing? Yes, sure, absolutely. But can we arrive at eyes, beaks, and feathers? Unfortunately, no.

Sir Vivor, you ask from where derives my objection to organic evolution? I am in search of good science as well as good theology. I don’t see how evolution fits either.

The entropic nature of this world bares witness daily that the properties of matter and energy alone are incapable of constructing life forms as we understand them.

Theologically, evolution leaves a creator God redundant. In fact, that seems to be the point of it. And it seems you’ve noted some of the clear contradictions between a straight forward reading of the Bible and what evolution teaches.

Dan! "God and man are one"! its either ignorants or you have not excepted what I have written? What I have said is picking up speed all round the planet, so what Iam saying, we are all on the same side.

Please! Stop going around in circles! I hear what you are saying, and your only pulling at straws.

EVO

re: "I am in search of good science as well as good theology. I don’t see how evolution fits either."

theology - "1. the science which treats of God, His attributes and His relations to the universe" (Macquarie Concise Dictionary, page 1045)

science - "2. systematised knowledge, in general" (Macquarie Concise Dictionary, page 888) (as opposed to experimental science)

Dan, can you kindly and succinctly state whether you agree or disagree with each of the following statements?

(1) The words of the Holy Bible (King James Edition, say) are literally true.
(2) The world was created in 6 days
(3) Humans are a separate and distinct creation from other apes and other animals.
(4) Humans and other animals do not "evolve" by organic evolution or any other mechanism of change over time.

My assumption is that you consider all four statements to be true. Is that so?

Dear Michael,

If my post were an emotional outburst, there would have been capital letters and exclamation marks everywhere. But I don’t believe I need to explain what is wrong with coercing a child to reject facts much more than I have already in my last response to George, and scientific reasoning explains why the belief is patently wrong.

I find it ironic that you say: “The heart shouldn’t overrule the head.” This is what should be told to all creationists as their beliefs do not come from reasoning or evidence but from an emotional dependency that relies on believing that the Bible is literal truth. This is becoming very clear in the posts of one particular creationist here who (when cornered) retreated to another thread and has now resorted to threatening others with hell.

I’m not sure why you think this place is not suitable for a debate though. The word limits are a little restricting but the “Pro-evolution” camp seems to be doing just fine.

I will be happy to lower my tone on ‘abuse’ when someone can show me that my claims are wrong. So far, that hasn’t happened.

Thank you for your offer to respond to anything that has been said earlier, but I don’t believe that is necessary. I have heard all the arguments for creationism before and they all fall into two categories: Fallacies and/or misrepresentations.

Dear George.

By “abuse” I was specifically referring to creationism and the coercion methods used by some parents to ensure their children uncritically believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible. It is unfair to potentially condemn a child to appear foolish and instill ignorant mindset in them for the rest of their lives.

Yes, it is a disservice to deny a child education, but I wasn’t just talking about that. I was talking about the methods used to train children to actively reject anything that may contradict the parents’ beliefs and what can result from that (ignorance etc.).

(Cont’d)

The word ‘murder’ is, by definition, an unlawful act. ‘Child abuse’ is simply abuse that happens to a child. I can see no formal definitions that refer to ‘child abuse’ as specifically being the ‘unlawful’ abuse of a child. So I still think your over-reaction was unwarranted, although your apology is accepted.

There is a big difference between ‘indoctrination’ and ‘religious education’. Indoctrination means to teach someone to accept a doctrine uncritically and coercing a child to reject science for religious purposes fits the definition of ‘indoctrination’ to a tea, so I’m not sure why you wouldn’t use the term in that situation.

Whether or not I class “education into a Christian world view” (as you have put it) as ‘indoctrination’ (and hence abuse) would largely depend on how it was done. If the child is threatened with, or even told about such nonsense as ‘hell’, then yes, that is psychological abuse and the only reason it isn’t outlawed is because religion holds an untouchable status in societies. But there would be a very fine line between ‘education into a Christian world view’ and ‘indoctrination’ since religions generally rely on the followers not thinking critically about the religion.

The comparison you make between indoctrination into Marxism/Nazism and Atheism is nonsensical as you cannot indoctrinate someone into a way of thinking that has no doctrine. Nazism and Marxism have a doctrine, Atheism doesn’t.

As for “Evolutionism”, this is a term that is predominantly used by creationists in order to make evolution sound like a religion and is sloppy English in my books.

AdamD wrote:

The comparison you make between indoctrination into Marxism/Nazism and Atheism is nonsensical as you cannot indoctrinate someone into a way of thinking that has no doctrine. Nazism and Marxism have a doctrine, Atheism doesn’t.

Dear AdamD,

Although atheism does not have a doctrine it has become part of other doctrines. It is an integral part of Marxism to such a degree that it is often associated with Marxism. I am an atheist. On a boat trip between Italy and Greece I was talking to an Italian man and mentioned I was an atheist. He found it difficult to understand how I could be an atheist and not a Marxist. A person whose inclinations would lead him or her to be a religious believer upon indoctrination into Marxism would have to profess atheism. Such profession may lead to actual atheism.

Charles Darwin simply showed the link between natural selection and the ability of species to evolve, he did not claim to lay down the exact mechanism by which it occurred.

The use of genetics and fossil records simply enhances and refines the theory and does not in any way replace it. Any claims to this end are spurious.

Ford invented the assembly line method of building cars. The new assembly lines bear very little resemblance, but still are founded on the same principles.

Darwin's theory is stronger today than it was a century ago.

Shadow! Here Here!

EVO

EVO,
If you are going to accuse me of ignorance, it would help if you could spell it correctly. Do you have a spell checker?

Grim,
Thanks for doing the research on Neo-Darwinism. You’re a better man than I am. What I said was coming from my recollections of sitting in the back of science class in high school. And that was a long time ago.

Adam,
I think this forum is fine for debating. However, I said that it wasn’t a great place for formal debate. By that, I refer to the fact that this forum has no formal convenor or adjudicator, has no formal finishing point, has no set number of people debating each side of the question, has not even a formal question on the table to debate, etc.

As for your assertions about Christian education, teaching, indoctrination, abhorrent coercion, brain washing, or whatever other emotive word you care to choose, I think you need to get out a bit more and see what is really happening out there.

In my experience, most Christian schools and home schoolers of which I’m aware who teach creation are also very conscious that evolution must be taught alongside. They do this for various reasons. One is the benefit of comparing conflicting theories, which helps to teach kids how to think rather than just what to think.

Their attitude often is that they want their kids to know all there is to know about evolution. As they say, evolution is a bit like Marxism, the more you know about it, the less likely you are to believe it.

Sir Vivor,
Thanks for the dictionary definitions of science and theology. I’m not sure why you’ve included them, but I can agree with them as useful definitions.

As for your questions:
Yes, the Bible teaches that the world was made in 6 days.

Yes, humans were distinctly created. I can’t see any link to animals in the sense of their creation in Scripture other than that they were all created about the same time. There are also many distinctions that could also be made between humans and animals from everyday observation: clothing, language, worship, etc.

I wouldn’t necessarily agree with your first or fourth statements. These are trickier as they are heavily dependant on word definitions.

For the first statement, no. Whenever you read anything, you are entering a process of interpretation. Scripture should be interpreted along common sense rules of exegesis. The main questions usually asked by scholars are: what was the intention of the author, and what did the passage mean to the original recipients of the writing? Also, Scripture needs to be interpreted by other Scripture. In particular, in this case, we could ask what Jesus’ understanding of Genesis was. Jesus and all Bible writers interpreted people and events within Genesis as straight forward historical accounts. This is also what Hebrew language scholars see the authors attempting to describe. They used a style appropriate for Jewish history. If they were trying to be poetic, they would have used different style and mechanisms well available to them.

Finally, the word ‘evolve’ is loaded with many different meanings and connotations. If by ‘evolve’ you mean ‘change over time’, then of course, this will always be true as living things do change over time. For example, I am shorter and have less hair on my head than my dad. If evolution means ‘from goo to you via the zoo’, then no, I don’t accept that as being true.

I hope that helps makes things clearer.

Dan,

To describe creationism as a theory is incorrect. It is a belief.

To say that religious schools teach both concepts to compare competing theories is rubbish.

There are two main reasons why they even mention evolution

1) To avoid their students failing science through total ignorance
2) To rubbish evolution by pointing at gaps in the fossil records and claiming that this is proof that evolution has failed.

There is a good reason why the US has banned the teaching of such mythology in class.

Dear AdamD,
Our controversy is not about Darwin or evolution, but about language, the use of terms “child abuse” or “indoctrination”. As for “child abuse” try to tell a father whose education methods you did not like that he was guilty of “child abuse”, and see the reaction.

I agree that there is a big difference between ‘indoctrination’ and ‘religious education’ as there is a difference between a bad and a good education into anything, say, mathematics: the difference between the child receiving just a superficial knowledge of data, rules, theories and facts, and when he/she receives also a deeper (critical if you like) understanding of these data, rules, theories and facts.

However I was not so much concerned with RE at school. That is a different problem, not at all easy, also because of the rights of the child‘s parents.

What I was concerned about were instruction (OK, I accept you do not want the state to interfere) on how Christian parents should or should not educate their children. For instance, what you call “coercion methods used by some parents to ensure their children uncritically believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible“ are the only methods you can instruct a very young child about not only religion, but anything. How would you explain a five-year old what “literal interpretation means” when you read him/her stories based on the bible? How do you explain to him/her that e.g. “hell” stands as a symbol of absolute punishment, and had its justification and served its social purpose in the prescientific age? How can a child at such an age believe anything critically? The parent - whether fundamentalist or “enlightened” - can talk to him/her about mathematics, evolution, political or religious beliefs etc. only using language he/she can understand.

The child at such an age will accept his/her parent’s world view uncritically - irrespective of whether that parent was a fundamentalist or not - and use it as a point of departure when forming his/her own world view in later years. (ctd)

(ctd) It is only then that school, mainly high school, comes into play. At this stage the parent might want to not only complement but also correct the general world view that is offered - consciously or unconsciously - by the school. But under normal circumstances the parent‘s influence could not prevail over the school’s, unless the young person can see his/her parent as more open minded, “critical”, than what was offered at school, e.g in matters of science and religion (as e.g. in my case when my father could easily prevail over my narrow minded marx-leninist teachers). In either case I do not see a space for something that could rightly be called parental indoctrination (I did not consider the possibility of “home schooling”).

If you cannot accept my definition of creationism (and evolutionism), and do not offer an alternative, there is nothing we can base our discussion on. Also, I never said you could indoctrinate somebody into atheism. I agree it is as impossible as to indoctrinate somebody into having a very poor understanding of mathematics. If you read my post more carefully you will see that I spoke of “education into AN (not “the“) atheist world view“. There is a variety of respectable (tolerant) and less respectable world views that are compatible with - or even based on - atheism (however you define it) as there is a variety of respectable and less respectable world views that are compatible with theism, e.g. with Christianity.

>> ‘hell’ ... is psychological abuse and the only reason it isn’t outlawed is because religion holds an untouchable status in societies.<<
Could you explain how you would outlaw the mentioning of “hell” even if religion did not hold “an untouchable status” in society? Anyhow, what do you mean by “untouchable status”: did anybody force you to be religious, accept the moral authority of a Church or not to verbally attack the Pope or this or that Archbishop? I think emotive language, be it “child abuse”, “indoctrination” or “untouchable status“ does not help us to understand each other.

So, Dan, you accept the literal truth of the Bible, at least some of the time, and are willing to accept exegesis of texts such as the three chapters of the book of Jonah.

Chapter 2 of Jonah is hard for me to accept as factual history. I assume you do not believe that Jonah was literally swallowed by a fish, then vomited up on dry land three days and three nights later.

The difficulty for me, in accepting both exegesis and literal truth, depending on which is best, is that the exegesis depends on fallible scholars for its authority.

So depending on them for authoritative statements about evolution becomes a matter of accepting their word rather than depending on the consilience of inductions, mentioned by the author of the article that got this discussion going.

This body of coherent evidence has been extensively developed by scientific research and experimentation over the past 150 years.

In the past 30 years or so, the tree of life has been drawn using a research tool known as cladistics. Google "tree of life" and cladistics, using Google Images, an you will find a wealth of diagrams showing how we are all related, from goo through zoo to primates such as ourselves and the other great apes.

I would rather be part of an evolving, ongoing creation than an isolated species, with no kinship to the rest of the organic world. I prefer a family history going back more than 2 billion years, rather than a history that some dead preacher, from the 17th century, says began about 4000 years ago.

Don't get me wrong. I believe humans are unique, in positive ways. We are capable of sympathy, empathy, self-consciousness, novel and complex speech and tool-making, and are aware of our life and our mortality.

As for the definitions, I added them so as to make clear the difference between creation science, where the word science is used in the general sense, and experimental science, where the words imply the outcomes of activities carefully crafted to produce repeatable outcomes which address particular questions.

And what difference does it make how I spell it? Smile.

Just joking Dan, and I with-draw the clam. I do believe that god is in the mind and that's fine, i believe in things as well, and for some strange reason, I look up to the sky and talk to my self! and I have know idea why i do it.
I guess in all humans, we just needed a buddy to talk to.

Cause when you talk to your self, who are you talking to?

Lets just call it god or jesus and leave things just the way they were intened to.

EVO

Experimental evolution is a pressing policy issue.

Dan, instead of denying evolution, you and your fellows of similar faith need to be looking at how evolutionary science and technology is surging ahead, like the tide before King Canute.

I have included a link to an experiment that is similar in principle to one I did with fruit flies, at university, in introductory genetics, back in 1969: subject an organism to selective pressure over several generations, and note the change in gene frequency and/or phenotype (appearance or other observable trait) over the generations.

In this case, the organism is a virus, the trait is infectivity and the implications are for production-scale culturing of human disease virus. The article is from the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Acadamy of Science, a US periodical that publishes world-class experimental results.


http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/02/20/0813365106.abstract?etoc

Excoffona, K. et al (2009) Directed evolution of adeno-associated virus to an infectious respiratory virus

[conclusion]
"In summary, we speculate that ... viruses can evolve under artificial selective pressure to be significantly more infectious. This finding has strong relevance for the engineering of novel virus-based gene therapeutics.
[and]
This general approach thus enables the development of "designer" gene delivery vectors under clinically desirable selective pressures ...[that] ... will continue to yield exciting new candidates for human gene therapy."

Dan, I assume you belong to a particular sect. What is the position of your church on genetic engineering of viral, bacterial and higher organisms? In this case, the implications of a potential to develop highly infectious and fatal germ warfare agents ought to be taken into consideration.

"As they say, evolution is a bit like Marxism, the more you know about it, the less likely you are to believe it."

How much do we know about creationism Dan?

We know it was unwitnessed, described by a man living thousands of years ago, passed from generation to generation, eventually written down and subequently included in what came to be the bible.

What else?

George,

When you said

" I like the definition where evolutionism is an ideology masquerading as pseudo-religion based on the scientific theory of evolution. Symmetrically I would call creationism an ideology masquerading as pseudo-science based on belief in an “intelligent designer”, whatever that means. So one can accept evolution without accepting evolutionism, and e.g. the Christian model of Divinity without accepting creationism: the two acceptances are compatible. In this sense creationists are “evolution-deniers”.

The pseudo religious evolutionism that you are referring to is the 19th century movement that thought everything incl organisms, society, culture etc were constantly improving themselves through evolution.

Very few people who believe that man evolved fall into that category, rather they understand it to be a natural phenomenon.

Similarily I believe that gravity draws matter together, but I would hesitate to call gravitationalism a pseudo religion.

Dan,

I would compare religion to Marxism. The more you know, the less likely you are to believe it.

Creationist slogan - Ignorance is bliss.

Dear Michael,

No, this forum is not a place formal debate but in regards to settling the debate, that was done long ago. In fact it has already been done here because the facts support the “Pro-evolution” side of the argument. Nature and scientific reasoning are the adjudicators.

Your claim that home schooling by fundamentalists is done to teach both sides goes against my observations and is a flawed argument. Why would a parent go to all the effort of home schooling their child to teach creationism when they could send them to a school and still do that at home?

Aside from that, creationists know very little about evolution (as both yourself and runner have shown in this thread) and what little they do know, are misconceptions. They would hardly be ideal teachers of evolution.

Another point: Teaching evolution only is not telling a child what to think. But teaching creationism (an unfounded belief) alongside evolution is misleading a child and causing unnecessary confusion.

Dear George,

I’ve already mentioned some coercion methods used such as home schooling and having children repeat nonsense statements out loud. Yes, I know the method of repeating something our loud is done for standard academic education but it’s not done at schools in an attempt to prevent children from accepting facts.

(Cont’d)

Then there’s the continuous thought in the back of the child’s head that not believing in creationism could result in an angry god because of the literal interpretation they’ve been taught (Although this would be a less direct method).

Of course a child uncritically believes what their parents tell them. This is a build-in survival mechanism; a by-product of evolution that is (ironically) abused by fundamentalists. The problem is when the uncritical acceptance is carried through to adulthood because the child was taught that they shouldn’t question religion.

I realise you didn’t say that it was possible to indoctrinate into atheism. I just thought the comparison was a bit silly because atheism doesn’t have a doctrine like the others do.

I entirely agree with your definition of creationism. Shadow Minister has said very well why I have a problem with the term “evolutionism”. It’s an invalid term as far as I’m concerned. I can think of no one - not even someone like Richard Dawkins - who believes in or practices “evolutionism” as you have described.

I admit that my third last paragraph was not as clear as it should have been. Essentially what I was saying, was that had it not been for the place that religion has established itself in society, and the undeserved respect that it has (and thus our immunity to abhorrent religious teachings such as telling a child that they potentially face an eternity of hell if they stray), I see no reason why telling a child such a thing would legally be considered psychological abuse, as it has been know to cause anxiety problems and is an abhorrent thing to do.

Religion is not completely “untouchable”, but as I just said, it has itself an undeserved respect. We’re not really supposed to question someone’s faith simply because it is their ‘faith’. On top of all that, churches remain tax free for absolutely no good reason at all.

You may accept that the concept of ‘hell’ is an outdated bit of mythology, but you are in a very small minority there.

AdamD (among others) apparently believes that if you do not believe in evolution, you are a fool.
Runner (among others) apparently believes that if you do not believe in creationism, you will burn (literally, BURN) in hell.
FOREVER.
And this will be the act of a benevolent, loving God.
Personally, I'm quite proud that Australia does not (even) have the death penalty.
The Christian God is not a Christian.

AdamD,
I liked my definitions of evolutionism and creationism because they emphasized where both these extremes - examples of both abound on this forum - were wrong. You do not like, them, OK. What you referred to as evolutionism is not what I had in mind, so let us skip the word at all. Similarly creationism, and just keep the two extremes - those who use their belief in God to oppose the scientific theory of evolution and those who use the scientific theory of revolution to oppose the possibility of a religious belief in a Creator God - unnamed, as awkward as it is to refer to positions that do not have simple names.

I agree that Dawkins would not like to be called an evolutionist - your definition or mine - the same as the Pope would not like to be called a creationist. John Paul II allegedly wanted to use the Big Bang as an explanation of how the world was created, until cosmologists persuaded him that it would not work. Richard Dawkins uses neo-darwinism as an explanation why the world could not have been created, but nobody seems to have explained it to him that it does not work. So Dawkins comes closer to what I called an “evolutionist“ than JPII to what could have been called a “big-bangist”.

I am not sure what experience you had with religious education of children at home: it sound like something from the far away past, at least as far as the mainstream denominations are concerned. Looking at the Sunday church attendance (in Australia or Europe) it does not seem to me that many young people had been brought up “not to question religion“. It would rather suggest that too many have been told (by school, by the media) not to question the incompatibility of religious orientation (faith) - or even memebership of a Church - with a scientific outlook.

The ATO would not provide tax exemptions for religious organisations unless it though it beneficial to all Australians. However, that is a different bone of contention.

George wrote: "The ATO would not provide tax exemptions for religious organisations unless it though it beneficial to all Australians."

Dear George,

I think you have an unreasoning faith in the ATO.

The Tax free status of the church dates back to the time before church and state were separated.

It is time to dispose of this anachronism.

George,

What on earth is neo Darwinism?

Also while evolutionism as defined only applies to a tiny fraction of those that believe in evolution (perhaps < 1% as I have never met one) and is rejected by most of us that simply believe that evolution is a sound scientific theory, Creationism has a vast and malignant following that are not content to keep their beliefs to themselves but feel obligated to impose it on others.

Dear George,

Yes, I do like your definition of creationism. I was, at first, a little surprised to see you use a term like “Evolutionism” (and now “Neo-Darwinism”), because they are terms that are now predominantly used by creationists in a desperate attempt to degrade evolution and those who accept it. You’re more intelligent than that.

In regards to Dawkins, I actually said that I don’t see even him fitting your definition of “Evolutionism”. Like Shadow Minister, I do not know of anyone who fits that description. Not on this forum; not anywhere.

Yes, there are extremes on both sides. But it sounds as though you not only believe that there is an equal amount of extremists on both sides, but that the extremism on the atheist side (nowadays - not including Marxism) is actually comparable to the religious extremists. All I can say is that I strongly disagree. Atheism alone simply does not have the power to delude that religion has (this alone should ring alarm bells to any intelligent person like yourself), and we can see this on these forums.

I have to agree with david f and Shadow Minister too on the taxation issue. But you are right, that is a different bone of contention that I do not wish to go into here.

As for my upbringing, you are way off the mark I’m afraid. I attended a boringly average and traditional protestant church and my parents never forced their beliefs on to me. They were very loving and accepting of whatever I believed. They did, however, tell me that I shouldn’t question god’s existence. It made sense to me at the time, but I soon grew up and realised why I wasn’t supposed to question god’s existence.

(Cont’d)

On a final note, I’d just like to say that I am using harsh terms here in an attempt to raise an awareness of something that I believe is quite a tragedy (which is why the word “emotive” is annoying me). Especially when I see a child around the age of 10 naively mocking evolution simply because they trust what their parents tell them. I feel you have down-played my claims party because of a misunderstanding of what I saying at first saying and I take most of the responsibility for this as I have been less-than-clear at times.

If it makes you (and others) happy, I will take back what I said about ‘child abuse’ and leave it at this: Fundamentalists are abusers - abusers of the trust that their children have in every word they say.

Let me make this clear: I do not wish to see religion banned, nor do I want to see the imprisonment or lynching of those who teach their children nonsense. All I would be happy to see is that this behaviour be scorned upon by society.

But why is it not scorned upon? Is it because we are so willing to appear accepting (see Grim’s post that appears to suggest that others who think like me may one day want the death penalty for indoctrination) of others’ beliefs that we completely forget who’s being done a raw deal in all this? Why do we turn a blind eye to indoctrination just because it’s someone’s faith? Why does one’s faith mean that we can’t shake our heads at such behaviour? If I was to start my own religion that allowed me to teach my children wacky ideas, why would people then feel able to openly shake their heads at me? Have we become immune to this nonsense because we’ve seen it happen for thousands of years? All I argue is that enough is enough.

Might I add too though, George, (and as I said to Waterboy) I think that if all Theists were like you, religion would not be a problem.

Bennie,
You ask how much do we know about creationism? That is up to the individual. You could get a book written by a respected creationist and find out what it’s really about. Or you could base your opinions on misinformation from their detractors. It’s up to you.

Adam,
I don’t know what prompts you to say the things you do about Christian education. Have you ever set foot in a school that discussed the issue of evolution and creation openly with its students? Have you ever spoken with a school teacher who saw the value in such discussion? I have a state school teacher friend who raised the issue with his biology class. He did so because he didn’t want his kids to be ignorant of how to deal with controversy.

Your comments are full of misapprehension. For instance, many parents are choosing home schooling not because of the issue of creation or any other single issue. They simply believe it is a path to a better education. In fact, the public school system is a fairly recent invention. How do you think people were educated in most past eras? Do you think Blaise Pascal or Isaac Newton learned to read at their local state school? Did it hurt them?

Shadow Minister,
You object to creation being called a theory. Like a rose with another name, let’s call it something else. Creation is an idea, a concept, a metaphysical model, that which stands in opposition to evolution. It is also a public issue open to discussion. There are some out there who can’t handle that it’s being discussed quite a lot.

As for evolutionists needing the US court system to defend their ‘theory’, this says a lot about the US educational and legal systems. It also says a lot about the fragility of the Darwinian view. A truly robust theory should be able to withstand public scrutiny on its own merit. More evidence of Darwin’s approaching ‘use-by’ date.

Sir Vivor,
I do kinda belong to a sect. Called the Christian faith, it branched out from Judaism about 2000 years ago. It follows the teachings of Jesus and his apostles as described in the Old and New Testaments. I am unaware of the official position of our church on genetic engineering, but I’ll give it a stab.

I’ll guess the church thinks genetic engineering, applying human ingenuity to modify genetic outcomes, as not much different to other forms of selective breeding practices occurring over thousands of years. God gave mankind brains and a mandate to responsibly and justly manage the world.

You accuse us of “denying evolution”. That is unfortunate as I don’t want to be seen as inhibiting progress or denying anything clearly demonstrable. Perhaps I should try and explain what we’re about. The Christian church is about getting the foundations right so that progress can be achieved. In the scientific domain, that means getting the basis right for correct thinking.

Here we have achieved much. You would note how the scientific method and modern science generally was born in the Christian West, within those countries and centuries strongly influenced by Biblical teaching. If in doubt, take a quick look at the influences upon the names mentioned in this thread so far: Isaac Newton considered himself a theologian, spending more time, paper, and ink on his theological writings than on his physics. The Wright brothers were sons of a bishop. Mendel was a Catholic monk.

The problem with Darwin’s thinking was that he ascribed creative tendencies to undirected matter. That is, matter, given enough time, under its own steam, will organise itself into various life forms. This isn’t only counter-intuitive but it has no foundation. It is a thinking hazard.

We don’t gain anything technologically by thinking this way. Do aircraft engineers build anything by allowing aluminium sheets and turbine engines to just do what comes naturally over millions of years? We could say similar things about your genetic engineering. The crucial ingredients were adaptive functions already present and intelligent direction. And still nothing new was created.

Shadow Minister,
>>What on earth is neo-Darwinism?<<
“Encyclopaedia Britannica uses this term to refer to current evolutionary theory. This term is also used in the scientific literature, ... referring to "neo-Darwinism as practised today" and some figures in the study of evolution like Richard Dawkins...” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Darwinism). In my copy of “The Blind Watchmaker” it is defined on page 115.

>>Creationism has a vast and malignant following that are not content to keep their beliefs to themselves but feel obligated to impose it on others.<<
I am not sure what is a “malignant following“ but yes, there are people who want to convince you they are right, for instance by writing a book about the “delusions” of those who see the world and life differently. I can accept that some people find Dawkins convincing, without claiming that he wrote the book because he “felt obligated to impose“ his ideas and explanations (his own delusions about what educated theists believe?) on others. Those who find Dawkins‘ arguments “imposing” simply do not have to read his book, the same as we do not have to read, or even react to, posts here that we feel are “imposing“ themselves on us.

Dear AdamD,
Since I agree that my definitions emphasized too much the extreme positions, let me say it this way: BOTH those who (mis)use their belief in God to oppose the scientific theory of evolution, AND those who (mis)use the scientific theory of revolution as an argument against the existence of a Creator God, can sometimes try to forcibly impose on us (see above) their metaphysical presuppositions (about the existence or non-existence of a reality beyond the one that science can study and describe).

Both these presuppositions are compatible with established scientific theories like evolution, big bang, relativity theory, quantum physics etc. Where I disagree with both Dawkins and religious fundamentalists is their claim that theism is incompatible with any of these scientific theories, although Dawkins and religious fundamentalists each draw different conclusions from this conviction. (ctd)

(ctd) I agree that one cannot compare the two extremes. However, if a theist can accept that attacking evolution on the basis of a priori religious positions is annoying, an atheist should accept that attacking theism using evolution theory is also annoying. Because the vast majority of educated contemporary e.g. Christians see in evolution the “technology” - or at least that part of it that is comprehensible to us - of “the act of Creation”, a concept that is outside the confines of science.

I agree that you can fanatically defend a belief but not fanatically be indifferent to it. We had fanatical Communists and fanatical Anticommunists but not those who fanatically could not care less. So we have theist zealots and antitheist (but not atheist) zealots.

Perhaps religion does have “the power to delude“ that atheism lacks, so maybe therefore those who need to attack ALL theists use “evolution” as an appropriate tool to justify themselves, thus using a scientific theory as an ideology. I would not speculate about the numbers of these compared to those experiencing the need to attack evolution.

When I referred to your experience with religious education of children at home, I did not mean your personal experience but that of a professional, e.g. educationalist, child psychologist or teacher. Nevertheless, thank you for the info about your upbringing. I myself do not remember having been told explicitly not to question God’s existence but I remember having been told not to engage in many activities (e.g. trying to take apart an electric appliance while under power) until I was sure I knew how to do it; or to questions things I have been taught about (in science or religion) until I developed a critical enough mind. Religion, like a gun or a knife, is not the problem. It becomes a poblem when it ends up in the wrong hands.

Let me return the compliment by saying that I have also learned from you how an atheist can see the world, and how I have to be more careful when formulating my own convictions.

Dear George,

I agree with you. I don't think there is a God. However, if God exists God could have used evolution and all the scientific principles that humans have discovered to effect his purposes.

However, I am not at odds with a religious believer who believes in things I can neither prove nor disprove but don't believe in as long as that person doesn't demand that I believe in those things and denies my humanity because I don't believe in what he or she believes in.

I know many religious Christians who do not deny the discoveries of science. One was a minister who became a senator in the Australian parliament. I consulted to him while he served in the senate, and it was a good experience for us both.

I visited a mosque in the Brisbane West End, and the imam invited me to observe the service and participate in the later discussion. After the service the men (the male services are separate from the female services) split into groups of about 12 and discussed part of the Koran. They discussed a sura where the Prophet advocated education. A couple of the men had read Rushdie's "Satanic Verses" and didn't like the book. However, all in the group were against censorship, for free speech and against any penalty for those like Rushdie who wrote material they disapproved of.

I became friendly with a Muslim in the Netherlands who told me that at his mosque after the services the congregation would be asked if anyone had any problems of any nature. It was a small group so everyone could give an individual answer. Those who said yes were questioned as to the nature of the problem. Discussion would follow in which some of the participants could offer advice or assistance. It sounded done in a caring way.

We must not put all who do not believe as we do as people we can not deal with, be friends with and care for.

AdamD,
I fear you may have missed my point. I was trying to make the comparison that, whereas Atheists such as yourself (and I) would merely think anyone not accepting evolution was foolish (or ignorant), some creationists think that anyone who does not agree with them should burn in hell.
I consider that to be a fairly stark comparison.
The other comparison of course, was the difference between Australian culture -which I'm sure no one would suggest is perfect- which does not even allow for the death penalty, and a God which considers eternal pain and suffering to be a perfectly acceptable punishment to several crimes we would consider to be fairly trivial.
This is what I do not understand. Why would anyone want to worship a god whose moral standards are lower than their own?
As I said, the Christian God is clearly not a Christian.

re: "The problem with Darwin’s thinking was that he ascribed creative tendencies to undirected matter"

Dan, I say Darwin did no such thing. If you can contradict me on this, then I suggest you quote chapter and paragraph of Darwin's texts, supporting your assumption.

One does not have to attribute "creative tendencies" to matter. That is like attributing "selfishness" to genes, as Professor Dawkins does. Matter is not creative, genes are not selfish, willows do not weep, pines aren't lonesome. This lapse between the literal and figurative world encourages much wooly thinking and many fatal mis-steps in discussion.

The problem of self-organisation of molecules into progressively complex hierarchies, in the face of thermodynamic constraints, is real but no more proof against the molecular origin of life than Newtonian physics is proof against the theory of relativity.

Thermodynamic constraints are vastly different from thermodynamic impossibility.

I can't offer you any thermodynamic mechanism of molecular transition from non-living atoms, through self-replicating molecules, to simple cells showing the necessary and sufficient attributes of organically evolving life. That does not preclude the existence and continuing operation of such a mechanism, or render it permanently incomprehensible to humans. Such a possibility is no more mysterious than the spirituality associated with human dieties, including the God of Abraham.

As for your comment that
"The Christian church is about getting the foundations right so that progress can be achieved. In the scientific domain, that means getting the basis right for correct thinking."

I would suggest that the crux of Christian thought and action is to be found in the story of the Good Samaritan, which is nothing to do with science or technology, and independent of any creation story, literal or otherwise.

Grim,
You say that other people besides Runner have claimed that not believing in creationism can send you to hell.

I didn’t notice anyone. Were you referring to someone on this thread or another?

Sur Vivor,
Since you gave your opinion on what is the essence of Christian teaching, I’ll give my opinion as well. When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus responded: love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. With the second most important being: love your neighbour as yourself. So what you said about the Samaritan was pretty spot on.

The bit about loving God with all your mind (from the first of those two commandments) is the bit creationists are about. They want to integrate all thinking; science, theology, and all other domains, into a cohesive unit. They don’t think it is acceptable to rip out certain key chapters from the Bible so as to side with a majority position.

Unfortunately for those who might not want to admit it, the Bible makes many claims about the nature of the world and reality in general other than those which concern moral conduct. If God doesn’t speak truth about the nature of reality, than why listen to him when he speaks of moral propriety?

To Sur Vivor, Davidf, and quite a few others,
I do think it is interesting that an article which focussed on Darwin, and tried hard to ignore religion, has inspired a discussion focussed on religion. However, where Darwin is concerned, I suppose if the hats fits, wear it.

There seems to be a bit of controversy around your priority of commandments, Dan

see:
http://bible.cc/luke/10-27.htm
which cites Luke 10:27 of the King James version as:

And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.

and also Matthew 22:37 as:
"Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind."

I prefer Luke's story, as it places equal compulsion on worldly and spiritual obligation to both God and one's fellow man.

Matthew's story allows the unfortunate telling that suits the blindly righteous the world over. So long as the tellers have themselves convinced that they are acting on Matthew's version of this commandment, they can crusade away in every and any religion-based (or other) war.

When spirituality justifies murder, its practice and outcome is no better than applied social Darwinism such as the eugenics of the Nazis.

So if the neighbours aren't following Matthew's version of Jesus' greatest commandment, then it's OK to sort them out - by the sword (in the good old days of proper medieval crusades), by artillery, by bayonet, by Zyklon-B, by car-bomb, by smart bomb, by not-so-smart nuclear device, by colonisation, by anthrax powder by post, by white phosphorus incindiary, by genetically engineered virus and so on.

For ordinary people with grudges or grief, or sick people with character disorders or leaders with psychopathic personalities, Matthew may provide an excuse to walk over, wound or murder "thy neighbour", along with masses of others.

That may be OK for you, Dan, but it is not OK for me. I prefer Luke's version.

As for the original article ignoring religion, I am neither surprised nor offended. The article is about Darwinism as the theory of organic evolution, not about whether Darwin's theory is a better creation story than that told in Genesis.

Me Myself and I, that's three dimensional thinking. Today's world of thinking, the human language can not compete with the numbers that do not fail.
Numbers dictate everything in our universe so what level you are on dictates evolution. Numbers cannot lie, but words can as you all know hence the arguments that are here online.
This is a multidimensional universe with smallness as its basis the infinity is yet what my mind is to discover. Up down left or right, god or evil, well yawn.
De-evolution concepts dictates what lives and what dies, hence 101.
So in layman terms you still all know what I am going to say.
Without a doubt technology plus humans = De-evolution, hence the words that are in fact! aren't we the poor cousins.
So while technology tones us down from running from the lion now the lion sees us as a beanbag hence the reverse. A smaller and smarter world would keep us up with evolution then the living programs would be of an absolute consistency.



EVO

Jade! from cootamundra! Your job! Out-standing!

SMB.

EVO

"Bennie,
You ask how much do we know about creationism? That is up to the individual. You could get a book written by a respected creationist and find out what it’s really about. Or you could base your opinions on misinformation from their detractors. It’s up to you."

That's a total cop-out Dan. Your 'misinformation' turns out to be millions of pages of collaborative text backed up by scientific enquiry and research. Perhaps you're like runner and think science is a 'paradigm'.

Again, a poor answer. Grow a spine and tell me what you yourself know about it.

Dan,

Your comment "As for evolutionists needing the US court system to defend their ‘theory’, this says a lot about the US educational and legal systems. It also says a lot about the fragility of the Darwinian view. A truly robust theory should be able to withstand public scrutiny on its own merit."

Is bluster at best, This is an example of creation not standing up to public scrutiny. The court cases were in reaction to ridiculous laws being promulgated to force public schools to teach creation as a science.

These laws along with other stupid or prejudical laws such segregation when tested against reason in the US court system failed miserably.

As for science being born in the Christian West the Arabs and ancient Greeks laid most of the foundations centuries ago, and I suppose the persecution of Gallileo was to "get the foundations right?"

Maybe you could point out a book by a creationist that is respected by his scientific peers and not only fellow creationists.

George,

The above are prime examples of the malignant nature of the christian fundementalists, where there are clear attempts to control how people think.

Dawkins is entitled to free speech where you can take it or leave it. The creationists are trying to force their mythology to be taught as science in public schools.

Sir Vivor,
There is no controversy with regard to those two passages. The main problem was that you didn’t read to the end of the Matthew paragraph. If you had, you would have seen that the Matthew passage and the Luke passage are essentially the same in content.

As for you bizarre interpretation, that is up to you. Those passages make no reference to violence. To read any violence into them requires much imagination on your part.

You also seem to have skipped over the main point in my last post, so I’ll repeat it. I was not critiquing the article. I asked why an article void of religious content has inspired a religious discussion. Why is that unless Darwin truly is filling a religious need and touching that part of our core being? As you suggest, the question does turns into who has the better creation story.

You defend Darwin, saying he didn’t ascribe creative tendencies to undirected matter. So when he wrote about how the eye came about from a light sensitive spot or nerve (Origin, 1859), did he say that the molecules around the eye were being directed by intelligence or a purposeful force? I think not. Rather, the functional eye was the result of numerous, successive, slight modifications. Did the process create something new that wasn’t there before? Yes, apparently it created something as complex as an eye. So I think we’ll have to conclude that undirected matter has been afforded creative tendencies.

That the process is rather mysterious is not surprising considering how ignorant Darwin was of the biochemical complexities involved in vision. In your post you say the process is no more mysterious than the God of Abraham. But is it any less mysterious?

You admit that you can’t offer any thermodynamic mechanism of molecular transition that describes the process. Neither could Darwin. So do we rest in the faith that another scientist will one day in the future uncover something? Or do we admit the possibility that Darwin’s reign might be approaching its end?

As I made clear, I know of no currently accepted thermodynamic mechanism to explain molecular evolution into self-replicating molecules. The question is hotly pursued. I am pessimistic about my fellow humans finding an answer and a method.

My reservations stem from my awareness of the consequences of technology in the service of both commercial and charitable organisations. Among the wonders of science and technology that get promoted and often subsidised by taxpaying mugs like myself are Atomic energy, genetic engineering, pesticides, chemical and biological weapons, all of them fruits of advanced technology.

Evolution science offers us the promise of an explanation mark after Einstein's observation that "The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."

Since 1945, life has grown more complicated in this regard, and related lapses in faith are the cause of growing struggle in the hearts of many people.

As I suggested in an earlier post, to deny the strength of the theory of organic evolution, and its current and developing application in a number of commercial technologies is to seriously put your head in some serious sand.

You are certainly welcome to your interpretation and accepted exegesis of the King James Bible. I honor your right to read it as you choose.

Likewise, I am happy for you to have the last word on our exchange of views.

In my previous post, I overlooked my substitution of the word exclamation with the word explanation. The lines should have read:

"Evolution science offers us the promise of an exclamation mark after Einstein's observation that "The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe."

Sir Vivor wrote:

As I made clear, I know of no currently accepted thermodynamic mechanism to explain molecular evolution into self-replicating molecules.

Dear Sir Vivor,

Stuart Alan A. Kauffman (28 September 1939) is an American theoretical biologist and complex systems researcher concerning the origin of life on Earth. He is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection, as well as for proposing the first models of Boolean networks.

Kauffman rose to prominence through his association with the Santa Fe Institute (a non-profit research institute dedicated to the study of complex systems), where he was faculty in residence from 1986 to 1997, and through his work on models in various areas of biology. These included autocatalytic sets in origin of life research, gene regulatory networks in developmental biology, and fitness landscapes in evolutionary biology.
Kauffman is best known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems and organisms might result as much from self-organization and far-from-equilibrium dynamics as from Darwinian natural selection.

Kauffman has written several books and articles. Books, a selection:
1993, Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution, Oxford University Press, Technical monograph.
1995, At Home in the Universe. Oxford University Press.
2000, Investigations. Oxford University Press.
2008, Reinventing the Sacred: A New View of Science, Reason, and Religion. Basic Books - ISBN 0465003001 -&#8232;(Video Introduction)
Articles, a selection:
1969, "Metabolic stability and epigenesis in randomly constructed genetic nets," in: Journal of Theoretical Biology, 22:437-467, 1969.
1991, "Antichaos and Adaptation," in: Scientific American, August 1991.
2004, "Prolegomenon to a General Biology", in William A. Dembski, Michael Ruse, eds., Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA, Cambridge University Press.
2004, "Autonomous Agents", in John D. Barrow, P.C.W. Davies, and C.L. Harper Jr., eds., Science and Ultimate Reality: Quantum Theory, Cosmology, and Complexity, Cambridge University Press

The fundamental (sorry) problem with the creationist/intelligent design view is its narrowness, neatly personified in Dan S de Merengue.

Every objection to evolution theory carries as its seed the same essential ingredient: if it cannot be easily and completely explained, then God must have done it. This is, at its base, the laziest form of thinking.

He also asks:

>>why an article void of religious content has inspired a religious discussion. Why is that unless Darwin truly is filling a religious need and touching that part of our core being?<<

The reason is simply that Darwin's views, from the time they were published in the middle of the nineteenth century, threatened the cosy self-fulfilling theories of traditional theism - that everything was God's direct creation, fulfilling some kind of godly purpose. This has not altered through the ages, with each successive generation of theists fighting an ever-less-convincing rearguard action.

"Darwinism" isn't really about evolution theory, it is about the freedom to think outside the strictures imposed by religious thought. Galileo fought the same battle, but lost, simply because the church's emotional hold over the individual was still extremely strong at that time in history.

The hollowness of the Dan S de Merengue school of thought is clearest when he makes this type of challenge:

>>So do we rest in the faith that another scientist will one day in the future uncover something? Or do we admit the possibility that Darwin’s reign might be approaching its end?<<

We can, of course, do both, without in any way dishonouring the achievements of Darwin, or falling into the "God musta dun it" form of cop-out thinking.

People who continue to question the completeness of existing theories will continually uncover something new. No-one, including the man himself, has ever suggested that Darwin found the complete answer to life, the universe and everything.

He simply made a massive contribution to science, and at the same time underlined the value of keeping an open mind. If that continues to upset the blinkered theist, so be it.

Dan,

Your comment "You admit that you can’t offer any thermodynamic mechanism of molecular transition."

Is a prime example of the pseudo science claptrap that the creationists spout. There is no "thermodynamic mechanism" There are merely complex chemical reactions that occur and have to meet the thermodynamic laws.

Billions of eyes come into being every day through these reactions and are subject to the same restrictions that the first pre-eyes and eyes were.

Another peachy example of pseudo scientific drivel "Rather, the functional eye was the result of numerous, successive, slight modifications. Did the process create something new that wasn’t there before? Yes, apparently it created something as complex as an eye. So I think we’ll have to conclude that undirected matter has been afforded creative tendencies." What absolute cr*p.

Miniscule improvements over time is also called evolution, and there is no requirement for matter to be afforded creative tendencies.

Bravo for showing us all how science and religion don't mix.

Shadow Minister wrote:

"Bravo for showing us all how science and religion don't mix."

The above was addressed to Dan de Merengue. I think it unfair to put Dan as representing all religion. One can be religious and not use the Bible as a scientific treatise as Dan does. I am an atheist. However, most religious people I know would not deny scientific discoveries on the basis that those discoveries contradict the Bible or other sacred books.

I need to clarify an item in my previous post.

The term "thermodynamic mechanism as used in chemisty/biochemistry" does not refer to an actual process but rather to the mathematical analysis done on the process. Because it is mathematical and involves number crunching, it is "mechanistic".

An equivalent example would the analysis of the movement of planets around the sun. A single planet's movement is simple and can be done by a high school student.

The addition of a second planet severely complicates the calculations, and by the time you get 8 planets incl larger asteroids, the process requires massive computational capability.
If you then for example throw in a couple of unknowns, such as a dark body, even the complex calculations would be erroneous.

Most papers written on Thermodynamic mechanistic analysis of chemical reactions are on very carefully controlled reactions (to limit the variables) where the process is very well understood, and even then the work involved takes teams weeks or months.

The process that Dan is alluding to has yet to be accurately defined, and as such saying that as a detailed mathematical analysis is not yet available, therefore it is not possible is ridiculous in the extreme.

Here is an interesting quote on the topic being discussed by a scientist, Dr. S. Lovtrup, professor of Zoophysiology, University of Umea, Sweden. He says: "I suppose that nobody will deny that it is a great misfortune if an entire branch of science becomes addicted to a false theory. But this is what has happened in biology. I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science. When this happens many people will pose the question: How did this ever happen?"

His is not an isolated case. Here is what Dr. Vladimir L. Voeikov, Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry, Moscow State University and member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences has to say: "The ideology and philosophy of neo-Darwinism which is sold by its adepts as a scientific theoretical foundation of biology seriously hampers the development of science and hides from students the field’s real problems."

In yet another case Dr. David Berlinski, a mathematician and philosopher of science with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (CSC) says as follows: “Darwin’s theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought. It is large, almost completely useless, and the object of superstitious awe.”

Well, that's three scientists who think that Darwinism is not all it's cracked up to be. But there are many more. You can see the long list here:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660

A couple more quotes by scientists.

Dr. Russell Carlson, Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology at University of Georgia: "To limit teaching to only one idea is a disservice to students because it is unnecessarily restrictive, dishonest, and intellectually myopic."

Dr. Raul Leguizamon, M. D., Pathologist, and a professor of medicine at the Autonomous University of Guadalajara, Mexico: "I am absolutely convinced of the lack of true scientific evidence in favour of Darwinian dogma. Nobody in the biological sciences, medicine included, needs Darwinism at all. Darwinism is certainly needed, however, in order to pose as a philosophy, since it is primarily a worldview. And an awful one, as George Bernard Shaw used to say."

"People who continue to question the completeness of existing theories will continually uncover something new. No-one, including the man himself, has ever suggested that Darwin found the complete answer to life, the universe and everything."

Well said, Pericles. It might be added that people who continue to question the followers of rigid dogma can expect consequences in proportion the the power wielded by the dogmatists. Well, we don't really know what strings Dan de Merengue may be capable of pulling, but we can certainly see the consequences of pulling his chain, on this thread.

It's my opinion that folks like Dan can give the theistic faithful a bad name with the atheistic and agnostically minded folks who prefer their own fundamental (and equally, fundamentally irrational) premise.

-*-

Davidf, thank you for the citations. How many I will be able to access is yet to be determined.

You may be interested (if you don't already know of it) in the work of H.T Odum, who developed the "maximum power principle", which is an idea allowing evolution of natural systems within thermodynamic principles. It was originally suggested by A.J Lotka in the 1920's.

Easy enough to discover more by Googling ""maximum Power Principle". For example, see:
Hall, CAS. (2004). The continuing importance of maximum power. Ecol Modell 178 (107-113)
which can be downloaded from
http://www.emergysystems.org/pdfpubs.php
by email request.

Further, regarding HT Odum (not to be confused with his brother, the ecologist E.P. Odum), try Googling "Sholto Maud" Odum or retrieving
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/6224

A Eulogy of HT Odum can be found at:
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2635129/Bull-99-template-copy

It describes his contribution to current thought, and (of course) tells a bit about him as a person.

Shadow Minister,
I didn’t say science was born in the Christian West; I said modern science (that which we have come to know and love) was born in the Christian West. Certainly other societies such as the Arabs and the Greeks and others made advances, but history shows how it developed to fruition in the West.

The ‘Galileo affair’ was largely a personal spat between him and the pope, two headstrong personalities. Most church authorities were happy with Galileo’s contributions. And it’s a good example of getting the foundations right. Before long, the church learned that it needed to replace the erroneous and inhibiting Ptolemaic view of the solar system, and its general reliance on Greek philosophy.

Pericles,
You accuse me of ‘hollow’ thinking. Let’s view what I said.

Of the two statements:
1) we rest in the faith that another scientist will one day uncover something (to affirm the Darwinian process),
2) we admit the possibility that Darwin’s reign might be approaching its end,

I prefer the 2nd. But you say we can do both!

So we’re in agreement about the 2nd statement. After all, it only speaks about the possibility of something, which as you say, underlines the value of keeping an open mind. However, we could be the only two who dare to admit this possibility. Most others here want to take a hard line on Darwin, radically insisting the impossibility that any wise person could challenge or critique the Good Gentleman.

Now it’s strange that you agree with the 1st statement. Strange because usually we don’t want to think that faith has anything to do with science. Isn’t it about cold hard facts? Certainly not about things that are hoped to be discovered.

You accuse me of ‘lazy’ thinking.

“If something cannot be easily and completely explained, then God must have done it.”

The problem here, Pericles, is that isn’t the creationist position. Those are your words not mine. Show me where I said anything approaching that.

Don’t you think it is ‘lazy’ to try and forward an argument by putting words in someone else’s mouth?

Bennie,
Did you say that millions of pages have been written in opposition to the creationist view? Wow! I didn’t realist that creationism was making such an impact.

You ask me to tell you what I know about creationism. I’ve read a few books on creationism. Do you want me to tell you everything I know about it in 350 words?

I think it would be more profitable if you got yourself an introductory book and read something more substantial on the matter than relying on my humble opinion.

However, I’ll say a couple of points.

The design concept is not, as certain accusations put it, based on ignorance. We are capable of recognising design when we see it. All of the posts above we know did not come from mice running across the keyboard. From finding a four-wheel vehicle on the far side of the moon to finding a simple arrowhead in an archeological dig, we can and already do decipher evidence of structural design. The more we understand of biological systems, the more we see such evidence of design.

With regard to natural history, creationists argue that the present data fits more readily the model of catastrophism (described as flood geology) than the current uniformitarian model.

Here are a few titles that challenge Darwinist thinking that I think would be enlightening:
‘Darwin’s Black Box’ by Michael Behe
‘Refuting Evolution’ by Jonathan Sarfati
‘The Genesis Flood’ by Morris and Whitcomb
And for a very quick (30 or so page) summary of the evidence for creation I suggest:
‘Stones and Bones’ by Carl Weiland.

Sir Vivor,
You offer me the last word. I would prefer if you answered this question. You’ve spoken only generally about commercial technologies supposedly brought about by evolutionary thinking. Can you name any one of these gainful activities in particular that owes its development more to Darwinian thinking than to a design/creationist based approach?

Dan,

You say "The ‘Galileo affair’ was largely a personal spat between him and the pope, two headstrong personalities. Most church authorities were happy with Galileo’s contributions. And it’s a good example of getting the foundations right."

Copernicus himself did not have his theories published until after his death because of the certainty of persecution by the church.

Campanella, seven times underwent torture. And Kepler was several times imprisoned for "throwing Christ's kingdom into confusion with his silly fancies."

So this was not a personal spat between the church and one individual, but the continuation of the oppression of free though through the dark ages, and the only foundations that were "got right" was that the church lost all credibility in scientific matters (and largely as a moral guide) and has hereto been seen as an obstruction.

Even now when the church makes pronouncements on issues such as stem cell research it is largely ignored.

Even 200 years later the church refused to remove either Gallileo's work or Copernicus's work from their "index" of banned heretical publications.

If this is your idea of "Before long," Then I am sure that Before long many of the questions unanswered today will be answered. Probably even how to create life.

"Can you name any one of these gainful activities in particular that owes its development more to Darwinian thinking than to a design/creationist based approach?"

http://thinkevolution.net/archives/85

Dan,I have already answered your question. You appear to have dismissed it as an example of selective breeding.

See my post of Thursday, 26 February 2009 9:42:23 AM (spelling since corrected)

"The article is from the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, a US periodical that publishes world-class experimental results.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/02/20/0813365106.abstract?etoc

Excoffona, K. et al (2009) Directed evolution of adeno-associated virus to an infectious respiratory virus"

Dan, your response included
"I’ll guess the church thinks genetic engineering, applying human ingenuity to modify genetic outcomes, as not much different to other forms of selective breeding practices occurring over thousands of years. God gave mankind brains and a mandate to responsibly and justly manage the world."

The PNAS article is based on a consilience of science-based inductions and evidence about organic evolution, and ways and means the theory can be further investigated and applied. The authors apply the theory in a technology, at bench scale, which demonstrates its power.

If you choose to argue that the experiment describes selective breeding of virus rather than directed organic evolution, then that is your choice. You have also chosen not to directly address questions which I earlier put to you. Simple yesses and noes are so much more convincing. In my humble opinion, we have nothing more to say to one another about organic evolution.

"Dan, I have already answered your question. You appear to have dismissed it as an example of selective breeding."

You'll notice, however, that creationists like to identify the Nazi's selective breeding program as a product of evolutionary theory to spuriously claim that Darwin = genocide. Indeed, it's the central theme of the Intelligent Design propaganda film "Expelled".

They want a buck each way, it seems.

Dear Grim,

Thank you for the clarification. I apologise for the misunderstanding.

Dear Michael,

Thank you for your strawman argument about public schools being a recent invention. I’m not sure how that relates to what I was saying about fundamentalists choosing to home-school their children now, when public schools are available, in order to prevent their children learning certain facts. It is an act of futility to attempt to deny what the home-schoolers themselves admit to.

On another note, if this discussion is to proceed constructively, it would only be fair (and courteous) if you could acknowledge when you have been wrong instead of moving onto another point and leading everyone in circles.

I was going to list a few misrepresentations and fallacies as examples of what I meant earlier, but you’re doing a much better job than I could have done (and now with the help of Apis, we have yet another logical fallacy: The argument from authority).

Here are some of fallacies and misrepresentations think need retracting before we can proceed forth:

”Darwin was duly trumped by the discovery of genetics. So much that the Darwinist view had to be rearranged into what was newly dubbed Neo-Darwinism.

”Therefore the mechanism of heredity does not provide the capability to produce new design features. Variation in eye colour, length of beak, number of feathers on a wing? Yes, sure, absolutely. But can we arrive at eyes, beaks, and feathers? Unfortunately, no.”

“The entropic nature of this world bares witness daily that the properties of matter and energy alone are incapable of constructing life forms as we understand them.”

”The problem with Darwin’s thinking was that he ascribed creative tendencies to undirected matter ... This isn’t only counter-intuitive but it has no foundation. It is a thinking hazard.”

(Cont’d)

”We don’t gain anything technologically by thinking this way. Do aircraft engineers build anything by allowing aluminium sheets and turbine engines to just do what comes naturally over millions of years? We could say similar things about your genetic engineering. The crucial ingredients were adaptive functions already present and intelligent direction. And still nothing new was created.”

”The ‘Galileo affair’ was largely a personal spat between him and the pope, two headstrong personalities. Most church authorities were happy with Galileo’s contributions.”

Also, Michael, you say that the design argument in not based on ignorance, yet when I showed that it was, you had no response. Care to explain?

As for your list of books, none of them have been peer-reviewed and they all contain (at best) re-dressed arguments that have all been disproved. They are nothing more than fallacy-filled adventures that misrepresent science for an audience who were already going to uncritically believe what they said anyway.

I think you are probably on your last argumentary legs here, Dan S de Merengue, but I'd just like to add my own correction to all the others.

You first quote a snippet from one of my posts:

“[the laziest form of thinking is that] if something cannot be easily and completely explained, then God must have done it.”

...and proceed to add your diversionary tactic:

>>The problem here, Pericles, is that isn’t the creationist position. Those are your words not mine. Show me where I said anything approaching that.<<

But as you already know, but choose to ignore, is that the preface to my observation was not limited to creationists, but to "every objection to evolution theory"

This includes intelligent design theorists, of which group you have on many occasions expressed your approval.

And your attempt to divert attention from your lazy thinking fails dismally, I'm afraid.

>>Now it’s strange that you agree with the 1st statement [that we rest in the faith that another scientist will one day uncover something to affirm the Darwinian process]. Strange because usually we don’t want to think that faith has anything to do with science. Isn’t it about cold hard facts? Certainly not about things that are hoped to be discovered.<<

Here, you are simply manipulating the English language to assert that the word "faith" may not be used anywhere near the word "science".

However, "having faith" does not necessarily connote religion. Even Merriam Webster - by no means my favourite resource for such information - provides the synonym "belief", the nominative form of the verb "to believe".

So yes, I do have faith/believe that scientists will continue to discover new stuff. And no, it is not inconsistent with science to predict that something will, most certainly, happen in the future.

Bending simple English terms for religious purposes is a favoured tactic of the defensive creationist/intelligent designer, I have noticed, but is both deceitful and pointless.

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"A Vatican-backed conference on evolution is under attack from people who weren't invited to participate: those espousing creationism and intelligent design. ... Organizers of the five-day conference at the Pontifical Gregorian University said Thursday that they barred intelligent design proponents because they wanted an intellectually rigorous conference on science, theology and philosophy to mark the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species." (http://pewforum.org/news/display.php?NewsID=17667)

Sir Vivor,
You say that I should give ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers to your questions. I did give simple answers to those questions permitting simple answers, and gave more detailed answers where appropriate.

We are not in primary school. If you think the important questions in life are answered simply with one word, yes or no, then I don’t know why I am the one accused of being ‘hollow’, ‘narrow’ and ‘lazy’. The important questions in life are worth discussing, and here we are given 350 words to do it.

As for certain theists giving themselves a bad name in the eyes of atheists? Why would it be desirable for theists to be liked by atheists, or vice-versa? This might be called conflict of interest. They don’t send each other their books for peer review. They usually don’t send each other Christmas cards. Fast bowlers aren’t liked by batsmen, and full-backs don’t want a nice reputation with full-forwards.

Adam,
You’ve read all those books?

You claim to have ‘shown’ that the design argument is based on ignorance. I’m sorry that that demonstration escaped me.

I would have thought that it would be hard for any of us to ‘show’ anything in 350 words. We’re just a bunch of guys and gals giving our opinions. I wouldn’t get ahead of yourself.

I said back on Feb 21 that this debate could go for a long time, and that I didn’t think it was going to be settled here. It’s already gone 23 pages, and could go for many more. If evolution was as clearly demonstrable as many believe, then it wouldn’t be so hotly debated, here and elsewhere. It is debated more so now than at any other time in the last 50 years.

If it was so clear cut, then it wouldn’t even be discussed on a web sight like this, one devoted to opinions. Instead this discussion became one of the longest running on OLO for weeks.

Yet when we are tempted to reiterate, that’s a sign that things are getting a bit stale.

Happy birthday, Charles!

Asks Dan, "Why [has] an article void of religious content inspired a religious discussion? Why is that unless Darwin truly is filling a religious need and touching that part of our core being? As you suggest, the question turns into who has the better creation story."

On The Origin Of Species was attacked by the church for implying biblical creation wasn't true. It was and has been derided by creationists since publication. It doesn’t even mention the origins of mankind; the religious debate is of the church’s making.

Darwinism is a logically consistent explanation for what we see around us. http://richarddawkins.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=73385&start=25#p1781821. It is uninfluenced by where you live, or when you were born, and can be examined for inconsistencies. Unlike dogma, science is designed to accept revisions. Unless you’ve formed your own private church it is possible to be both Christian and Darwinist, as the Vatican attests.

Unlike the O.T. evolution is not a “story” but a theory. Big difference. It is tangible, non-dogmatic, measurable, disprovable. It’s like gravity and general relativity - if you wish to be consistent dispute these also. Calling it a "creation story" is deliberately provocative and somewhat childish.

Your assertion "undirected matter has been afforded creative tendencies" holds no more for the eye than for picturesque sand dunes http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=darwin-misunderstood.
It's the end result of natural forces over time; in the case of living organisms is due to living creatures’ imperative to pass on successful traits to the next generation, and among other things it has led to all kinds of sentient creatures. Most of them rational.

Since you charge "You admit that you can’t offer any thermodynamic mechanism of molecular transition that describes the process", perhaps you can explain what the bible does says about it. Can you even tell us who wrote it?

Apart from tilting at windmills you’re in way over your head, Dan.

It amazes me the scientifically ignorant would climb onto the shoulders of scientific knowledge and proclaim, "From here I can over the horizon, and there lies god."

"Unlike the O.T. evolution is not a “story” but a theory. Big difference. It is tangible, non-dogmatic, measurable, disprovable. It’s like gravity and general relativity - if you wish to be consistent dispute these also."

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39512

Dan,

What a beautiful circular argument. Evolution is being debated, therefore it must be shaky.

The only ones that oppose the theory are the flat earthers/ creationists.

In all the arenas that actually count i.e. the universities, the legal system, etc, creationism and intelligent design has been found to be a religious belief, completely devoid of any basis in fact.

The only "scientific" work done by the flat earthers is to point at some of the gaps in the collected information.

The theory of evolution simply proposes a methodology by which life evolved, and all the evidence found to date confirms this. The gaps are simply that. Where information is yet to be found.

If the same criteria were applied to creation, how does it hold up.

The answer is simple. It falls over at the first hurdle. The planet is not 10 000 years old.

Intelligent design is simply a rear guard action, recognising that pure creationism is so flawed you could float a tanker through the holes, claiming that evolution occurred but god must have had a hand in it.

The flaw in this is that the designs are not perfect, but the best from what is available. Brains, eyes, immune systems, etc could be far better, but evolved from what was available.

Life if evolved from another path would be completely different.

When humans finally get to design life forms from scratch there is no doubt that they will be better faster smarter, and finally we will have intelligent design.

On 5 March 2009 at 4:31:22 PM AdamD wrote: "(and now with the help of Apis, we have yet another logical fallacy: The argument from authority)" and "Also, Michael, you say that the design argument in not based on ignorance, yet when I showed that it was, you had no response. Care to explain?... As for your list of books, none of them have been peer-reviewed" and more.

Adam, in relation to the information that I supplied, shooting the messenger (me!) is no argument.

Calling the providing of factual information relevant to the matter being discussed "an argument from authority" is no argument either. Pardon me, but your slip is showing , as they used to say in the old days: either you misunderstand the principle in question (argument from authority) completely or you are unable to apply it except in the most extremely narrow frame of reference. Besides, since you belong to a school of thought that relies simply and solely (and uncritically) on a mega-argument from authority, namely the teachings of Darwin and all that stems from them, it is a bit rich to throw the "argument from authority" in someone else's face.

Now, if you demonstrated the same level of "honesty" and "courtesy" that you demand from Dan when you berate, bully and browbeat him, you would have taken the information that I provided and adressed it impartially and accurately. So, my question to you and your henchmen is this: when certain well-qualified scientists who earn their living from pursuing science in a goal-oriented way come to conclusions about Darwinism that are different from yours, by what right do you accuse them of logical fallacies and other putative transgressions? Care to answer?

(Cont'd)

(Cont'd)
Take the names of the numerous scientists who have "come out" about their non-acceptance of Darwinist dogma and conceptual imperialism; they can be seen here at a website which I provided previously.

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/filesDB-download.php?command=download&id=660

The list is eighteen pages long! Obviously these people have been deemed suitable, qualified and competent to work as scientists according to that peer-review that you so readily invoke. Or are we to believe that each and everyone of them should be removed from his
position on the say-so of the likes of yourself? If, however, you correctly perceive that they have in all likelihood earned their place on their own merits and have been chosen following rules of objectivity and impartiality which are so important to the scientific critical apparatus, how will you answer the objections they raise? Will you do so on the neutral and level field of scientific debate or in some other way that is perhaps somewhat less scrupulous?

apis, I have to agree that it would be indeed fascinating to understand in detail why your list of 754 dissenting scientists do, in fact, dissent.

Or even, indeed, whether they are indicating their dissent at all.

The problem is, apis, that the wording of the petition in question doesn't actually commit them to anything.

"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

No-one could possibly have a concern with the second sentence. That, after all, is what scientists do.

However, the wording of the first sentence is distinctly iffy.

There is nothing wrong with being "skeptical". What the petition - probably deliberately - doesn't say, is that they disagree with it.

I could sign that petition, and still believe that Darwin has come up with the best explanation, so far, of the mechanics of evolution. I will allow myself to be sceptical, and I most certainly would encourage continued rigour in the examination of the evidence.

But the reality is that it doesn't prove anything. Least of all, what you are trying to persuade it to mean, which is that a bunch of smart guys reject Darwin's findings.

After all, if that were true, that is what they would have said. Nothing would be simpler. "We the undersigned think that evolution as postulated by Darwin is a crock"

To paraphrase your last sentence back at you, apis...

>>Will you provide evidence on the neutral and level field of scientific debate or in some other way that is perhaps somewhat less scrupulous?<<

'Cos quite frankly, producing that petition in evidence is itself somewhat less than the rigorous application of logic, is it not?

I wasn’t going to bother responding to Michael’s last graceless sidestep. But I’d hate to think that I’m missing out on all the fun here.

Dear Michael,

On the 18th of February I made a few points as to why we don’t appear to be designed. In fact, nothing about Earth’s living creatures implies that we have been designed unless, of course, the designer was a very sloppy designer. Given this point (and many others I haven’t mentioned), the argument from design is an argument from ignorance.

Your posts are filled with non sequiturs, but one of the biggest was in that last response:

”If it was so clear cut, then it wouldn’t even be discussed on a web sight like this, one devoted to opinions.”

It would be more accurate to say:

”If it weren’t for religious nutters, then it wouldn’t even be discussed on a website like this, one devoted to a diverse range of opinions; whether they be based on a good understanding of the facts, or a lack thereof.”

Evolution is one of the most “clear cut” fields of science. According to your logic here, quantum physics should be an even more “hotly” debated topic, but it’s not, because it doesn’t threaten the emotional needs of fundamentalist Theists. The immense threat in which evolution poses to creationists is evident in your subtle sniping at Charles Darwin.

The second non sequitur:

”I would have thought that it would be hard for any of us to ‘show’ anything in 350 words. We’re just a bunch of guys and gals giving our opinions”

It sounds as though you think that an opinion has immunity from verification. I’m afraid it doesn’t. You don’t get off the hook that easily my friend. It would still be more courteous and helpful to the discussion if you could acknowledge when you are shown to be wrong instead of jumping to something slightly different and pretending your last failed point didn’t happen. Creationists are understandably fooled by these sorts of shenanigans (a necessary trait for denying facts) but others aren’t.

Dear apis,

You need to settle down a little. You provided the opinions of others, not facts.

The argument from authority is a logical fallacy because it doesn’t matter who believes what, but why they believe it. It doesn’t matter who thinks what, only what the facts support.

Not only are most of the scientists in your link not even scientists in the relevant fields, but those who are no longer deserve the title of “Scientist” as they have abandoned the scientific method for religious belief.

I can play your fallacious game too and add that less than 1% of scientists reject evolution.

As a side note, I noticed that the link you provided was from the Discovery Institute - not exactly a credible reference.

If you want to know by what right I accuse these “scientists” of logical fallacies then please read through this thread and try listening to every argument that every creationist has ever had to say. I will happily take back what I have said if you could give me one - just one - piece of evidence that supports creation. No one else has ever been able to, so I suspect you couldn’t. But give it a go anyway. It could earn you a Nobel prize.

Dear Sancho,

Intelligent falling is no joke and many scientists reject the belief in gravity and the new false religion: Gravitationalism.

Before you poke fun at Intelligent Falling, please educate yourself about the theory. I recommend books such as:

’Newton’s Black Box’
’Refuting Gravity’
’Newton’s Enigma’
’The Predicatment of Gravity’

Let us not forget about the numerous people throughout history who have pushed innocent people off cliffs because of their belief in gravity. I’m not sure what these tragic acts have to do with the facts of the matter but it makes gravity sound very bad anyway.

I will now leave you with a selective quote from Newton that proves even he doubted gravity:

”I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore ... whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Apis,

The document you refer to shows that there is a tiny handful of the 1000s of acedemics who are "skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life."

What a pathetic, wishy washy, non commital statement. I notice no committment to any alternative. Also I could see no A grade scientists included.

If this is the best you can do for acedemic support you are seriously grasping at straws. I also see no attempt to offer any evidence.