J.E. Dyer on May 7, 2009 at 9:48 PM

You are spot on in your description of the limitations of science.

I might make a minor quibble on whether you “believe” in scientific theories. They are theories precisely because they cannot be empirically verified, and therefore they require some belief. You can believe in a theory. But you are quite right to say they must be tested against what CAN be empirically proved.

The problem I see with evolution is that it requires a lengthy chain of events to all be true, where if any one of them is not true, the entire theory fails. Whenever I have dug into or heard discussion and summaries of the ACTUAL SCIENCE, and especially the points put forth by Creationists or other skeptics, my take is that the theory of evolution is so full of holes and specific pieces wholly unsupported — and close to disproved — by the evidence, that I think it takes far more faith to believe in the theory of evolution than it does to believe that God created the universe.

Evolution’s answer always seems to be that if you allow enough time, anything is possible. If you try to point out how unique life is, and how improbable it is that random chance is responsible for what we scientifically observe today, the evolutionist just ups the ante and says, “See how amazing this process of evolution is!

Many a evolutionist is so convinced that their theory is correct that it seems impossible to find any way to falsify it. I think a revealing question to put to an evolutionist is what would it take to convince them that their theory is false.

Evolution doesn’t assume the non-intervention of God any more than it assumes the non-intervention of Smurfs. Neither Smurfs nor God have any discernible effect, so they are ignored.

maleman on May 7, 2009 at 5:14 PM

Actually, Evolution DOES assume the non-intervention of Smurfs. It asserts that all life evolved by random chance, and that would rule out Smurfs intervening.

But here goes: One does not “believe in” a scientific theory — not if one wants to take a scientific approach. One subjects it to empirical proof. The theory of evolution has passed some empirical proof wickets, but to insist that it has passed enough of them to “prove” the thesis that less-complex organisms evolve through an unguided process into more-complex organisms, is to go beyond science and into the realm of philosophy or religion.

Regardless of what we demonstrate about evolution, it will never “prove” that mankind or the universe came to be in the absence of a creative intelligence. Any honest scientist will tell you that cannot be proven at all. We can postulate it, and test events to see if they seem to conform with that theory. We may find some results convincing, and others less so. But to say that we have “proven” the theory is to go beyond what the scientific method can do for us.

Evolution is another of those things on which the politically-motivated demand litmus-test consensus. That’s all Matthews is doing here. None of us should have any trouble saying “No, I don’t ‘believe in’ evolution.” Particularly those who claim to base their worldview on empiricism.

The principles behind the operation of your vehicle, your electric lights, your TV, telephone, etc. are all ‘theories’. The theory of natural selection/evolution gets stronger all the time-not weaker. In biological sciences it is practically an assumption along with cell theory. Actually, cell theory is the most suspect but we won’t know for sure until life is discovered elsewhere.

As for the above poster’s supposition that the ‘first cell’ spontaneously appeared, the hypotheses don’t suppose that happened. Increasingly larger molecular complexes formed based on chemical interactions, the energy sources and the conditions on earth billions of years ago. Actually, it is more likely that untold billions of primitive cell-like structures were forming at any given time.

It is not an easy task to differentiate the living from the nonliving as it is…compare a living thing to an automobile or a burning candle…then throw in viruses, prions, and viroids and it’s an even more daunting task. For good measure, consider the formation of amino acids out of a mixture of water and simple chemicals in the Miller-Urey experiment. That result reversed the idea that a biomolecule (protein) could be formed only from living cells.

Christian Conservative on May 6, 2009 at 3:32 PM

Well quoting scripture in science class is inappropriate, no matter who does it.
I realize most science teachers are stuck on stupid.
For instance, PTC paper testing for genetics has been found to be inaccurate, but current science texts, labs, etc still use it as a viable test.
I do not.
I research & continually update my education as frequently as possible about the subjects I teach (all of them).
I cannot possibly know everything & so we discuss all the possibilities we can.
It is a challenge to keep up to date on all this stuff-but I do not come off to my students as a know it all & I certainly give them all the sides of an argument I can & let them decide for themselves.
It’s too bad you had such a crappy experience. I’ve had them myself.

Evolutionists will assert that ID is not a science, because it assumes the intervention of God. By that standard, evolution is not science, because it assumes the non-intervention of God.

????

Evolution doesn’t assume the non-intervention of God any more than it assumes the non-intervention of Smurfs. Neither Smurfs nor God have any discernible effect, so they are ignored.

Is that science? Why don’t you believe in the scientific method?

I accept empirical evidence. Facts are facts. Conclusions to be drawn from those facts are theories or postulations. Belief in a theory requires faith. Faith implies a spiritual investment.

So, no, I do not “believe” in Evolution. Produce the facts, and I’ll accept them. But don’t try to shove your opinion and “accepted opinions” at me as scientific, empirical fact.

oldleprechaun on May 6, 2009 at 1:48 PM

I think F.R.S. is short for “Fellow of the Royal Society,” which is the UK’s big catchall scientific community – for a few hundred years (roughly from the days of Newton until the late 1800s) they were the top of the pyramid in all branches of science. How far they’ve fallen in the last few years on the AGW scare, and the salt scare, and secondhand smoke, and immunization (and many others), is downright depressing. These days, a printed paper from the Royal Society is worth almost as much as the blank sheets on which it’s been printed.

It also is a garbage theory that explains nothing, appropriates other disciplines achievements as its own and generally makes a mockery of science.

Darwin is to biology what astrology is to astronomy.

In covering the story of an Ohio science teacher who lost his job for allowing students to question the THEORY (shocking!), the CBS radio reporter used as her example of some of the “controversial” material taught by the teacher the notion that (and I paraphrase) “he taught that carbon dating cannot be used to date dinosaur fossils or that it proves the earth is billions of years old.”

Well, that is hardly “controversial,” in fact, the teacher’s statement is scientifically and horribly accurate. CBS should be embarrassed to have questioned his clear, scientific statement of fact… but they were only reflecting the gross ignorance foisted on America by a dumbed-down public school system.

Now, had she’d made a clever “Fred Flintstone” comment, well, there would then be no question as to her scientific bona fides!

Some people go out of their way to prove your point. Does your mom know you stay up that late?
Squiggy on May 7, 2009 at 5:41 AM

One more time: ???????

ps. Mom passed away 2 years ago.

You’re right mankai. Evolution is a hoax and Fred Flintstone really did drive a T.Rex frontloader and played with Dino in the front yard after work with a Brontosaurus burger on the grill.

I feel like I’m surrounded by lunatics on both sides. Global Warming will leave my house underwater in the next 30 days, and the world is only 6,000 years old. The next third party should be called “The Non Lunatic Party”…

adamsmith on May 6, 2009 at 1:50 PM

Wow. A Fred Flintstone joke. How can one possibly argue with that? Scientific inquiry is not dead!

Are you going to make a “carbon dating” comment next?

And then we could resume learning real science.

guitarguy on May 6, 2009 at 1:23 PM
guitarguy – The man who knows science. Doesn’t really add up, does it?

?????

guitarguy on May 6, 2009 at 11:03 PM

Some people go out of their way to prove your point.

Does your mom know you stay up that late?

He make the very important distinction between historical proof and scientific proof.

Science is limited to what can be observed, measured, repeated, and empirically verified. It cannot prove anything about the past. Science only gets us as far as proving facts about the present. Those observed processes must then be extrapolated into the past to try to explain how past events occurred, with varying levels of validity or certainty. Assumptions about the past must be made, such as the rate things decay today is the rate they have always decayed, and no catastrophic events (like say a worldwide flood) occurred.

A creationist and an evolutionist will almost always agree on the hard facts of what can be observed, like current rate of decay, what material fossil bones are made of, deviation within a species, etc. Where they vary is once they take the hard data and try to interpet it and develop an overarching theory or framework to explain the past and predict the future.

The theory of evolution is not science any more than ID or creationism is. It is a pretty poor theory chocked full of holes. I have heard 3 hour lectures describing instance after instance of known scientific knowledge that the theory of evolution can not explain.

There is, at best, VERY LITTLE support in the fossil record for a slow evolution from one species to another. On the contrary, the fossil record shows an overwhelming abundance of specific current or extinct species with basically no intermediate species to speak of. It became such a problem for evolutionists that they had to evolve their own theory by saying that ALL of the change from one species to another came in quick short bursts that would have left no trace in the fossil record.

To be sure, Creationism assumes there is a God who created all living things, and this is FAR outside the reach of science. But that does not mean that science disproves God, only that science has nothing to say about the existence of God. Remember science is only the observation and empirical verification of the natural world as it operates today. It does not attempt to explain the supernatural.

Similarly, Intelligent Design assumes there is a designer. From my perspective though, ID is quite different from Creationism and assumes much less. The basic crux of the theory is that the more and more we learn about how complex our natural world is, the more and more ludicrous it becomes to try to assert, as evolution does, that it all happened by chance. When you drive through a city and take note of all the building and roads, it is obvious that there was intelligent design behind the city. The city, even if you gave it billions of billions of years, would never have sprung up there by itself with no intelligent direction. To believe that it would have is the definition of crazy. And yet that it was those who believe in evolution would have us believe, that even at the cellular level, where a cell itself is thousands of times more complex than a major city, all of that just happened to align itself by chance, and take every step of the evolutionary ladder by chance without ever failing and snuffing life back out. It is scientific evidence itself that inspires belief in ID. Creationism is an extension on ID in that it asserts much more about who the Designer was, and how He designed it.

It is evolutionists, though who are most closed minded. They immediately rule out the supernatural, and dogmatically mandate that everything must be explained in the natural. They venture far beyond the limits of science into the realm of whacky theory, and hide behind the badge of science all the while. And worst of all, they militantly try to snuff out any opposing view, keeping a fascist grip outlawing opposing theories in the universities, and refusing to debate ID proponents or Creationists.

What are they afraid of? If their theory is so foolproof, why not debate the Creationists and expose their silly theories for the fraud that they think they are. Oh, that’s right, because when they tried that 30 years ago, they got their clocks cleaned by the Creationists.

Exit question: When was the last time you actually heard ANY scientific debate at all on the actual evidence itself?

Add to that, that for every error Science has made, the rejoinder is that Science is “self-correcting”.

However, the Science-bandwagon (or paddywagon) crowd believes that Social Darwinism cannot be pinned on Science because it wasn’t strictly Science. So it was wrong. But it was a worldview that was embraced by those who most stringently held to Darwin. And many, many scientists were pro-eugenics. Plus, if Science can be wrong for a period, but self-correct, then all that matters is that Social Darwinism is corrected in the future. However, that would make it Scientificy as a worldview. But thus, the argument that “it’s always better” or “you can’t go wrong” is a little bit in question. Because Holmes wrote an opinion an 8-1 victory in Buck vs. Bell, which argued that the State’s interest in a pure gene pool outweighed the individual right to procreate.

However flawed that decision is, if Science can advance, then it has that same characteristic–however, it doesn’t make some of want to wait until it has a better idea.

Often not understood is that Scopes wasn’t just forbidden to teach Evolution, but it was more that he was forbidden to teach from the book that he did. The state of Kentucky especially had a problem with this book because of it racist and eugenic nature. William Jennings Bryan was not a strict creationist and allowed for some eventual form of creation by God, but was again motivated by the eugenics in this book to take up the case. Bryant offered to pay Scopes’ meager fine. And Clarence Darrow later defended brutal, remorseful killers by stating that it was just their nature. But this is made to be a case against Science.

So again, either nihilistic, mechanical eugenics was part of a “scientific” worldview, or it wasn’t. The case of Scopes, the pure science martyr, never existed. It’s hardly scientific to believe in a non-event.

Well, I couldn’t determine what the M.A and F.R.S. credentials indicated, but I found this entry interesting, “Darwin did not particularly take a liking to medical studies – the fear of the sight of blood being a major hindrance, but the primary reason for his aversion appears to be that he found the study of medicine incredibly boring.” That from http://www.aboutdarwin.com/timeline/time_03.html, an extensive bio on Mr. Darwin that you may wish to check. (He appeared to have been no where near as rabid as his followers.)

Sadly, you evaded most questions I posed.

“Given the state of medicine 150 years ago, it wouldn’t be that impressive if he did. What about the credentials of virtually every biologist alive today?” Odd that you’d write off his titles, being that you seem to be an admirer.

Okay, what about the credentials of virtually every biologist alive today? If your question is to imply that all contemporary biologists agree with Darwin, you’re mistaken. (Sorry my response is fuzzy, but you weren’t too clear on that.)

“-has anyone here other than my self actually WATCHED “Expelled” from start to finish?”

Well, you did get around to answering that one, but again, you respond to a question with a question.

“Have you read the Origin of Species from cover to cover?”

And yes, I read “Origin” as recommended reading in college over 45 years ago.

I asked, “-if you have, what are your thoughts regarding the Polish intellectual who stated that political correctness is stopping scientific debate in the U.S.?”

You answered, “I haven’t seen the film, but there are many difficult questions that political correctness gets in the way of answering.”

I agree that political correctness gets in the way of answering some difficult questions. But in this case, the “difficult question” is, is political correctness stopping, or worse yet steering, scientific debate in the U.S.? What do YOU think is more important, addressing difficult questions or silencing debate?

I think you’d enjoy the humor in the film, especially scenes where several fervent Darwinists refer to anyone refusing to accept Darwinism as “stupid”, and then stating that life on earth may well have been “seeded” by aliens from outer space. That had me laughing out loud.

“speak civilly” I guess you missed that one, but the mild contempt of “right back at ya’” reminds me that an insult is like alcohol, if refused, it has no effect.

Rest well.

For crying out loud. Evolution can’t be proven scientifically until it can be replicated — reproduced — scientifically. Current theories of evolution suggest that would require millennia. Good luck on settling the question scientifically in less than 500 thousand years.

The day we start saying the opposite of what we know to be true is the day we deserve to lose. And it’s certainly the day that science dies.

If you demand a knee-jerk assent to an unproven — of necessity — theory, then don’t pretend that you have a love of science.

ThereGoesTheNeighborhood on May 6, 2009 at 1:36 AM

Go right ahead, then. LET liberals paint conservatives as kooks. Give liberals all the ammo they want on the subject of “Intelligent Design” to mock us all as a bunch of wackjobs.

This is a sure way to turn off countless people that conservatism could be intellectually attracting, by the deplorable “strategy” of making anti-evolution some kind of major league public battle.

By the way I have another post in this thread in which I make mention of the specious, equivocating relationship that ID-boosters have with the concept of “proof.” You seem to be doing it too. No scientific theory can ever be “proven,” by definition — but that doesn’t stop the ID-bots from turning “no proof of the theory of evolution” into their idiotic mantra.

Edouard on May 6, 2009 at 4:34 AM

Sorry, but your embarrassment is not an argument. It simply shows that you don’t understand the limitations of science in general, and the limits of evolutionary theory in particular.

As for “proof,” that depends on context. Historical/legal proof is based on witnesses and evidence. Scientific proof is based on being able to demonstrate a theory is correct through experimentation. It’s not proof in the classical sense, but rigorous application of the scientific method, emphasis on actual experimentation, and peer review combine to make it work very, very well. To the extent that “scientific proof” is often assumed to be a higher level of proof than historical proof.

But evolution does not rise to the level of scientific proof. It’s an attempt to explain what may have happened millions of years ago. Properly speaking, science is the wrong tool to try to answer such historical questions. All you can try to do is to find forces in operation today that could conceivably explain the development of all life on earth. And if you manage to accomplish that, you still have not demonstrated that it DID happen that way, just that it COULD HAVE happened that way.

Also note that the science of evolution does not include the possibility of God intervening. God is excluded from the theory of evolution NOT because it is proven that God had nothing to do with it, but because science is based on the operation of natural forces, and God by definition is supernatural.

In other words, God is excluded from the theory of evolution because science is not really able to deal with “God did it” as part of a scientific theory.

Evolutionists will assert that ID is not a science, because it assumes the intervention of God. By that standard, evolution is not science, because it assumes the non-intervention of God.

And then we could resume learning real science.

guitarguy on May 6, 2009 at 1:23 PM
guitarguy – The man who knows science. Doesn’t really add up, does it?

?????

I would also ask him why the Dems have been so “anti-science”. Why many advanced countries have for years and years used nuclear power, but over here the libs were staging die-ins at sites where a nuclear plant was proposed. The world had the technology to make nuclear plants, but they didn’t want them. Also the Dems have called NASA “throwing money into space” back in the 70s before Reagan vowed to get the program moving again. They were also “anti-science” on SDI, and would have rather relied on a 20+ year treaty.

If he has a problem with “belief” why does he rely more on believing in Evolution than what can specifically be said about the phenomenon formerly known as “Global Warming”. I would have also brought out the idea that Science findings equates to world views the way Darwinism equates to Social Darwinism. We now reject all the eugenics that went on in the name of being with the times, but how can they ask the same thing now?

No, Matthews has got it boiled down to “agin’ Science”, while he’s fer it.

The Cambrian Explosion & the pre-Cambrian fossil beds in China: Darwin’s worst nightmare.