Evolution..?

Question

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection over 140 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms.
Many "antievolutionists" freely admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Why do you think such dishonesty prevails?
Can education prevail?

Primoa, thanks for being a perfect example of what I was asking about.
Your incorrect assertions are not only ignorant, they are wilfully so.

Adam , is your current truth also a "sad mistake of tomorrow"..?
A flawed and hollow argument Adam.

Paulo, science doesn't morph into something else, it amasses data and grows with each new discovery.
On the other hand your god has become many different branches just within christianity, the earth is no longer flat, and the Vatican now embraces evolution and the "mainstream" scientific description of the natural world.
Very dishonest of you Paulo.

Baptist, no! That would you putting words in my mouth, and seeking a lack of knowledge instead of knowledge itself.
The facts remain regardless.

InSeattle, Charles Darwin WAS NOT a devout catholic, although his father was.
What is MY science?
However I have heard some of the creation "pseudo science" nonsense that come out of these schools. Here lies the problem at hand..

Ah, alleninthehills, I see your campaign of misinformation, misrepresenting science, misquoting, quoting out of context, quoting scientifically illiterate creationist propaganda, and spewing forth general deciet and lies is still underway.
I don't have time to address what are simply lengthy untruths and scientifically illiterate and flawed arguments.
It's a pity you don't copy/paste from some mainstream science journals instead, you may actually learn something.

Pamela, thanks for avoiding my question and offering your opinion of me.
Evolution is not just based on Charles Darwin, it is based on masses of data and input from many scientific fields and many learned "scientifically literate" people.
Maybe re read the question and choose to either answer it, or not.

Answer 1

So many people these days are confusing biblical creationism with intelligent design. "Intelligent Design is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence" (Dr. William Dembski). That's it; it says nothing of who the creator is and how he/she/it/they did it. Intelligent Design encompasses every "creation" story, even aliens seeding life on this planet.

William Paley is famous for using this argument. In 1802, he came out with a treatise called Natural Theology. He began by arguing that if one were to discover a watch lying in the middle of nowhere and they were to examine that watch closely, the person would logically conclude that it was not an accident, but had purpose; it had a designer. He went on to argue that the overwhelming design in the universe is evidence of a Grand Designer.

Now, is this a valid argument? Well, we detect design all the time. If you find an arrowhead on a deserted island, you assume it was made by someone, even if you can’t see the designer. We can tell the difference between a message written in the sand and the results of the wind and waves on the sand. The carved heads of the presidents on Mt. Rushmore are clearly different from erosional features.

The thing is, reliable methods for detecting design exist and are employed in forensics, archeology, and data fraud analysis. These methods can easily be employed to detect design in biological systems.

When being interviewed by Tavis Smiley, Dr. Stephen Meyer said, “There are developments in some technical fields, complexity and information sciences, that actually enable us to distinguish the results of intelligence as a cause from natural processes. When we run those modes of analysis on the information in DNA, they kick out the answer, ‘Yeah, this was intelligently designed’ . . . There is actually a science of design detection and when you analyze life through the filters of that science, it shows that life was intelligently designed.”

What about teaching it in school? I'm sorry, but I have to agree with George W. Bush: "Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about . . . Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought . . . You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes.”

Good science teaching should include controversies. Most Christians I know don't want biblical creationism taught in science classes. What we want is for molecules-to-man evolution to be taught with all its warts (they are not even allowed to present evidence that would put evolution in a poor light). And we want intelligent design to at least to be presented. Unlike leprechauns and unicorns, a significant percentage of the population believes in ID.

Answer 2

Not in the near future I'm sad to say. Just look at some of these answerers, who don't even know what the theory of evolution is - yet they are strongly opposed to it from the misconceptions and lies they are told from their parents, teachers, priests, etc.

Evolution is not guided or linear. It is not chance. The theory does not say we evolved from monkeys. Yes, there can still be monkeys around even if we did evolve from them (that's the most ridiculous one). Yes microevolution is observable and fact. Yes, the theory of evolution is a "theory," which has tremendous significance. Yes details of the theory change, and this is a good thing. From the unlikelihood that any part of an organism is somehow preserved over millions of years, it is amazing we have as many "transistional" species as we do. And no, there is only one theory explaining the diversity of life - the rest are pseudotheories and myths.

Dishonesty prevails because the majority WANTS to be uneducated, and wants to believe stories that make us superior to the rest of life.

Answer 3

Evolution is a process of change to meet new challenges. The change from the idea of unique creation by an all-powerful deity to the idea of development from simpler forms carries with it a very humbling readjustment to our own sense of self-importance. The evolution of ideas can be a painful thing for reasons precisely like this - universal truths can diminish the sense of human importance - just as it did when we discovered the Earth was not the centre of the universe. Just as that is now a fact largely (though not entirely) unchallenged, so will evolution be eventually. But the idea of creation by a god has had thousands of years to establish itself as "fact". The reality of evolution will take time to overcome that idea, but it'll get there. I do think we need to be vigilant against the resurrection of creationism in other, pseudo-scientific forms, as these will only slow the evolution of intelligence down.

Answer 4

I don't know that public education can prevail against religious influence from Gov't and the more powerful religions in this country. I am willing to contribute in what small ways I can to starting private schools that would disallow religious tinkering focus on pure and practical language and scientific subjects.

My girl and I starting to plan our future (family wise, and still years off). One of our goals is to send our kid(s) to a school that's completely free of religious influence that will give them skills to compete in this world. We don't want them to think that whispering into the night sky will make their dreams come true if that's the only effort they are taught put forth.

I think the lie of "ID science" prevails because the people that buy into the ludicrous concept, are purposely discouraged from learning and using critical thinking skills or the hard facts of previous research that allow ppl to understand that it has nothing to do with science. Science to the unlearned is anything and everything they don't understand. Science will always find ways to reduce Irreducable Complexity. It's just a matter of more research. Irreducable Complexity to the faithful is, again, anything they don't understand or care to learn more about.

The ppl pushing "ID science" know that it's a sham but they also know that the people they're preaching it to are already predisposed to taking things on faith. They just use it to mobilize the ignorant base majority to accomplish their goals for them.

Answer 5

Excellent summary.

In fact the current situation (in the US specifically, though I'm disgusted to note that it's infected the UK to some extent too) represents a slide *backward*.

There was a time when science and religion kept their ideas to themselves, kids were taught evolutionary biology in Science class, and creation in Religious Instruction. Simple and flexible creatures that they are, they mostly believed both simultaneously without problems, until they became adults and realised the conflict. Then they made a decision based on their attraction to fantasy or reality. But there were seldom arguments about it.

Now, religious fundamentalists are yelling for kids to be taught 'the controversy' - as if there was one!

Evolution is a fait accompli. It a sad reflection on the small band of fools pushing the God hypothesis that such nonsense still holds such sway among the ignorant public.

CD

Answer 6

Well said. I am truly embarrassed by the current climate in the United States. Quite honestly, this is akin to the problems they have in rural Africa when trying to vaccinnate children: the parents are convinced that it is a trick to make their children ill. I think we have failed in the education of children in the past 30 year - too many of us have come opt of High Schools with heads filled with rapidly forgotten facts and no clue how to think critically.

For instance, anyone can look up the year America was discovered, but we need to be able to teach kids to see what such a discovery meant - the socio-economic, religious, and political ramifications of such a discovery. They need to be able to ascertain for themselves the truth of a statement and the meaning of evidence, and from what I see on this site, we have failed in teaching that miserably.

We can blame "Conservatives" for the decline of science education and "Liberals" for the decline of critical thinking. (I'm a liberal, but too often I see my cohorts doing great disservice to immigrants and other minorities by assuming that they are unable to do the same work as a white kid with advantages. That's simply not true, and dumbing down the educationalsystem in some warped sense of "fairness" has really messed up this country.) Between this "don't teach science to my kid" mentality and the mentality that says "Hey, he's had a rough life, go easy on him," we've made our own bed.

::rant over::

Answer 7

If it is true that evolution is false, I must wonder why the G-d of creation was so misleading as to leave all the earmarks of past geological records. Obviously, it is not Satan who supports evolution, but G-d.

Our current theories about evolution may not be true, but they are closer than anything the religionist can come up with. Why anyone should be forced to teach or learn mythology is beyond me.

For all of you who believe in Intelligent Design, ask your creator why he/she created so much into the historical record. Ask why he/she purposefully tried to dissuade people from believing. Ask why he/she wants you to believe without logic, thought, or common sense.

Answer 8

If creationists provide support to politicians, they expect some payback. Creationism in the science classes is the result.

Answer 9

Dishonesty prevails because people choose to reject any evidence that conflicts with their dogmatically help beliefs. The reason people want to deny evolution is because it conflicts with the literal truth of the Bible, and some people refuse to accept anything that potentially falsifies the literal truth of the Bible.

Answer 10

gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.

Really?? and you ask about dishonesty?

Robert Carroll, an expert on vertebrate paleontology and a committed evolutionist, comes to admit that the Darwinist hope has not been satisfied with fossil discoveries:

Despite more than a hundred years of intense collecting efforts since the time of Darwin's death, the fossil record still does not yield the picture of infinitely numerous transitional links that he expected.41

Another evolutionary paleontologist, K. S. Thomson, tells us that new groups of organisms appear very abruptly in the fossil record:

When a major group of organisms arises and first appears in the record, it seems to come fully equipped with a suite of new characters not seen in related, putatively ancestral groups. These radical changes in morphology and function appear to arise very quickly…42

Biologist Francis Hitching, in his book The Neck of the Giraffe: Where Darwin Went Wrong, states:

If we find fossils, and if Darwin's theory was right, we can predict what the rock should contain; finely graduated fossils leading from one group of creatures to another group of creatures at a higher level of complexity. The 'minor improvements' in successive generations should be as readily preserved as the species themselves. But this is hardly ever the case. In fact, the opposite holds true, as Darwin himself complained; "innumerable transitional forms must have existed, but why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" Darwin felt though that the "extreme imperfection" of the fossil record was simply a matter of digging up more fossils. But as more and more fossils were dug up, it was found that almost all of them, without exception, were very close to current living animals.43