This is what I honestly think about the idea of the earth being real old like the schools say: If you took away all the public founding for indoctrinating children into that belief it would die out in a generation or two. If people had to start their own Atheist school system and debate the issues openly they would be utterly surprised that they would not win the debates!!! Their school would die from lack of funding after awhile. As it is, the venue for debate is completely controlled by people indoctrinated into that belief and massivly funded by the public. The other venue is your local churches, and only a few of them. I have looked at both sides of the argument and I get a laugh when I hear somebody say "millions of years ago....". I would say that very few have really looked at the creation side of the debate at all. Search on Kent Hovind, get his Seminar (the seminar CD is hugely educational, the other stuff is not necessarily) on CD for about $15 and get the creationists scientific viewpoint. I did it and I was floored, I never knew there WAS an opposing viewpoint that was well substantiated. To be totally convinced after hearing one side of an argument is not smart, ok? His lectures are entertaining anyhow. You might actually be of a mind to thank me eventually. Max
Maxpi, man that is depressing. Truly depressing. If morons like this ever get their hands on the controls I think we can fully expect the already dismal levels of scientific literacy in America to sink even lower. I HAVE read the "creationism" side of the debate. There IS no debate. "Creationism", especially this lunatic nonsense of Young Earth creationsim is JUNK, JUNK, JUNK, JUNK. The ONLY people I have EVER seen convinced by this CRAP are RELIGIOUS people. I wonder why!!!
And you're wrong maxpi. It's not the scientifically established, pretty much beyond any doubt (by sane people), view point that would perish without indoctrination. It's the mind bogglingly absurd beliefs held by religious people that would perish without indoctrination.
What I will never understand is why more people do not understand that evolution does not explain, or even attempt to explain, the origin of life, human or otherwise. What people are really arguing about is not evolution, but: Did life originate (a) via a creator (b) spontaneously or (c) it never "originated", life has always existed. This question is not even addressable by the scientific method. Theories about its answer are not scientific theories.
Yeah, and your point is? Christians go crying to mamma over evolution because evolution says we, humans, evolved from other species. We weren't specifically, specially "created" by Big Daddy In The Sky. They CAN'T HANDLE this. That is what all the hullabulloo is about.
I recommend you teach the controversy. Start with these ten questions. Regards. ** ORIGIN OF LIFE. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on the early Earth -- when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery? DARWIN'S TREE OF LIFE. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor -- thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life? HOMOLOGY. Why do textbooks define homology as similarity due to common ancestry, then claim that it is evidence for common ancestry -- a circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence? VERTEBRATE EMBRYOS. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry -- even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked? ARCHAEOPTERYX. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds -- even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it? PEPPERED MOTHS. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection -- when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged? DARWIN'S FINCHES. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection -- even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution occurred? MUTANT FRUIT FLIES. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution -- even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory? HUMAN ORIGINS. Why are artists' drawings of ape-like humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident -- when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like? EVOLUTION A FACT? Why are we told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact -- even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?
The Urey experiment showed it is very easy to produce amino acids. Its author, as I recollect, did not intend it to show this is how life started. Pre Cambrian time was dominated by soft tissue organisms that do not leave fossils. The Cambrian explosion had the first hard body organisms that leave more easily found fossils. The few pre Cambrian fossils are consistent with post Homology is not defined as similarity due to common ancestry and then used as evidence for common ancestry. Rather, traits are considered before presuppositions. Many of these traits are common between groups and show compelling evidence of common descent. This is true no matter what you choose to call the traits. The "homology" label gets added after the evidence for common ancestry is already in. RE" faked embryos. I assume you refer to Haeckel's pictures. These were corrected by other scientists who saw the error. Embryos do show many similiarities in groups such as mammals where they all have pharyngeal gill pouches. ARCHAEOPTERYX was not the missing link, see Wells, Jonathan, 2000. Icons of Evolution. Rather it is transitional giving support to the idea that birds are descended from dinosaurs. PEPPERED MOTHS. The photos were staged but do not detract from the experiment. THere are 1000s of pages in peer reviewed journals related to this, if you care to read more. The point is using a staged picture to illustrate does not invalidate the work. The general consensus is that bird predators don't eat the less conspicuous ones demonstrating a form of natural selection. DARWIN'S FINCHES: I presume you refer to the work of the Grants. Their study of these finches show that beak size varies with climate and demonstrates microevolution. Evolutionary theory predicts beak size would vary with climate (big beaks during dry spells and smaller beaks during wet times, and this is what they observed.) The "no net change" claim is a mystery since the beak size varied with the climate as theory predicted. Had there been an extremely long drought, then the big beaked finch would be fixed in the population. Unfortunately an experiment to show this would take many human lifetimes. MUTANT FRUIT FLIES In a few textbooks this is used to illustrate the point that genes can mutate to create novel structures that are the raw material for evolution. HUMAN ORIGINS Your claim is silly that the drawings justify the claims, they merely illustrate what is known about our ancestors. Evolution is a fact, easily observable. Darwin's work is a theory not a fact. Do you have the name of the scientist who claims Darwin's theory is a fact? DS
At least one group of Christians I know of, the Catholic church, officially recognizes evolution as a valid scientific theory-- since the 1960's.
Let's just stick with the first point, the Miller-Urey experiment. The authors might not have claimed they were searching for the 'origin of life', nor that they had discovered the origin of life, but their results have been used ever since to suggest just that. Look at the 1998 March issue of National Geographic, an issue I have. Part of the article on Miller-Urey says, 'Once you get the equipment together it's very simple' [to produce life]. Their results have repeatedly been used in magazines and textbooks to give the impression, misleading of course, that science can produce the first blocks in the process in the origin of life. In 1986 chemist Robert Shapiro said this, and he was criticizing the misleading use of the Miller-Urey experiment: "We have reached a situation where a theory has been accepted as fact by some, and possible contrary evidence is shunted aside. . . . [this is] "mythology rather than science." Do you approve of misleading the public? I hope not. Then teach the controversy to the kids. The 1998 college textbook, Life: The Science of Biology, by Purves, Orians, Heller, Sadava, tell students that Miller produced "the building blocks of life". Many scientists wouldn't agree with the Miller-Urey experiment, but the scientific controversy is somehow passed over when the books are published. Why? Aren't we supposed to teach the kids to think critically, to evaluate the evidence, to reach sound conclusions? Douglas Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology (1998) includes a drawing of the Miller-Urey apparatus. He repeats the line that their experiment simulated early earth conditions. Nothing is mentioned about any controversy and that most scientists disagree. These aren't isolated instances. They happen all the time, with the full knowledge of the scientific community. Is that science? Suppress the controversy? Teach the controversy and let the kids decide. Start with the Miller-Urey experiment.
Well this is getting quite interesting it is the information I had hoped to see on the other thread. I appreciate the exchange we just saw thank you.