Today is the final post of CMI's "Question Evolution" campaign, or rather my answers to their supposed Fifteen Questions for Evolutionists. I'm glad to come to the end of this exercise; the questions are long and tiresome, full of the same garbage that supporters of evolution (i.e. "real science") have rebutted over and over again only to see it thrown back at us like it's absolutely new. It isn't. There are the same old recycled arguments creationists have had for years. I have to think that the people pushing this wouldn't be satisfied with any answer we can give them, no matter how much evidence is provided. They'll just close their ears and spout "irreducible complexity," "problems in the theory," "religious dogma" and other such denials at us. Nonetheless, I've come this far and won't stop until I've answered the last two. Here they are:
Q14: Science involves experimenting to figure out how things work; how they operate. Why is evolution, a theory about history, taught as if it is the same as this operational science?
For the same reason we teach cosmology, paleontology and geology. We use principles that we observe today (universal gravitation, progression of species and behavior of species, plate tectonics and natural selection, etc.) to make informed judgments about what happened in the past based on the evidence available. When Alfred Wegener made the judgment that South America and Africa has once been joined, he was laughed at. However, while he may have been wrong about the mechanism (it is plate tectonics, not continental drift that makes the continents move) his overall idea was correct. This, like evolution in the fossil record, is a historical science making judgments about the past based on observable principles about the world.
Further, evolution is directly observable in the laboratory. The Miller-Urey experiment, while inaccurate as to the composition of the Earth's early atmosphere, was important in that it showed that the basic building blocks of life can arise from chemical interactions. We continue to watch the evolution of bacteria, whether resistance to our antibiotics or the development of entirely new functions like the ability to digest nylon. We recently witnessed the evolution of single-celled yeast into multicellular organisms. Don't pretend that evolution isn't directly observable; we've watched the evolution of entirely new species. To act as if evolution is just baseless speculation about the past is disingenuous.
Q15: Why is a fundamentally religious idea, a dogmatic belief system that fails to explain the evidence, taught in science classes?
This question and the assumptions that ground it never fail to irritate and frustrate me. There are so many wrong assumptions that form the base of this and similar questions that it's hard to know where to begin. I repeat, as I've said before, the by definition evolution cannot be "dogmatic" as it is open to new evidence and ideas (witness Lynn Margulis and her ideas on symbiotic relationships). Evolution is not a religious idea because it has nothing to say about God, again I repeat, and it is based on solid evidence, not divine revelation. There is no creed scientists must swear to equivalent to the oft-professed Nicene Creed of Christianity; no scientists lead hymn services to Darwin with readings from The Origin of Species. No scientist has "faith" in evolution; faith is unnecessary given the abundance of evidence to support it. The very notion is ludicrous! Even more ridiculous is the idea that evolution fails to explain the evidence. It explains it quite simply and beautifully, which is far more than can be said of the creationist "alternative" which explains nothing and is backed by no facts but does spend a good deal of time denying all manner of facts and realities of the world in which we live. This question, more than any of the others, is a petty, point-scoring, name-calling exercise that is unbecoming of a rational discussion of facts, the rhetorical equivalent of sticking out one's tongue at the opposing side.
As for being taught in the science classroom, I only wish that evolution were taught in every science classroom. Entire universities and many private schools don't touch the topic of evolution, preferring creationist explanations that fit their notions of how the world operates, based on their reading of the Bible. And as if that wasn't bad enough, many public schools, where creationism has repeatedly been barred by a series of court rulings, a plurality of science classrooms never teach evolution. Never. A small percentage even teach creationism, in flagrant violation of court precedent and the practice of good science. Don't whine to me that evolution is in the classroom when creationism isn't. Over fifty years of baseless creationist attacks and relentless bullying of teachers and school boards have resulted in biology texts and lesson plans stripped clean of any mention of evolution, the foundation of modern biology. This is an embarrassment to science and to our nation, one that we will pay for sooner or later. So thank you, creationists. You haven't won, but you haven't yet lost either, despite being pushed into increasing irrelevance with the passing of each year, with each new discovery that continues to support evolution again and again.
Now at the conclusion of the "Fifteen Questions", once more creationists aren't left with a leg to stand upon. Can science answer everything with certainty? No, of course not, but that doesn't mean that we put superstition into the gap. Science continues forward, having left creationism behind over a century ago. All they can do is continue to spin their web of lies and deceit to a public functionally illiterate in science. Creationists can sit and try and pick holes in evolution as much as they like, but science and scientists continue to accept it and support it because it works, because it is true. It is a shame that, not content with their own ignorance of scientific fact, the creationist has to "evangelize" the public to make sure that no one else learns about evolution either.
Q14: Science involves experimenting to figure out how things work; how they operate. Why is evolution, a theory about history, taught as if it is the same as this operational science?
For the same reason we teach cosmology, paleontology and geology. We use principles that we observe today (universal gravitation, progression of species and behavior of species, plate tectonics and natural selection, etc.) to make informed judgments about what happened in the past based on the evidence available. When Alfred Wegener made the judgment that South America and Africa has once been joined, he was laughed at. However, while he may have been wrong about the mechanism (it is plate tectonics, not continental drift that makes the continents move) his overall idea was correct. This, like evolution in the fossil record, is a historical science making judgments about the past based on observable principles about the world.
Further, evolution is directly observable in the laboratory. The Miller-Urey experiment, while inaccurate as to the composition of the Earth's early atmosphere, was important in that it showed that the basic building blocks of life can arise from chemical interactions. We continue to watch the evolution of bacteria, whether resistance to our antibiotics or the development of entirely new functions like the ability to digest nylon. We recently witnessed the evolution of single-celled yeast into multicellular organisms. Don't pretend that evolution isn't directly observable; we've watched the evolution of entirely new species. To act as if evolution is just baseless speculation about the past is disingenuous.
Q15: Why is a fundamentally religious idea, a dogmatic belief system that fails to explain the evidence, taught in science classes?
This question and the assumptions that ground it never fail to irritate and frustrate me. There are so many wrong assumptions that form the base of this and similar questions that it's hard to know where to begin. I repeat, as I've said before, the by definition evolution cannot be "dogmatic" as it is open to new evidence and ideas (witness Lynn Margulis and her ideas on symbiotic relationships). Evolution is not a religious idea because it has nothing to say about God, again I repeat, and it is based on solid evidence, not divine revelation. There is no creed scientists must swear to equivalent to the oft-professed Nicene Creed of Christianity; no scientists lead hymn services to Darwin with readings from The Origin of Species. No scientist has "faith" in evolution; faith is unnecessary given the abundance of evidence to support it. The very notion is ludicrous! Even more ridiculous is the idea that evolution fails to explain the evidence. It explains it quite simply and beautifully, which is far more than can be said of the creationist "alternative" which explains nothing and is backed by no facts but does spend a good deal of time denying all manner of facts and realities of the world in which we live. This question, more than any of the others, is a petty, point-scoring, name-calling exercise that is unbecoming of a rational discussion of facts, the rhetorical equivalent of sticking out one's tongue at the opposing side.
As for being taught in the science classroom, I only wish that evolution were taught in every science classroom. Entire universities and many private schools don't touch the topic of evolution, preferring creationist explanations that fit their notions of how the world operates, based on their reading of the Bible. And as if that wasn't bad enough, many public schools, where creationism has repeatedly been barred by a series of court rulings, a plurality of science classrooms never teach evolution. Never. A small percentage even teach creationism, in flagrant violation of court precedent and the practice of good science. Don't whine to me that evolution is in the classroom when creationism isn't. Over fifty years of baseless creationist attacks and relentless bullying of teachers and school boards have resulted in biology texts and lesson plans stripped clean of any mention of evolution, the foundation of modern biology. This is an embarrassment to science and to our nation, one that we will pay for sooner or later. So thank you, creationists. You haven't won, but you haven't yet lost either, despite being pushed into increasing irrelevance with the passing of each year, with each new discovery that continues to support evolution again and again.
Now at the conclusion of the "Fifteen Questions", once more creationists aren't left with a leg to stand upon. Can science answer everything with certainty? No, of course not, but that doesn't mean that we put superstition into the gap. Science continues forward, having left creationism behind over a century ago. All they can do is continue to spin their web of lies and deceit to a public functionally illiterate in science. Creationists can sit and try and pick holes in evolution as much as they like, but science and scientists continue to accept it and support it because it works, because it is true. It is a shame that, not content with their own ignorance of scientific fact, the creationist has to "evangelize" the public to make sure that no one else learns about evolution either.
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