Woo.

[Devil's Advocate]

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8493

[awip2062]

Hmmmm.....

But I wonder why some scientists refuse to allow the teaching of the scientific evidences against evolution. IF they are so sure that evolution is real, then why will they not allow the teaching of those things and merely say, we don't understand why we have these results, but we are sure that in time with better science, we will find out why they show up and they will prove evolution as well.

And why is it that when I was in university things that had clearly been proven to have been falsified to prove evoluion, were still being taught as true?

And why don't they teach that there ARE non-Christian scientists who do not believe in evolution?

What is the evolution camp so afraid of?

[Devil's Advocate]

But I wonder why some scientists refuse to allow the teaching of the scientific evidences against evolution.

Because there is none.

IF they are so sure that evolution is real, then why will they not allow the teaching of those things and merely say, we don't understand why we have these results, but we are sure that in time with better science, we will find out why they show up and they will prove evolution as well.

Sure, there are things in biology that have yet to be scientifically explained. But those things are not evidence against evolution. They're not evidence for or against anything, other than perhaps the limits to our present knowledge. And that is the context in which students are told about them. And they are told - there's no cover-up - although for many cases it's more of a college thing than high school. High school science is more about what we know (and how we know) than what we don't, after all. Students don't need to know much about the gaps in our knlwledge till it's their turn to try to fill one or two: when they're choosing a PhD subject, for instance.

And why is it that when I was in university things that had clearly been proven to have been falsified to prove evoluion, were still being taught as true?

Could you be specific?

And why don't they teach that there ARE non-Christian scientists who do not believe in evolution?

Other than one or two Jews and Muslims, I'm aware of no such scientists.

And bear in mind that real, active researchscientists who deny evolution are very rare, and even rarer amongst biologists.

What is the evolution camp so afraid of?

The damage to students' education that would inevitably result from the teaching of creationism instead of science.

[Soup4Rush]

I think they do it to get DA fired up and than he can post some interesting topics in the Politics and World Events thread... or maybe not..

[Devil's Advocate]

Actually the plan was to post the link at a different board, but since it was being hacked at the time I just parked the URL here so I wouldn't lose it.

[Kares4Rush]

I thought this was an interesting article too:

http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/documents ... 630_00.pdf

[awip2062]

Okay, let's talk about this a bit. I grew up believing in evolution but at a secular university in California, while studying as an environmental biology major, I came to become a creationist. Just a bit of my background, so you don't think I have always been a creationist.

As far as evidences against evolution go, they ARE out there, but those who espouse evoltuion don't teach them. One of them is the second law of thermodynamics. It states that although the total amount of energy remains constant, the amount of usable energy is constantly decreasing. This law can be seen in most everything. Where work is done, energy is expelled. That energy can never again be used. As usable energy decreases, decay increases. Herein lies the problem for evolution. If the natural trend is toward degeneration, then evolution is impossible, for it demands the betterment of organisms through mutation.

Some things that have been taught as true after they had been shown to be hoaxes were:
Piltdown Man: No fewer than 500 doctoral theses were written on the subject. It was determined that the teeth in the jawbone belonging to an orangutan, had been worn down artificially and that the "primitive" tools discovered with the fossils were simple imitations that had been sharpened with steel implements. In the detailed analysis completed by Joseph Weiner, this forgery was revealed to the public in 1953. The skull belonged to a 500-year-old man, and the jaw bone belonged to a recently deceased ape!

Lucy. I remember seeing a copy of her in the Tar Pit museum in Los Angeles. Turns out her skeleton was actually put to gether from 30 individuals

Haekel, a scientist that came up with the theory of embryonic recapitulation which sserts that the human fetus goes through various stages of its evolutionary history as it develops in the 1860s. He made drawings of eight different embryos in three stages of development to prove his claim. A few years later his drawings were shown to have been fabricated, and the data manufactured. He blamed the artist for the discrepancies, without admitting that he was the artist. But still I was taught in university in the 1990s that this really happens.

Those are just a few specifics.

You may be aware of no scientists other than Christians, Jews, and Muslims. For example, there is Robert Locke, a definitively non creatioinist, who states:
I AM NOT A CREATIONIST, and must confess that until recently, I
treated people who questioned evolution with polite dismissal. But
there has recently emerged a major trend in biology that has been
suppressed in the mainstream media: evolution is in trouble. More
importantly, this has absolutely nothing to do with religion but is due to
the fact that the ongoing growth of biological knowledge keeps
producing facts that contradict rather than confirm evolution.

Active research scientists who deny evolution are not as rare as you think, but I will agree that they are rarer amongst biologists. Chemists, however, see the problems with evolution more easily.

What damage comes to student's education be teaching creationism or intelliget design WITH evolution? That is what was at issue here. Not suppressing evolution, but teaching multiple views.

[Devil's Advocate]

Most of the information in this post comes from: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html

As far as evidences against evolution go, they ARE out there, but those who espouse evoltuion don't teach them. One of them is the second law of thermodynamics. It states that although the total amount of energy remains constant, the amount of usable energy is constantly decreasing. This law can be seen in most everything. Where work is done, energy is expelled. That energy can never again be used. As usable energy decreases, decay increases. Herein lies the problem for evolution. If the natural trend is toward degeneration, then evolution is impossible, for it demands the betterment of organisms through mutation.

By that argument, life itself is impossible. But luckily, the argument is flawed.

The loss of usable energy to entropy can be countered by the addition of energy from outside, from a source such as, say, a big hot shiny thing in the sky.

The Creationist argument supposedly based on the 2nd Law is actually based on a misunderstanding of that law. The second Law of Thermodynamics only applies to a closed system, which is to say one in which no energy or matter either enters or leaves. Life on Earth simply does not constitute a closed system, given that the sun is pouring energy on to us at some 4kW per square metre.

Some things that have been taught as true after they had been shown to be hoaxes were:
Piltdown Man:

No. Piltdown Man was a hoax, indeed, but it was never "taught as true" after it was demonstrated to be a fake. Furthermore, outside of the UK it was never taken all that seriously by the scientific establishment, on account of it not being consistent with the other evidence of other fossils' morphology and geographical location.

No fewer than 500 doctoral theses were written on the subject.

Not so. This claim apparently arises from an editorial in Nature which said: "More than five hundred articles and memoirs are said to have been written about Piltdown man."

There is no known doctoral thesis on the subject.

Lucy. I remember seeing a copy of her in the Tar Pit museum in Los Angeles. Turns out her skeleton was actually put to gether from 30 individuals

If so, what of it? As long as those 30 individuals were from the same species, the reconstruction is valid.

I haven't come across this particular claim before, but a popular one amongst creationists is that Lucy's knee was found over a mile away from the rest of the skeleton. That claim is false - a different individual's knee was found some distance away, but no-one ever claimed it was Lucy's. However, the implication of this claim is that the Lucy fossil is all one individual.

Haekel, a scientist that came up with the theory of embryonic recapitulation which sserts that the human fetus goes through various stages of its evolutionary history as it develops in the 1860s. He made drawings of eight different embryos in three stages of development to prove his claim. A few years later his drawings were shown to have been fabricated, and the data manufactured. He blamed the artist for the discrepancies, without admitting that he was the artist. But still I was taught in university in the 1990s that this really happens.

Haeckel exaggerated the features he wanted to draw attention to. But he did not fabricate the data - his observations can be repeated by just about anyone with a microscope. What matters, surely, isn't the drawings he did but the embyos?

Incidentally, Haeckel's recapitulation theory was never part of Darwin's ToE.

You may be aware of no scientists other than Christians, Jews, and Muslims. For example, there is Robert Locke, a definitively non creatioinist, who states:
I AM NOT A CREATIONIST, and must confess that until recently, I
treated people who questioned evolution with polite dismissal. But
there has recently emerged a major trend in biology that has been
suppressed in the mainstream media: evolution is in trouble. More
importantly, this has absolutely nothing to do with religion but is due to
the fact that the ongoing growth of biological knowledge keeps
producing facts that contradict rather than confirm evolution.

Claiming not to be a creationist doesn't mean he isn't one. I hadn't heard of Robert Locke, but a bit of Googling suggests he is or was editor of Front Page magazine, and that the quote you provide is from a review he wrote of Denton's and Behe's books.

He's a journalist, not a scientist.

Active research scientists who deny evolution are not as rare as you think, but I will agree that they are rarer amongst biologists. Chemists, however, see the problems with evolution more easily.

Chemists? Why would they?

What damage comes to student's education be teaching creationism or intelliget design WITH evolution? That is what was at issue here. Not suppressing evolution, but teaching multiple views.

There's only so many hours you can keep a kid in the classroom. Shoehorning non-science into science classes squeezes out the science.

[awip2062]

Okay, let's keep the debate going.

As far as the earth being an open system, yes, it is. There is no such thing as a truly closed system in nature. Still, energy is lost and continues to be lost. The sun is losing energy, and it is not being replaced. Long before it is out, we are toast.

The point about entropy there though was that things are decaying, not becoming more complex. When have you ever seen evidence of things becoming more organized? Don't our daily experiences show that things become less so? Do you have to work to keep your yard messy or neat? Evolution requires organisms develop new specializations and become new creatures.

We don?t see this though. For example, with all the talk of the TB bacterium "evolving", it is still a TB bacterium. With all the breeding we have done on dogs to make new breeds, they are as yet still dogs. Not only are they still dogs, but the purebred dogs have LOST genetic information, not gained it in becoming purebred. You will not end up with a great diversity of features on the puppies of two purebred Dobermans,. No matter how much you breed them, those Dobes simply will not give you the blue tongues like Chows have or the beaver-like tail of the Labrador. The variations you will find will have been from one of two things. First, the remaining variations still left within the genetic code or mutations. Now, I know that evolutionists say that mutation is the way it happens, but how many negative, and in fact disease or death causing mutations have scientists documented and how many positive, helpful ones have they found?

As far as Piltdown not being taught as truth after it was shown to be false?.maybe not in the UK, DA.

I can't get into talkorigins.org, although I have tried. I am unable to verify from any other source, that there were no theses written on it. Please link me to those, if you will.

One of the many problems with Lucy is that the 30 or so individuals were not of the same species. Even Richard Leaky (a well-known secular scientist) believes that at least two or three species were combined in her formation.

The problem with Haeckel's recapitulation theory is that although something may look like another, is it that other thing? Not necessarily. Human beings simply do not go through all the stages of evolution in the womb. Sure, there are slits near the beginning stages of a human's life, and they look similar to gill slits, but we never have gills.

Robert Locke may have been a bad choice. Anti-creationist, but not working in the sciences the way you want. So?how about Leo Berg, William Fix, Pierre Paul Grass?. Not all men I agree with on all things, but men who are more than scientific journalists.

As far as chemists, why do they see it more? I don't know. I have heard it hypothesized, but a chemist, that it is because they deal in mathematics wherein truth is so much harder to debate. But, that is only one person's opinion.

[Devil's Advocate]

As far as the earth being an open system, yes, it is. There is no such thing as a truly closed system in nature.

True, other than th euniverse itself.

The point about entropy there though was that things are decaying, not becoming more complex.

On average, taking the Sun and everything in its sphere of influence, including the Earth and life on this planet, entropy is indeed increasing.

Th formation of a crystal entails a localised decrease in entropy - but at the expense of an increase in the entropy of the crystal's surroundings. It's the same with life: we take a small portion of the Sun's output of energy and use it to locally decrease entropy.

When have you ever seen evidence of things becoming more organized?

Crystallisation
life
any form of construction (buildings, machines, etc)
tropical storms and other weather phenomena such as tornadoes
the conical shape formed by pouring sand onto a surface
the spherical shape that planets and stars take under the influence of their own gravity
spiral galaxies
Saturn's rings...

Is that enough, or would you like the long list?

Don't our daily experiences show that things become less so? Do you have to work to keep your yard messy or neat?

Precisely: you have to work. That is, you need to input energy, just as the Sun's input of energy is used by life to locally decrease entropy.

Evolution requires organisms develop new specializations and become new creatures.

It doesn't require them to do anything of the kind. There's nothing in the ToE that says that complexity must increase.

We don?t see this though. For example, with all the talk of the TB bacterium "evolving", it is still a TB bacterium.

It is. But there's no barrier to prevent its ongoing change from proceeding till its descendants are no longer TB.

With all the breeding we have done on dogs to make new breeds, they are as yet still dogs.

But they differ enough from wolves that they ahve their own Linnean classification.

And since the criterion for two individual animals being of the spame species is that they be able to breed and produce fertile offspring, a strong argument can be made for the Pekinese not being the same species as the Great Dane.

Not only are they still dogs, but the purebred dogs have LOST genetic information, not gained it in becoming purebred.

Again, evolution does not require any increase in information.

You will not end up with a great diversity of features on the puppies of two purebred Dobermans,.

True. But keep breeding them for a few hundred-thousand years (which is about as long as we've been domesticating dogs, iirc), and you'll be able to produce much more variation.

No matter how much you breed them, those Dobes simply will not give you the blue tongues like Chows have or the beaver-like tail of the Labrador.

Eventually, you could. You just need a lot of patience - regardless of whether you start form pure-bred Dobermanns or from a pair of stray mongrels.

Now, I know that evolutionists say that mutation is the way it happens, but how many negative, and in fact disease or death causing mutations have scientists documented and how many positive, helpful ones have they found?

Since most of the research in this area goes in th eopposite direction (starting form a genetic disease and looking for the mutation(s) to blame), the data is skewed.

It is further skewed by the fact that a harmful mutation is much, much easier to identify as such than a beneficial one.

And in fact the vast majority of mutations are neither beneficial nor harmful. I have heard it said (and I wish I had a source for this) that the average human has some 300 mutations, not including those inherited from his or her parents.

Any brood of offspring will have a range of characteristics, which will be broader than the differneces between its parents. (I, for instance, am taller than either of my parents, or any of my grandparents.) That range will be due to the neutral mutations. If, for some reason, the environment changes such that the animal is not quite suited to it, then somewhere in the range of characteristics of the next genertion will be individuals who are even more unsuited to the environment, and others who are better suited to it. The latter group will be more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on their genetic differnece from thier parents to their offspring. That's all there is to it.

As far as Piltdown not being taught as truth after it was shown to be false?.maybe not in the UK, DA.

Nor in America. I have the text of a creationist book from 1922 which dismisses Piltdown as a fake, and which correctly describes how it was done. The scientific establishment abandoned Piltdown long before 1953 due to it having become anomalous with the other fossils then known.

I can't get into talkorigins.org, although I have tried. I am unable to verify from any other source, that there were no theses written on it. Please link me to those, if you will.

Strange.... Why can't you get in?

The "500 theses" claim is dealt with on TO here, but the sources it cites are the Nature editorial I mentioned, and another article on TO which says (in part):

...When one considers the small number of PhD's in paleontology being granted currently and the even smaller number 80 years ago and the diversity of topics chosen for PhD theses a figure of half a dozen seems generous; in all probability there were none whatsoever. John Rice Cole notes that in the 20s there were about 2 dissertations per year in physical anthropology in the entire US on ANY topic.

Robert Parson made a systematic search of the bibliographies of The Piltdown Forgery by Weiner, The Piltdown Inquest by Blinderman, Piltdown: A Scientific Forgery and The Piltdown Papers by Spencer, The Antiquity of Man (1925) and New Discoveries Relating to the Antiquity of Man (1931) by Sir Arthur Keith. Spencer and Keith's works have extensive references and bibliographies of the primary research literature. There are no references to any doctoral dissertations. Likewise Millar's bibliography contains no references to any doctoral dissertation.

One of the many problems with Lucy is that the 30 or so individuals were not of the same species. Even Richard Leaky (a well-known secular scientist) believes that at least two or three species were combined in her formation.

I still haven't found anything on this 30 individuals thing. But could you be confusing Lucy with the new(ish)ly discovered Kenyanthropus platyops, of which "fossils of more than 30 individuals [were found] in 1998 and 1999." (source)

The problem with Haeckel's recapitulation theory is that although something may look like another, is it that other thing? Not necessarily. Human beings simply do not go through all the stages of evolution in the womb.

Indeed, Haeckel was wrong about that. At best, he over-stated the case. But his theory is not the Theory of Evolution.

Sure, there are slits near the beginning stages of a human's life, and they look similar to gill slits, but we never have gills.

Right, but the point is that those structures are identical to those in fish embryos - which do develop into gill slits.

So?how about Leo Berg, William Fix, Pierre Paul Grass?. Not all men I agree with on all things, but men who are more than scientific journalists.

I've not found much info on Berg, but Fix has his own theory that no-one takes seriously except him, and Grasse did not deny evolution. He disputed the mechanism for it, that has since been (and for that matter was already) supported by overwhelming evidence.

Here's a quote from TO by Grasse:

"Zoologists and botanists are nearly unanimous in considering evolution as a fact and not a hypothesis. I agree with this position and base it primarily on documents provided by paleontology, i.e., the history of the living world ... [Also,] Embryogenesis provides valuable data [concerning evolutionary relationships] ... Chemistry, through its analytical data, directs biologists and provides guidance in their search for affinities between groups of animals or plants, and ... plays an important part in the approach to genuine evolution." (Pierre P. Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, pp. 3,4,5,7) (source)

As far as chemists, why do they see it more? I don't know. I have heard it hypothesized, but a chemist, that it is because they deal in mathematics wherein truth is so much harder to debate. But, that is only one person's opinion.

Hm. I thought you had something or someone specific in mind.

I would say that the scientists who reject evolution are less likely to be biologists because evolution is a biological theory. Similarly, you'd be more likely to find biologists than physicists who reject Einstein's theories.


That was a long post.

[rushlight]

Yes. That's what makes you YOU.

[Xanadu]

Evolution...a long chain with many branches a pattern in itself that is endless and part of the pattern that is the entire universe branching in ways that blows our minds. Time is one big "block" that goes on forever tho we may seem to be in one moment all time is allways there...you may choose your path through it. Genes are maps containing the history that is allways present even tho its behind you. Evolution is a mere change in patterns over time...like a pepetual kaleidescope for everything that happens the exact opposite is happening somewhere else...

...that is all obvious but what is the driving force?

[awip2062]

As far as the earth being an open system, yes, it is. There is no such thing as a truly closed system in nature.

True, other than th euniverse itself.

Actaully, it is not an uncommon belief that there are many universes.

When have you ever seen evidence of things becoming more organized?

Crystallisation
life
any form of construction (buildings, machines, etc)
tropical storms and other weather phenomena such as tornadoes
the conical shape formed by pouring sand onto a surface
the spherical shape that planets and stars take under the influence of their own gravity
spiral galaxies
Saturn's rings...

Is that enough, or would you like the long list? [/quote]
In a discussion on the veracity of evolution, you cannot say that life has become more complex because you have no proof, unless you are saying that the fact that it is here is proof, and that is bad logic.
Construction would be more of a proof of intelligent design, not a help to your side.
Tropical storms and other weather phenomena are short term.
The conical shape formed by pouring sand also is short term, and rapidly decays without something keeping it there.
The spherical shape of planets and stars, spiral galaxies,...yes, I agree gravity holds them together, but they are not becoming more complex. their shape is being changed by an outside force.

Evolution requires organisms develop new specializations and become new creatures.

It doesn't require them to do anything of the kind. There's nothing in the ToE that says that complexity must increase. [/quote]
The Theory states that we became what we are from one-celled organisms. That DOES require complexity increasing. I surely am more complex than an amoeba, for example.

We don?t see this though. For example, with all the talk of the TB bacterium "evolving", it is still a TB bacterium.

It is. But there's no barrier to prevent its ongoing change from proceeding till its descendants are no longer TB.[/quote]
And if left alone long enough a monkey pushing keys on a typewriter can write out a line from Shakespeare, but that doesn't mean we believe he will, nor that it is proven he will.

With all the breeding we have done on dogs to make new breeds, they are as yet still dogs.

But they differ enough from wolves that they ahve their own Linnean classification. [/quote]
Different classification, still dogs.

Not only are they still dogs, but the purebred dogs have LOST genetic information, not gained it in becoming purebred.

Again, evolution does not require any increase in information.[/quote]
Again, if you don't add information, there is no chance of an animal without a system deveolping them.

You will not end up with a great diversity of features on the puppies of two purebred Dobermans,.

True. But keep breeding them for a few hundred-thousand years (which is about as long as we've been domesticating dogs, iirc), and you'll be able to produce much more variation.[/quote]
This is a belief, but until we have had that time put in, cannot be PROVEN.

No matter how much you breed them, those Dobes simply will not give you the blue tongues like Chows have or the beaver-like tail of the Labrador.

Eventually, you could. You just need a lot of patience - regardless of whether you start form pure-bred Dobermanns or from a pair of stray mongrels.[/quote]
Again, believed, not proven. And the Dobermans have lost that information.

Now, I know that evolutionists say that mutation is the way it happens, but how many negative, and in fact disease or death causing mutations have scientists documented and how many positive, helpful ones have they found?

Since most of the research in this area goes in th eopposite direction (starting form a genetic disease and looking for the mutation(s) to blame), the data is skewed.p
But we are still waiting to find the good ones.

It is further skewed by the fact that a harmful mutation is much, much easier to identify as such than a beneficial one.[/quote]
But we are still waiting to find the good ones.

And in fact the vast majority of mutations are neither beneficial nor harmful. I have heard it said (and I wish I had a source for this) that the average human has some 300 mutations, not including those inherited from his or her parents.

I will accept the statement.

Any brood of offspring will have a range of characteristics, which will be broader than the differneces between its parents. (I, for instance, am taller than either of my parents, or any of my grandparents.) That range will be due to the neutral mutations. If, for some reason, the environment changes such that the animal is not quite suited to it, then somewhere in the range of characteristics of the next genertion will be individuals who are even more unsuited to the environment, and others who are better suited to it. The latter group will be more likely to survive and reproduce, passing on their genetic differnece from thier parents to their offspring. That's all there is to it.

This is survival of the fittest and I have no trouble with that overall. It does not show change of one species to another, however, so it does not prove macro-evolution.

As far as Piltdown not being taught as truth after it was shown to be false?.maybe not in the UK, DA.

Nor in America. I have the text of a creationist book from 1922 which dismisses Piltdown as a fake, and which correctly describes how it was done. The scientific establishment abandoned Piltdown long before 1953 due to it having become anomalous with the other fossils then known.

Unfortunately, not all secular texts dismissed it as a fake, and I was taught it in school.

I can't get into talkorigins.org, although I have tried. I am unable to verify from any other source, that there were no theses written on it. Please link me to those, if you will.

Strange.... Why can't you get in?

I dont' know. The server may have been down? *guesses*

I still haven't found anything on this 30 individuals thing. But could you be confusing Lucy with the new(ish)ly discovered Kenyanthropus platyops, of which "fossils of more than 30 individuals [were found] in 1998 and 1999." (source)

No. If I remember, I may look the information up and link you.

Sure, there are slits near the beginning stages of a human's life, and they look similar to gill slits, but we never have gills.

Right, but the point is that those structures are identical to those in fish embryos - which do develop into gill slits.

A slit is a slit. So the fish one grows into a gill, how is that showing evolution in a human embryo?

So?how about Leo Berg, William Fix, Pierre Paul Grass?. Not all men I agree with on all things, but men who are more than scientific journalists.

I've not found much info on Berg, but Fix has his own theory that no-one takes seriously except him, and Grasse did not deny evolution. He disputed the mechanism for it, that has since been (and for that matter was already) supported by overwhelming evidence.

Isn't his problem with macro-evolution, or am I confusing him with someone else?

That was a long post.

Yes, these seem to get quite long. But discussion is good.

My youngest son was blasting Ozzy today while we cleaned house and I heard a line that is quite true. He said, "You gotta believe in foolish miracles."

I believe in the foolish miracle of a loving G-d who created everything there is in six days simply by speaking.

You believe in the foolish miracle of everything being created by chance.

Either way, we choose by faith what we are going to believe. And so, onward and upward, roll the bones, DA!

[Xanadu]

I believe in the foolish miracle of a loving G-d who created everything there is in six days simply by speaking.

Maybe God created us over a long period of time via evolution although the future exists now in endless demensions and you could still say *poof* we exist

[awip2062]

I used to believe that G-d used evoltuion, but that changed when I was at university.