From Wired Magazine, an example of how skeptical views on climate change have now become mainstream enough to earn a level of protection when educators want to explore both sides of the issue. It is unfortunate that Wired magazine chose to label the idea as “anti-science”.
They write:
House Bill 302, as it’s called, states that public school teachers who want to teach “scientific weaknesses” about “controversial scientific topics” including evolution, climate change, human cloning and — ambiguously — “other scientific topics” may do so without fear of reprimand. The legislation was introduced to the New Mexico House of Representatives on Feb. 1 by Republican Rep. Thomas A. Anderson.
Supporters of science education say this and other bills are designed to spook teachers who want to teach legitimate science and protect other teachers who may already be customizing their curricula with anti-science lesson plans.
“These bills say, ‘Oh we’re just protecting the rights of teachers,’ which on the face of it isn’t wrong. But they draw big red circles around topics like evolution and climate change as topics to be wary about,” said Joshua Rosenau, a policy and projects director at the National Center for Science Education. “It suggests this kind of science is controversial, and would protect teachers who want to teach anti-evolution and climate-change-denying lessons in classrooms.”
The bill is one of five already introduced to state legislatures this year. While more than 30 such bills have been introduced since 2004, only Louisiana adopted one as law in 2008.
full story here
Anthony Hughes says:
February 7, 2011 at 5:14 pm
This is the SETI search, the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence.
I think it’s a moot point, since we know there is already intelligent life on planet earth. And yes, William Dembski has already started identifying the rules that identify intelligence from randomity.
Yes, SETI. But the thing you need here is not to tell the difference between intelligent vs. random processes, but between intelligent design and entities that work just as well (or much better, one would say) than the ones we do know for sure were designed by rather intelligent engineers in advance of their implementation, even if their structure simply emerged as a consequence of random variations occurring in tiny information storage devices of replicators followed by blind environmental selection processes operating on said replicators. That’s a much tougher question. Actual DNA sequences are very far from being random. They have meaning which is revealed through the process of embryogenesis.
Anthony Hughes says:
February 8, 2011 at 11:21 am
Rene Descartes was supposed to have said “I think, therefore I am”.
The cogito ergo sum is flawed itself. It is a pseudo-syllogism which can be revealed by considering its negation: “I don’t exist, therefore I don’t think”. If someone came up with such an utterance at a pub, it is a sure sign of being stoned. This proposition is not simply false, it does not make sense. Now, in logic ~~A = A (double negation of a proposition is equivalent to the proposition itself). Therefore Descartes’ cogito, being the negation of a senseless proposition, is senseless itself. One surely can not build rationalism on senselessness.
The only thing that’s shown here clearly is mystery of existence can’t be resolved by logic.
“And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” (Exodus 3:14)
Mind you, the “I AM” in this phrase is the name given in response to the question posed by Moses “they [children of Israel] shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them?”
Although somewhat cryptic, it is a much more honest explication of the problem of existence than the one given by Descartes.
This reminds me of Kurt Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem, whose interpretation depends on something that looks just a tiny detail at first sight.
If all characters in strings standing for propositions about natural numbers are treated in the same way during the coding process used by the proof (that is, their meaning is abandoned), it simply says in all axiomatic systems (capable to capture certain properties of natural numbers and expressed in first order logic) there is a proposition that can neither be proven nor disproven in the system. That is, one can add the negation of the Gödel sentence to the axioms and still get a consistent system (provided of course the original one was consistent in the first place). Such non-standard number theories were in fact constructed and studied (and it was found for example either addition or multiplication is uncomputable in systems like that).
On the other hand if at least the meaning of the existential quantor ∃ is retained, that is, we don’t forget it actually means existence of the entity following it, the theorem says the Gödel sentence of the system is in fact true (although a formal proof can’t be given within the system). Now, the negation of a true proposition is a false one and adding a false axiom to a system does not look like a particularly wise move.
It is not a small difference. The latter interpretation says the human mind can not be modeled by any formal system, which may have far reaching consequences even in physics, as noted by Sir Roger Penrose. Dreams of strong AI to be realized by computers (Turing machines) should also be abandoned in this case.
“Jerry built” means:
“built in a makeshift and insubstantial manner.”
Human vision is Jerry-built, not designed intelligently. We know this:
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.htm
Creationists, however, pretend that living systems are irreducibly complex, perfectly functional, and perfectly designed. Creationists suffer from anasognosia and a massive blind spot.
Something Matt Schilling said about pearls and swine was lifted verbatim from the bible. Another poster suggested that Christianity was an old friend of science, yet history shows that the opposite is true, starting with the decline and fall of the Roman Empire under the influence of Christian piety and not ending with the persecution of Galileo for calling the Pope a “simplicio.” Christianity set the western world on a backward-facing path for around 1500 years.
In contrast, John Damscene wrote Christian screeds attacking Islam from the safety of the Caliphs court!!
Science actually flourished under the early influence of Islam: I do not know why, but it did.
This is why most of our “western” scientific terms have an Arabic or Persian origin, i.e.,
al-kaline, al-chemistry, al-gebra, al-gorithm, azimuth, drug, sin, cosine, tangent, etc ad nauseum:
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/cairo-autumn.html
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/damascus-spring.html
It would seem not everyone agrees with such an intepretation of incompleteness. Interesting post nonetheless.
Mark
Jeff Alberts says:
February 8, 2011 at 6:39 pm
“My parents are my creators.”
Hmmmmm…..
That’s how dogs and cats come into the world.
I never heard of a pooch being sprung from the pound because the dogcatcher failed to give him a Miranda warning.
Umm, Khwarizmi says I lifted something “verbatim from the bible”. This is simply not true. Actually, I made an allusion to a bible reference when I wrote this:
Someone once coined a poignant phrase that is incredibly apt for describing the act of displaying all the splendor of life on Earth to an evolutionist. It goes something like this: “Casting pearls before swine.”
If I had lifted my reference “verbatim”, I would have copied and pasted this quote:
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” (Mt 7:6) (Of course, upon reading it, I realize I should have quoted this verbatim; it is a succint lament for what evolutionists have done to the exquisite jewels of life.)
So, Khwarizmi has already been shown to reside somewhere between “incorrect” and “imprecise”. What implications does that hold for whatever else he has written?
Early on in his latest posting, he says we creationists think living systems are “perfectly functional, and perfectly designed”. This does not even rise to the level of “imprecise”; it is patently false and shows an appalling lack of understanding about the worldview of the vast majority of creationists: We do not believe anything “under the Sun” (allusion alert) is perfect. Rather, the defining characteristic of this plane is imperfection.
Everything in the natural world is not merely flawed, but fatally flawed. Demonstrating flaws in DNA to a creationist does not set him back; it provides him more anecdotal evidence of what he already assumes.
As for algebra and Arabia, it is clear that ancient innovation passed through Arabia; it was not born there.
As for his tiresome attempts at anti-Christian revisionist history – as though science fared better under Islam than under Christianity, extant facts shout otherwise.
I must wrap up. I have two words for him: “Isaac Newton”. OK, I have two more: “Louis Pasteur”. Oops, a couple more: “Johannes Kepler”. I could go on all day, but I must go to work.
Mark T says:
February 8, 2011 at 9:39 pm
It would seem not everyone agrees with such an interpretation of incompleteness.
That’s true. It is an open field of investigation up to this day and no one knows for sure how the final outcome would look like.
However, the utter failure of more than fifty years of AI research to reproduce even the most common human capabilities should serve as a warning that there may be some hidden obstacle deep down below the surface. The brutal lesson we had to learn along this path is the problem is not with the thin layer separating the most intelligent person from common men, but with basic abilities like walking around, perceiving things and comprehension of everyday speech, shared by all able individuals. The logical depth beneath these faculties seems to exceed anything required to perform tasks traditionally linked to intelligence by far.
Computing power of the most powerful supercomuters like Tianhe-I (2.5 petaFLOPS while consuming 4 MW of power) is already many orders of magnitude beyond the threshold envisioned by pioneers like von Neumann in the fifties, still, we are not seeing any immediate breakthrough coming around the corner.
It may well be the case the Hebbian brain model is a grave misunderstanding and something much more intricate is going on at the molecular level, like some quantum computation (or more) in microtubules (with about 10^7 tubulin dimers in each cells) working at several hundred megahertz (while consuming 10 watts or something like that). We just do not know.
It seems that Climate Warmism and Darwinism have both descended to the level of religious cults. Their proponents may adopt a veneer of scientific respectability, but this is a sham. They practice the traditional behavior of dogmatism, intolerance and superstition.
Basically, the search for God is a basic human drive. But what is God? It is the basic cause of a universe. In the case of a Darwinist, Darwinian evolution by Natural Selection is God, the basic cause of the biological universe. Anything not attributable to that is an illusion, a work of the Darwinist devil.
In the case of orthodox Warmists, God is the planetary climate system, which imposes a stable climate on the planet via natural processes. Putting excess Greenhouse gases into the air is the counterpart of blasphemy, and offends the climate God. And the ultimate punishment would be catastrophe, the End of the World.
Why do Warmists and Darwinists commit ad-hominem attacks? Because nonbelievers deserve to be punished. They’re not just wrong, they are evil and must be destroyed.
What would be a true scientific view of these subjects? One that is objective, open-minded, nuanced and tentative. Thus, a scientist would view evolution by natural selection as one possible phenomenon, but certainly not the total and ultimate cause of every biological phenomenon. A scientist would admit that a Greenhouse gas may or may not have some climate forcing, and that forcing may or may not be significant.
In both cases, the scientific view would be objective, open-minded, nuanced and tentative. The scientist would not be dogmatic, intolerant of others with opposing views, or try to expand a particular principle into the ultimate cause of anything.
Matt Schilling,
You say to me “It is also further anecdotal evidence of willful obtuseness – as though Causey was unaware that an author of a novel sits outside of his novel and the painter is other than her painting.”
That was the exact point I was making. If life cannot bootstrap itself, as you imply, then you have to invoke a supernatural creator. Obviously, if this is your position then there is nothing left to argue about. One either accepts a creator or one doesn’t. However, your reasons for denying a natural progression of evolution are philosophical, not scientific.
You gave an example of inheritence in OOP and say “Evidence of these in code is proof of intelligent design (as opposed to sloppy, inefficient, haphazard spaghetti code). The evolutionist sees them in nature and says they are evidence of random naturalism; veritable proofs against intelligent design.”
This is a strawman. Evolutionists have never argued that complexity and beauty are ‘proof against intelligent design.’ They have argued that, evolution by natural selection can account for it. (Nevertheless, your example is not without irony. One can write software to simulate organisms under a simple game-of-life scenario, and when you run them, interesting body plans develop.)
So far, all you have offered against evolution has been a lot of hand waving and misdirection, such as “only to find he is a grunting brute who promptly clobbers her over the head with a club and drags her back to his cave,” and “It goes something like this: “Casting pearls before swine.” All very colourful, I’m sure, but adds nothing to the debate. If you have arguments that refute evolution, other than your visceral loathing of it, you have not presented them. If you have arguments for divine creation, other than argumentium ad ignoratum, you have not presented them.
Yet, as genetics advances, more and more evidence accumulates supporting the idea that switching a few genes on and off leads to large morphological changes. The question of who switches them on and off is the key one to this debate. A evolutionists says ‘natural selection’ and a creationist says ‘God’.
Vince Causey, one of my main points has been, to paraphrase an old saying, evolutionists miss the splendor for the genes. Hence my “colourful” (love British spelling!) reference to a knuckle dragger that is completely oblivious to the finer qualities of a lovely woman. His interest is too base to even notice or care about what she hoped he’d be most interested in.
This, of course, is also the core meaning of the quote from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Ironically, those who often are best suited for the quote are most likely to miss its deeper meaning as they focus on the insult that merely acts as a carrier for the real message – thereby demonstrating their fitness for it.
My primary point, though, has been to say life on Earth is so exquisite, so refined, such a four dimensional display of genius, that I used to be gobsmacked (colourful word, that!) that otherwise intelligent people can be so dull witted to miss it. Yet, it is now my considered opinion that people who defend evolution are not missing anything; they have embraced evolution as an act of the will. Therefore, I purposely regularly use the term “willfully obtuse” to describe people who ought to know better, yet refuse to. (And, since “willfully obtuse” perfectly applies to CAGW alarmists, I think that is how this side discussion has developed on a site that most often discusses them.)
William Paley’s comparison of an evolutionist to someone who finds a fine watch in the woods and thinks it was created by happenstance grows more apt all the time. After all, the closer we look and the more refined our looking glasses become, the more amazing even the simplest life becomes and the more awestruck we ought to be to gaze on it.
I have limited myself on this thread to merely discussing the ridiculous notion that ATP, and all its attendant subsystems, slowly arose by blind chance from nothing in the midst of an entity for which it is a fundamental building block. Yet, the same gross assumption is made about dozens of other essential complex systems. Further, these multiple strings of pearls are all delicately integrated and finely regulated by other systems just as amazing as they.
No other generation should be quicker to affirm that poetic bible phrase that we are “fearfully and wonderfully made”. Scripture has become science before our eyes, yet this generation refuses to admit it. Schilling out!
Matt Schilling,
I have no argument against any of what you have just said. It is certainly true that there are Darwinists/evolutionists who are blind to the miracle and beauty of life, and those that go on counter religious crusades – Richard Dawkins comes to mind. But I would be surprised if this was a universal trait amongst evolutionists. Even physicists may search for the ‘mind of God’ in fundamental particles.
There is less separating our positions than you may think.
Some participants in this forum are “Enforcers for Darwinism” and their comments are morally offensive in the extreme. They are offensive to the same degree and for the same reasons as the comments made by the members of the Inquisition that tried and sentenced Galileo. They believed firmly that Aristotle’s cosmology and Ptolemy’s account of astronomy were the truth and they set out to crush all opposition. Some of you are behaving in exactly the same fashion. Your goal is to crush any criticism of Darwinism. You support high school and college teachers who have exactly the same goal and apply the same methods. Like Galileo’s accusers, you explain that all of the evidence is on your side. What you mean is that all of the evidence that you understand is on your side and you want to rule out of court any other evidence. That is good old gold plated Political Correctness. You immediately erect the Strawman of Creationism. Presented with any scientific or methodological criticism of Darwinism, you change the topic to Creationism and give your strawman a good beating. What the hell are you scared of?
Darwinism is full of scientific and methodological holes. Here is a simple example. Darwin’s definition of the word ‘species’, which is taken-for-granted in the science today, is a definition useful for reporting field work but for absolutely nothing else. According to Darwin and his followers, a population of critters has split into two species when there are two groups who no longer interbreed. Mind you, it does not say “who cannot interbreed” but simply “no longer interbreed.” Using that definition in the field is reasonable, I guess. You can report that there are twelve species of Finch in the Galapagos Islands. But what do you do when the next time you visit you find that two of the species are interbreeding once again? Do you say that there was this separate species X that existed for time T but exists no more? Looking toward the generalizations needed for hypotheses, do you say that species are elastic? How do you define elastic? What laws govern species elasticity? Not one of you will care to address such questions because not one of you is actually interested in Darwinism; rather, your interest is in suppressing criticism of Darwinism. You make fine Inquisitors.
Theo, where did you get that definition of a species?
Anyone who knows much about biology knows that biologists would kill for a good definition of a species — because right now, there isn’t one. What you quoted is a somewhat distorted version of the “reproductive species concept,” which is useful for organisms that reproduce sexually but absolutely no good for organisms that don’t. How, for example, can you talk about reproductive isolation with the New Mexico whiptail lizard, which is composed only of females that reproduce by parthenogenesis? Or with diatoms, which reproduce by fission?
Biologists are slowly drifting toward a definition of “species” that depends on the degree of genetic difference between two populations of organisms, but even that leaves something to be desired.
Robert Heinlein’s definition of a ‘fact’ was ‘A fact is anything that has happened.’
Evolution is a fact. Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming is not.
But this bill is an attempt to authorise teaching religion instead of science in science classes. It’s an attempt to appropriate the credibility of scientific skepticism about CAGW for biblical literalism. It should be resisted for those reasons.
Rejecting the Bill does not endorse the idea that the Hockey Team’s consensus is as infallible as the Pope’s, much as they would like us to believe it.
Vince Causey, I think you made very good points in your last post. And, regarding your last sentence, I take you at your word.
Also, in your 6:49AM post you said, “Evolutionists have never argued that complexity and beauty are ‘proof against intelligent design.’ They have argued that, evolution by natural selection can account for it.” That point is well taken, too.
I stay tethered to what I actually believe when I invoke William Paley and say his argument is more valid today than when he first made it. Reading an executive summary of what is now known about the living cell ought to have the same profound impact on a person as first seeing the Grand Canyon.
wolfwalker says:
February 9, 2011 at 6:23 pm
Theo, where did you get that definition of a species?
Anyone who knows much about biology knows that biologists would kill for a good definition of a species — because right now, there isn’t one. What you quoted is a somewhat distorted version of the “reproductive species concept,” which is useful for organisms that reproduce sexually but absolutely no good for organisms that don’t. How, for example, can you talk about reproductive isolation with the New Mexico whiptail lizard, which is composed only of females that reproduce by parthenogenesis? Or with diatoms, which reproduce by fission?
Biologists are slowly drifting toward a definition of “species” that depends on the degree of genetic difference between two populations of organisms, but even that leaves something to be desired.
The definition is all over the place. Most recently, I found it in Jerry Coyne “Why Evolution Is True.” Obviously, it is not designed to cover asexual species. But it is the most interesting definition because it applies to middle-sized critters like dogs and cats and stuff.
Defining “species” in terms of genetics assumes that each species difference is recorded in genes. That is simply false.