Vice reports that some US States are using new academic freedom initiatives, designed to prevent climate indoctrination, to add courses about creationism to mainstream school syllabuses. The question – who has the right to decide what lessons children learn?
CLIMATE DENIAL IN SCHOOLS
A new wave of state bills could allow public schools to teach lies about climate change.
By Emmalina Glinskis on Apr 25, 2017
Legislation proposed across the country since Donald Trump’s election threatens to bring climate change denial into the classroom under the guise of “academic freedom.”
Currently, six states have legislative measures pending or already on the books that would allow anti-science rhetoric, including the rejection of global warming, to seep its way into schools’ curricula. While these types of proposals have become fairly routine in certain states, some of the most recent crop have advanced farther than in the past.
Senate Bill 393 in Oklahoma, for example, would permit teachers to paint established science on both evolution and climate change as “controversial.” The “controversy,” however, doesn’t really exist — more than 97 percent of actively publishing, accredited climate scientists agree that global warming trends over the past century are directly attributable to human activity. And some teachers might already be misleading students.
Since its initial proposal in early February, the bill passed out of the Senate and into the House, where it circumvented the House Education Committee and now heads for a full House vote.
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Read more: https://news.vice.com/story/six-states-trying-to-pass-climate-denial-in-education-legislation
I believe anyone who takes a serious interest in climate science should be able to see that there are serious problems. The models don’t work, the evidence is weak, and the assurances that the science is “settled” are clearly a political construct, not a scientific conclusion.
I also believe that creationism is junk science.
The thought that creationism is being taught in mainstream schools makes me as uncomfortable as the thought that some students are being indoctrinated with climate dogma.
But plenty of people hold different views. Some people believe evolution is bogus, that creationism is a more acceptable explanation for the formation of the Earth. Some of those believers in creationism are parents.
I believe schools which teach climate dogma to students are doing those students a grave disservice.
Many people believe not teaching climate alarmism leaves students unprepared for the choices they urgently will need to make, to avoid the apocalyptic climate dystopia which looms over their future.
Yet other people think exclusively teaching evolution, not teaching creationism, leaves students with an unbalanced view of the evidence.
Some people even think children as young as seven should be comprehensively educated about all the different weird sexual preferences and “genders” prevalent in some parts of today’s world, should be educated about “gender fluidity”. I personally think confusing young children about sexuality in this way is completely insane.
Who has the right to decide what children are taught?
The answer as far as I can see, is no one group has the right to decide what children learn.
Ultimately parents have to decide what is best for their children.
If parents think the best preparation for their children’s future is a course on making voodoo dolls, or the healing power of crystals, do we really have the right to step in and demand they desist?
Freedom means having the freedom to mess up your life. Academic freedom is the freedom to mess up your children’s education.
I don’t like the choices some parents will make. I absolutely loathe the choices some parents make. I think any parent who indoctrinates their children with the idea that the world is about to end in a fiery climate catastrophe needs their head examined. I think parents who teach their kids that there is no point studying palaeontology, because god made everything just the way it is, are crippling their children’s understanding of the world.
But the alternative to having the freedom to mess up your children’s education, is giving the state the authority to mess up your children’s education.
The only sane choice is to take back power from the state, to demand and receive the right to decide what is best for our own children – however outrageous some of those choices may be. Because the only thing worse than watching other parents make bad choices for their children, is being forced to accept whatever lunacy the latest crop of government bureaucrats decide to inflict on your children.
And the same policy allowing scientific criticism to be aired in class is true of climate change, as well.
The Book of Genesis — the best philosophical science of its day.
In Genesis why are plants created before the stars are set in motion? Because it’s pure Aristotle. (The Old Testament ain’t as old as people think.) Aristotle argued that there are three types of motion — physical place to place motion, change of color and growth. (Later Aristotle adds shrinkage as a fourth form of motion different from growth.) When the universe is set into motion all three (or four) types of motion are started up. Things move about and plants perform change of color and growth (also shrinkage).
Motion can’t be started till things are created that can “move”. If there were no sun and stars in place to move about than motion could not be started. Likewise if plants were not there motion could not be started.
According to Aristotle all motions have a unitary cause. — apparently one (and only one) commandment from God. (Apparently God was rather thrifty with his commandments.)
So the idea of one God originated in Greece (God is Greek) not in the east. Aristotle was Alexander the Great’s teacher. Alexander conquered the east and brought Greek philosophy with him. And about four hundred years later the Old Testament was written.
Oh, and by the way, the Old Testament was completely written by Christian Hebrews — yeah, like you are going to believe that.
Eugene WR Gallun
Thought this was a pretty apposite quote for the discussion here:
‘[S]cience can stand on its own feet and does not need any help from rationalists, secular humanists, Marxists and similar religious movements; and… non-scientific cultures, procedures and assumptions can also stand on their own feet and should be allowed to do so… Science must be protected from ideologies; and societies, especially democratic societies, must be protected from science… In a democracy scientific institutions, research programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality.’
— Feyerabend, Against Method, p. viii[47]
It is my opinion that human beings basically are religious. Religion answers questions about the Unknown to ease our consciousness and suppres doubts. Religious theses become true by authority (placing things outside comprehension of the public) and consensus which requires heretics to be silenced.
Science places truth outside authority and consensus which requires analytic reasoning and numerical expertise. In climate matters, religious arguments dominate because the climate is not well understood. This enables opportunists to develop new business models, based on virtual fears. The Middel Ages are back. We have become a theocracy. If continued we are entering a period of stagnation and a more static lifestyle. Return to a feudal system could happen which is typical for a low-energy-society.
David says “It is my opinion that human beings basically are religious.”
If by “religious” you mean “easily believe what they are told”, then yes. Believing is, on average, safer. If your distant ancestor heard that lions and tigers and bears oh my were just over the ridge, it is safer to believe it than to go see for yourself.
There’s a reason why the Climate Consensus is almost exclusively a product of the socialist left; it is a social control mechanism. It might also be more or less true but that’s not the important reason most Democrats subscribe.
A social grouping cannot exist if everyone requires proof, challenges claims, scientific behavior in other words. A social group exists when people simply believe what they are told by a leader. The leader himself might not believe a thing which is what makes him the leader rather than just another follower.
Libertarians tend to be challengers, questioners, skeptics. It doesn’t mean libertarians do not believe, but they will tend to have good reasons for belief. A religious libertarian has made a choice for good reasons as seems to him. People of the Left go with whatever they are told but it will (almost) always incorporate elements of simple belief of what an Authority (or a Consensus) has told them.
Evolution vs. Creationism
Both do not exclude each other as long as you do not believe in a very specific story of creationism (i.e. bible). You can believe in evolution and track everything back to the very first single cell and how that one evolved. Still, this does not explain, how the conditions for this evolution were set. Since there is no start and no end of time we will very likely reach a point where we will fail to explain everything by evolution or science as we know it. It is at least as likely that there is something to set all this in motion as it is that everything evolved by hazard.
But even if you believe that there is some creator it does by no means answer the question whether this is a being we describe as god. Also, it does not prove that this being started this process just to create mankind because nobody can know that we are the end of the process. It does not prove that any of the religions we know on earth has something to do with this being. Looking at the time scales and the many different religions over earth and time it is more likely that those are pure inventions of a selfimportant mankind which thinks to be and remain the top of the evolution. Even if the creator focussed on mankind an we were the very target of the process, who tells you that this creator has good intentions? etc. etc.
After all I have come to the conclusion: Evolution explains the development of universe, earth and mankind well enough for me. Maybe there is a creator in another dimension to start the whole process with a specific intention, maybe there is not. But if there was one it is very unlikely that this is a godlike being (according to our definition) who would be interested in us or our lifes.
Both have their place in school, evolution as the reality based theory and the different religions including their explanation of creation as it’s philosophical counterpart. The students will have to learn to evaluate both.
There isn’t a scientific theory of evolution. Scientific theories require testable concepts and no one knows how to test the claim, for example, tat ATP synthase evolved by means of natural selection, drift or any other blind and mindless process. The same goes for all of the biological systems and subsystems observed to exist.
That said Creation is OK with populations evolving. It is OK with antibiotic resistance evolving. Creationism actually predicted reproductive isolation and the beginning of the universe, so at least it has that going for it.
Darwin predicted the existance of an insect with a very long nozzle fitting to a similarly shaped rare flower. Years after his prediction this insect was discovered. I don’t care how the evolution theory is called. To me it is completely logical but of course I accept other views.
Actually, there are scientific theories of evolution.
Evolution itself is a fact, and it’s pretty well supported by observations.
More importantly, there are any number of conceivable observations that would completely falsify evolution. Mammalian fossils in undisturbed Devonian rock, for example, or pollen in undisturbed Cambrian rock. One of the reasons why Creationists get so excited about complexity and “irreducible complexity” is they purport to show events that can’t be explained through known evolutionary mechanisms. (Explanations tend to get worked out, and in at least one case that I know of, the explanation had been worked out before the book popularizing the problem had been published.)
Now the difference between evolution and Climate Change is that I’m not sure what possible observable fact could falsify it. If we have a heat wave, it’s Climate Change. If we have a blizzard, it’s Climate Change. If California has a drought, it’s Climate Change. If we have more water than we can handle, it’s Climate Change. I’ve listed two things that could completely disprove evolution. What would completely disprove Climate Change?
(I think it’s fair to define Climate Change as having three parts: (1) The world is getting warmer; (2) Humans are responsible for a major amount of that warming; (3) Said warming is going to bring disastrous consequences. “Disproving Climate Change” means getting Climate Change Alarmists to admit that no, it’s not a disaster after all, or at least no, we don’t have to roll technology and civilization back to 1750 after all.)
Joe,
There is no scientific theory more scientific and subject to falsification of its testable predictions than evolution. It has passed every test.
As for the evolution of ATP synthase, there is a large literature on the subject. ATP itself is a nucleotide found in both DNA and RNA. How the enzyme to make this energy storage molecule evolved has been satisfactorily described for over 20 years, with recent refinements. It clearly involves selective pressure and gene duplication.
Rotary DNA motors:
http://www.cell.com/biophysj/pdf/S0006-3495(95)80096-2.pdf
F-ATPase similarity to V-ATPase:
http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/potm/2005_12/Page2.htm
Differing proton gradient between them:
http://www.jbc.org/content/290/23/14350
Rotation of gamma subunit to drive enzymatic reaction:
https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v421/n6918/full/nature01250.html
Gene duplication:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1016/0014-5793(90)80014-A/abstract;jsessionid=17840C4D0AEE41353FBB330318DE19A0.f02t02
Reversals in functions:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1016/j.febslet.2004.08.065/abstract
paulclim writes: “But even if you believe that there is some creator it does by no means answer the question whether this is a being we describe as god.”
There is no “we”. Consequently what you have in mind by the word is nearly certain to be different than what I have in mind by the word.
“Also, it does not prove that this being started this process just to create mankind because nobody can know that we are the end of the process.”
However it is easy to believe that mankind is the apex of the process right now, or its purpose. One thing that you cannot know is that no others can know a thing that you do not.
“It does not prove that any of the religions we know on earth has something to do with this being.”
Proof is not relevant. If God wanted everyone to know he exists, then everyone would know. Since that is clearly not the case, either he doesn’t particularly care for everyone to know he exists, or he cannot force everyone to know he exists, or he is choosing to not impose it (other possibilities may exist).
But *I* can know a thing that you do not, and if I tell my story and others believe it, I have just started a “religion”.
“a selfimportant mankind which thinks to be and remain the top of the evolution.”
That is indeed what I think, more or less. However I suspect my dog also thinks she is the pinnacle of creation.
“Even if the creator focussed on mankind an we were the very target of the process, who tells you that this creator has good intentions?”
He does. One assumes of course that he is telling the truth; and if not, what then are you going to do about it?
“Evolution explains the development of universe, earth and mankind well enough for me.”
Whereas any of dozens of different creation stories serve the same purpose for others.
“But if there was one it is very unlikely that this is a godlike being (according to our definition) who would be interested in us or our lifes.”
Why would it be unlikely?
What I know for sure is that there is such a being and that for reasons not entirely clear he is interested in my life. He has said nothing about yours to me. Each person will know, or not, based on personal experience and this is a thing that cannot be given to another person and that appears to be by design. Your moral compass will lead to your source of morality, mine to mine. My interpretation of these events is that life is a separation and development opportunity, sort of a metaphysical natural selection (unnatural selection?). God does not make you believe; rather, he selects those that do (or will). I was raised in an atheist household. That gave me one advantage — I did not have to “unlearn” a lot of cultural baggage. I did not so blindly believe “7 days” creation that it was difficult to change my thinking; rather I can read the plain words of the book and see that the Earth was already here, the Sun wasn’t created until the 3rd day anyway so “day” isn’t “day”. Since then I’ve also learned that in Hebrew it also isn’t “day” but rather a denotation of the end of one period of time and the start of the next. That may still not be accurate or correct, mythology in other words, but how hard is it to read the plain meaning of the words?
I find that AGW and CAGW advocates and atheists have one thing in common—the desire to SHUT UP EVERYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH THEM. For a while there, I actually thought there could be civil discourse, but introduce one or two rabid atheists and civility is history. Just like CAGW believers, they are NEVER wrong and must be allowed to silence all teachings about religion in schools. The only solution is to completely destroy PUBLIC government schools and go back to home schooling and smaller schools or internet schools with the curriculum chosen by the parents. Otherwise, both atheists and CAGW believers will destroy all hope of actual learning in schools by demanding only their beliefs be taught. The blindness of the two groups is mind-boggling—they seek to silence all who oppose them rather than actual debate. They make proclamations and demand alligence. So very close-minded and dangerous.
I do thank David Middleton for his answers and article. For a while, and off-and-on, very civil answers were given and i learned a lot. Perhaps later it can be tried again and until those “rational atheists” who demand no one believe a certain way jump in, we can all learn. Thank you David for your answers and article.
Sheri I disagree that atheists want to shut up people who disagree. At least I could not find that as a common behavior here in the comments. It should be clear that believeing in or opposing CAGW has nothing to do with being religious or not. i.e. even the Pope believes in CAGW.
Evolution has nothing to with being religious, either, but it is used to stomp out religion on a regular basis.
It seems to me lots of things are used to stomp out religion, including religion.
Now what?
paulclim says “even the Pope believes in CAGW.”
That is a thing you cannot know. Others can know what he chooses to say, and at times various persons can observe his behavior. My comment is a pedantic nit but let’s be precise.
Sheri,
Keeping the anti-scientific, cult religion-based dogma of creationism out of public school science classes is not an attempt to shut anyone up. It’s a necessary result of the separation of church and state.
@ur momisugly Michael 2
If I said “Even the pope seems to believe in CAGW” instead, would that change anything? Being 100% precise impedes an exchange between 2 adverse views, especially in short comments.
i DON’T CARE IF THEY WANT TO MESS UP THEIR OWN CHILDREN’S LIFE. bUT i SET A LIMIT WHEN THEY START MESSING WITH MY CHILDREN’S LIVES BY FOISTING JUNK SCIENCE INTO THE CURRICULUM.
Sure, what you label “junk science”. That’s the problem. Everyone has their own pet science/religion that they will never giver up no matter how junky it is. Skeptics constantly condemn vaccinations, Big Pharma, GMOs etc. The ONLY solution is to home school children. I’m fine with that. Then no one foists anything that might disagree with what you hold near and dear to your heart upon your children. Home schooling solves all of that problem.
Sheri writes “Home schooling solves all of that problem.”
Indeed it does! But some new problems arise. Finding time and a teacher; and it seems to me states that allow home schooling still set the curriculum.
Micheal: Some states do, others do not. Where my brother lived, his kids had to pass certain tests each year. That was it. There’s also a lot of online schools now which are accredited and free.
Wow- if anyone wants to see what a complete joke of a website this is- just take a look at this thread. Climate “dneyers” now debating creationism vs evolution.
At least it is one step further in the evolution compared to the AGW religion.
What a joke are celebrity Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change Alarmists, who also oppose vaccination, such as gigantic carbon footprint, globe-trotting CACCAlarmism advocate and Obama BBF, Leo DiCaprio:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-robert-de-niro-anti-vaccine-autism-movie-tribeca-20160325-story.html
I regret having missed the meat of this debate. Maybe another time.
My take on Darwin and his theory of evolution has nothing to do with creationism. I criticize Darwinism from a scientific perspective. The main points that I would make are two: 1. that the theory of evolution is incomplete because it has no account of human rationality and 2. that Darwin’s original story is taught by secondary teachers and some college professors as “the truth” rather than as science.
Among all living things, human beings are unique because they can imaginatively project themselves into the distant future and treat it as no less important than present experience. Imagine a rabbi during Kristallnacht imaginatively exploring where this event is leading. No chimpanzee can do that. So, Darwin’s account of human evolution ended at least 50,000 years ago.
As regards teaching “Darwin’s story” as the truth, consider a thought experiment. Suppose that we find in South Africa, or some such place, a family living near a cave that contains the burials of all their ancestors. Suppose that we discover that the first crypt contains a chimpanzee and, after walking hundreds of miles in this cave, that the most recent crypt contains Grandfather who died last year. Teachers of Darwinism present such a story as “the truth;” that is, they teach that the bones are in the ground somewhere and that, in principle, the entire line could be reconstructed. That is an incredibly powerful image to put into the head of a teenager. The problem is that on strict scientific grounds no one can say that the image represents reality. The idea that there is a direct line of descent from some chimpanzee to the first homo sapiens sapiens and that it is unique is presented as fact yet it is not a scientific fact by any stretch of the imagination
No magic need be invoked to explain human mental capacities. We have an enlarged neocortex, the evolution of which is evident not only in the fossil record but in our genes. Even so, our spatial memory is far inferior to that of chimps.
We don’t descend from chimps as they are now, but from a common ancestor with chimps and bonobos in the Pliocene Epoch. Our genomes show precisely which mutations were important in our evolution.
One happened early in the Pliocene, the gross chromosomal mutation which is associated with upright walking. Two smaller, standard great ape chromosomes fused to produce human chromosome #2. That’s why we have only 23 pairs instead 24, as do the other great apes.
The other occurred near the end of Pliocene, a simple mutation which enabled our brains to grow larger. Less than a decade ago, another evolutionary development associated with brain function was discovered hiding in plain sight in a non-coding portion of our genome. (“Genes” are portions of our DNA which code for proteins.)
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2008/06/14/rna-gene-separates-human-brains-from-chimpanzees/
The fossil record is now good enough so that we can also recreate the stages in human evolution of the past several million years, since the split from that common ancestor. Evidence from embryology, comparative anatomy, the paleontology of our ancient habitats and all other lines of evidence show what happened.
“Truth” in science means that hypotheses have been repeatedly confirmed without ever having been shown false. That humans evolved from African apes ancestral to both us and our chimp and bonobo kin is supported by all available evidence and contradicted by none.
We do share the MN blood group with gorillas, which chimps lack. But that’s just because the chimp line lost it during its separate evolution from our last common ancestor, while humans retained it. Overall, genomics, anatomy, proteins, indeed the huge preponderance of all evidence shows that we’re closer to chimps than to our other great ape kin, ie gorillas or orangutans.
You did not address human rationality. No living thing on Earth can imaginatively project itself into the future and treat that future as important, except for humans.
Your definition of truth does not wash.
How is thinking about the future different in kind or quantity from any other sort of rational thought, which exists abundantly among birds, mammals and even mollusks?
You ought to try to understand what “truth” means in science.
Humans are not fundamentally different from any other living thing.
“No magic need be invoked to explain human mental capacities. We have an enlarged neocortex, the evolution of which is evident not only in the fossil record but in our genes.”
So, you believe that some Chimpanzee has engaged in deliberation like the following:
“I really love the Catholic Church. I love the ceremonies, the priests, and especially the sacraments. But I love the Baptist Church’s emphasis on the Word of God and the importance of preaching. I am really torn. And I know whatever decision I make, I will stick with it all my life.”
How did you become aware that the chimpanzee deliberated about the distant future and commitment to abstract ideals? How did it communicate these thoughts to you?
I believe that we did not become fully human until many among the existing population of the time engaged in deliberations about the distant future. I believe that this mental capacity and its outward expression, which are pretty much one and the same thing, is essential to what we understand by human being. I hold that human beings have most likely not existed for more than fifty thousand years.
Your descriptions of mental capacities strikes me as someone describing the differences among various computers. I don’t think that you have addressed the question of human rationality. I don’t think you understand it.
As for ‘truth’, I used the word in two senses in my example. I said high school teachers tell their students that the truth about human evolution is buried in the ground and all we have to do is be patient and dig it up. That is serious malpractice. Scientists might have inferred from theory that everything is in the ground, but they have not come even close to establishing that either in practice or theory. Teaching kids that evolution is a series of physical facts is no less wrong than teaching them that the story of Genesis is a series of physical facts.
The concept of truth in science applies to particular observations, such as “I see the bone of a human finger,” and to theoretical claims, such as “Gravity explains the paths of the planets around the Sun.” Evolution remains a set of theoretical claims. It is not at all clear that they are well confirmed; rather, they might prove to be unfalsifiable. But I do not have time to go into Darwinian ideas of empiricism, which are certainly very different from those found in the hard sciences.
Finally, and most important, keep in mind that we are discussing the teaching of Darwin’s ideas. You cannot defend that teaching by appealing to ideas or research that themselves depend on advances that Darwin did not know.
Theo,
We aren’t talking about teaching Darwin. We are talking about teaching evolution.
We don’t teach Copernicus, Kepler or Galileo when we teach astronomy or Newton or Einstein when teaching physics, although their names are attached to the advances they made. What was a great insight by Darwin in 1837 is a trivial observation now. Same as with Copernicus.
The fact of evolution exists regardless of Darwin, Wallace or any other single scientist.
Darwin didn’t know a lot of things, although he glimpsed and discovered much. He didn’t know how heredity worked. Had he read Mendel, his later books would have been even better.
Paul Westhaver asks (April 26, 2017 at 11:52 am) “A protein made of 160 amino acids would take how long to randomly assemble?”
[https]://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26829/ 2 amino acids per second or 80 seconds.
nope. A protein is an ordered structure. The one I suggested is typical and has 160 amino acids in a specific order. 80 seconds represents the first attempt at randomly assembling the protein. Please try again. 🙂 and again, and again etc.
Human rationality and the idea of morals, and the process of metamorphosis are two things I have never found adequate explanations for in the theory of evolution (Yes, I read the evolutionist’s answers. I don’t go to ID to get answers to evolution, or anything else for that matter.) A few cobbled together ones, but none that held up to scrutiny. That to me says the theory is incomplete.
Sheri,
You really ought to study a subject before rejecting it.
Are you freshman all full of vim and vigor and out advertising the virtues of your love, Darwinism? You, Sir, do not even understand what the conversation is about. Read my post in reply to you that is above.
Theo,
No, it clearly is you who don’t understand, as I pointed out.
You too ought to study a subject before presuming to comment upon it.
Wouldn’t help, Chimp. Mindless people like yourself reject anything that isn’t in line with their world view. In fact, you are doing a wonderful job of playing “global warming tr*ll” on the evolution thread. You’ve insulted, demeaned and now that you are not being praised for being the smartest person on this thread and infallible, you’ve gone to juvenile insults. Even if I had a PhD in evolutionary biology, you would call me a Li*r and say I’m making it up. Any answer I give will be called a lie.
Fascinating. Tr*lling is a universal behavior, not just practiced by the global warming crowd. I do thank you for your hard work in laying out this fact for all to see. Have a nice close-minded, narrow, “shush up, I don’t want to hear it, you’re clueless and I’m brilliant” life. Sadly, people like you are worse than religious ones—religious people have been known to reject religion. Self-absorbed, super-smart, know-it-all genius atheists never, never change.
Sheri,
If you had a PhD in evolutionary biology, you wouldn’t make such laughable errors.
Evolutionists sort of address phenomena such as a family or tribe taking care of its own. But they haven’t reached questions such as what value has a concept such as Justice.
So, Chimp, the topics that I have written about, such as deciding which church to join, that falls entirely outside Evolutionary Theory, right? And you think that human reason is not a fit topic for evolutionists? So, tell me, how does a human being differ from a chimpanzee, exactly? And if you teach Darwin to high schoolers or freshman, do you refuse to answer questions along the lines that I have asked?
Theo,
As I keep pointing out, abstract thought is simply a capability empowered by a larger neocortex.
Birds manage to use reason to solve problems with their simpler reptilian brains. Mollusks don’t even have reptilian brains, and don’t live long to gain much experience, but can also use logical processes to solve problems.
Human brain function is no different, just with more circuits. Consciousness doesn’t exist outside the biological, physical and chemical processes of the brain, which are no different in lab rats from in humans, except in scale.
I thought I would leave you with this note, you do know that now we have scientific proof that there is a soul. I would provide a link, but I know you would not follow up. Have a nice day.
Theo,
You keep not understanding. You must be trying not to do so.
Of course reason is an evolutionary topic. There is a gigantic body of literature on the subject of the evolution of mental function in animals. As with all other biological processes, rational thought evolved.
Theo: Everyone knows if you disagree with the likes of C, you are just being mean and not listening or trying to understand his brilliance. Really, you can’t see that?
(Of course he ridicules kids in school for asking such questions. That’s been going on for fifty years. Why would it change now? Indoctrination is always better than learning to think and being a teacher is a power-trip. That means group-think is the only option.)
Chimp, you write:
“We aren’t talking about teaching Darwin. We are talking about teaching evolution.”
Nonsense. No one would be upset with high school or college teachers if they started with Mendel and finished with genetic engineering. It is exactly because they teach Darwin, who is a combination of science and religion, that people get upset.
Anyway, evolutionary theory, Darwin or not, has to explain human rationality as I have presented it or accept that the theory is incomplete. Or even worse, deny that human rationality exists, which is what you seem to be doing. No question about those things.
Theo,
Not nonsense. Only people who have never studied biology imagine that evolution requires Darwin. As I said, his insights and contributions to evolutionary theory–common descent, natural and sexual selection–are now simply observations. I don’t know why you suppose that the state of our knowledge about evolution would be somehow different today if Darwin had never lived. Wallace discovered natural selection on his own and an agricultural researcher before Darwin.
Darwin didn’t even call his hypothesis evolution. That organisms evolve is just a consequence of reproduction. It has to happen, sooner or later. It’s observed every day, and would be without Darwin.
Again, please study the subject before commenting on it.
You missed my point totally. I said that teaching Darwin or Darwinism is what upsets people. If you just taught the science, Mendel’s population genetics and Crick and Watson’s vats of chemicals and genetic engineering, no one would get upset.
But when you teach that Darwinian idea that the unique history of human evolution is in the ground as fossilized skeletons, you are teaching religion not science.
Chimp (the Reply button is malfunctioning for me):
You write: “Of course reason is an evolutionary topic. There is a gigantic body of literature on the subject of the evolution of mental function in animals. As with all other biological processes, rational thought evolved.”
Then why are you not addressing my examples? So, you do agree that a human’s thoughts about religion might show an evolutionary step beyond chimpanzees?
Theo,
I don’t get what it is you think you’re saying.
In evolution, there is no “beyond”. The process has no goal. Organisms evolve the mental capacities which help them survive and reproduce in their environments. Brain tissue is expensive. In chimps’ habitat, more neocortex would have been a liability.
Humans evolved our capabilities because they offered a selective advantage in our ancestors’ habitats, such that we gradually acquired more brain tissue. But our brains work the same way that chimps’ do and other mammals with neocortices do.
There was a jump in brain size from the australopithecines to H. habilis, which permitted making stone tools. We know what the mutation was which permitted this increase and about when it occurred. After that, brain tissue increased gradually from H. erectus to H. sapiens. Neanderthal brains are actually larger on average than Moderns’, but shaped somewhat differently.
I’ve answered what your questions appear to be over and over.
Chimp,
“As I keep pointing out, abstract thought is simply a capability empowered by a larger neocortex.”
You are whistling past the graveyard. Evolutionary theory has never addressed human rational thought. Your answer shows the basest kind of reductionism. I know that all thoughts arise from physical causes. But the character of the thought is not explained by the physical cause. And your computer analogies are not helpful. There are powerful arguments to the effect that digital computers cannot in principle understand natural language, though they can simulate it. The argument is called “The Chinese Room Argument.” That is not surprising to me. I expect natural language and rational thought to be a product of the unique biological organism that a human is.
Theo,
Clearly you have never read any actual books or papers on evolution. As I said, there is a gigantic literature on the evolution of human thought processes, down to the molecular level.
Mere seconds of Googling would have showed you that, yet you persist in making this false claim out of total ignorance. Why? Are you afraid of the truth?
Please educate yourself. I’m through trying.
Why are you so defensive? You cannot move outside the processes that underlie a thought. So, evolutionary theory will never address actual thoughts as opposed to the processes that underlie them?
Let me give you one more example. Among all living creatures, human beings are unique in their ability to suffer pain. A human being can project himself into the future, maybe motivated by discussions of nuclear war, and begin a kind of suffering that can become a major depression and last months. What is the cause of the pain? It is thought. No other creature can suffer that kind of pain. Can evolutionary theory explain what is different about the rational human fear. Its cause is not processes underlying thought but thought.
And you are needlessly offensive. Clearly you have read nothing on the vast literature on human thought rather than on processes underlying thought.
Because you are so obtuse and lacking the least clue about what you’re talking.
Well, Chimp has devolved to the name-calling angry behavior always found in close-minded individuals. EVERYONE is clueless if they don’t agree with him. You’re just dolts who didn’t study hard enuough…..wait, this sounds familiar. Michael Mann says if you disagree with AGW you’re a d*nier and a dolt. Commenters on AGW blogs say if you don’t agree with their science you’re a imbecile. Indoctrination and name-calling are how this “science” is done and no one understands that except C and Michael Mann and the AGW crowd. We are fools for asking questions and daring to question authority.
So, have a nice time. Once things become nothing but insults and chest-beating on the part of the true believers, science is DEAD and so is any discussion thereafter.
Right on the money.
Sheri,
What worries me most about Chimp’s presentations is that he is just piling on the achievements of evolutionary theory and believing that those achievements alone will be satisfactory to students or critics. That is very much the approach used by the CAGW crowd and by much of institutional science. There is a terror of critical reflection on his own enterprise and a need to beat down any point that demands critical reflection. If widespread in science education, that attitude means that most students are not being taught science. They are being indoctrinated. Of course, you have said wiser things along the same lines. I just wanted to acknowledge your wisdom.
Sheri,
What name calling?
I said that the authors of Theo’s link are professional liars, which they are. I didn’t call you or him liars.
Theo,
Creationists are like the CACA crowd, in being antiscientific.
When you repeatedly don’t get what I’m saying, then, yes, I tire of trying to educate you. It’s pointless if you don’t actually want answers to your questions.
There is no scientific case against the fact of evolution. It’s not a subject of debate. The body of theory explaining the observed fact of evolution is, like all scientific theories, subject to improvement. But evolutionary theory is far better understood than is the theory of universal gravitation.
Really!! The science is settled!! You sound like algore.
How about these for starters.
http://www.reasons.org/articles/mites-take-a-bite-out-of-evolution
• Pavel B. Klimov and Barry OConner, “Is Permanent Parasitism Reversible?—Critical Evidence from Early Evolution of House Dust Mites,” Systems Biology 62 (May 2013): 411–23, doi:10.1093/sysbio/syt008.
• “House Dust Mite Study Shows Reverse Evolution Possible,” Nature World News, March 9, 2013, http://www.natureworldnews.com/articles/781/20130309/house-dust-mite-study-shows-reverse-evolution-possible.htm
and http://www.reasons.org/articles/nobel-winning-dna-research-challenges-evolutionary-theory
What about them?
read the article
I did. I didn’t see anything that said the proposed changes were the sort that would be expected to be irreversible.
If the adaptations involved had been the type that served as the foundation for a number of subsequent adaptations, we’d expect those to be “locked in” — changing them would pull out the underpinnings of everything subsequent. However, I don’t see any analysis showing that was the case.
Mike,
Of course evolution is reversible. It’s observed all the time. As long as the evolving population still retains the genes and epigenetic sequences for the reversal to occur. These can be lost over time.
This says nothing at all about the fact of evolution, except to provide another instance of it.
Please quit cutting and pasting from the blasphemous works of the professional liars upon whom you rely for arguments against the fact of evolution.
Creationism has nothing to offer positively, since “God did it!”, so consists entirely of totally bogus objections to reality.
Maybe it is YOU that is the professional liar. Ah, the science is settled. You and mr gore have a lot in common.
As I said before, Reasons to Believe has a testable creation model. But since in your little mind the science is settled you will never know the truth. I wonder if you think that Francis Collins is one of the “professional liars” too, If you do not know he used to head the human genome project and is now the director of the National Institutes of Health and a Christian. Have a nice day.
You did not say anything about the Nobel Laureate’s article on DNA.
Using the word “blasphemous” is generally use in a religious context. Does that mean that evolution is your religion?
Your reaction does not appear to be just an intellectual disagreement, but it seems personal. So, if Christians and/or God let you down at some point in your life, I apologize.
Mike,
I used “blasphemous” in its religious sense. It is blasphemy to imagine that God is cruel, incompetent and deceitful, as do creationists.
Reasons to Believe has no such thing. It’s just as antiscientific and ludicrous as ID. Hagfish slime doesn’t “prove” that there is a creator. There is nothing the least bit mysterious about its evolution.
You lost me there. I certainly do not believe that God is cruel, incompetent and deceitful and I know of no Christians that think that. A pastor at a church where I used to go preached a 24 hour/7 day creation and I told him he was wrong. He is not very scientifically literate, and fell in with the wrong crowd (answers in genesis). He even repeated the old worn idea that God could have created everything young to look old. I told him that if God created me with the mind that I have, to do so would be a lie, and God does not lie.
Concerning hagfish slime, I do not recall reading about that, so I can not comment.
We will have to agree to disagree about Reasons to Believe. I do not see them as anti-science.
All they are trying to do is understand both of God’s books, the bible and nature. I am thinking that this is basically a matter of opinion.
On scientific subjects, God’s Word is wrong; His Work is always right, whenever they conflict. The Bible cannot be reconciled with objective reality, unless you suppose that God is cruel, incompetent and deceptive, as your pastor imagined.
Stars do not hang from a dome and fall to earth, as in the Bible. Nor is earth immobile, flat and covered by the solid dome on which God walks, operating the levers of the storehouses of rain, hail and snow, and through openings in which the sun and moon travel.
Reasons to Believe has no science. Hagfish slime is one of their attempts to show, like ID advocates, that some biological features could not possibly have evolved. Behe’s example of “irreducible complexity” was a bacterial flagellum. Had he studied microbial flagella instead of pretending their evolution couldn’t be explained, he might have contributed to helping fight disease pathogens, but his religion got in the way of his work.
To try to make the Bible correspond to reality requires lying about God, so is blasphemous. Worshiping a book written by men (and maybe one woman) trying to understand God, rather than God Himself, is beyond blasphemy. Nor in Protestant theology should you expect God to want to be understood and for us to find evidence for His existence. The whole point is to believe in Him on faith alone. If He were visible, what’s the value of faith?
What is faith? The faith you seem to be describing is “blind faith”, which is not the kind of faith that I have. This is the way John Lennox explains it in his book “Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are Missing the Target” <>
I know of no Christians who “worship” a book. Christians worship God. Since I believe that God inspired the writings in the bible, and He also created the “book” of nature. If I can read about Him in one book, why not in the other?
You make the mistake of reading all of the bible as literal, which it is not. There are many teaching stories, songs, poetry in there which should not be taken literally.
I still do not understand where you get that God is cruel, incompetent, or deceptive. Even my former pastor does not think that. Am I wrong in assuming that is the way you see Him?
Looking at these comments I see a danger that alarmists are going to be given ammunition for the claim that AGW sceptics are all creationists and Christian fundamentalists. Many of the commentators seem to be tough on the nonsense that plagues climate science, but soft on the equal nonsense that the fundamentalists come out with.
In some ways the alarmists and the creationists are very similar. For one thing, they hold themselves to a much lower standard of scientific evidence than is demanded in other fields.
(And I like that “A new wave of state bills could allow public schools to teach lies about climate change.” It’s the one thing I dislike most about the climate change industry, that outright lies are considered
acceptable in a “good cause”.)
Creationism ==> Creationism is a religious belief. It is perfectly proper to teach it as such if the school district or State education department thinks it should be mentioned. Nearly every textbook about Native Americans, for instance, mentions their beliefs about the creation – mankind coming up out of a hole in the Earth or whatever. It certainly is no threat to Science.
To say “Creationism is junk Science” is silly. It is not intended to be science — it is intended to be an understanding about the greater Universe, about which Physics, for example, has recently admitted to understanding only about 4% — all the rest (dark energy, dark matter == stuff we don’t have a clue about) makers up the other 96%. (may have those %s slightly off….they keep changing)
Only those with a very shaky hold on reality or very little faith in the evidence for Darwin’s evolution could feel threatened by the fact that science teachers might say “Many Christian sects believe that the creation story of the Bible is literal”.
The problem is that millions believe that creationism is science, when its nothing of the sort.
I don’t think that public high school teachers are prohibited from saying in biology class that some Christian sects believe that each individual species is immutable and specially created by God, as long as he or she doesn’t teach that as science. If kids want to study creationism, they can do so in comparative religion classes, not that they are common in high schools.
Chimp ==> I am not convinced that anyone believes that Creationism is Science. Creationists believe what they believe because — based on — their religious beliefs.
There are Creationists that want Creation taught in schools as a parallel to Darwin — but again, not because it is science, but because they believe it is the greater truth and that the kids have a right to hear different views — in the same way that climate skeptics believe that the skeptic/lukewarmer view of climate science should be taught alongside of the Consensus view, which is held by most in the Science Education world to be settled truth.
One mustn’t confuse religious belief — things held to be True based on one’s spiritual understandings — with “science” — we all know that Science simply represents our collective best current understanding of the world around us. It is not TRUTH — and it is constantly changing. Many science fields wander down paths of misunderstanding for years before making self-corrections.
Kip, not all “Creationists” are the same. The “answers in Genesis” variety is not science
IMHO, as they fast and loose with science, in that they interpret it wrong or leave out significant
information. I am more closely aligned with the “Reasons to Believe” group, which try to use science to reveal the truth found in the Bible. I think what many Christians react to, is that evolution may be taught as an absolute truth, meaning all other belief systems are wrong. I believe in the Christian God, but I also believe in science, knowing that it is always changing, which makes it all the more fun.
Mike Graebner ==> Yes, “Creationist” is like “Climate Skeptic” — they only agree on a general theme, not on the details.
It is always a mistake to try and shore up one’s religious beliefs with fallible science — a mistake some religionists make.
Science is our (mankind’s or our society’s) best current understanding of something in the physical world.
Religion is a shared understanding of a higher order — the spiritual. Like minded people, those with a shared spiritual understanding, can group together to form a religion, a church, a sect, a cult — or whatever. But individuals each have their own unique understanding of the spiritual (at any moment and it changes, sometimes day to day, hopefully deepening and broadening) — and it almost never matches that of any other living person.
None of this “understanding” effects the Actuality of the universe. It is how and what it is — and someday we may get closer to having some inkling of what it’s all about.
Why not just be honest and teach we don’t know how the universe was created, that means the solar system we live in and the earth we inhabit. We don’t know why earth is capable of sustaining life or why it started here. How bout we stop acting like we know it all and just admit there is a lot of stuff we don’t know and probably will never know.
Actually, we don’t know whether the universe were created or not. We’re trying to look back before the Big Bang and beyond our universe, but not with much success so far. For all we know now, mass and energy might simply be properties of spacetime, which itself might have no beginning. In any case, positing a Creator doesn’t tell us anything about “creation” and is not a testable scientific hypothesis.
Nor do we “know” with a high degree of certainty whether life developed on earth or came here on meteorites, as some scientists contend. I think it arose here through chemical reactions, but the same reactions could have occurred on bodies in space. Asteroids contain water ice and within ice are pockets of water, which concentrate the organic chemical precursors and complex molecular constituents of life.
Before too long we will find out one or more ways in which these constituents could have developed into living things, whether one of those ways is how it actually happened in the history of life on earth, or not.
We do know why earth is capable of supporting life, which is why so many suppose that life will be found on other planets or moons with similar conditions.
Chimp, if you’re still around/get this, I would love to hear your belief as to “why” (not how) Earth “is capable of supporting life.”