Darwinism Must Die So Evolution Can Live

I had a quick look at the slashdot article you linked to. It seems to be based around a fairly big misapprehension.

Biologists do not use the term “Darwinism” in any technical context.

It is only ever used by science popularisers as a shorthand for evolutionary theory, and by creationists when they wish to create a false dichotomy or a strawman of evolutionary theory.

All semantics aside, however, the core ideas that Darwin had (natural selection, the principle of divergence, common descent etc.) and the sheer quantity of data he accumulated to test his ideas remain collectively a massive intellectual achievement. While it is true that no-one uses terms like “Einsteinism” or “Newtonism”, this may be because no-one has assembled a concerted and organised attack on the teaching of these ideas in physics.

Without Einstein, for example, a great deal of physics still makes sense. Without Newton, the same applies, but perhaps to a lesser extent. However, without Darwin – by which I mean his evolutionary theory – nothing at all in biology makes any sense whatever. Without evolutionary theory, biology is just a collection of facts. With it, however, we are empowered to understand the interrelationships between organisms and to make predictions and to identify new areas for research.

So, while I try not to use the term “Darwinism” at all, I can see that it does serve a purpose, particularly for science popularisers.

OTOH, its meaning has been subverted by creationists into some kind of cult bogeyman. We can either let them get away with this, or science can take it back. Either way, it is not going to disappear any time soon.

OK, to focus again on the OP, creationism taught in public schools. To comment on both science and religion, the world is not doomed when the LHC is fired up, nor when creationism is taught in public schools.

There are two things wrong with creationism being taught in public schools:

(1) It is demonstrably wrong, so it is just lying to the students. Claiming it to be science is just a bigger lie. However, claiming creationism to be science undermines everything that kids should be being taught about science, so it handicaps them when they leave school and try to participate in a high-tech society for themselves.

(2) If you want to teach religion or religious ideas (and creationism really is no more than this) in publicly-funded US schools, the First Amendment demands that you give all religions equal time. No school has the time to do this.

All this aside, there is simply no comparison between the manufactured and false fears over the LHC and the intellectual crippling of a generation of schoolkids. It would be child abuse.

I think anxiety about either is much exaggerated.

See above.

If you’ve read my replies to different members of your blog, you will understand why I think that.

Actually, no. You have not made any attempt to explain why you believe what you do, nor why you consider the word of the Bible or the church to be qualitatively different from everything else around you.

I wrote earlier, that I can choose between different authorites in science, when they disagree, which one to go by.

And this choice is meaningless.

You may as well choose which make of car to buy according to what colour it is – the two are equally arbitrary.

Without comprehension of the relevant information you are not empowered to make such a coice in any meaningful way. Of course you can choose to whom you listen, in the same way that you may choose which car dealer to go to. But science has a final arbiter of truth – the evidence, and the conclusions drawn from it by the international scientific community.

I write now, I am aware of least two different moralites, from which to choose right and wrong. I get to choose which morality to follow, too. It’s wrong to take the children’s minds and bodies from the parents, since God assigns parents and children to each other by birth.

Well, first off, you have no evidence to support this assertion.

Second, do you therefore condone leaving children with abusive parents? Or do you concede that leaving children in an environment where those supposed to nurture them neglect or abuse them is wrong?

Third, your dichotomy is a false one. There are not two different moralities – there are as many different moralities as there are people to hold opinions about morality. These moralities are judged, not by any single church or book, but by societal consensus (well, such is the case in a democratic society). This consensus is commonly known as the law.

He knows what He’s doing, and I don’t question that.

But why not?

What if he is whimsical and vengeful?

The man I follow says, “Render unto God what is God and unto Caesar what is Caesars”. (Since that man also pulled a gold coin from a fish’s mouth to pay tax to Caesar, shouldn’t churches pay taxes, instead of accepting an exemption?) Anyway, I’ve seen somebody quoted as saying, “…the children are God’s” It’s my considered opinion, that as long as any level of government attempts or succeeds in alienating children from their parents with any type ofr education, then, that level of government has sown or nourished the seeds of strife.

But what if the parents are wrong?

Why should the children of deranged lunatics be prohibited from having a full and accurate education, as would be the case if what you wish were to be true?

How long did you really “consider” this matter? Surely, parents who routinely and persistently lie to their children are sowing the seeds of strife? After all, didn’t someone else once say “Thou shalt not lie”, or words to that effect?

In closing, my understanding of histotry and myth had taught me that knowledge has been gained and lost, by a sucession of civilizations.

Well, this goes to show how limited your understanding is.

Myth is, by definition, made up. Therefore, any “knowledge” in a myth is either purely incidental or also made up.

History has shown us that, although some knowledge may be lost (e.g. in the sack of the library of Alexandria) by one civilisation, it is almost inevitably rediscovered by another. To whit: the Renaissance in Europe was mainly fuelled by the rediscovery in arabic documents of much that the ancient Greeks had deduced (plus, also, additions that the arabic scholars had made). This, and the need to know where your cannonballs will land, anyway. Arguably, this led to the beginning of what we now recognise as science.

Therefore, I conclude that that will happen, to this civilization, also. With that temporary nature of civilization in mind, is why I think the religion I have chosen will endure through the ages.

Eh?

This is just insane. If a civilisation falls, much of its knowledge and work falls also. Given that modern civilisation is pretty much global, what makes you think that one specific religion will endure unchanged through any putative collapse?

And what relevance does any of this have to the OP?

I am closing, without answering further posts to me, because I need time to go to the blogs I ordinaryally frequent.

Look, everytime I come here, for two weeks afterward, I have a mental hang-over. That’s why I come by so infrequently. I’ll drop in again, some other time.

Actually, please don’t.

You have demonstrated no willingness to learn about that of which you are ignorant.

You have made assertions with very little attempt to back them up with argumentation or evidence.

You have made no acknowledgement that people who know more about you on a particular topic are more qualified to judge the rightness or wrongness of statements within that topic.

Todd W, thank you because you have probably suceeding in that in which I have failed: to gain some kind of respect for ordinary, even uneducated people.

Don, you will never gain respect for ordinary, uneducated people by claiming that your opinion has value equal to that of an expert in their field of expertise. Quite the opposite, in fact. The only way to gain respect in any highly technical field is to acknowledge your ignorance and then do something about it.

Going back to the OP, the kids of Texas deserve to be taught good science. All you have done here is to demonstrate how deeply this need runs in the USA.

Two links you might be interesting it:

Vatican not so doomed
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5705331.ece

Darwinism Must Die So Evolution Can Live
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/10/0450228&from=rss

I understand that I am saying, “I question anything, and the aurthorites, that are not church..” It’s just that simple.

Yet you have made no attempt to explain why you consider the authority of the church to be beyond question.

Why do you treat information derived from religion as different from information derived from any other source?

Don Snow said:

In truth, I am Catholic, I appreciate science and I am not totally ignorant. I think that the above statements come across to me as knee-jerk reactions, because I question the authority of science ande dare to form my own opinions.

Science does not operate by authority. It operates by conclusions drawn from evidence. As has been pointed out before, an uninformed opinion in science is next to worthless.

No-one here disputes your right to form your own opinion. I dispute your ability to judge the quality of a scientific argument or proposition.

P.S. As they say, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks”!

Really? Do you have any evidence to support this assertion?