Kevin disabled the comments on his post, so I had to post my thoughts in a new thread. I find it especially annoying and cowardly when bloggers do this. Comments are an integral part of blogging. Turning them off turns your commentary into a lecture, and honestly, the last lecture I sat through was by Richard Feynman. Sorry, Kevin, but you aren’t Richard Feynman.
Darwin had as much to do with Nazism and the Holocaust as the Bible. Just because the Nazis took his ideas and twisted them around for their own ends should not diminish them. Scripture has been cited by countless demagogues over the years to justify all kinds of atrocities including the Holocaust. Should we hold it to the same standards?
Darwin never applied evolution to anything other than biology. It was Nietzche and others who applied it to society, and by doing so they made a critical mistake. Social darwinism is lamarckian in that ideas can be developed by one generation and passed on to the next. Think giraffes stretching their necks to reach acacia leaves. Natural selection is complete chance. A giraffe can crane her neck all she wants but she’ll die of starvation unless she was lucky enough to have been born with a longer neck.
The theory of Evolution only applies to biological organisms – nothing else. Any reference or usage of the term “natural selection” or “evolution” is non-scientific and is unscientific.
I like Ben Stein. I have several of his books and I will continue to like Ben Stein even though I disagree with him over his movie almost as much as I do with Michael Moore’s anti-American propaganda. The movie is completely funded by the Templeton Foundation, who is to creationism what George Soros is to socialism – namely deep pocket proponents who sugar-coat their ideas with euphemisms like “intelligent design” and “progressive politics”. Scratch the surface, however, and you’ll see that it’s still creationism and in the case of Soros, good old fashion socialism.
I believe that religion should be allowed in public schools, just not in a science class. Why? Because ID/Creationism is not science. Argue about God in a comparative religion or better, philosophy class, but keep religion out of science (and science out of religion).
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Scott:
The “Darwin begat Nazism” argument is nothing but a red herring to stop debate on whether evolution is scientifically valid. It’s a way of saying “your position is evil… wooooo” instead of providing a substantive debate on the actual point.
Much the same way that atheists will use the Inquisition as a way to tell religious people “your position is evil… woooo” for the same reason.
It has been my experience that trying to use reason and logic on such people is a pointless exercise, but it’s good that you are trying anyway.
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CC
I like Kevin even if he is wrong on this one. In fact I can get pretty bombastic too; I remember pissing off Martin and several others over McCain – and my loathing of Jimmy Carter goes so deep that I find it difficult to stay rational.
There are several things about ID vs. Evolution which annoy me. First it’s the assumption that just because one supports Evolution, one is some sort of religion-hating, Michael Moore slurping, left wing zealot. That’s just straw-man making on Kevin’s part. Because I doubt anthropogenic causes of global warming, I have been pigeon-holed by lefties into being a doubter of Evolution.
Nothing could be far from it. The reason why I doubt AGW is because the evidence for it is so scant that proponents try tying it to the Theory of Evolution, which has amassed a huge amount of supporting evidence over it’s 160+ years. Comparing the two is disingenous and damages Evolution more than it helps the AGW theory.
There are zealots on both sides of the issue, but that doesn’t mean that they are both right or wrong. While Richard Dawkins drives me up a wall (and his Selfish Gene theory ages poorly), he’s right about the science behind evolution. He’s just comletely off his rocker when it comes to religion. On the other side there are religious people who are right about Faith and morality issues, but out of their depth when it comes to Science.
In summary I wouldn’t want a priest to teach physics at Mass, so why should one want a science teacher to handle faith? Faith and science are only enemies if you force them to be. Leave the 17th Century behind, people!
Scott,
well said.
Scott:
You’re right, I should have said that it is pointless to argue with zealots on the subjects they are zealots about, which is what I meant. Being a zealot on one subject does not revoke your “rational” credibility on other subjects.
But it does revoke it on that subject. ;)
You sound very similar to me in the positions you outlined. I am a die-hard skeptic, but one that is willing to accept evidence that makes sense. The theory of evolution “makes sense” to me in a broad fashion. I am quite sure that we have a large amount of the particulars quite wrong, but overall the concept of species differentiation over time to fill available niches seems to fit very well with my view of how the universe has developed over time and explains very well a lot of what I see in the world today, and what I see in the fossil record.
I’m still agnostic on whether evolution is purely random or is directed in some fashion though. I think both are plausible. However, if it is directed, that doesn’t mean there’s some divine source of the direction, that’s a whole ‘nother subject.
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The reason I “believe” in evolution is simple: I’ve talked to the people who created the food that I have eaten. They’ve said things to the effect of without Evolutionary theory, we wouldn’t have been able to do this.
Same thing with some of the (medically prescribed) drugs I’ve taken.
Moreover, some friends of mine in other sciences have said things to the effect of if those lines of attacks of Evolutionary theory were true, then our work in Physics wouldn’t be consistent with what we’ve observed
The the first problem with ID is that it attacks a theory with great predictive power and tries to replace it with a theory which lacks predictive power. The second problem is that many of it’s attacks on Evolutionary theory attack science as a whole.
Thank you, Scott.
Kevin’s action in closing off comments is both cowardly and not at all in keeping with the kind of behavior I expect to find at Dean’s World.
The image of Kevin doing that is no different than the image I have of him sitting there, endlessly repeating his mantras, with his fingers in his ears. Pitiful.
It does confirm, however, my judgment that I can just skip over any post by Kevin. Anything else would be like talking to a wall.
BTW, your take is the same as mine, though I’m probably more skeptical about any sort of ‘design’ being involved. Randomness works perfectly well for my mind.
Yes, but… if ideas develop by chance, there is no reason why a certain Darwinian logic should not apply to them as well. In addition, if ideas (as opposed to mutations), do develop by some non-random processes, then social scientists should not be embarrased to embrace a form of Lamarkianism. Friedrich Hayek, in fact, applied evolutionary insights to social institutions, and intelligently in my opinion. Though his thought was more Darwinian than Lamarckian (he thought the best ideas developed without concious creation by any single mind), he contrasted his theory with “Social Darwinism,” which he viewed as rather naive in a number of respects.
I, too, wished Kevin had allowed comments, but only to link this interview between Ben Stein and RC Sproul about “Expelled,” so thanks, Scott. It’s long, about 30 min, but I found it very interesting. I don’t agree with Sproul on a few things; for instance and probably most important to him, I’m not a Calvinist (nor pure Arimian), but in terms of logic, reasoning and rhetoric (classical), he’s good — at least imo.
While I agree with the thrust, there’s several technical details which I feel compelled to correct.
Darwin never applied evolution to anything other than biology.
See Descent of Man where Darwin wrote:
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. … We must therefore bear the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely that the weaker and inferior members of society do not marry so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage, though this is more to be hoped for than expected.
and
at some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world
That’s Darwin considering Evolution in the context of human society. It wasn’t a principle line of inquiry for him, but it was something he considered so you can’t say he never applied evolution to anything but biology.
Social darwinism is lamarckian in that ideas can be developed by one generation and passed on to the next.
Prior to Origin of Species, it was indeed very Lamarckian. However, even Spencer changed after OoS. There’s a reason eugenics played an important part in the Progressive/Social Darwininst movement. So Lamarckianism + Darwinism as applied to society = Social Dawrinism.
The theory of Evolution only applies to biological organisms – nothing else.
Actually, it can be applied to any environment that is characterized by “survival of the fittest” (that’s technically Spencer’s phrase) with random (but not too random!) mutations from genetic algorithms, to memetics, to the market. Technically the “mutations” in each of these events are not truly random, but neither are biological mutations truly random (at a low enough level, everything’s deterministic, and then at an even lower level, everything’s random again…).
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I’m not sure that’s really a fair reading of Nietzsche, for that matter – he was much more concerned with the individual than the “social”.
Remember that he proposed the yearning for the Ubermensch, not the Ubervolk (or as the Nazis corruption has it, the Herrenvolk).
But that’s, er, a fairer reading than that which blames Darwin, because Nietzsche wasn’t the clearest (or most consistent) of writers – and because his sister did her share of Social-Darwinist editing after his death.
(And, while “evolution” and “natural selection”
as specifically Darwinian terms apply only to biological organisms, it doesn’t seem unscientific in itself to apply them – rigorously and constrainedly – to other areas; one must, however, not conflate biological evolution with any other sort or pretend that the specific nuances of the one apply to the other.
“Evolutionary computation”, for instance, is a “scientific” use of the term. The field is well-defined, work is repeatable, and the use of “evolution” as the description is apt at more than the metaphorical level.
“Social Darwinism”, at least when it makes claims beyond the not-especially-insightful “societies that aren’t adapted to the real world fail”, is about as bad a misnomer as “Social Democracy”, which isn’t, either.)
Thank you, Scott. I agree with everyone here on the merits of blocking comments on the previous entry on this topic.
And while I agree with all the comments here so far, I’m struck further by the way Kevin summarized this issue. If the point of the whole movie is that in the ID vs. Evolution debate, one side is simply being excluded, then shouldn’t what follows be a rational argument in favor of INCLUDING Intelligent Design ? If so, the “slippery slope” argument that more Nazism is the inevitable result is the worst possible argument to be made.
Is there really anyone that could support including Intelligent Design in a school’s curriculum because the alternative is future Nazis ? Really ?
Good lord that argument is pathetic. I’m not dead set against the idea if actual merits can be hypothesized, but preventing the next Nazi Germany doesn’t cut it.
I also agree with Scott that even IF you can convince me that ID should be part of the school curriculum, it should be in a philosophy class, not science class.
Throwing it out of the science classroom by force makes it look very, very much to millions upon millions of parents (not to mention their children) that scientists and teachers are hiding something and are terrified to discuss what is a perfectly natural question.
Which is why, even though I have very, very little patience with creationists, I’ve long advocated letting them have their stupid little warning stickers if they want them, and if they want to have a debate in the classroom, let ‘em.
I automatically think of any scientist who claims that what she does would be “impossible” without Darwin is indulging in quite a bit of silly ideologue thinking herself; the truth of the matter is, if we could demonstrate definitively tomorrow that Darwin was wrong on everything (which, clearly, isn’t even plausible) it would in no way make any scientific discoveries we’ve made to date “impossible” nor would it mean that any significant research would grind to a halt. Those who say otherwise are being silly, or haven’t really thought about the arguments and are just commenting off the top of their heads, because if God invented genes and chromosomes in the year 1872 by saying “let there be genes, and make the world look like they’ve always been there!” that wouldn’t make Genetic Research stop or even slow down once we “discovered” that “fact.”
The truth of the matter is that after years of observing this debate, if you can even call it that, I find that there are roughly equal numbers of abusive, irrational, nasty people on both sides. That doesn’t make both sides of the debate “equally wrong” but it does mean that there are flaming assholes on both sides who embarrass themselves and their positions.
And no, I don’t want the ID “debate” shoved into a comparitive religion class. That makes Darwin proponents (of which I am one) look like complete cowards. These questions naturally arise in one place: the biology classroom when they bring up evolution. Therefore, that is the exact right place to have the discussion, which at most should take a day or two of classroom time and then the students can get on with learning about genes, chromosomes, RNA, cellular structure, natural selection, and the other things that actually are part of the science rather than pointless arguments over whether some higher intelligence may have had a part in all this or not–and frankly, that’s what most students would conclude, that the debate can’t be resolved and we should just move on to learning the facts.
As for the Nazi comparison: the convenient thing about Nazis is that 1) everyone hates them, or acts like they do, and 2) their ideology was so whacky you can paste just about anyone into it, including socialists, christians, pagans, and atheists.
Why? Hitler had the support of some Lutheran bishops and other prominent German Christian leaders. He publicly claimed to be Catholic himself. On the other hand, he privately encouraged his most elite confidants and officers not to take part in any church. He believed firmly in social evolution, but in the context of the “destiny” of the “master race,” none of which can be found in Christianity or any real Darwinism. Oh, right, and he also practiced paganism and had a number of working pagans amongst his closest advisors. Also some atheists. Plus they believed in socialism for some things (making them like the socialists), but capitalism for other things (making them like the Objectivists and other libertarians).
So, once we get down to it, the only people in the world who aren’t guilty of being “like Hitler” appear to be Jews, Gypsies, and Muslims. Everyone else is “like the Naxis” in some way or another.
So it’s pointless. And by the way, I actually agree with the overarching point that if you throw out traditional values completely, or put them all strictly in the service of the convenience and needs of the state, then, you get something like Nazi Germany (and also Communist Russia). But by even bringing Hitler into the discussion, Stein almost certainly hurts his own message.
Oh, I guess one last thing: I don’t care who’s providing the deep pockets behind this “movement.” So long as it’s not hidden from the public, I honestly don’t give a rat’s patootie.
The truth of the matter is, you’ve got parents whose kids come home from the public schools and are told by their parents that their teachers lie to them, that the scientific establishment lies to them. And to both those kids and their parents that’s largely what it looks like when you refuse to even let the issue be raised in the classroom, or try to relegate it to a ghetto (especially since most kids don’t get comparative religious classes or philosophy classes anyway).
Oh, wait, I forgot, some Muslims in the 1930s and 1940s adopted fascism; see the entire Ba’athist movement, including Saddam Hussein and the thugs who currently rule Syria.
So, Christians, atheists, Darwinists, socialists, capitalists, pagans, vegetarians, AND Muslims are all “like the Nazis.” Although not all of them are exactly like Nazis. %-)
Darwin did of course apply his theory of evolution to biology. And because I view humankind as merely one of some millions or perhaps billions of known or yet unidentified biological species — irrespective of our cognitive development — evolution applies as much to us as to any crustacean.
Should creationism be banned from public schools? Even as an apatheist, I’m not certain I would pursue that separation too far. Who knows? Maybe creationism would make an interesting topic in a class that is studying ultimate cosmologies. Gods, goddesses, or committees of wrangling deities such as those of the olympian gods, all have their place in our varied human cultures and their histories.
And no, I would not blame Hitler or the National Socialism movement of Germany in the first half of the 20th century on Darwin or any of his work. I would also have to say that the dictatorship of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had more to do with russian culture and the historical development of their society than anything Karl Marx dreamed up in one of the great libraries of 19th century London.
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Mount Horeb WI
I have often felt that there are two ways for a science teacher forced to teach religion alongside evolution to do so while retaining his or her integrity:
1) A simple statement to the effect that there are non-scientific theories of the origin of life and the development of the species; that those theories involve the supernatural, and that instruction in them is left to parents and whatever clergy the child and his or her parents turn to for guidance, if any. There could even be an exam question: “to whom should one go for information on alternate theories of creation?”
That might not be enough to satisfy the law in some places, so:
2) Do some research and choose the most outlandish and obscure version of supernatural creation to teach. (I seem to recall one from the South Pacific, involving humans sprouting from the skin of a god as boils and dropping off to populate the earth.) Spend an entire day on this, and put it on the test. Make sure it’s a creation story that some people actually do believe in, or at least that they did at some time in the past.
I get pretty hot about this stuff. I live in Texas, where the state education commission recently fired the director of science education simply for forwarding an email announcing a lecture by a proponent of evolution education. Our educational system is broken enough as it is; I don’t think we need to compel teachers to waste classroom time indoctrinating their students with the millenia-old creation myths of a nomadic desert people.
I do believe in evolution. Part of what got me back to religion was when I finally realized that it seems extremely likely that we were evolutionarily designed to have religion–as there appears to be vanishingly few people on Earth who don’t believe in some form of higher power or powers or spirituality. Even in supposedly super-secular and super-rational Europe, where churchgoing is rare and a large percentage of the population claims no religion at all, you find that when asked a majority believe in some form of the supernatural, such as astrology or ESP or or other dimensions or ghosts or reincarnation or other things like that. Almost none are of the Richard Dawkins-esque hyper-atheist mold.
And, from where I stand, every society that has ever been founded on purely atheist philosophy has turned into a dangerous monstrosity; Communists were and are by and large officially atheist (with the odd “liberation theologian” here and there in the mix) and they butchered and oppressed more people in the 20th Century than the Nazis ever did. So it’s not like atheism has some sort of great lock on intelligent or moral thought.
Mark:
I have to take exception to your “go to your clergy for alternate theories of creation” because there is currently NO coherent or testable scientific “theory of creation.” None.
What would it be?
“Something appeared out of nowhere for no discernable reason.”
Is that a “theory?” No, it’s a statement of faith. In fact this is the fundamental thrust of the whole “Expelled” argument, that science cannot explain the creation of the universe any more than religion can. The logical fallacy that “Expelled” is indulging in is that because neither can explain the ultimate origin of life or the universe, that both are therefore equivalent rational constructs. They are not. By placing the focus of the debate on this question, Stein is attempting to put both on equal footing. And in that particular context, they are. But once you postulate the existence of the universe or of life, from that point on evolution beats the holy heck out of creationism as a theory. And that’s the argument Darwinists should be responding with, instead of letting themselves get rolled by creationists.
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Kevin disabled the comments on his post, so I had to post my thoughts in a new thread. I find it especially annoying and cowardly when bloggers do this.
Agreed. Comments should be always on or always off. I also find it distasteful when a blogger turns comments off to move thraffic to another blog.
There are several things about ID vs. Evolution which annoy me. First it’s the assumption that just because one supports Evolution, one is some sort of religion-hating, Michael Moore slurping, left wing zealot.
This is the first problem with zealots on both sides of the arguement. Thinking that it is either/or, or us vs them, while in fact neither side can prove the other wrong on facts alone. The only honest people I hear are those that are agnostic for lack of science to swing the arguement either way.
The reason why I doubt AGW is because the evidence for it is so scant that proponents try tying it to the Theory of Evolution, which has amassed a huge amount of supporting evidence over it’s 160+ years. Comparing the two is disingenous and damages Evolution more than it helps the AGW theory.
Well that is what is wrong with both Intelligent Design and Evolutionists. Actually ID and Evolutionists both can somewhat be compared to AGW alarmists. There is no way to prove that there is a creator, just as there is no way to prove that lightening struck a mud puddle and started the chain reaction of life.
I firmly believe that boths sides are right on a lot of things, and that both sides are terribly wrong on a lot of other things. That makes it a perfect subject for debate, not annihilation of the other side.
One reason I was miffed at Kevin for closing his comments was that I recently watched RC Sproul interviews Ben Stein on this film. It didn’t convince me either way, but was worth watching and wanted to post the 30 minute 3 part YouTube clips.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Good point.
On the other hand, the Big Bang Theory, and even evolution (they are not the same thing, and one does not necessarily lead into the other although it might) gives absolutely no explanation as to why things are the way they are. It doesn’t matter how much more we learn about the big bang, or black holes, or quasars, or genes, or molecules, or atoms, or quarks… none of those can really answer how any of this got started in the first place, it can only push the question back farther and farther.
Indeed, I actually disagree with Sean here: I don’t think evolution is “better” at explaining these ultimate questions at all. All it does is push them back a little and make us think harder on them. Empiricism cannot–or hasn’t yet–explain what caused the big bang in the first place, or what caused life in the first place. All anyone has is educated guesses.
And if you believe some truth cannot be grasped through human senses and reason alone, and requires revelation from an outside source, then “God” for want of a better word is a lot easier to understand as a concept.
So no, I don’t agree that evolution is “vastly better” at explaining these ultimate questions. Evolution is better at coming up with mechanisms for how life changed and evolved than saying “some divine source made it all happen.” That’s about all I’ll say.
You know, it’s funny, vanishingly few people argue that the Big Bang Theory is a threat to biblical values, although from my perspective if you insist on being a bible-fundamentalist “literalist” then I guess it’s a threat. It’s a mighty cramped spiritual view if you ask me, but… [shrug]
CosmicConservative:
I have to take exception to your “go to your clergy for alternate theories of creation†because there is currently NO coherent or testable scientific “theory of creation.†None.
Point taken. But the idea is that there should be a bright line of distinction between what is taught in the classroom and what is taught in Sunday school, and that creationism – by whatever name – belongs somewhere other than the classroom.
(And remember that my premise is that of a teacher being forced by statute or policy to include creationism in the coursework; a statement and test question such as that might be the minimum requirement for him or her to remain employed.)
I think we’re pretty much on the same page here; only the semantics are different.
Dean, I appear to have badly stated my position on the origin of the universe if you think that I am suggesting that Evolution explains the origin of the universe, or even of life, any better than creationism. In fact the whole point of my post was to say exactly the opposite. Perhaps you were responding to someone else’s comment? I hope so, I would like to think that as badly as I explain things, I don’t usually get it bass-ackward!
I was trying to say that NEITHER Creationism nor Evolution explain “where it all came from.”
When Creationists say “Yes we do, it came from God” all that does is make me ask “OK, where did God come from then.” And their explanation of that is no more rational nor credible than the Evolutionist beliefs about where the Big Bang came from.
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Dean
ID does more than explain what science cannot. It attempts to inject a divine power into biology – a grand “design” on how things are versus the cold, randomness of natural selection based on chance mutation. Sorry, but we don’t need the Divine to understand why the African cichlids in my aquariums are mouthbreeders, or why two species may interbreed but produce infertile (hybrid) young. Natural selection works just fine without it.
ID doesn’t stick to the fringes of our knowledge; it wants to replace evidence based theories with conjecture and philosophy. And like you said, when you compare it with Evolution, Darwin kicks the tar out of it.
So yes, when it comes to the “ultimate” questions, ID might stand a chance. But when it comes to everyday biology – whether discussing bacteria or babies – it’s a loser.
Mark:
It’s not entirely “semantics.”
I frankly have no problem with teaching in the classroom that the universe could very well have been created by a divine being. So long as the class took the opportunity to also point out that this approach does not explain anything about the origin of the divine being itself, and so doesn’t explain “how it all began” any more than anything else does.
To me it is just as plausible to suggest that an extra-dimensional being created the universe as it is to suggest that random three-dimensional “membranes” (also called “branes”) collided suddenly in some multi-dimensional space and that was what we percieve as the Big Bang.
Neither has any truly compelling merit over the other. Neither explains where the stuff “outside our universe” came from.
Frankly I think it’s pretty much impossible to explain the existence of anything. When my mind goes there, it just hits a blank wall of “huh?”.
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Sandi: Great minds and all that — look at comment #8. ;-)
Scott:
I have to say that rejecting any discussion of divine intervention in the classroom is not scientific.
Do you think that it is anti-scientific to propose a theory that earthly DNA could have been manipulated by some external mechanism? That basically means that any theory that alien beings ever visited earth is “anti-scientific.” I don’t think you would agree that such a theory had no scientific merit.
In my opinion that’s no different than saying God sometimes meddles with DNA. It’s a possibility and as such it belongs in scientific debate, at least enough to acknowledge it as a possibility.
By rejecting any such debate at all, you are essentially using the same “slippery slope” argument that Creationists use. “Oh, don’t go there, or you’ll end up in a bad place.”
I’d like to think that if it were treated reasonably and with respect, as Dean says, it would take up the first few days of Biology class, and then people could move on to observed, repeatable phenomena.
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CC: That reminds me of a quote from Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.
“Some would ask, how could a perfect God create a universe filled with so much that is evil. They have missed a greater conundrum: why would a perfect God create a universe at all?”
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Cosmic/Sean: Well maybe I made my point badly. To clarify, I was responding directly to this bit of reasoning you so-well penned:
I have to take exception to your “go to your clergy for alternate theories of creation” because there is currently NO coherent or testable scientific “theory of creation.” None.
What would it be?
“Something appeared out of nowhere for no discernable reason.”
Is that a “theory?” No, it’s a statement of faith.
You could say all of that about the Big Bang theory, could you not? In fact, Stephen Hawking himself admits that mathematically and otherwise, it’s impossible for science to tell what caused the Big Bang or what happened before it. The Big Bang Theory does little more than state that something appeared out of nowhere for no discernible reason. That’s exactly what the Cosmologists typically tell us; I can’t think of a better one-line summary of the Big Bang Theory.
Science also would have us believe mutually contradictory and deeply mysterious things, such as “light is both a particle and a wave” and “individual subatomic particles often travel along two completely different paths simultaneously, in effect being in two places at once.” Quantum Physics even, these days, posits that particles often come into existence, and then flash out of existence and are gone. This used to be laughed at, but Hawking used the math behind it to prove that black holes must emit–and now, most of the physics and astronomy worlds accept that they probably do emit–from particles that appear out of nowhere for no discernible reason. Unless you postulate that the particles appear and disappear just to make physicists happy?
My own view is that Science, and empiricism in general, are fabulously successful at getting us to look at things in a somewhat objective manner and, more importantly, in making useful predictions. It is, so far, the highest practical achievement of mankind’s very limited intellectual faculties. And that’s all.
Scott: We’ll have to agree to disagree. I’ve read a good bit of ID literature, and while I think they’re out in the margins of science, and probably don’t deserve to go into great detail in K-12 textbooks, I do not believe they are *truly* stalking horses for biblical creationism, nor do I believe their ideas are in any way dangerous. In any case, I think it’s pretty clear that the “cure” (i.e. running to court to run them out of town) is much, much worse than whatever disease they cause.
I’m also not sure that ID really “kicks the tar” out of Darwinism, since most of its advocates concede that much of what Darwin suggested was completely correct, including natural selection. They’re looking at what they believe to be deeper questions.
That’s just me. I know good people on the other side can disagree, it just makes me scratch my head, and did even moreso when I was a practicing atheist. [shrug]
Dean:
Perhaps I misunderstand the “Big Bang Theory” but I don’t believe anything in the theory explains WHERE the “Big Bang” comes from. My understanding of the Big Bang theory is that it comes from working the current expansion of the universe backwards in time and concluding that at some point in the far distant past the entire universe was contained within a mathematical point, and it has been expanding ever since.
In the years since the theory was proposed it has been refined, the biggest refinement that I am aware of being the inclusion of “inflation” in the theory to explain both how it reached its current size in the time frames conjectured, and to explain how it cooled so rapidly that matter and energy separated at the point that they did. But this still did nothing to explain “where” the Big Bang came from.
Then a completely separate train of thought along the lines of multi-dimensional space came along and over time people began to suggest that the “Big Bang” could have been initiated by actions outside of our own dimensions, which has now become the “branes” theory.
Of course this is all about five years out of date now, so maybe I don’t have it right.
So, the current “Big Bang Theory” if you roll it up in the “multi-dimensional space of floating membranes” concept (I can’t call that a “theory” yet) then you could say that the current “Big Bang Theory” does “explain” where the “Big Bang” came from, but so what? All it does then is give us the question of “where did all those other dimensions come from?” So it still does not explain anything about the origins of the “multiverse” if you want to call it that.
But to try to get to your point as directly as I can, I don’t believe the “Big Bang Theory” can be summarized as “something appeared out of nowhere for no discernible reason.” The theory describes how the universe grew from a singularity, it says nothing about where the singularity initially came from. The part that you are calling “the theory” is quite explicitly excluded from the actual theory for that very reason.
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By the way, if we want to get into the numerous logical problems with Intelligent Design, we should start another thread. Believe me, if you actually start looking at molecular biological processes and want to suggest that they are completely driven by a guiding hand, you start having to explain some very disturbing things, like why such a being would have “guided” a virus like Ebola to eat a human being from the inside. If that’s the result of “Intelligent Design” that’s an intelligence I don’t want to contemplate too deeply, because that’s a pretty frightening concept.
The biggest problem with Intelligent Design is that most of the “design” that we actually see doesn’t look very intelligent at all. Or if it IS intelligent, it’s a downright sinister intelligence.
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I have been thinking in recent years that there may be multiple simultaneous universes; that these come and go; that there was beginning and that there shall never be an ending.
And why is the assumed point of creation of this universe be thought of as a “singularity” at all? Maybe a similar event has been occuring continuously and endlessly, but that we merely cannot know of it?
Why not to any or all of the above? And if not, what lies outside THIS universe?
Moreover, why must this particular universe necessarily be a single large glob of space? Why could it not be shaped sort of like a long, continuous balloon formed as a giant ring? So that if you travel long enough in one direction you may indeed arrive back at your point of beginning?
No. I have no answers whatsoever. But why should that imply that I should have no questions?
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Dean
No problem; we’re on the same page I think.
One thing before I go oppress Kevin…
From the Pocket Darwin (evil PDF link)
Agreed. With. Every. Single. Word.
crap, man, as far as I am concerned you might as well have closed your comments! You arent giving me even one scrap to argue with. Cant even seize on the Michael Moore bit.
well, anyway. Well done.
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CosmicConservative:
I frankly have no problem with teaching in the classroom that the universe could very well have been created by a divine being.
Which classroom – i.e. which subject – would you suggest would be appropriate for the teaching of religion in the public schools, please?
Sean: I’m probably more behind than you are, since my last in-depth reading on this was Hawking’s “A Brief History Of Time.” However, if I recall correctly he says it’s mathematically impossible to tell what happens “before” the Bang, and not even possible to define what “time” is, let alone space, before that event. All the laws of physics break down in that massive singularity, if I read Hawking right, so finding what caused it and then made it explode is impossible with what we know today.
Also, to be more clear, what Quantum physics suggests happens is, matter particles and antimatter particles regularly wink into existence, each travel along a mirrored trajectory sort of like this:
()
…then collide and cause each other to wink out of existence. This is apparently going on regularly throughout the universe.
Hawking could not explain why this was, or jibe it completely with Einstein’s universe. Quantum Physics’ math just suggested it was true. However, by positing that it was true, he was able to mathematically show that if it does happen, then at the edge of the event horizon of a black hole, you will have these pairs of particles winking into existence but one of them gets sucked into the black hole and the other escapes the black hole. Thus, if matter and antimatter particles do wink into existence for no discernible reason, it must be that black holes emit radiation. It’s called Hawking Radiation.
So, Sean, we appear to live in a universe that came into existence for reasons that science cannot explain, and in which matter and antimatter continue to regularly come into existence for no discernible reason except to make the math look good. And in which black holes, from which nothing can possibly escape, emit large quantities of radiation.
Make of it what you will. ;-)
Dean:
I can’t seem to get you to understand that I have been repeatedly stating that science not only does not claim to “explain” the creation of the universe, but that science currently puts that into the “unexplainable” category.
You are a bit behind in your quantum physics though.
There are some glimmers of insight into why particles and anti-particles come into existence, and it has to do with what was once called the ‘zero-point energy’ of the universe. As far as I can understand it the theory is that the universe itself has some sort of “fabric”. The “complete vacuum” of intergalactic space is still “something”. What it is we don’t know, but because it is something then it has some level of mass/energy at it’s “zero” state. And because there is something there, when you look at it at a quantum level, what you see are these swarms of “virtual particles” which manifest themselves as particle/anti-particle pairs. The “math” part of this, when I was in school, claimed that such particle/anti-particle pairs could not interact with the rest of the universe, but Hawking pretty much blew that out of the water with his “black hole radiation” explanation.
There’s more to it, Hawking did not start the investigation with the splitting of the particle/anti-particle pair, he actually started with the mathematical supposition that black holes must radiate because they must have some temperature. It’s a black-body inspired argument, then he used the virtual particle/anti-particle splitting to explain where the radiation could possibly come from.
One of the weird things about quantum physics is that it seems to say that the virtual particles don’t really exist until someone LOOKS for them. bizarre…
I guess I’m going to have to get off my migraine meds if you keep misunderstanding my basic positions so thoroughly…
Science is about explaining what we can observe and test. Since we can’t observe nor test “creation” science pretty much says “not our deal…. yet.”
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