http://www.malcomlagauche.com

“Many schools have taken basic science (biology, chemistry, etc.) out of the curriculum because of fear of future lawsuits from creationists and intelligent designists. Millions of kids in the U.S. today can not tell you what oxygen is or its function, or hydrogen or carbon. The Dark Ages are making a comeback.”

I reckon you need the Philosophy of Biology blog. Best of both worlds.

But Mark’s comment was a little gem. I knew we kept you around here for something, coach (oops, done it again - sorry).

I’ve missed most of this debate unfortunately but that’s not really what I meant, Kate. I meant that I found the concept quite interesting and worth exploring, at a personal level. Which I do. I expressed myself badly (which I do).

As I said above, the ID people are partly, semantically correct in saying there was an “intelligent design” but it was a ‘natural selection’ default design that saw us win out for example over the neanderthals which, if they had a 2-3% higher birth rate would most probably be with us (or already interbred with us) today.

(Please lets not argue if neanderthals had a soul!)

To get to this point, it should make creationists (Mark’s Aquinas variety) and non-believer evolutionists both happy. To the extent that cretinous US leaders want to use ID to oppose evol. theory, they have both a scientific and theological problem, ie dumbing down.

They never heard the saying ” God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform”?

That an almighty being set in motion a system and dynamic (which we call evolutionary), that ‘made our world‚Äô of living things is not explicitly denied by evolutionary theory. Its not such a difficult concept to see that creationist beliefs (I‚Äôm not talking about literal 7 days biblical stuff) and evolutionary theory are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

I reckon that evolution and creationism have to part ways when we start talking about humanity. From an evolutionary perspective mankind is just a random accident, an interesting side effect of billions of years of evolution.

But from a creationist perspective humanity is special. We’re here, created in god’s image, blessed with a soul and so on. If evolution was a mechanism set in motion by god, then it was so that mankind would ineleuctably be produced. But if you accept that, then how far away are you then from some sort of ID? with the dead hand of the creator “steering” evolution in the desired direction.

You seem have conceptual difficulties, and you haven’t answered the natural selection bit yet, for example do you deny that natural selection is an essential part of evolutionary theory? If you do, there’s not much point continuing.

Homer, that is an untenable statement. That an almighty being set in motion a system and dynamic (which we call evolutionary), that ‘made our world’ of living things is not explicitly denied by evolutionary theory. Its not such a difficult concept to see that creationist beliefs (I’m not talking about literal 7 days biblical stuff) and evolutionary theory are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Some that use evolutionary theory to deny creationism are trying to use science to disprove a supreme being, that’s not possible. Some use creationism as proof that evolutionary theory is bunkum, that’s irrational.

Liam:
The solution to what was meant to be one of several simultaneous equations actually has its simple solution as “truth”. x and y must both = zero.The difficulty in arriving at that solution of truth is my point, equiv, to evol. theory, and should not be cast away because of difficulty in understanding and lack of theological mention.

Most people in my experience who bitterly oppose evol theory, don’t understand its basic concepts fully.

I have tried and failed to convince my mother’s husband that the world is more than 5000 years old. I found the easiest way was not to go down the path of discussing it, and not to watch documentaries with him because it gets really annoying when he keeps chiming in, saying that it can’t be millions of years old because the world is only 5000 years old.

*takes a deep breath and prepares to be slapped down* IMHO scientists who ‘become’ christian after studying the universe etc is just a symptom of hubris. It’s like, ‘I can’t understand it, therefore it must be the creation of a higher power because if it was science then I would be able to understand what is going on’. It’s a get out of jail free card for not having the scientific knowhow to find out every little detail about life. Get over it.

I did my reading in mid 80’s.
I am afraaid I didn’t come across much of his stuff.
Hard to appreciate how much harder it was in those pre-WWW days not just to research articles but to locate journals, books etal.
It took a hellva long time however I was single!

Peter
Evolutionary theory does not inherently deny creationism but many creationists and I believe most ID people explicitly deny evolutionary theory

appears to contradict what you wrote earlier.

Evolutionary theory most certainly does deny creationsim and so it should.

It doesn’t with regard to ID. I am wondering how ID people got into the equation.
Does ID deny evolution. No it doesn’t.

I am not too worried by Howard….yet. There was the Compass episode prior to the last election where all the leaders were open about their religious views. John Anderson worried me far more that Howard. But he has gone.

In science, x squared by y squared = 0 cannot be thrown in the rubbish bin as an untruth

Now, I never did much good at maths, but I don’t remember that as being either inherently true or untrue.

There is good reason to believe that speciation can occur rapidly at times, although the fossil record is incomplete which makes it difficult to be sure.
Also the definition of rapid is still pretty slow in this context, rapid change occurs over millions of years rather that 100s of millions.

If evolution has proceeded in bursts this does fall outside the classical darwinian condition of gradual change, but not outside of natural selection or indeed the idea of occasional random mutations causing variation.

There are a number of possibilities; exogenous shocks - meteor strike or other rapid global climatic change, or possibly just due to the nature of a marginally stable complex system producing bursty behaviour. A series of rapid extinctions creating a new set of possibilities for expansion into evolutionary niches.

Unfortunately in Darwins day it was difficult to explain how sudden bursty behaviour could be explained in terms of rules which locally seemed to imply otherwise and would invite the declaration of divine intervention. Now we have any number of models to suggest that bursty behaviour could easily be explained with the basic mechanism of evolution.

ps. Gould has been talking punctuated equilibrium since 1972, how old is your reading?

. Evolutionary theory does not inherently deny creationism but many creationists and I believe most ID people explicitly deny evolutionary theory.

Its not a matter of making up one’s mind on science as against a religiously held belief, you either believe science or mathematic’s exquisite sometimes nuanced difficult to comprehend proofs or you believe in alchemy/witchcraft.