Louisiana Senate Bill 561 - Another State Fighting for Academic Freedom
Another academic freedom bill is out there, this time in Louisiana.
It seems that lots of folks are interested in expanding the coverage of scientific topics in classrooms across the nation. I think this is a good thing.
Eugenie Scott and her friends at the NCSE (the folks who want to keep you from questioning Darwinism) are tracking the bill here. Please note that the NCSE calls the bill antievolution rather than pro academic freedom. It seems that even allowing a whisper of dissent from Darwin constitutes antievolutionisim.
If you are an Offensive Christian,™ you need to get out there on the web, on your phone, and in your legislator’s face about supporting this bill. The truth about Darwinism needs to be told in Louisiana, Florida, and anywhere Offensive Christians™ are free to speak!
I need to add that I am a Young Earth Creationist who supports aspects of Intelligent Design and natural selection. I have a ideological reason to question Darwin but the reasons I hold for doubting Darwin are based in science and not in my religious beliefs. I wish the the humanist dogmatists would admit the same bias when it comes to their doubt regarding supernatural events.
OC
March 24 2008 06:19 pm | Education and Science and The War
Mark Bobak on 25 Mar 2008 at 12:14 am #
“…interested in expanding the coverage of scientific topics…”
There’s nothing wrong w/ expanding coverage of *scientific* topics. Problem is, there’s NOTHING scientific about creation or intelligent design. Keep religion and mythical story telling out of classrooms.
You have actual scientific topics that you think need more coverage in the classrooms? Bring it on!
-Mark
Rich on 25 Mar 2008 at 5:35 pm #
It simply comes down to the fact that creationism is not science. If it was science and it proved the concept of creationism, I would be all for teaching it. As a person who values facts above all else, I can never complain about what the facts show to be true or where the facts point. No one begrudges you your beliefs, believe as you will. However, once you try to inject belief into a topic like geology or biology, you will always get resistance until you offer facts.
OC on 25 Mar 2008 at 6:06 pm #
Rich and Mark,
I don’t think facts come in a vacuum and neither should you. Facts come with presuppositions. We have to assume that our thoughts are rational or we can’t begin a discussion. We can’t empirically test the rationality of our own thoughts because all facts regarding our thoughts must be filtered through our thought processes.
With regards to the law as proposed - will you show me where it injects belief? The fact that I, a Christian, support it does not make it religious in nature. Where is the belief in questioning Darwin? Why does Darwinism get a free pass when it comes to questions of origins, irreducible complexity, statistical probability (even over the very long time scales proposed by old earthers) and other quandaries?
I keep hearing this name calling, telling me my scientific concerns are fables and mythical beliefs. If you don’t want to believe what I believe regarding God and Jesus, that’s your choice. But when it comes to the presupposition of naturalism, the a priori belief that God doesn’t exist, and propose that science requires that belief, then we have a problem.
Where is the double-blind study that proves macroevolution? Where is the double-blind study that affirms the abiogenesis that is required to get Darwinism (neo or otherwise) going? Where is the double-blind study that proves I evolved from primordial goo? I accept natural and artificial selection; observational science has proved these out. I don’t accept molecules to man evolution as taught in schools today. I don’t think science bears it out.
The facts as taught today, come with a religious bent all their own - that of secular humanism. This faith has it’s fundamentalists too, Dawkins… I don’t think facts come in ready packaged, ideology free units.
Thanks for commenting.
OC
TRoss on 25 Mar 2008 at 8:34 pm #
“And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and man became a living soul.”
You think science bears this out?
Mark Bobak on 25 Mar 2008 at 11:54 pm #
Hi OC,
First, thanks for the response.
Of course, everyone’s reality is filtered through their own thought processes. To some degree, we all percieve reality differently. No argument there. However, we all still seem to find some common ground, and still find things we can all agree on. So, I’m not sure exactly what the point was here, but, ok.
First, let’s call it “the Theory of Evolution”, not “darwinism”. Darwin wrote Origin of the Species about 150 years ago. He got some stuff right, and some stuff wrong. The Theory of Evolution does *not* get a free pass! The theory of Evolution, in the past 150 years, has been continually modified and refined. Some of Darwin’s ideas have been long since abandoned and left behind. Others continue to be refined, as part of the Theory of Evolution. This is how science works. Currently, evolution is the best theory science has for the observed changes in life on earth over time. In science, a theory is a testable model. It’s a coherent set of facts, with a testable explanation that ties them together. When new evidence is discovered, it’s compared to the existing theory. Does it fit the theory? If it doesn’t, the theory must be modified or abandoned. It’s that simple. The theory of evolution has a proven track record of 150 years of testing and successfully explaining newer data and new findings, from new fossils to DNA analysis.
So, science has a built-in mechanism for testing scientific theories. Science, by it’s very nature, is constantly testing and filtering it’s theories.
So, why do we have to legislate what science already does?
-Mark
OC on 26 Mar 2008 at 8:44 am #
TRoss on 25 Mar 2008 at 8:34 pm # edit this
“And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life; and man became a living soul.”
You think science bears this out?
TRoss,
Yes. Why shouldn’t I? Is there observational science that disproves it?
OC
Mark J. Bobak on 26 Mar 2008 at 10:39 am #
“TRoss,
Yes. Why shouldn’t I? Is there observational science that disproves it?
OC”
See, OC, there’s the difference between science and faith. Science asks us to prove what we believe. Faith says prove it’s not true. This is a fundamental difference. If you wish to believe it, you are free to do so, however, don’t attempt to back it up with any kind of scientific reasoning or argument. Science teaches us to observe and attempt to explain our observations, first with hypothesis, then theory. Faith says “I said so (or God said so), therefore it’s true and you can’t prove me wrong.”
I’ll leave you with one thought:
“The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike.” <–I’m not sure who to attribute this to, sorry.
-Mark
OC on 26 Mar 2008 at 1:44 pm #
Mark,
No one can live up to this kind of scientific standard. We all make unscientific assumptions every day. I just happen to acknowledge most of mine. This was kind of the point I was making regarding thoughts. We assume that our perceptions are accurate. We assume that our thoughts make sense. There is no hypothesis that can prove this. Facts don’t come in a vacuum. Even Stephen Jay Gould (who I don’t quote often, lol) said:
“Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective “scientific method”, with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology”
That I start with the assumption that bible is true doesn’t make for bad science. I just means that I’m honest about the presuppositions I make when I begin to examine the world. The assumption that evolution is unassailable and established as law (I remember reading Sagan’s Cosmos where he claimed that) is a false assumption based on observational science - I’ve never seen a information increasing mutation that was derived by chance.
I don’t see where my accepting the bible as fact makes me or anyone else antiscience.
I’m rambling now but I think I recall one of my profs talking about most scientific breakthroughs not coming from the standard application of the scientific method but with the spark of an idea first and enough data to affirm it later.
Thanks again for being a reasonable “offensive evolutionist”
If I can call you that.
OC
Lynet on 28 Mar 2008 at 4:33 pm #
Well, I’m cool with initial assumptions like “My thought processes are to some degree reliable but have their flaws”. I don’t know why you think I wouldn’t acknowledge that one. What I’m not cool with is initial assumptions like “This book, despite its numerous internal contradictions, should be considered reliable in every particular unless it can be proved otherwise.”
Define ‘information’, please. Because if you want a rigorous definition for information, the usual one is ‘Shannon information’, and random mutations can definitely increase that.
If you don’t have a rigorous definition of what you mean by ‘information’ in that sentence, don’t call it a scientific objection! Seriously, from what I hear, people have been asking William Dembski for years to mathematically define what he means by information when he makes claims like that, and he never will. At that point, the statement becomes unassailable and untestable, because whenever it is proved wrong he can just say “No, no, I was talking about another sort of information” — and then not say what that is.
OC on 28 Mar 2008 at 5:24 pm #
Lynet,
Sorry about not responding to your earlier posts. I had surgery last week and have been out of it since.
I’m going to have to get back with you after I talk to my Molecular/Microbiolgy PhD friend about this issue. It appears to me that you’re presupposing evolution happened and then looking for data that appears to support your position - not a heinous crime mind you, but I don’t know enough about this to give you an adequate response yet. I’m actually going to call him in a few minutes and see if he can do a guest post.
With regards to defining information, give me a few on that one as well. Need to make sure I make sense before I spout off something extremely stupid.
Thanks for your patience.
OC
Lynet on 29 Mar 2008 at 2:51 am #
Fair enough, and well said, OC.
Let me just address this one thing:
Actually, the idea here is to suppose — hypothesise — that evolution happened and then look for ways in which the evidence should disprove that if we’re wrong. It’s textbook scientific method: frame a hypothesis, work out what evidence could disprove it if it were wrong, and then check to see if that evidence is actually there. A good theory will have many things which could disprove it if it wasn’t true, but few things that actually do. In this case, any situation where a species’ hypothesised nearest neighbours have one more chromosome than the species itself presents a possible disproof of the theory
. Of course, if we find the theory works in nearly all cases and we just have one place where we don’t find the remains of telomeres (chromosome end points) in the middle of a chromosome, we might check to see if there was another slightly less likely evolutionary mechanism that just happened in that one place. If, however, most of these situations don’t show the expected pattern, then we really ought to be making major changes in our understanding of biology somewhere — and possibly those changes would be in the theory of evolution itself. Make sense?