At 12:19 PM 3/17/00 -0500, Bertvan wrote:
>Brian:
> >I was interested in your claim:
>
> >>"When the Kansas school board did nothing more than refuse to teach
> that the
> >>mechanisms of macro evolution are know "facts", they were attacked by the
> >>press as being religious extremists." -- Bertvan
>
> >Consulting a creationist organization is something that they did, is it not?
>
> >Now, from your original statement, quoted above, I got the impression
> >that the "mechanisms of macro evolution" were included, they were just
> >not taught as facts. But from what you now say, it seems that macro
> evolution
> >is not mentioned at all. This is a completely different situation. How can
>you
> >teach common ancestry without macro evolution? How can you teach the
> >theory of evolution without common ancestry?
>
>Bertvan:
>I judge the document produced by the Kansas school board with out
>consideration of the motives or the process by which that document was
>produced.
Motives are interesting, but not my concern here. Process, however, is
important since we are talking about public schools public money, elected
officials etc.
The appropriate process is to have the document prepared openly by
a group of teachers, educators and scientists. To allow comment on the
process and results from the public. This is exactly what *was* happening.
What happened after that is simply unacceptable. One can judge this
without consideration of motives.
When I first started my response, I was planning a completely different
approach. I was somewhat irritated by your statement that you were
judging without consideration of motives since when it comes to biologists,
"materialists" and practically anyone else who disagrees with you, you seem
to attach great significance to motives. It occurred to me that perhaps you
do this without really being aware of it. So, let me give you the benefit
of the
doubt and assume you mean what you say. With this in mind, I would invite
you to take a look at your posts, inspect them objectively to see whether
or not you are judging others according to their (perceived) motives.
>It is likely that the dissenters consulted some organization
>committed to a materialistic explanation of life. I have no interest in
>religion, and am probably skeptical of the beliefs of many religious
>people. (Those disagreements are in areas which are not likely to proved,
>and I wouldn't waste my time arguing about them.) Nevertheless, when someone
>produces a convincing argument for design, I try to reflect upon it without
>consideration of the motives of whoever made the argument.
>Would you have been satisfied if the Kansas school board had said the
>following?
>
>"Macro evolution is a mysterious process which no one has completely
>explained. All life forms appear to be somehow related, and most scientists
>believe that relationship is due to common ancestry. How many common
>ancestors (1? 2? 5? 10? 100?) is sometimes debated. The process by which one
>organism could acquire completely novel complex organisms and body parts, and
>might change into an entirely different organism is still seeking
>explanation."
I really don't feel competent to draft any statement myself. A better
approach is to just
let the process that was already in place go to its completion.
Nevertheless, I can
go ahead and give my suggestions for additions/improvements about what you
wrote:
1) I see no reason to say its mysterious.
2) You should say that organisms *are* (not appear to be) related. You
could then explain
what that relatedness entails, homologous structures etc. Then go on
to say that practically all scientists agree that this relatedness
is due to descent
with modification. It might be good to emphasize at this point
that scientists
seldom agree universally about anything :).
3) As to your last sentence, this is, IMHO, misinformation. It seems to me
that what you
are really saying is that there is no theory of evolution. Well,
at least you're consistent :).
This is, after all, the implication of discussing evolution only
in terms of micro evolution.
Micro evolution is, after all, something that almost all
creationists accept.
>How could they "teach" macro evolution, if they don't know how it occurred?
They can start by giving the overwhelming evidence that macro evolution has
occurred.
Then they could mention that several theories have been proposed to account
for this accumulated evidence. Probably most time would be spent on
Darwin's theory.
>How can you call an unknown "a unifying theory"?
It is not unknown and it *is* a unifying theory.
Here is another historical example. Newton won a very long battle (I believe
victory came after he was dead, though) against Descartes followers even
though he had no mechanism for how gravity occurred while the Cartesians
had both a theory and a mechanism. One of the reasons for Newton's success
was the unification that his theory provided.
>Perhaps the Kansas school
>board didn't mention macro evolution in the hopes of evading the uproar such
>a statement as the above would have provoked.
>
>Brian:
> >Looking back through my old files I managed to find what I believe is the
> >first post I read on the matter. It is written by a professor at Kansas
> State
> >and was originally posted to the ASA site. I know this is probably old news
> >for some, sorry :), but here it is anyway:
>
[ommitted Miller quote]
> >Brian:
> >Your tirade above about credibility takes on a whole new light. Were you
>aware
> >of these details?
>
>Bertvan:
>I thought this was a place where we discussed ideas, rather than use words
>like "tirade".
So did I, so how do explain your behavior then?
>The above is Ken Miller's opinion of the document.
No it isn't. For some reason you seem to think that someone like Keith
would offer his opinions without documentation. The documentation is
readily available, it just isn't contained in the post I gave. I'm somewhat
surprised that you seem not to have heard of any of this. As I said
before, I wasn't keeping up with this, nevertheless it took me only a
short time to find where these things have been documented. I would
not have posted this without some type of disclaimer if there were no
documentation.
>Rather than state his
>specific objections, he uses words such as "ghost written", "terrible",
>"lack of understanding of the nature of science" (Miller's personal
>understanding, I presume), "egregious", "errors of fact", "misrepresentation
>,"things are a mess", and "an embarrassment to Christians". I believe Ken
>Miller is committed to a materialist explanation of life. (His privilege)
Here is an example of what I was talking about. You jump to a conclusion
without evidence. Why? Is it because you are trying to "explain" his
opposition in terms of his commitment to materialism. This is classical
circumstantial _ad-hominem_.
>
>Nevertheless, if Miller had voiced specific examples of these "errors of
>fact", I would have tried to give them my unbiased consideration.
>Bertvan
Did you consider the possibility that there is documentation for what Miller
wrote? Again, I'm surprised that these things seem new to you.
Brian Harper | "If you don't understand
Associate Professor | something and want to
Applied Mechanics | sound profound, use the
The Ohio State University | word 'entropy'"
| -- Morrowitz
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Mar 17 2000 - 17:30:29 EST