Slashdot Mirror
Is The U.S. Becoming Anti-Science?
smooth wombat writes "As a follow-up to a recently posted Slashdot article, Reuters UK has an article which poses the question: is the U.S. becoming hostile to science? From the article: 'Among the most significant forces is the rising tide of anti-science sentiment that seems to have its nucleus in Washington but which extends throughout the nation,' said Stanford's Philip Pizzo in a letter posted on the school Web site on October 3. Cornell acting President Hunter Rawlings, in his state of the university address last week, spoke about the challenge to science represented by intelligent design which holds that the theory of evolution accepted by the vast majority of scientists is fatally flawed. Rawlings said the dispute was widening political, social, religious and philosophical rifts in U.S. society. 'When ideological division replaces informed exchange, dogma is the result and education suffers,' he said." What is your take?
Except no. There's tons of evidence for natural selection. Natural selection does not need to explain absolutely everything any more than gravity does, that's not how science works. However, the theory of natural selection has made various claims which have followed testability. (I'm lazy, so I'll just point at Talk Origins.) That's how science works. Furthermore, the theory of natural selection does not say that intelligent design could not have played a role in the origin of species. The theory merely states that the forces of natural selection have played a role on the evolution of life on earth.
The problem with intelligent design is not that it is implausible, but that it is completely untestable. An intelligent entity could have done anything it wanted to, so you can't apply tests to the theory. As a result, intelligent design becomes a "theory of the gaps," such that wherever we find something unexplainable you can say, "Well, maybe an intelligent being created it."
Another thing about irreducable complexity is that it's rather hard to actually prove something is irreducably complex. Darwin himself had trouble thinking of how the eye could have originated, but now I believe scientists have discovered a pretty good understanding of what sort of pathways it might take to get to the eye. Similarly, just checking Wikipedia shows that the evolution of the flagella is a well studied concept. (Huge page of cites was moved onto the talk page.)
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -- Hanlon's Razor
Why does no one ever attempt to explain that God created man using evolution as a tool?
Pope John Paul II did accept that "God" made man using evolution. Here's his Magisterium Is Concerned with Question of Evolution For It Involves Conception of Man. He delivered the Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1996. Of course other Christians don't have a good opinion of Catholism or the Pope, some even believing they're devil worshippers.
FalconShould there be a Law?
And we have found fossils of transitional forms.
http://www.origins.tv/darwin/landtosea.htm
Evolution is nothing but changes in allele frequency in a population over time, so its not like modern scientists or Darwin were ever expecting to see a transitional form that wasn't itself a functioning, living species. Its not like the transitionals are going to be half-melted blobs melting from human into porcupines, like some frozen outtake from Species the movie.
Oh, and How many missing links do you want? How many more well-referenced testable and falsifiable evidences for macroevolution can scientists put together while we all wait for IDers to put together one? How many times will creationists in this Slashdot thread say that scientist are ignoring a creationist claim when in fact its been answered so many times they made a FAQ (or sometimes Slashdotters'll use something from the list of claims that a major creationist group asks people to stop using)? It'll be interesting to watch this thread and see the last question being answered.
RU-486 is a drug that will induce a chemical abortion any time during the first trimester, after the fetus has already implanted in the womb. It is an abortion.
Emergency contraception, also called the "morning after pill" or "plan B", is taken withing 5 days of unprotected sex (rape, failure of contraceptives, drunken one-night-stand, etc) to prevent the fertilized egg from implanting on the uterus. This is in fact a form of contraception, albeit not one that should be used on a regular basis, because it is only partly reliable, and has rather heavy side effects from the large doses of hormones it contains.
They are not the same thing! Practically no pharmacy in the U.S. stocks RU-486 (it is supplied directly by abortion clinics), but it should be entirely reasonable to expect them to have the morning after pill. Should. Plan B is even considered safe enough for over-the-counter sale in many countries (in the U.S. it's OTC sale was blocked by the FDA solely for political reasons; after all, this is Bush's FDA we're talking about).
The Cheese Stands Alone.
To answer your question, evolutionary science has brought us at least the following (partial list):
1: Partial linguistic reconstruction of dead languages by examining genetic data.
2: The yearly flu vaccine. This would be utterly impossible without evolutionary theory.
3: Genetic algorithms for computing. For many problems, they are the fastest way of finding and appropriate solution.
4: Gene therapy.
5: Radiation therapy.
6: Cancer research and cures.
7: Bacterial synthesis.
8: Nanotechnology.
Just off the top of my head. Evolutionary theory (it's a theory, not a hypothesis, because it has indeed been proven), is of great import in a vast quantity of fields. Creationism and intelligent design teach no more than astrology, alchemy, and phrenology teach. They are useless, and in some cases even damaging.
I am a science fantasy fan