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New Mexico Drops Creationists, Decides to Evolve
Large Green Mallard writes "In a move sparked by Kansas's decision to stop the teaching of evolution, New Mexico has decided that teachers no longer have to teach Creationism, the view preffered by Kansas. The Story at CNN also mentions that Kentucky has erred on the side of political correctness and has decided to delete all references to the theory of evolution, instead referring to it as a 'change over time.'"
I have to say, I agree with New Mexico's decision. If the standard of separation of church and state is to be upheld in public schools, then either no creationism can be taught, or every major religion and/or ethnic group's creation story needs to be presented as a possibility.
human://billy.j.mabray/
human://billy.j.mabray/
"Every good system has a backup." -- Dale Hanchey
This story reminds me of a story about a Senator in an estimeed Bible -belt state who proposed defining PI as 3 because it was absurd that it might be 3.14...
IN any case, evolution != change over time
Here is the defn:
evolution \Ev`o*lu"tion\, n. [L. evolutio an unrolling: cf. F. ['e]volution evolution. See Evolve.] 1. The act of unfolding or unrolling; hence, in the process of growth; development; as, the evolution of a flower from a bud, or an animal from the egg.
2. A series of things unrolled or unfolded. ``The whole evolution of ages.'' --Dr. H. More.
3. (Geom.) The formation of an involute by unwrapping a thread from a curve as an evolute. --Hutton.
4. (Arith. & Alg.) The extraction of roots; -- the reverse of involution.
5. (Mil. & Naval) A prescribed movement of a body of troops, or a vessel or fleet; any movement designed to effect a new arrangement or disposition; a maneuver.
Those evolutions are best which can be executed with the greatest celerity, compatible with regularity. --Campbell.
6. (Biol.) (a) A general name for the history of the steps by which any living organism has acquired the morphological and physiological characters which distinguish it; a gradual unfolding of successive phases of growth or development. (b) That theory of generation which supposes the germ to pre["e]xist in the parent, and its parts to be developed, but not actually formed, by the procreative act; -- opposed to epigenesis.
7. (Metaph.) That series of changes under natural law which involves continuous progress from the homogeneous to the heterogeneous in structure, and from the single and simple to the diverse and manifold in quality or function. The pocess is by some limited to organic beings; by others it is applied to the inorganic and the psychical. It is also applied to explain the existence and growth of institutions, manners, language, civilization, and every product of human activity. The agencies and laws of the process are variously explained by different philosophrs.
The fact that controversial shouldn't stop it from being taught in schools! Frankly, I personally don't care about how I came into being other than knowing about my family's lineage for a few generations, but I find it offensive that the legislature would remove that word from the curriculum because some nuts find it offensive.
Wouldn't it be sufficient to teach both?
Really, how long can it take?!
They seem to be splitting things up into "macroevoloution" and "microevoloution" with some hazy distinction between the two they never really get into. I mean, where's the line? I'm sure they would rather not have to pay attention to that, but you can't completely _ignore_ it; i mean, genetics isn't something you can ignore, and what they call "microevoloution" can kill you, since diseases do it constantly.
Just for the record, microevolution and macroevolution are not words made up by creationists. Microevolution is the change within a species, but not resulting in the change to a new species, i.e. moths that change wing patterns based on the change in available resting places, but are still able to breed with the "old wing-style" moths. Macroevolution is the change of a species to a new species, i.e. the "new wing-style" moths would not be able to breed with the "old wing-style" moths.
Where does "microevoloution" stop and "macroevoloution" start? You can interbreed dogs and get new things; so are all dogs related? What about wolves? At some point in order for creationism to work you've got to point at one specific thing that begat all doglike creatures, or all catlike or cowlike or undersea protazoa or fish. But are all fish from the same ancestor? What about sharks? They're a lot bigger. Things get very hazy, especially if you pay any attention to the fossil record. You start looking for the one ancestor of all those things and find it's pretty similar to a lot of other things at that time.
This was covered in my previous explanation. Creationism doesn't group things into "doglike" and "catlike" or "fishlike". Likewise, biology deals with specific species. Can a dog and a wolf breed? If so they're the same species. Can your two example fish breed? If so, they're the same species. However, for the point of evolution, "doglike" and "catlike" do have meaning, because we're trying to determine common ancestry of modern (or fossil-record) species. Just don't confuse the statements of evolution and creationism. Another misconception about creationism is that it explains all current species. It doesn't. Don't forget that those that beleive in the Biblical creationism would also beleive in Noah's arc, in which two of all creatures existing at that time (not necessarily those that were at creation) were loaded into the arc, and that current species are descended from those.
Oh, that's right, carbon dating is all lies. But then if THAT'S true, we've got to reevaluate a LOT of history, since we base dates of certain early historical things on carbon dating and similar technologies. All our dates must be wrong. And what about atomic science? it describes exactly how and why carbon dating works; if carbon dating is lies, then that means our entire hypothesis of nuclear decay is totally wrong.
You're right about that. If the theories of nuclear decay are wrong, then that changes a lot. The point that scientists supporting creation make is that it's possible our theories on nuclear decay are wrong, and that the rate of decay is not constant (i.e. we haven't been observing decay for 5700 years to know for sure the half-life of Carbon-14, and haven't observed that the protons emitted by the sun for the past 700 centuries has been a constant (i.e. the decay is caused by proton bombardment, and 700 centuries is the "upper limit" of C-14 dating).
You can't really put creationism in a school. It isn't science.
I agree. It isn't. I certainly wouldn't support the presentation of creationism as science. But please don't make the mistake that everything in your science book is good science either. See things like: there is no gravity in space, sound travels better though solids and liquids than air, friction is caused by rough surfaces, infrared light = heat, rainbows have only seven colors, laser light is "in phase", air is weightless, water drops are "pointy ovals", batteries store electrical charge, hot water freezes faster, water drains clockwise/anti-clockwise depending on your hemisphere, etc. So I wouldn't call Creationism science either. But then I would correct all the falsehoods that are taught as science also.
I intend to explain a rather basic idea, though I have a feeling that the explaining could get rather long. At any length, I plan to show why creationism (or more accurately evolution-backlash) is gaining a resurgence currently.
I think the major conflict between the the creationists and evolutionary theory is the misunderstanding of what evolution really is. Most people who believe in creation over evolution do accept micro-evolution (to not accept that bacteria evolves to become resistant to certain antibacterials would be to accuse scientists of outright dishonesty, not just misinterpretation of evidence).
The major sticking point for creationists is not in fact evolution but biogenesis. How life came about. And even more importantly (though it really doesn't fall into evolutionary theory) how the universe came into being. Those asserting that man did not come from animals are in a similar camp to those who's basic aversion to evolution theory concerns biogenesis: They for the most part seem to be in acceptance of evolution of animals as long as it does not concern man (the 'in the image of God' argument).
Neither of the above standpoints is necessarily exclusive of evolution, and in reality this is the great pitfall for Christian thought (or any other creationist thought, for that matter). Evolution is conceivably compatible with liberal Christian theory. It in effect has to be, for as it must do with all strongly founded scientific theory, to be viable Christianity must accept blatent reality.
It is not however compatible in a lump sum, because big ideas do not become blatent reality until smaller parts from which they are derived become so.
Christianity for a very long period of time accepted that species were static groups. Extinction was unfathomable (consider Noah's Ark...). Yet there came a point when the existence of extinction was undeniable. This accepted, it follows that species must also be newly formed to replace the old. This laid a strong groundwork for the idea of a changing world. The rejection of instructionalism (if not the whole of evolution) and selectionism's later support from genetics made microevolution nearly common sense. And today, as the human genome is being mapped and the patterns of similarity and dissimilarity between species are plainly discernable, evolution is becoming even more than scientific fact (or very close to scientific fact). Evolution is becoming an obvious reality. By this I mean it is becoming an underlying postulate of the common sense of existence. Like gravity, it will be taken for granted.
That said, the cause behind the current evolution hostility may not be obvious. The near-acceptence of evolution by common sense and the near-compatibility between evolution and Christianity is a greater threat to Christianity than any radical (and incompatible) theory could be. The acceptance of evolution by the mainstream has been an erosive effort--as I demonstrated earlier.
Evolution is derived from a number of small, easy to swallow (for the most part) ideas. So why does this present a problem to, for example, the Kansas school board? Simple: as it comes closer to being common sense, those people can see it in a more well-defined light. Suddenly it becomes apparent not only what evolution means (how acceptable it is) but what ideas may be derived from it. Returning to the beginning of this post, three major ideas that may be derived from strict evolution are biogenesis, man as a higher animal, and big bang-ish genesis (or others; I sort of like Stephen Hawking's idea of a vague non-beginnig as opposed to a distinct, pointed singulatity).
As acceptence of evolution is not counter to the church in itself, rejection on a large scale becomes very difficult. Those who see the possible results have little recourse but to make evolution more loathesome by tacking on these possible derivatives to the evolution bandwagon. It is only at this point that they can point at evolution and say 'This is what they believe. Do you really want to believe this?' and present a converse to the added-on ideas. Creationism and creation science don't really address the core of evolution. Fortunatly for truth the manipulation is all too obvious.
Jose M. Weeks
jmweeks@cord.edu
This is sad. Truly sad. So many people engaged in what has to be the most pointless argument of all time (evolution and creationism answer two entirely different questions; they don't conflict at all and it's quite possible that they could both be right or both be wrong).
I should also point out that people here are severely overreacting to the Kansas decision, mainly because of a rather key piece of misinformation: Kansas does not require schools to teach creationism. All the law does is say that evolution is not a requirement; no new requirements were set (therefore, most school curricula were not affected in the least, since most biology teachers prefer to teach evolution).
Look. In the end, both theories are technically myths (or theories; use whichever term you prefer but it applies equally to both) anyway. We're never going to be able to conclusively prove either one unless someone gets a time machine and goes back with a camera. Personally, I'd love to see both turn out right, if only because the looks on the militant creationists' and militant evolutionists' faces would be priceless. Until that happens, the only truly honest and fair way to teach is to tell it like it is: we don't really know how life got here, here are the major theories, here are the flaws and merits of each; you'll have to decide for yourself what you believe.
For the record, I believe both. Evolution answers how life got here but never touches on why. Creationism provides a reason why but never states exactly what happened ("God said 'Let there be light...' and there was light"; gee, how descriptive). That's the strange part of things; religion deals with cosmic purpose, science deals with cosmic order, yet somehow people have gotten it into their heads that two things which deal with completely different matters somehow conflict.
More to the point - how many of you out there learned to use computers on your own? For those who are largely self-taught, how many of you would rate yourselves as better than your school-shaped counterparts?
--
it is good to hear that New Mexico has a clue.
Now, as for schools that don't, there is something I should point out:
Why just the Christian creation story?
If schools still continue with the Colorado or Kansas paradigm, then they must not only give equal time for creationism to join to evolution, but also the following theory, which I believe deserves equal time:
The universe came into being when I thought it up,
back in 1975.
All of it, including the memories and history of people of days prior to 1975, were things I contrived in order to give the world context.
It is not enough to teach creationism. Solipsism is a valid theory that deserves equal time.
But there are certain realities here.
We've got a mountain of evidence for evolutionary common descent. If this was a topic that did not conflict with people's religious views, nobody would even be debating this. It would be as widely accepted as the Blue Sky theory. Here's what we have:
- The fossil record
- Comparative anatomy
- Comparative embryology
- Comparative biochemistry
- Genetics
.. and the list goes on and on. All of these individual fields of study point to one thing: evolutionary common descent as the source of biodiversity on Earth. Now, "scientific creationists" can do whatever is in their power to exorcise these topics from public schools. But they do so at the risk of the education of our young people. And they do so while conveniently ignoring two basic facts:- Evolution says nothing
.. repeat, nothing about where life came from.
- Science does not rule out a higher power as a guiding force behind evolution.
The bottom line is that equating belief in evolution with atheism is indefensible. 500 years ago, people were convinced that the Earth was flat, and that it was the center of the Universe. And then along came Copernicus and Galileo, suggesting that we were a small, uninteresting ball of rock that was movingThey did things to Galileo; let's not talk about that.
Guess what? People eventually learned that their faith was just as valid on a tiny ball of rock as it was when they were at the center of the universe. And as a hopeless optimist, this is where I see the evolution "debate" going; literalist creationists will eventually stop trying to place limits on the power of their God, and they will come around. Those that don't will quickly fade out. This is a process that is known as "natural selection."
Yes, I believe that I live on a tiny ball of rock orbiting a main sequence star located in the suburbs of a very large spiral galaxy. Yes, I believe that the evolutionary precepts of changes in the gene pool over time have resulted in the diversity of life on our small planet. No, I don't believe that all of this has happened in purely naturalist terms that modern science can currently understand.
So, literalists: Stop putting words in my mouth.
Thank ya verr much.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
If we are to take the early chapters of Genesis absolutely literally, then of course the answer is yes, the two are irreconcilable.
However, very few Christians read Revelation, the last book of the bible dealing with all the apocalyptic end of world stuff, and expect to see literal dragons, bowls in the sky, etc. The language is highly symbolic. Mightn't we expect that descriptions of Creation, a situation also far outside of the environment our languages evolved to describe, might be symbolic too? And in that case, do we really need to take a Highlander-"there can only be one" approach?
The order of Creation, etc in Genesis is broadly compatible with evolution (emphasis on broadly here). However, it is unlikely that the intention of the author was to give a scientific account of Creation. Science isn't what the rest of the bible is concerned with; relationships between God and each other are. The Creation vs Evolution debate is IMHO not only pointless, but demonstrates a lack of appreciation for the orthogonal roles of Big Bang-Evolution type ideas of science and the Why am I here-What is the point etc type ideas of the early chapters of Genesis.
remove the sz's from my email to use it
This is God. I forgot my password which is why I'm posting AC.
Well you guys amaze me with your intellect. You have figured out how I created you and everything around you. Hell, you're even figuring out how to create life too! As they say, like father like son. Heh heh..
Now will you quit with this creationism vs. evolution argument already? It's really starting to get me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. I created you using the technique you have called "evolution."
Now will you please shut up and write me a USB driver for Linux?
Oh yea, while I'm here, I thought you guys would like to know that Gates is that Antichrist guy you read about in Revolations. (You do read my work don't you?) When they start embedding WindowsCE in peoples foreheads in a couple of years you better not be one of the volunteers - or else!
We rejoice about the NM school board making a good decision, but it wasn't always this way. Two years ago, I was working at the Santa Fe Institute and we heard that the school board was going to have a public meeting on a preliminary decision over how to word evolution in the teaching requirements. They wanted to take evolution off. So a bunch of fairly famous SFI researchers, Staurt Kauffman (sp?) and others, along with big name researchers from Sandia Nat'l Labs and Los Alamos Nat'l Labs.
This fairly rural board (mostly conservative religious right types) had no idea the caliber of scientists in the room with them. Many highly regarded physicists, biologists and computer scientists all telling them it would be stupid to take evolution on the board. Anyway, to make a long story less long, after statements from very conservative families and scientists the board vote to keep evolution off.
The good side of the story is that they already had much of evolutionary theory in there without using the words. For example they had statements like: teaching the theory that "The genotype and non-somatic mutations within it are inherited", etc. (paraphrasing rather poorly) They were just offended by, not suprisingly, the theory that modern simians and humans have a common ancestor.
-- Moondog
Truth is a weak foundation. Mathematics is on no firmer ground than evolution. Godel and Tarski showed that mathematics isn't about truth, it's about logical relationships between statements. Your system is never any better than your axioms, and no finite set of axioms can ever suffice.
Just because evolution and creationism can't be proved true doesn't mean they're not useful. Note that the parallel postulate *or* its negation can be added to geometry and result in a consistent (i.e. useful) system. Hence the possibility of useful *and* conflicting theories is real. One is useful for planes, the other for curved surfaces.
The danger isn't in studying either evolution or creationism. It's in asserting that either is truth eternal or claiming that one necessarily negates the other. Both may be useful when applied to a system modelling their particular suppositions.
After studying them, my personal conclusion is that one is far more useful than the other because it requires far fewer assumptions. This seems to me a more rational basis for choice of what to teach in time limited classrooms, should such choice be necessary. Studying creationism can be valuable, if only to understand its assumptions.
what, exactly, are the pro-creationists after?
i mean, really, they just seem to be destroying science without putting anything in its place. "creationism", the alternative to evoloution they seem to be pushing, doesn't seem to, like, contain any science. It has no factual basis, doesn't help with predicting things or explain anything, and it's based entirely on faith. If it's based on faith, what is there to teach? nothing.
They seem to be splitting things up into "macroevoloution" and "microevoloution" with some hazy distinction between the two they never really get into. I mean, where's the line? I'm sure they would rather not have to pay attention to that, but you can't completely _ignore_ it; i mean, genetics isn't something you can ignore, and what they call "microevoloution" can kill you, since diseases do it constantly.
It's one thing to say evoloution theory is bad, but when you try to get rid of it in the school and replace it with something concrete, well, creationism breaks down completely. The only option is to simply not teach anything. (which, i'll bet, is what they're doing in Kansas)
Where does "microevoloution" stop and "macroevoloution" start? You can interbreed dogs and get new things; so are all dogs related? What about wolves? At some point in order for creationism to work you've got to point at one specific thing that begat all doglike creatures, or all catlike or cowlike or undersea protazoa or fish. But are all fish from the same ancestor? What about sharks? They're a lot bigger. Things get very hazy, especially if you pay any attention to the fossil record. You start looking for the one ancestor of all those things and find it's pretty similar to a lot of other things at that time.
They point a lot to "gaps in the fossil record", but they seem to be saying that since evoloution isn't supported at every step by fossils, you should reject it in favor of a system that totally ignores the fossil record. How do they explain that the fossils seem to follow a kind of pattern of starting simpler and diverging into more adapted creatures? is it just a coincidence?
and this is where things get REALLY wierd. since of course they _start_ with claiming that man are not directly related to bacteria, but eventually it becomes less clear what they're after. What it comes down to is that eventually they claim that the earth can't be older than 7000 years. (if you allow more than that to occur it would contradict a literal interpretation of Genesis, and anyway if you lend any credence to carbon dating it kind of makes macroevoloution look kind of likely.) But if the earth isn't older than 7,000 years that kind of hurts history a lot. You've got to throw out quite a bit of early history-- i mean, historians seem to claim that real humans started around 35000 BC. Oh, and what about all those "homo habilis" and "austrolopithicus" things there seem to be fossils of? What the hell are THOSE? what about all those kind-of-humanlike fossils that start to get more and more humanlike over time?
Oh, that's right, carbon dating is all lies. But then if THAT'S true, we've got to reevaluate a LOT of history, since we base dates of certain early historical things on carbon dating and similar technologies. All our dates must be wrong. And what about atomic science? it describes exactly how and why carbon dating works; if carbon dating is lies, then that means our entire hypothesis of nuclear decay is totally wrong. We've got to come up with something in it's place. But nothing is offered to replace it. No good reason is offered as to why our theory of atoms is correct as far as it can make nuclear power plants and atomic bombs work, but its description of carbon isotopes decaying at a certain rate over time is somehow dead wrong. Do we have to throw out the periodic table, since it's where the neutrons come from?
The point is you wind up destroying more and more science the more you poke into this. Oh, and wouldn't our entire system of geology be wrong? plate tectonics describes earthquakes and how the mountains form and the deep-sea trenches and everything, but it describes things in terms of millions of years; there are only 7000 years.
You can't really put creationism in a school. It isn't science. Simple as that. It isn't like evoloution theory, which starts with a number of questions about why things are the way they are, and attempts to come up with the best explanation possible; creationism starts with an answer, and treats the questions as if they were totally irrelivant and unimportant. But if you're TEACHING SCIENCE, at some point questions do matter after a fashion.
ok i'm done rambling now.
--mcc-baka
"If we could just get everyone to close their eyes and visualize world peace for an hour, imagine how serene and quiet it would be until he looting started." -anonymous
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You can learn a lot by teaching yourself. A whole lot. However, there is a lot to learn. A whole lot. A whole lot more, in fact, than you can learn by teaching yourself.
:-) I could go on: foreign languages, history of obscure places, etc, but I feel that these examples are enough.
Consider this: I can (and have) taught myself programming from assembler to C++; I have taught myself a fair deal about the internals and externals of UNIX systems; I have taught myself to use autoconf and automake. These things can be learned by doing and I believe I have learned them well.
Now: how do I teach myself linear algebra? How do I teach myself the fundamentals of quantum mechanics? How do I teach myself about optics? In all these cases, I wouldn't really even know where to begin, and if I did, simply learning one of them would consume so much time that I'd never start on the next. Quantum mechanics you can't even learn by doing, and linear algebra, while useful, is not a structure most people are likely to derive on their own. Fiddling with lenses might get you somewhere in optics, but not everyong is Newton.
This is what teachers, schools, and books are good for: the more theoretical and esoteric bits of learning that a student is not likely to pick up on his or her own. I really hate to use the word 'efficient' in connection with education, but the truth is that you can just learn a lot of things much faster from someone who knows them already than by just flailing around on your own.
I don't mean to disparage the value of hands-on experience with anything from a mathematical equation to a Mozart symphony -- this is indisputably important. It's unfortunate -- no, make that bad -- if you work with computers and can't grope your way to a solution when all else fails. But too many people in this forum and elsewhere have an arrogant "Edukashun? We don't need no steenkin' edukashun!" attitude, thinking that simply because they taught themselves to install Apache that they know everything and there's nothing anyone can teach them. This is generally nonsense; worse is the assumption that there's nothing anyone can teach
anyone
, because in a [nominally] democratic society that attitude can end up hurting
everyone
.
If you want to believe that what you can learn with your hands is the sum total of human knowledge -- fine. But don't limit other people to this.
One last thing -- I may not have learned to use computers in school (I assume you mean elementary and high school, college lets students choose what they want), but I certainly learned writing, mathematics, history and the basics of various sciences there. These, and the mental skills they encourage (eg, logical reasoning), not only help with computers but are also of paramount importance for any would-be self-schooler. Even if you feel that college is beneath you you will need these skills to effectively bootstrap any curriculum you choose.
Daniel
Hurry up and jump on the individualist bandwagon!