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Andy Coghlan, reporter
Question 1: Is science equipped to evaluate supernatural explanations for our observations? Explain your reasoning.
Answer: No. "Because the scope of scientific inquiry is consciously limited to the search for naturalistic principles, science remains free of religious dogma... An explanatory principle that by its nature cannot be tested is outside the realm of science."
Signed,
42 Nobel laureates, 19 April 2011
Forty-two Nobel laureates have backed the repeal of a Louisiana law allowing creationism to be taught in science lessons. They have weighed in to support repeal of the "misguided" Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) of 2008, which allows teachers to bring "supplementary materials" of their own choice into science classes to widen debate on science subjects including evolution, cloning and global warming. In the words of the laureates themselves, "this law creates a pathway for creationism and other forms of non-scientific instruction to be taught in public school classrooms".
The Louisiana saga is the latest attempt by creationists to challenge the teaching of evolution in schools. In previous high-profile cases, creationists have attempted to disguise creationism as other concepts such as "intelligent design", a ploy that was successfully demolished at a trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2005.
In their letter, the laureates back SB-70, a bill introduced to the Louisiana legislature on 15 April by Democratic state senator Karen Carter Peterson. Their letter was posted online by 17-year-old Louisiana schoolboy, Zack Kopplin, from Magnet High School in Baton Rouge, who has spearheaded the fight to get the Louisiana act repealed. The laureates include 17 chemists, an equal number of physicists and eight winners of the medicine Nobel.
Naturally, Kopplin is delighted with his new and prestigious support, as he made clear in an update to his repeal movement blog on Facebook:
It's only been three years since the act was passed unanimously by the Senate. Now there's a repeal, with a groundswell of support, that will be heard in that same chamber. This is a remarkable victory for science. The Louisiana legislature should listen to these 42 Nobel Laureate scientists urging them to repeal this law.
Kopplin has brought together an alliance of students, clergy and businesses to fight for repeal, claiming that the law has made the state a scientific "laughing stock". The clergy have joined up for fear that they will all be tarred with the same "extremist" brush, and businesses are worried that high-tech, science-based industries on which jobs depend will quit any state seen as "anti-science".
Naturally, the Louisiana Family Forum, the loudest supporter of the current law, will be seeking to oppose repeal. And a report last week from the Associated Press cited a spokeswoman for state governor Bobby Jindal as saying that the governor "opposes any attempts to repeal the law".
But with the heavyweight support from the Nobel laureates, and the introduction of the repeal bill, Kopplin and his supporters have new hope. Final word to the laureates, then:
Teaching religious ideas mislabelled as science is detrimental to scientific education: it sets up a false conflict between science and religion, misleads our youth about the nature of scientific inquiry, and thereby compromises our ability to respond to the problems of an increasingly technological world.
We strongly urge that the Louisiana Legislature repeal this misguided law. Louisiana students deserve an education that will allow them to compete with their peers across the country and the globe.
Elsewhere, "creationist" bills are also on the ropes. Tennessee's "monkey bill" was designed, like the Louisiana act, to open up debate on "controversies", including "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning". As reported by the National Center for Science Education, the bill looks like it will run out of time for consideration by the senate education committee in the current legislative session, although it could be considered when it adjourns next year.
27 Comments
As scientists, what do we do with the fact that in development, the human brain and the heart both form first BEFORE the primitive structures - the aorta and spinal cord? The fact that complexity exists before simplicity throws Darwin's antiquated and pre-scientific musings out the window. Virchow's and Schwann and Schleiden's work also discredit Darwin's erroneous and non-existent mechanism. And what really does Natural Selection explain? We can neither prove Creation nor Evolution - so what? We don't know. Live with that. It's called a mystery. Enjoy it. Stop throwing stones. Creation is religion and so is Evolution - both evidence-less belief systems, of the two, Evolution is the weaker argument scientifically. It has a mountain of Thermodynamics to climb with no energy to climb it. As a human scientist, Creation holds more promise for the future than does the dead dog of Evolution and its bastard stepchild, allopathic medicine. They are now hurting more than helping progress.
Evolution is not "evidenceless", it's been observed, directly and over a course of months, in fruit flies. I've got a program running in the background that uses the same principles to create a picture of Darwin (or anything you choose, it could equally well do one of Jesus). There's plenty of evidence, and certainly far more than exists for traditional biblical creation. I suspect you're confusing "evidencelesslness" with a "theory" - yes, outside of pure mathematics it's nigh-on impossible to prove something 100%, but evolution is still the vastly more likely explanation for the world we see. Yes, creation is also a theory, but one with a similar evidential basis as the Flying Spaghetti Monster (all hail his noodly appendage) who was created to mirror the statistical likelyhood of {insert deity of choice} creating the universe.
Since evolution is "truth", there would be no problem if critical thinking were encouraged right? It should strengthen the position of evolution because of the "mountain of evidences" that will further establish it. Unless of course evolution is false...
@Jeff Prystupa
The brain and heart _don't_ form before the "primitive" structure. Unsurprisingly their "primitive" precursors form at the same time, in the fifth week of gestation.
And in what way exactly does the work of Virchow, Schwann and Schleiden discredit Darwin? Schleiden was in fact one of the first German biologists to accept Darwin's theory of evolution. So he's a good example to the contrary of your assertion.
As for what does natural selection explains? That you don't need a designer to have complex things emerge from simpler things. It has proven itself as a practical design principle in industry, something that can't be said for creationism (since it doesn't really tell you anything). Evolution has a great problem solving capacity which we can take advantage of (just look at all the various applications of genetic algorithms). Evolution has application value, you can use it to make things, as well as predictive value in how something like an epidemic progresses; creationism has at best some theological value.
But creationism is not science, because it does neither investigates itself nor the world; it does not test itself and it has no practical application. In fact it is the opposite of science, in that it denies what we find out in the world in favour of what it wants to find. In addition, it implicitly asserts that God is actively out to deceive us; because everything from biology to cosmology conflicts with a literal creation account. So given the choice that creationism is right and God is a big fat liar, or that creationism is wrong, I'll go with the latter.
In closing, I'll link to some advice Saint Augustin left us: www.pibburns.com/augustin.htm
That same evolution may well dictate how fast parts of the body grow, such as growing a brain and heart faster than other parts of the body. This is particularly important in humans, who require their brains to develop at a rather impressive speed in the womb in order to survive. Moreover, to use your example again; it seems to make logical sense that the components would develop so that they're useful by the time they're connected together. I see no reason for evolution to be incompatible with this example, and if that is the only reason you have for justifying creationism, thank you and good day sir.
@Jeff
I was going to write a line-by-line argument debunking everything you wrote, then I got to this little gem;
"Evolution is the weaker argument scientifically"
You've already done more than I ever could in discrediting you.
Science cannot be determined by law, the courts, or popular opinion. If the evolutionist dogmatists want to prove their theory let them do it with science.
Mr Prystupa, do I understand correctly that you are going against the 42 NOBEL LAUREATES? Do I understand correctly that you "think" evolution is not possible? Please clarify for me, thankyou.
In response to Jeff Prystupa's comment, Creation (by a supernatural entity) is not a scientific explanation at all. It posits that the explanation for something complex and partially known is something presumeably even more complex and completely unknown, and if theology is to be believed, unknowable.
At best, that's a conjecture in need of a cogent explanation itself. But there isn't even a grounded (non-abstract) vocabulary in which you can discuss the question of supernatural creation. It's all words in the air, supported by the heat of their utterance.
Just have to refute one of the "not even wrong" points in Jeff's post.
The most direct subject of evolution is the information embodied in the genome. This information, arguably the essence of (each type of) life, is conserved from generation to generation and includes the instructions for constructing (through direct and indirect processes) ALL of the organism's body. The information constructs the body in an order determined by many constraints including the constraint of feasible incremental modification of earlier construction processes of simpler ancester organism types. The information however is constructing a whole organism, and there is no complexity before simplicity because all of the information needed for the entire construction process was always there (as far as the new organism is concerned), passed in the genome from the parent instance(s) of the organism.
It is tiresome to keep hearing the line "evolution is religion" spouted. It is not. It is science. There is evidence for it. It is not under debate by any respected scientist. That does not mean there aren't many open questions, some of them very difficult. But we should never let complexity daunt us. Gravity, disease, light and so many other things were considered very mysterious. Now we have greater understanding - and while there is less mystery, the way it all works is quite marvelous, and should be inspiring to all.
Jeff i'm afraid evolution has more scientific evidence proving its existance than any other theory humanity has come up with. Unfortunately it is people like you that seek to confuse the situation just like these American governors. Creationism theory IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY and therefore cannot be taught as science.
Sighs at 1st comment.
Jeff Prystupa, either you have a great sense of humor, or your 1980's TRS-80 wrote the comment after a 200 degree heat spike damaged it's CPU. No human could have put together that comment.
Jeff said: "Creation is religion and so is Evolution - both evidence-less belief systems, of the two, Evolution is the weaker argument scientifically." That of course is a lie. A simple, openly stated lie, easily disproved. One need only look at the multiple independent lines of evidence for evolution found in: patterns of morphology, co-evolved relationships, convergent evolution, observed speciation, Lenski experiments, shared DNA, inherited ERV markers, molecular biology, vestigial traits, atavisms, genetic mutation, embryology, the fossil record, paleontology, archaeology, transitional species predictions, radiometric dating, dendrochronology, thermoluminescence dating, ice core dating, biostratiography, archaeogenetics, biogeography, plate tectonics, geology, chemistry, and physics.
But of course Jeff's use of the term "allopathic" puts him firmly in the camp of "believers in anything without evidence". If we value justice, let's hope he's never on a criminal trial jury.
And let's continue to teach our kids actual science - it's worked well so far. Just compare how much our knowledge of nature has progressed over the past 2000 years as compared to our knowledge of, for example, demons, or angels, or gods.
Creationism belongs to the medieval age, not the 21st Century. Repeal the creationist bill no matter what.
Yaaaaawn. What a predictable rant.
Don't pretend Religion is Science, end of story.
Religion has it's place and it falls to the individual where that line is drawn - or isn't drawn.
Science promotes progress not simply for one belief over another (in parallel, yes. In juxtaposition and from different perspectives, yes, and that's why we have paradigm shi