Reflectorites
On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 21:08:42 -0600 (CST), Susan B wrote:
[...]
>>SB>Here is an interesting tidbit I picked up from another creation/evolution
>>>discussion list. *Very* interesting reading! And, of course, it contradicts
>>>Stephen's claim that the new Kansas standards actually increased the level
>>>of science taught.
>SJ>First of all I have claimed *nothing* about "the level of *science* taught"
>>(my emphasis). What I have claimed is that the new standards increased the
>>amount of *evolution* to be taught in Kansas over the old standards.
SB>and I've asked you to provide documentation for that statement and have
>been ignored.
I would ask Susan to substantiate her claim that she has asked me "to
provide documentation for that statement", ie. that "the new standards
increased the amount of *evolution* to be taught in Kansas over the old
standards" and that I have "ignored" her request.
AFAIK I have not been asked by *anyone* to provide such documentation.
I thought it was common grounds on both sides of the debate on this
Reflector that the KBoE "increased the amount of *evolution* to be taught
in Kansas over the old standards".
But apparently not with Susan. So I have taken steps to provide such
documentation, or at least web links to where Susan can read it for herself.
SB>I read the original proposed standards and the standards written by
>the creationists. "Macro" evolution was deleted along with the Big Bang and
>Plate Tectonics.
No one disputes that the KBoE deleted macroevolution and the Big Bang from the
"original proposed standards". Indeed I am sure I posted something on this
a while back.
>SJ>Second, the article Susan posted said nothing about what the evolutionary
>>content of the old standards was. No one denies that the Board reduced the
>>teaching of evolution in the *draft* standards presented to the Board for
>>approval.
SB>so what's the difference? This sounds like a semantic trick.
The "difference" is what the school students of Kansas were required to be
taught before July 1999 and what they are required to be taught now.
Before July 1999 the school students of Kansas were, AFAIK, not even required
to be taught microevolution. After the new standards of July 1999 they can
be taught microevolution, macroveolution and the Big Bang, but they will
not be required to be examined on the latter two.
>SJ>The rest of the article makes out like it is a new discovery that the KBOE
>>was assisted by creationists in deciding what to delete out of the draft
>>standards. But one of my earliest posts on the Kansas issue to the Reflector
>>said that the standards were rewritten "With the help of creationists":
SB>good for you! But it was originally made to sound like the creationists were
>the Board of Education itself.
Maybe Susan has been reading and believing too much evolutionist
propaganda?
SB>It's interesting to know the acutal name of
>the organization trying to prevent the Christian origin myth from being
>contradicted.
It never seems to dawn on Susan and her ilk that what they derisively
dismiss as "the Christian origin myth" is in fact the *only* "origin myth"
from antiquity which is close enough to what modern science has revealed
literally happened, as to be at least arguably real history expressed in
symbolic form. AFAIK the Babylonians, Egyptians, Greeks or Hindus are
not out there "trying to prevent" their "origin myth from being
contradicted"!
As Christian anthropologist E.K.V. Pearce points out, compared with its
contemporaries, "it is remarkable that it is even possible to consider
whether the ancient Bible story has scientific parallels":
"The contrast between the Genesis creation-story and the ancient creation-
myths has often been remarked upon even by commentators unwilling to
admit a divine origin for the story. The Babylonian Creation Myth
represents the heaven and earth as resulting from the god Marduk cutting
the goddess Tiamat in half to form heaven with one half and earth with the
other. The Indian myth represents the earth as being flat and triangular,
supported by three elephants, who are in turn supported by a turtle who
swims in a sea of mercury. In the light of such typical and contemporary
myths it is remarkable that it is even possible to consider whether the
ancient Bible story has scientific parallels. The opening sentence of the
Bible is both a scientific and theological masterpiece: "In the beginning
God created the heavens and the earth." (Pearce E.K.V., "Who Was
Adam?", 1969, p84).
Jastrow, an agnostic astronomer, notes that the modern scientific account
of cosmology is "the scientist's version of Genesis":
"This discovery led directly to the picture of a sudden beginning for the
Universe. For if we retrace they outward movements of the galaxies
backward in time, we come to a time when they were packed together in a
dense hot mass. Farther back than this the astronomer cannot go. In the
scientist's version of Genesis, that moment marked the beginning of the
chain of cause and effect that led to the appearance of mankind on the
earth." (Jastrow R., "God and the Astronomers", 1992, p8)
"the essential element in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis
is the same", and the scientific account is "the new story of Genesis.":
"Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the
origin of the world. All the details differ, but the essential element in the
astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis is the same; the chain of
events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply, at a definite
moment in time, in a flash of light and energy. This is the crux of the new
story of Genesis." (Jastrow R., 1992, p14)
Jastrow notes that only "the theologians" who "have always accepted the
word of the Bible" that "In the beginning God created heaven and earth"
was the scientific discovery of the Big Bang not "unexpected":
"A sound explanation may exist for the explosive birth of our Universe; but
if it does, science cannot find out what the explanation is. The scientist's
pursuit of the past ends in the moment of creation. This is an exceedingly
strange development, unexpected by all but the theologians. They have
always accepted the word of the Bible: In the beginning God created
heaven and earth...It is not a matter of another year, another decade of
work, another measurement, or another theory; at this moment it seems as
though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of
creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason,
the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance;
he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final
rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for
centuries." (Jastrow R., 1992, pp106-107).
BTW when I quoted this before, Susan implied that Jastrow was a nobody,
so I replied by quoting the blurb from his book:
"An internationally known scientist and authority on life in the Cosmos, Dr.
Jastrow is the Director of the Mount Wilson Institute, which manages the
Mount Wilson Observatory in California-the site of the first discoveries
leading to the Big Bang theory. Dr. Jastrow joined NASA at the time of its
formation, and founded and was for 20 years the Director of NASA's
Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Dr. Jastrow was the first Chairman of
NASA's Lunar Exploration Committee, which set the scientific goals for
the exploration of the moon. He is the recipient of the NASA Medal for
Excellence in Scientific Achievement and a member of the Board of
Governors of the National Space Society. Formerly Professor of
Astronomy and Geology at Columbia University and Professor of Earth
Sciences at Dartmouth College, Dr. Jastrow is widely known for his
television appearances in astronomy and space exploration. He has been
host of more than 100 CBS-TV network programs on space science. Dr.
Jastrow's books on astronomy and space have sold more than a million
copies." (Jastrow R., 1992, inside cover).
Personally I would have no problem if it could be shown that Genesis 1-11
was partly or even wholly couched in the literary form called "myth". The
word myth does not necessarily mean false. Webster's online dictionary at:
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary, defines the primary meaning of
"myth" as "a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that
serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice,
belief, or natural phenomenon", and only a secondary meaning of "an
unfounded or false notion".
The New Testament book of Hebrews begins with the affirmation that: "In
the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times
and in various ways" (Heb 1:1). So if God used the literary form "myth" as
the most appropriate vehicle to communicate information about creation to
a pre-scientific people, then that is OK with me, and I suspect most
Christians, except the strictest Biblical literalists.
For example, conservative evangelical Christian theologian I.H. Marshall
writes:
"Myth is a well-recognized literary genre, and there is no reason in
principle why the Bible should not contain mythical material. The question
regarding the historical truth of a myth must be separated from the question
of its validity; a myth may well be valid even though the story is fictitious,
just as in the case of parables." (Marshall I.H., "Myth" in Ferguson S.B., et.
al., eds., "New Dictionary of Theology"," 1988, p449).
Of course what Susan and her ilk want to imply by the word "myth" in the
phrase: "the Christian origin myth" is that it is not "myth" in the primary
sense of "a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that
serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice,
belief, or natural phenomenon", but rather in the secondary sense of "an
unfounded or false notion".
But if the latter is the case, they need to go the hard years and *prove*
their point, not just indulge in a play on the word "myth" and hope that no
one will notice!
What they need to explain, is how an "account of the heavens and the earth
when they were created" (Gn 2:4), the original sources of which were
already ancient when Moses translated them from clay tablets ~ 3,000
years ago, can be so scientifically accurate as to provoke the editor of a
leading 20th century scientific journal to oppose the Big Bang because it
was too much like the account in Genesis:
"The British journal Nature enlisted its physics editor, John Maddox, to
write an editorial titled "Down with the Big Bang." ... In the Nature
editorial, John Maddox predicts that since young-Earth creationists have
"impaled themselves on the hook of trying to disprove the relatively recent
geological record," it will be only a matter of time before "the impatient
creationists will have to retreat to the Big Bang" to support their belief in
creation. Maddox concedes that creationists' beliefs have "ample
justification" in the big bang. For this very reason he declares the big bang
"thoroughly unacceptable" because it implies "an ultimate origin of our
world" whose cause or Cause, lies beyond the universe. " (Maddox J.,
"Down with the Big Bang", Nature, 10 August 1989, p425, in Ross H.N.,
"The Creator and the Cosmos" 1994, pp75-76).
Steve
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"At the core of punctuated equilibria lies an empirical observation: once
evolved, species tend to remain remarkably stable, recognizable entities for
millions of years. The observation is by no means new, nearly every
paleontologist who reviewed Darwin's Origin of Species pointed to his
evasion of this salient feature of the fossil record. But stasis was
conveniently dropped as a feature of life's history to he reckoned with in
evolutionary biology. And stasis had continued to be ignored until Gould
and I showed that such stability is a real aspect of life's history which must
be confronted-and that, in fact, it posed no fundamental threat to the basic
notion of evolution itself. For that was Darwin's problem: to establish the
plausibility of the very idea of evolution, Darwin felt that he had to
undermine the older (and ultimately biblically based) doctrine of species
fixity. Stasis, to Darwin, was an ugly inconvenience." (Eldredge N., "Time
Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of
Punctuated Equilibria", Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, pp188-
189)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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