Re: Kansas Closing arguments

On Tue, 17 May 2005 14:50:28 -0400 "Ted Davis" <TDavis@messiah.edu>
writes:
> From where I sit as an outsider to professional science but an
> insider to
> the larger story of science in cultural contexts, and an insider to
> the
> study of science as a form of reasoning and as a human activity,
> here is my
> main concern about what is happening in Kansas and in other states.
>
> The politics of this obscures the search for truth. This cuts both
> ways,
> IMO, that is, neither "side" is willing to acknowledge actually
> valid points
> made by the "other guys." Let me offer just two specific examples.
>
> (1) Ever since Darwin (to borrow Gould's words for a purpose he
> would have
> deplored), there has been genuine controversy within science itself
> on how
> to interpret the fossil record. It is not difficult even right now
> in 2005
> to find texts/papers by distinguished scientists in which they
> simply admit
> to various serious problems with understanding what has taken place
> among
> higher taxa. In other words, to use the old saw of the
> creationists,
> "macroevolution" is not understood very well relative to
> "mircoevolution,"
> yet b/c of controversies like the one in Kansas many scientists
> don't want
> to say this, rather (it appears to me) that many engage in "closing
> ranks,"
> which sociologist Tom Gieryn has demonstrated happens in
> controversies of
> this kind. B/c it would obviously *seem to* support ID to admit
> this too
> loudly, open and unbiased coversation is very hard to come by.
> However, it
> need not support ID, that is, ID is not necessarily the only or
> best
> inference. But ID is a possible inference, and as long as it is,
> many
> scientists won't touch it.
>
> (2) The ID tent is very big in a theological way, such that some
> strong
> adherents are YECs who buy the biological piece of ID (namely,
> "irreducible
> complexity" in cells) but do not really buy the geological piece
> (the
> Cambrian explosion" fully anchored in the standard timescale) or the
> cosmological piece (fine tuning in a very old universe that came to
> be
> through the big bang), and some major public supporters (such as the
> chair
> of the school board in Dover, PA) are also YECs. The pragmatic
> political
> union of a wide variety of people who are angry about the presence
> of
> unchallenged evolution in school curricula leads many to equate ID
> with YEC.
> Although this charge is partly unfair (two of the three ideas
> mentioned in
> this paragraph are anathema to YECs), it is not entirely unfair b/c
> of the
> obvious political associations here. This makes the ID leaders
> appear
> disingenuous when they deny that they are "creationists."
>
> Hoping for better times and more truth-telling,
>
> ted
>
>
>
Ted,
The more I read the abstracts and some of the original articles on
genomics, the fewer problems with macroevolution I find. Gaps are
constantly being filled. For example, human chromosome 2 is clearly two
ape chromosomes joined. There are some additions to the genome that have
to be post-separation, for they are in human xor ape; others earlier
because they are found in the same position (inversions and other
alterations considered) on the matching chromosomes. We have a choice:
either a miracle or series of miracles produced the patterns, or the
patterns are macroevolutionary consequences. If we back up to consider
rats, mice, fruitflies, roundworms, yeasts, bacteria, and more and more
other creatures that are being sequenced, we find more and more patterns
that look as though they are derived from the same ancestors by natural
processes. Divine (or alien) intervention cannot be absolutely excluded,
of course. But are you going to ascribe this message to "supernatural"
forces or to an ornery cuss?
Dave
Received on Tue May 17 17:01:10 2005