Lord knows schools need to teach critical thinking skills better, both in the science classroom and out. The irony is that if they did, more people would be able to spot the ridiculousness behind creationist/intelligent design a mile off and laugh these kooks right out of the room.

Say, maybe Dr Cooper’s bill isn’t a bad idea after all?

Thanks for using my picture with your article. If your readers want to see more of the car, here’s the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/amywatts/tags/creationism/. This guy is a fixture in our downtown on weekends.

Normally I am all for a healthy debate on anything, and evolution should not be above it all. But those on the right are generally not for a healthy debate about most things- only on things that will promote their agenda.
Those on the right of the spectrum generally like things neat and orderly, and the theory of evolution makes the orderly transition of God’s mind to our world a lot more complicated. Complexity is the bane of the right. Mind you, those on the left tend to over-embrace complexity so much so that we can get confusion and gridlock.
Somehow isn’t there a way to embrace evolution and still believe in a somewhat orderly development of mankind and religion?
The last thing that our schools need right now is more confusion. We are having a lot of trouble graduating science majors who can compete globally! The only countries more averse to the theory of evolution than us are Turkey and Saudi Arabia. That is not a great club to aspire to. If we want to compete on the global stage, we need to expand our minds as much as possible, not retreat into cozy certainties.

I was at a candidates debate the other day where one of the candidates told the anecdote of the child who asked “if there’s evolution, and we evolved from apes, why are there still apes”, and someone else proferred, “for the same reason there are still Republicans.”

One would think those who cite science as the basis for their advocacy of macroevolution would welcome the opportunity to explore the facts and demonstrate how those facts support their conclusion. Surprisingly, many do not. Why might that be?

There is an alarming tendency among those who claim to be “scientists” to call an end to the debate and accept their favored conclusion as irrefutable and indisputable. That is being done with “global climate change”, which had been called “global warming” until the earth’s mean temperature declined for nine successive years.

Science does not recognize “consensus” as fact. In Galileo’s time, the “consensus” was the long-held belief that the earth was flat and Galileo was wrong. The “consensus” proved to be wrong.

If those who advocate macroevolution have confidence that their postion is supported by fact, they should welcome further inquiry. The fact that they do not leaves one to question why.

7dez7,

It’s more than a bit ironic that you would invoke Galileo’s name to justify Intelligent Design and its attacks on science.

One of Galileo’s major scientific contributions was his support for the idea that the earth revolves around the sun instead of the other way around. He was opposed by the Roman Catholic Church, which based its position on a literal interpretation of Biblical passages (1 Chronicles 16:30 “the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved.”; Psalm 104:5 “the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.”)

It was heliocentrism, not the shape of the earth, that got Galileo into trouble with the Inquisition. It was a religious institution, not the scientific establishment (which had long recognized the truth of what Galileo and others before him had already said) that persecuted him.

As to your main point: In order for there to be a scientific “debate” about evolution, there has to be an alternative scientific model that does as good a job of explaining the evidence and predicting what new evidence will be found in the future. Darwin never heard of DNA, yet it’s provided significant evidence of common ancestry for all land creatures. If it hadn’t, the theory of evolution would have survived.

There is, in fact, no scientific alternative to evolution. Creationism — even Intelligent Design — requires a supernatural power to explain empirical changes over time. That puts those “theories” the realm of religion, not science.

Physical and other evidence that supports the theory of natural selection has been pouring in by the truckload for over a 150 years dez. “Real scientists” know this. The frauds at the Discovery Institute either do not or choose to ignore it.

The creationist fiction of “intelligent design” isn’t theory - it’s a metaphysical hypothesis based soley on rhetorical argument, and a weak one at that. Unlike a real theory, it makes no predictions nor does it present any tangible data in its support. Darwinian Natural Selection, on the other hand, does both and its predictions have been borne out time and time again. Some of the best examples of this have been brought to light right here in St. Louis as part of the Humane Genome Project.

Contrary to what the nutburgers at the Discovery Institute would have you believe, theorists and researchers have been inquiring furiously on evolutionary questions for decades. That inquiry, however, has been on the details of how evolution works, not on whether it’s real. That question was answered a long time ago.

Where did life come from? How is a lightning bolt striking a puddle of mud and in turn life forming logical?

Here’s are some interesting questions and observations.

1. Where is the fossil records for all of the millions of creatures that were part of evolution from single cell organisms all the way to humans? Darwin himself bemoaned that no one had ever found more fossilized evidence to prove his theory.

2. Neaderthal man is an artists interpretation. There is no complete fossil record of “cavemen” ever existing.

3. Ever wonder why all civilizations all formed around 6000 years ago at almost the exact same time? Why did all at once, all across the world did mankind stand up? How come languages, governments, militaries, literature, arts, and science all sprang forth at the same time? Were the people any different 6000 years ago compared to 8000 years ago?

Darwin’s theory is just that…..a theory. You may not believe in anything else but give up your religious like zeal for Darwin.

Creationists, when faced with the undeniable evidence for natual selection, inevitably fall back to the abiogenesis question. Natural selection is the theoretical explanation of how organisms change over time, not how they got here. The question of how life began on this planet is for astrophysicists to answer. Darwinian natural selection is a valid theory whether life started millions of years ago or just last week.

The fossils of single celled organisms are well represented in formations of stromatolites and later pre-Cambrian formations found around the world. There are literally millions of fossil specimens of organisms as simple as cyannobacteria to multiple genera of hominids in museums and laboratories around the world. A lot has changed since Darwin’s day.

Distinct Neanderthal fossils have been found in several locations around the world. Southwestern France has yielded hundreds dated at between 70,000 and 40,000 years old. The most recently existing remains are 36,300 years old, while modern human fossil remains from the same area are 30,000 to 34,000 years old. Russia and central and eastern Europe have had fewer finds but one interesting one is that of a child buried and surrounded with goat skulls. These finds are between 40,000 and 25,000 years old and show some transition between Neanderthal and modern morphologies. In the middle East, Neanderthal fossils as old as 100,000 years have been found. Other finds come from Wales, Gibraltar, near Moscow, and Uzbekistan.

The fact is distinctly modern human culture didn’t spring up all at once. There is a relatively wide band of time where civilization developed throughout the Mesopetamian region and Eurasia, but didn’t in sub-Saharan Africa or south Asia. It wasn’t for tens of thousands of years after that that anything remotely civilized coalesced in the Pre Columbian New World. There are parts of the world today where it’s unlikely native inhabitants would have developed any technologies or culture we call modern today unless it was brought to them from the outside. These peoples are no different physically or mentally than any others - they simply had a good thing going and didn’t need to change.

It would be easier to take creationists seriously if they had some clue as to what they are talking about.