The big problem here is that it isn’t just the fundamentalists.
I spent a thread debate the very subject of evolution and what we know about it, or rather what conclusions have been drawn. The debate can be found here for any who are interested on exactly the type of reasoning we face:
http://discussions.godandscience.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=33468
I would love to post specific comments, but my IP has been banned. It happened to me once before a couple of years ago when I questioned how Noah could fill a boat with 2 million animals. I think I calculated that a minute per animal to locate, transport, board, and make all arangements for food, shelter, etc. would take him 4 years if he worked non-stop 24/7. I got banned, though I had admitted that I was an atheist. This time I posed as a christian who believes in evolution…this time the tough question that couldn’t be answered was if the Theory of Evolution is not science, why is it consiered to be so by the academies of science.
Nevertheless, the purpose of the web site is to show how God and science work in harmony, which I don’t have a problem with as a know many St’ers (like Slowguy and Tripple Threat) are Christians who, for the most part, have a pretty grounded view of Science and the physical world but also believe in a supernatural creator (God) who sent Jesus…etc. I had originally thought that this website was full of similar Christians and had originally returned there as TWO of my coworkers…wait…make that THREE coworkers have now told me that they found human footprints among dinosaur fossils.
Let me reiterate that. I work in an engineering company outside of Philadelphia and I had a an engineer with 27 years of experience at Boeing, a 40 something man with a degree in physics, and a 30 y.o. technician all tell me that we had found fosilized human footprints among dinosaur fossils and that they believe that it was either possible or even likely that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time. I then questioned why the 65 million year error and also wanted to know what their theory was as to why news as big as this never reached my ears. Supposedly they think its a big giant conspiracy by the powerful evolutionist scientists to suppress such information.
As I did some further research I came to find out that in 1986 in a Texas dig, there were tracks that sorta looked like human prints, but it was later determined that the stride length was way too big and that there were clear claw marks on the ground. It didn’t matter that the scientists imediately laid the rumor to rest, it was soon circulated through fundie churches across the country.
Back to the real issue here, in the debate on evolution, every which way you turn, the religious folk will deny any conclusions drawn by the scientists. Its one thing to be skeptical, but something else to believe that they are wrong and to do so based entirely in ignorance. The hardest thing to do in these debates is to get them to separate the subjects: The Big Bang, Abiogenesis, Evolution, and Atheism. All 4 are completely different subjects and though one might lead into the other, they are completely unrelated. The arguments follow that until we can create life fron non-living chemicals, we have no basis for Evolution (Evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life) or that until we see speciation occur within a single generation, we have no basis for Evolution (a genetic impossibility). In short, the Theory of Evolution is “a world view” and NOT science…despite the fact that the academies of science accept it as a scientific theory.
Yes, that is one side of the argument. However, if you get them onto a different thread or even read through their articles posted on the site, though they will argue that a field with 1000s of pieces of evidence supporting the theory without a single shred of evidence refuting it is NOT sceince…guess what they think IS science. That’s right, Intelligent Design. Allow me to quote Phd Greg Krukonis on the matter:
“ID proponents identify complex biological structures and then state that these structures could not have been the product of natural selection and, therefore, are evidence of the designer. Yet they don’t have any testable hypotheses. Their arguments aren’t scientific - regardless of the scientific terms and language they use - but theological, aliens and time travelers notwithstanding. They can’t say, exactly, what it is that allows them to conclude that one structure shows the hand of the designer and another one doesn’t. They just seem to know it when they see it. Many books are written on the subject of ID, but none of them share the methodology that would allow a student of ID to learn how these decisions are reached.”
A good book was written, 40 Days and 40 Nights, on the Dover, PA trial to have ID removed from the science classroom in their public high school. Among other findings, Of Pandas and People had been discovered to be a creationsim book in disguise. The supoenaed earlier drafts of the book and found they they had done a simple find and replace to change the word “creation” to “Intelligent Design” in the book…which was important as it had already ruled in previous cases that creation cannot be taught in schools. FYI, the lawyer found a new term that the ID/Creation crowd started throwing around (can’t remember it) and warned of trials in the furture when they intend to sell exactly the same concepts wrapped in new packaging.
At the end og the trial, it was discovered that in every way, shape, and form, the Discovery Institute had intentionally tried to deceive the public in their attempts to push God into the classroom. The quote I gave above was exemplified in the testimonies given by the “scientists” who came in support of Intelligent Design. I’m pretty certain that, to date, ID doesn’t have a single peer review article published in a scientific journal.
I hope that LTin83 is correct in that this kind of influence is waning, but every now and then you see what kind of nut jobs get into office. Whether you liked GWB or not, or whether you hated Gore, Kerry, or Obama, the fact remains that the evangelicals were a very powerful base of support for him and are largely a part of the reason why Sarah Palin was a VP nominee. They are still WAY too powerful for this country’s own good. It scares me to think that an Obama fuck up could pave the way for yet another religious nut job to take the helm.