Posted by alexandra_k on September 6, 2005, at 1:53:47
In reply to Re: Evolutionary Theory and Creationism, posted by alexandra_k on September 6, 2005, at 1:18:28
I just think that to teach evolutionary theory alongside creationism is to suggest that creationism is a viable alternative theory to evolution by natural selection.
But...
It is not.One way the creationist story runs is like this...
God made all the species fairly much exactly as they appear today. He made them in six days and then he rested. And the earth isn't anywhere near as old as the scientists say it is.Then there are some anomalous phenomena for the creationists theory:
- carbon dating of fossils
- human embryos develop gills very early on, and then they lose them.
- all living things share a common genetic code (a codes for adinine (or whatever, i forget...) yet this fact is arbitrary, it could have been otherwise.
- there is a great similarity between living things (arms are rather similar to wings etc).
- if god made the species you would have thought everything would be optimally adapted to its environment. pandas have a very crude thumb, they would do much better with an opposable one like ours for stripping bamboo.Creationism only has one thing to say: because god willed it so.
Evolution by natural selection tells us about what kinds of things there were initially... and then about the kinds of mutations, selection pressures etc that would have resulted in what phenomena we observe today.
The scientific theory has been useful to us. There are people who run computer simulations of genetic pools and vary mutations or environmental conditions etc to see how things evolve.
Dennett in particular goes on about the life game. You can download it for free from something or other... It shows how simple individual entities can become part of an entity with many parts and then how these entities can move around and 'eat' other entities or 'destroy' them or whatever.
I met someone once who worked with the common cold. He would subject the strain to current anti-biotics and keep the ones that survived. He would end up with mutant strains that were immune to current anti-biotics. Then he would work to develop a new anti-biotic that would work on the new strain. The idea was to speed up evolution in the lab in order to anticipate new strains in the world.
Whereas the creationist alternative has us conclude 'because god willed it so'. just because god willed that last time so that does not tell us about what he will will next time, however. creationism cannot predict half as well as evolution by natural selection.
creationism can only explain by saying 'because god willed it so'. evolution by natural selection offers the start of an explanation with respect to inheritance, mutation, differential fitness etc. then there is a whole heap to be done with respect to clarifying the nature and contribution of each. with respect to working out precisely what heritability amounts to and what characteristics are heritable etc etc.
in short: one is the end of explanation
and the other is just the start.no contest.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:551237
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/social/20050903/msgs/551290.html