A roundup of the views of GOP hopefuls on contraception, evolution, Internet freedom, and more from Reason’s Ron Bailey.
Click for “Where Do the Republican Candidates Stand on Science?“.
A roundup of the views of GOP hopefuls on contraception, evolution, Internet freedom, and more from Reason’s Ron Bailey.
Click for “Where Do the Republican Candidates Stand on Science?“.
Bob, I am going to agree to disagree on some of your points. I agree with regard to the arguments being philosophical but I disagree with comments regarding creationism vs. science.
First of all, I am not convinced that Intelligent Design is the same as “Creationism”. I am not a proponent of the Intelligent Design theory, neither am I a proponent of the theory of the origin of the species. Note that I said “origin of the species”, and not evolution. There is a difference and I do think that evolution is compatible with Scripture aka Genesis, but that “the origin of the species” or Darwin’s theory is not as compatible.
Creation Science as it is called is in fact an interpretation of Genesis that is very strict in the sense that it relies upon one only interpretation of what is written. As a result of that strict and literal interpretation the Creationists set about trying to prove their young earth scenario. However, there are millions, if not billions of other Christians who interpret Genesis in a less literal sense as in we recognize that the earth took millenia, rather than days to evolve, and that when Genesis write “day turns into night, and then there was morning” (or along those lines) that this represents an era of time. In other words time in Scripture is not limited to a 24 hour day. This is where Creation Science is wrong.
My understanding of Intelligent Design is that they tackle the issue differently from that of Creation Science. It would be far better to allow students access to the Intelligent Design materials so that they can test the assumptions for themselves than to ban it from the classroom. Otherwise how will we ever learn the pitfalls of such a theory?
Second, “evolution” is not a law. It is a theory, but there is empirical evidence to back up that theory that the earth revolved. However, when it comes to Darwin’s “origin of the species”, there has been no such support.
Not much science in the title or the article. I read enough of the article to decide that this is just one more strawman argument over philosophy. Contraception and internet freedom are philosophical areas. The science for either is pretty settled. Both sides of the evolution debate are religious arguments, with difficulty separated creation and evolution.
Is it the law of evolution or the theory of evolution? If it is the theory, then it can be refuted. So far, the theory seems to explain a lot of observations.
Creation is a whole other ball of tar. Some of the chemistry of stereochemical differentiation is interesting and highly suggestive of a pathway. The trouble is that the reaction sequences showing this are extremely unlikely to occur outside a lab. But those who are adamant about random events creating life, please send me the proven formula and reactions or at least link to the peer reviewed work.