Must condemn creationism at all times
We read:
"The hard-line zealots of the Royal Society, Britain's most prestigious scientific institution, finally did for Michael Reiss yesterday. Reiss was the Society's director of education. He is an evolutionary biologist - and a minister in the Church of England. Last week he went public with his belief that science teachers shouldn't simply dismiss questions from pupils about creationism, but explain why it's not compatible with science. Reiss made clear that he did not believe in creationism himself, nor believed it should be given equal billing with evolution.
It made no difference: within hours, the Royal Society zealots mounted a full-scale character assassination and last night Reiss agreed to step down. The zealots' point-man was Richard 'Mad Mullah' Dawkins, who compared having "a clergyman" directing education at the Royal Society to "a Monty Python sketch". But the real heavies are known only to seasoned observers of scientific fundamentalism: Sir Richard Roberts, Sir Harry Kroto and Sir John Sulston, Nobel Prize winners all.
Roberts plunged the knife, firing off a letter to the President of the Royal Society, Lord Rees, demanding to know "who on earth thought that [Reiss] would be an appropriate director of education?" and describing Reiss's religious occupation as "worrisome".
What many will find worrisome is the intolerance of eminent scientists to the suggestion of engagement with the questions of children. Yet they are far from alone. Fundamentalism is spreading across science, with zealots ready to attack anyone who dares question the accepted teaching - be it the unquestionable importance of animal experiments or the unimpeachable evidence for dramatic global warming.
The motto of Royal Society is 'Nullius in verba' - roughly speaking, take no-one's word for it. Its treatment of Reiss suggests that when it comes to words of dissent, the attitude of the Royal Society is closer to that of a madrassa than a learned body.
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16 comments:
www.answersingenesis.com has articles on this type of thing regularly. They also have many articles that show how compatible creation is with science and how incompatible Evolution is with science.
It really shows that their disdain isn't for people who believe in creationism, they have a disdain for religion and anyone that has religious beliefs.
The words "incompatible with science" is an oxymoron. It is non-sense to say that any issue cannot be approached scientifically, or that one theory is "scientific" and another is not.
Science is the application of knowledge to any question. Physical Evidence is the "gold standard" by which Scientific Theories are judged.
If a Theory or Hypothesis does not hold up to Physical Evidence, changing or discarding the Hypothesis is required.
Saying to a child "Faith is not Scientific" is not some horrendous injury to Science. Nor is it any injury at all to Faith. The actions of the Society are dogmatic, and that is the biggest threat to Science there is.
The law of conservation of mass says creationism=fail. Thank you for playing.
It's Britain, who cares what they do!
Maybe people in Britain do - but obviously you don't living in your little smug bubble!
It seems to me that the only people who have any heart burn over the THEORY of EVOLUTION are the Abrahamic religions (I don't see anyone else screaming). These are the same people who burnt, jailed, and torture others who had THEORIES (i.e. the Earth was not the center of the universe, the Earth was not flat, people had the right to read/question/conclude for themselves, GRAVITY, MAGNETISM/ELECTRICITY (these were thought to be the work of the devil
//look it up//), etc.) that countered what a compiled text had said. These are the same people that where later to be found FLAT WRONG.
Any scholar that knows the pre-Abrahamic stories can tell you that EVERYTHING (with name changes) in these texts are based on EARLIER MYTHS and EMBELLISHED EVENTS of the region. The Romans are the first to have had a council meeting of all of the pre-Christian faith adherents to have a "Sit Down" (The Council of Nicea)and hammer out a compiled book to try to keep the failing Roman government from tearing itself apart. The Romans were obsessed with power, greed, and control and would kill anyone who got in there way. What they have CREATED is still the same as they were.
EXAMPLE: the wealth of the ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH (the PROTESTANTS too), the POWER that it had amassed, and the willingness to DESTROY anything that gets in its way.
Everyone has their opinion. Some see 2+2 = 4 by counting on their own and others see 2+2 = 5 because the _____ says so.
anonymous 10:37,
The law of cause and effect says uncaused Big Bang (or any other version of matter spontaneously appearing out of nothing)=fail. Check with Einstein, NASA and any other reliable scientific source. The universe had a beginning. There had to be an intelligent cause.
A being outside of the universe and capable of creating those laws which govern the universe is not bound by those laws, and is therefore perfectly free to override them at will.
If you want to play the game, maybe you should show up a little more prepared.
anonymous 9:31,
There are so many errors in your post that I almost don't know where to begin. So I'll just stay on topic with Creation vs. Evolution.
You should study up on cellular biology. Let's look at just a fraction of what is required for life: DNA.
No cell capable of reproducing and processing energy and nutrients for sustenance and growth can exist without DNA. (Any cell which does not perform these two basic functions could not possibly be the theoretical "first cell." If a cell could not reproduce, not only would it be "the first cell," it would also be "the last cell.")
DNA is the "programming code" which controls the organism's physical properties. There are two basic types of jobs which the DNA performs: structural (single cell vs. multi-celled, body type, features such as hair color, eye color, etc.) and data.
In this case, I'm focusing on the data function that the cell uses to produce proteins, which are essentially the machinery of the cell and also an absolute requirement for life.
To produce a protein, a portion of the DNA strand is copied to mRNA, the mRNA is manipulated in preparation for the actual generation of the protein strand, then the actual protein strand is built from amino acids using the edited mRNA. The key point here is that DNA is actually the template upon which proteins are built.
In order for a protein to work, there can be no errors in the template. If even one molecule is wrong, the protein will not function, or even worse, will poison or kill the cell.
So let's take a look at the odds of a string of DNA capable of producing a single protein occurring naturally. Along the way, I need to simplify the calculations to keep them understandable. But every time I simplify, I will always simplify in the direction of favoring naturalism. To begin with, I am assuming perfect conditions for DNA creation with exactly the right chemicals in abundance, no chemical breakdowns, and nothing which could disrupt already formed DNA strands or prevent them from forming.
DNA strands are strings of molecules known as nucleotides. Each molecule can be one of 4 nucleotides abbreviated as A, G, C, and T. That means the odds of any one position in the string being the right molecule for that position is 1 in 4. The odds of getting the right 2 molecules in sequence are 1 in 16 (4 x 4). The odds of getting three sequential molecules correct is 1 in 64 (4 x 4 x 4). (You can check the math so far by writing down each possible combination on a piece of paper and counting them.)
Proteins are from 100 to 1000 amino acids long. There are 20 possible amino acids for each position in the string. (Note: I'm not addressing protein folding to keep this simple. And if I did so, it would make the odds worse.) Because there are 20 amino acids and only 4 DNA nucleotides, 3 nucleotides are required to select each amino acid in the string. Therefore, to produce the simplest protein, the strand of DNA must be 300 nucleotides long. Therefore, the odds against every molecule in the strand of DNA being correct to produce a particular simplest protein is 4^300 or 4.15 x 10^180.
There is a database which lists every known protein. It currently contains between 42,000 and 43,000 entries. (For the record, I don't know if any of those proteins are harmful or not. I'm simplifying by assuming that they're all useful.) To keep the calculations simpler and allow for undiscovered proteins, let's round that number up to 45,000. That means that the odds of a strand of DNA capable of producing any protein (assuming that all proteins are only 100 molecules long) is 1 in 9.22 x 10^175.
To give you an idea of just how bad those odds are lets compare them to the universe at large. Scientists estimate that there are 10^80 atoms in the entire universe. Scientists also estimate that the universe is 13.73 billion years old. If we round up to 15 billion years and convert that time to seconds, that gives us 4.73 x 10^17 seconds. (15 billion years x 365.25 days/year x 24 hours/day x 60 minutes/hour x 60 seconds/minute.) So if every single atom in the universe tried to produce our simplified strand of DNA once per second for the entire life of the universe, that would be 4.73 x 10^97 attempts. That's still 1 in 1.95 x 10^78 against that oversimplified strand of DNA ever being produced.
Scientists are also working on figuring out the bare minimum requirements for life. Currently, they think that the minimum number of products (protein and otherwise) produced from DNA for a self sustaining cell is between 200 and 500. (The smallest number found for a parasite, which requires an existing cell to draw from, is 182.)
Feel free to check the math for yourself and to check up on the biology. In fact, I encourage you to do so.
BTW… proteins are the machines which handle "unzipping" the two sides of a DNA strand and copying it to mRNA, editing the resulting mRNA, producing the protein strand and then folding it. (With multiple proteins required for every single step.) In other words, proteins are required to produce proteins; a classic chicken and egg paradox.
If you want to ignore the math and science in cellular biology to believe that life "just happened", go right ahead. Personally, I'm not into intellectual suicide.
Creationism is possible if you accept a Creator who is beyong the the laws of physics and such, since those laws were created by Him. Evolution has many holes in it, read the Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent design by Dr. Jonathan Wells. As it turns out there is a growing number of scientists who believe in intleiigent design, but the Darwinists are trying to shut them up.
Humans always try to explain "reality" based on their own limited understanding, and just as we sneer at the ignorant views of people in the middle-ages, so people in the distant future will regard the views 21st century folk as risible. Drawing conclusions like "must have" and "surely" and "only logical" are just conceits.
More from the ROYAL SOCIETY OF IGNORAMUSES its plain they have been having their attacks of darwinists stupididy
Hey anon,
I find the most interesting thing about posts from evolutionists such as yourself. It isn't enough to be 'right,' but you choose to belittle religion and anyone who believes in religion (specifically Abrahamic in this case) whenever the topic arises. When a creationist talks, he speaks of the astronomical odds against it but doesn't tend to try to belittle anyone who doesn't agree with him. If you can talk facts, please post ahead and we can have a scientific discussion. If you can't, then that shows your intellect, not the creationists'
There were also astronomical odds against you existing - that all your countless ancestors should have met in the exact right way for you to be born as you were - yet you are here!
Chimps would probably vote more responsibly than many humans!
I wonder how well Mr Sandpiper understands the 'evolution' he so rudely dismisses. Certainly the style of his comment suggests a basic ignorance, not least in spelling!
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