What do you write on the Critical Thinking chalkboard?
Driving back from the debate on Friday, Steve and I got into talking about critical thinking. I don’t remember how it happened. Talk about the debate moved to discussing what I wished I’d been able to say in the debate, to “here’s what I think skeptics believe in,” and from there to Steve telling me that he thought because skeptics wanted to teach critical thinking, we had made a mistake by taking creationism out of classrooms.
Let me make Steve’s point very clear here, because I like the guy and I don’t want you to misunderstand. Steve was not saying by any means that creationism should be taught in place of evolution. He was not saying in any way that creationism is correct or that it should be placed on the same level as evolution. Steve was suggesting that creationism should be in the classroom beside evolution to show kids why we believed in science and not in religious magic.
I don’t agree. I think there are major problems with bringing creationism into the classroom. First off, I think it would be extremely difficult to not give the impression that the two are on the same level. One is science and one is… NOT SCIENCE. These are not competing theories. One is a theory, and one is a bunch of ridiculous magic from a three thousand year old book. Giving kids any tiny notion that these two ideas are at ALL on comparable levels would be perhaps the worst thing you could do to any child’s science education. Second problem with bringing creationism into the classroom, even as a method of showing why we don’t believe in it, is that it would eat up time in the classroom. Do we need more time to teach critical thinking in science class? Absolutely. But we also need time to teach kids what we actually know, and evolution is not a simple subject. It’s complicated and I think you could get into why the evidence is so strong without wasting time going over the “theories” behind creationism and intelligent design. (You know what, I’m going to stop referring to these as different subjects. Do you mind?) But my biggest problem with bringing creationism into any classroom under any pretext whatsoever – we just don’t have the teachers to do it. Science education has taken a beating in this country. It is rare these days that we have science teachers who studied science as their major. We have a huge supply of science teachers that have degrees in education, so who knows if they’re really going to be able to teach the subject of evolution well enough to begin with, let alone teach evolution and intelligent design and then show why one’s the foundational theory of biology and the other’s a load of garbage. More than that, I think it would be too easy for a religiously motivated teacher to use this loophole to just introduce creationism full-stop into the classroom as a science. Until the education system in this country gets a drastic overhaul, there’s no way to safely bring creationism into the classroom as a way of teaching critical thinking.
All that said, I think there is a place to have that discussion, and it’s in a class that doesn’t yet exist. Critical Thinking 101. Make a discussion based class where kids learn logical standards, logical fallacies, how evidence based thinking works and how to use evidence based thinking. In that class, present ID and evolution as a case study in why one is accepted by scientists around the world and why one is rejected by 99.8% of the scientific community.
So now, I’d like to see if there’s anyway the GS community can make something new. What do you think is needed in a Critical Thinking curriculum? What would you put on the reading list? When you answer, consider what age you think this subject should be taught to. For example, I think Demon Haunted World is an easy add to a Critical Thinking reading list, but then I have to say “well, it’d be a pretty poor choice book for third graders.” At that point, I think we should watch some “Scooby Doo.”
Hope to see you all on the comments!
I’m just finishing up “a short course in intellectual self defense,” which is a fantastic critical thinking primer. My guess is, however, that it’s a little advanced for high schoolers (and certainly 3rd graders).
Has anyone checked out Dan Barker‘s “Maybe Right, Maybe Wrong”?
I guess we need to think about it as a tiered learning program. Perhaps early critical thinking course could be more integrated into science classes, but being more about experimentation than fact memorization? Not that I think science class should be about memorization, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to just scrap what’s currently there. I’d sort of like to be able to do that, but I don’t think it’s terribly feasible.
When I think about critical thinking curriculum it usually take son two forms:
A the grade school level, I think of thought activities that can be design to slide into existing curriculum, not just in science class, but also to history or social studies. Evaluating evidence is critical in these subjects as well. The activities should be meant to augment and work with current lesson plans and, of course, not take up too much time.
At the undergraduate level, I think of critical thinking as an elective that could take several formats. This elective course could be hosted by a number of departments, e.g. biology, journalism, philosophy, where the class might tackle different themes but toward the same intent. I would have LOVED a biology elective on critical thinking, but imagine how much fun it might be to take a similar course offered by another department. (It might be too lofty a goal to imagine a course that spans multiple fields, but maybe not).
These are just the thoughts I have always had.
I’m thinking at the high school level. I’d teach logical fallacies very early on and make pseudoscience central to the course. And interactive demonstrations such as the giving everyone in the class the same astrological reading and then after describing how accurate it was, reading their neighbor’s reading. I’d use SGU 5×5 and Skeptoid episodes to supplement readings. There’d be a heavy psychology component that goes through concepts like the Forer Effect and Cold Reading.
If a Christian is going to debate against a savvy skeptic/atheist, the person arguing the “affirmative position” should know how to successfully deconstruct an attack on the Bible’s credibility. When the attack is based primarily on objectivity of empirical science, the defense would probably benefit by defending its stance in the same manner. Jake went off as if the fossil record is accurate, there was a primeval soup, mutations exist, etc…the list goes on and on. I don’t feel Nick had much of a response to what seemed like scientific ‘evolutionary’ axioms, and my understanding of intelligent Creationism became somewhat convoluted. In a nutshell, the debate did little to strengthen my faith, but actually evoked more questions on the validity of the Bible and Creationism. However, if you think that Creationism is “NOT SCIENCE,” then you might want to take another look at the facts!
Psalm 139:14 I will praise you; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” (The Origin of Species).
“To suppose that the eye, with all it’s inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” -Charles Darwin, the Origin of Species
“As by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth? The number if intermediate links between all living and extinct species must have been inconceivably great!”
Darwin admitted that millions of ‘missing links,’ transitional life forms, would have to be discovered in the fossil record to prove the accuracy of his theory that all species had gradually evolved by chance mutation into new species. Unfortunately for his theory, despite hundreds of millions spent on searching for fossils worldwide for more than a century, the scientists have failed to locate a single missing link out of the millions that must exist if their theory of evolution is to be vindicated.
“In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it.” -H.S. Lipson
WE ARE FEARFULLY AND WONDERFULLY MADE!
“The creation account in Genesis and the theory of evolution could not be reconciled. One must be right and the other wrong. The story of the fossils agree with the account of Genesis. In the oldest rocks we did not find a series of foss…ils covering the gradual changes from the most primitive creatures to developed forms but rather, in the oldest rocks, developed species suddenly appeared. Between every species there was a complete absence of intermediate fossils.”- D.B. Gower
“What is it [evolution] based upon? Upon nothing whatever but faith, upon belief in the reality of the unseen, belief in the fossils that cannot be produced, belief in the embryological experiments that refuse to come off. It is faith unjustified by work.” -Arthur N. Field
“There are gaps in the fossil graveyard, places where there should be intermediate forms, but where there is nothing whatsoever instead. No paleontologist…denies that this is so. It is simply a fact. Darwins theory and the fossil record are in conflict.”- David Berlinsky
“Scientists concede that their most cherished theories are based on embarrassingly few fossil fragments and that huge gaps exist in the fossil record.” Time Magazine, Nov. 7, 1977.
“The evolutionist seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact that it is missing.”- G.K. Chesterton
“An increasing number of scientists, most particularly a growing number of evolutionists…argue that Darwinian evolutuionary theory is no genuine scientific theory at all…Many of the critics have the highest intellectual credentials.” -Michael Ruse
“With regard to the origin of life, science…positively affirms creative power.”-Lord Kelvin
“The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one out of 10 to the 40,000 power…It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.”–Fred Hoyle
“Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.”-Arthur Keith
“Ever since Darwin’s work…preconceptions have led evidence by the nose.” -Evolutionist John Reader
“Facts do not ‘speak for themselves’; they are read in the light of theory.” -Evolutionist Steven Jay Gould
“Alas, how frequent, how almost universal it is in an author to persuade himself of the truth of his own dogmas.”- Charles Darwin
“Geologists show that carbon dating can be way off.” -Time Magazine (June 11, 1990)
“Shells from living snails were carbon dated as being 27,000 years old.” -Science magazine, vol. 224, 1984
Fact n. “Something that actually exists or has occurred.”
Evolution n. “The theory that all forms of life originated by decent from earlier forms.”
Creation n. “God’s bringing of the universe into existence.” [Fact].
Greg,
Since you’re using my actual name, I’m going to guess that you’re coming in from the debate. Welcome to the Gotham Skeptic. You’ve put forward a lot of quotes and I’m not really going to deal with them. The reason is simple: the first quote you have here is a total quote mine and even if Darwin had actually said what you think he said, it wouldn’t make a scrap of difference on the science of evolution.
If you don’t know, a quote mine is when someone takes an isolated scrap of what someone else has said and then present it as though it was the whole thing. Often, a quote mine can be used to make it seem as though someone has said the opposite of what’s actually there. The quote you give from Darwin is in fact one of the most common quote mines that exists. If you do a google search for “Quote Mine Darwin,” it’ll be what you find. The reason that it’s annoying is because that quote is immediately followed by Darwin saying this:
“Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.”
With something like the eye, we have seen it evolve down multiple pathways, well enough to understand how its development works from an evolutionary perspective.
On to this whole fossil thing. To begin, we actually have found quite a few fossils that show us the history of many evolutionary changes. The places where our data is probably the best is in the evolution of horses and the evolution of whales. We have found the animals that whales used to be, these sort of big carnivorous cows. We can mark the evolutionary point where they go into the water. We recently found this really cool fossil of a whale giving birth. Now, unlike most mammals which give birth head first, the whale gives birth tail first, since the baby is coming out into the water. But this ancient ancestor of the whale is giving birth HEAD first, and what we’ve been able to figure out from this is that that old whale used to give birth on land! Look into whale evolution, we know a lot.
We also know a hell of a lot about our own ancestry. We’ve found Homo Erectus, Homo Habilis, and a whole bunch of others. But here’s what’s really great about evolution: fossils aren’t our only data point.
Genetics, morphology, retro-viral data, geology, fossil evidence, fetal development, phenotypic evidence – every single one of these lines, when we construct a time-line to describe how they diverged and changed gives us the exact same picture of the tree of life. Every single one. Although some aspects of evolution are not perfectly understood, common ancestry is an indisputable fact to anyone who looks at the data. There are great resources out there if you want to take a look. One of my favorites is a guy on YouTube who calls himself DonExodus2. His videos recently have been more about… well… you won’t like this – giving up on his Christianity, but if you look at his earlier videos he gives a ton of fantastic evidence for evolution, transitional forms, and he does it all in a clear and understandable fashion.
Giving us a bunch of quotes is not a good argument. You have not pointed out anything but the fact that people said things at different times. When we’re talking about what is and is not reality, we need to talk about facts. And deciding that a poetic verse from the bible reflects some view of reality is not pointing out a fact.
Here’s two of my favorite proofs that we share common ancestry with the great apes.
1 – Endogenous Retro-Viruses
Okay, check this out. So you might remember a few years back we cracked the human genome. The whole thing is huge, like… three billion protein “letters” long. It turns out that about eight percent of our entire genome is viral DNA. What that means is that every now and then, a virus would get into us, and even though we’d survive, the virus would place a block of its DNA onto our genome. Each piece is something like 500 letters long. 500 letters in 3,000,000,000. And this doesn’t just happen with us, this happens with other animals too. Chimpanzees, for example, have tons of viral DNA in their genome too. The chance of us having 1 block of 500 letters in the exact same place as a chimp has in their DNA is astronomical. Because this viral DNA isn’t placed in some specific spot, it’s just inserted pretty much randomly. Do we share 1 endogenous retro-virus with chimpanzees? No. We share at least 14. The best explanation for this huge chunk of shared viral DNA in our genomes is that we evolved from a common ancestor who passed the same viral DNA to each of us. We have found no evidence yet that points away from that conclusion.
2 – Our Second Chromosome
Human beings have 23 chromosome pairs. We have a full set of 23 from our mom and a full set of 23 from our dad. It turns out though that all the rest of the great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes. This was a possible downfall for evolutionary theory, because if we assume common ancestry, it makes way more sense for us to have started out with 24 and then somehow gotten down to 23 than for every other ape to have started at 23 and then somehow all added one and gotten to 24. The problem is, you can’t just lose a chromosome. That’s a huge chunk of data and it going away means the animal who loses it is not going to function very well. So where did that chromosome go?
Okay, so there’s these couple different proteins in every single chromosome. On the end of each chromosome is something called a tillomere. That protein lets RNA know when to start and stop making proteins from that chromosome. There’s also something called a centromere, which is a protein in the middle of each chromosome. So when we were looking at that big long genome, we saw something really weird on human chromosome #2. It had a non-functioning tillomere in the middle and two centromeres.
What we know thanks to examining genetic evidence is that our second chromosome is formed by the fusion of two ape chromosomes.
With both of these pieces of genetic information, there’s no reason to “design” the human genetic code that way. The only reason any designer would put in so much information that pointed in one direction when the truth lay in the other is that the designer wants to screw with us. And that does not seem to fit the definition of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing deity.
Jake
One more little thing, just because I don’t want you to get a wrong impression. These are not the only proofs of evolution. There are tons of proofs of evolutionary theory out there. These are just two that I like.
Hello,
I write as the Atlanta Creationism Examiner and apparently I would be one of your “old Earth” creationists. My take on things is that the science provides basic information about our world, but we twist and interpret things to suit our own purposes.
Many Christians do believe everything in the Bible as the “truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
Your article seems to suggest that the alternative is to believe nothing in the Bible.
I’ve got more of a “middle of the road” philosophy about the Bible. Humans had a hand in its production, so it inherently must have flaws. How many, we can only determine by its study.
The same goes for evolution theory. My argument has been it is not a scientific theory per se, but a philosophy cobbling together several scientific theories: natural selection and speciation to be sure, but I prefer to argue that abiogenesis and the Big Bang must also be taken into consideration. After all, creation does start with the beginning, and if you want to compare apples-to-apples, then crudely,
Creation = Big Bang + abiogenesis + speciation + natural selection
The arguments suddenly get more interesting and less certain when you consider “the Big Picture.”
From your writing, you seem to be a reasonable person. I do have some questions about how much of what we think we know is actually true.
BTW, to demonstrate how unafraid to show much of a “nutcase” I am, I will tell you that I do believe in “iterative creation” — in other words, the first six days in Genesis took millions and millions of human years, and God the creator wiped the slate clean several times before settling on modern creation. It conforms to my “LEGO” theory of DNA recombination to form new species of organisms. I’ve read about Darwin’s finches, the Larus gulls, and every conceivable explanation I can find for how life can happen without God the creator.
I’d love to have an intelligent debate with you on this subject. I promise not to be the first one to resort to insult in response to your arguments.
My theory is based on the scientific evidence for multiple extinctions. There is no biological explanation for punctuated equilibrium. It’s “science of the gaps.”
The same holds true for the fused chromosome 2 theory about ape and human evolution. Rather than regurgitate the entire body of my arguments in your comments, if you care to consider an alternate perspective and would like to read some of my articles that discuss evolution, creationism, and the relationship between secular atheism and science.
I’m not a pastor or scientist. I’m a regular guy who writes detective novels and short stories for a living (in theory.) I did have one book titled Divine Evolution that has been published espousing some of my nutty thoughts on this subject and I do write for the Examiner, but I can assure you it hasn’t been for profit. I probably make about .50 per hour when I write about my faith. It’s not about the money; it’s all about the debate. I would never have written my book if Richard Dawkins weren’t so virulently mistaken about the foundational facts on which his atheism is based, and so brash about preaching it.
Hopefully I’ll remember to come back. I write in too many places. Feel free to notify me on my site if you post a response here to which I fail to respond in timely fashion.
Sigh. I guess if no one responds to Greg he’ll come to a false “ha! stumped ‘em!” conclusion.
So Greg, before you get all gloaty please read this, this, and then this.
C’mon, Squidocto! I was about to get to it! I just… I didn’t see it until now. I promise you, Squidocto, as soon as I saw it I started responding. And then I saw your comment, and I had to reply to that, but now I’m going back to replying to him. A quixotic man just can’t move fast enough these days…
QM, no offense intended! And your response is clearly more complete than mine!
It’s all good. It was funny to me, I see the message from Greg, I start to put something together in my head but I’m not logged in, so I go and log in to write my response and I see Squidocto’s response waiting to be added to the system. I just didn’t have the speed…
Jake,
Thanks for your response, I find your conclusions interesting. Evidence certainly demands a verdict, especially when the evidence seems irrefutable. However, I take your opinions with a grain of salt and feel that credible apologeticists would successfully counter your modality of evolution. FYI, here are some credible sources diametrically opposed to your gospel: http://www.drdino.com/
http://www.icr.org/
http://www.evidencebible.com/
http://www.rzim.org/
http://store.rzim.org/SearchResults/tabid/38/Default.aspx?Search=oxford
One of many recommended pro-Christian books is The Dawkins Delusion (shown in the last link). Perhaps you and Squidocto could do lunch sometime and check it out
You’re probably not going to agree with me, but it’s very possible that humans have been around for about 6000 years or so. What the heck were they doing prior to 4000bc-ish? Could they not figure out how to dig a hole, put a seed or two in it, and add a little water? I’m sure their intellectual capacity was just as wonderful back then as it is today, yet they were living like stupid asses for many thousands of years, according to the ‘evolutionary paradigm,’ no?
I’d say this group of peeps is about 5 million years old http://www.google.com/images?q=pictures+of+new+guinea+man&um=1&hl=en&tbs=isch%3A1&ei=p57BTO_gDND-nAeogomhCg&sa=N&start=36&ndsp=18
What do you think http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils
Greg,
I’m actually severely disappointed in your response. I took a good amount of time writing up for you the reasons why I say evolution has been scientifically verified and you responded by saying, “Ho ho! I’m sure there’s someone out there that could argue with you!” That isn’t a response to anything that I’m saying. It’s not an answer. I’m not here arguing with every apologist on the planet. I’m here arguing with you. If that’s going to be your response, than it doesn’t matter what I say. You can always just say “Someone out there will say something that will make you wrong!” That is not a valid argument, it’s a cop out.
Don’t give me a handful of links. That’s not what I gave you. I put forward a handful of arguments that conclusively prove evolution. The fact that we have multiple sources that independently verify a tree of life that includes the common ancestry of every living creature on the planet, our genetic code and how we can see in it proof that we share an ancestor with modern apes, an explanation for why we have a really weird chromosome unlike what we see in most other lifeforms on the planet that includes in it our common ancestry with other apes – if you have respect for the process of argument, I expect you to do the same. Look in your books and your links and find an argument you think is compelling, then tell me what that argument is. If you do that, I’ll respond to your argument. And if you, and yes, I mean YOU, Greg, don’t have a response to the information I’m putting before you, concede that you don’t have a response, don’t just hide behind some phantom apologist who’s going to whoop me for you.
On “The Dawkins Delusion,” I don’t care. Honestly, I don’t care. I’m not a big fan of Richard Dawkins. If you find something incorrect in what he says about God (I’m assuming that the book is about “The God Delusion,” a book I have not read nor have ever really wanted to read), that’s not going to bother me. My lack of belief in God has nothing to do with Richard Dawkins. It has to do with the lack of any evidence that a God exists.
As to your one statement that even approaches an argument about how you believe it’s “very possible” that humans have been around about 6000 years, I’d like you to tell me why that is so possible when every single scrap of scientific data we have tells us modern man has been around for approximately 125,000 years. You back that up with an argument from ignorance (“Could they not figure out how to dig a hole, put a seed or two in it, and add a little water?”) which is…. kind of silly. It’s sort of like saying “Why couldn’t the greeks have made lightbulbs? Couldn’t they have just put an electric current through a filament in a vacuum tube?” Without any sort of data on what makes a plant grow, yeah, it’s going to take a while for man to invent agriculture. Add to that the fact that 125,000 years ago man is a pathetic sack of meat surrounded by predators that are stronger, faster, and can see in the dark better than he can, pre-historic man does not have much time to sit around doing scientific experiments and figuring out how to make his life better. Those first couple inventions are going to take a while. Don’t forget, he has to figure out EVERYTHING. He doesn’t know what makes crops grow, and he doesn’t yet have a society big enough to devote enough manpower to properly do agriculture to feed himself. Luckily, technology tends to add to technology. Improving the tools used for hunting gives early man the high calorie content he desperately needs to make his brain grow. Succeeding in domesticating wolves keeps man safe from predators at night. Succeeding at agriculture means man does not have to constantly go out and gather, and that when hunts are bad the entire community does not starve. Creating wheels, tilling soil, domesticating livestock – all of this has to be figured out piece by piece, and most of the time man is going to fail at making these new technologies work for him.
Give me an argument, Greg. But when you’re looking for your argument, I want you to remember something:
When you claim that the world is only 6000 years old, you are not simply going against evolution. You are going against nearly every science we have at our disposal. And what are you using to go against this massive amount of human intellectual effort? A three thousand year old book of highly dubious historical veracity.
Jake
Jake,
Can you provide a link where you found the information about your #1 and #2 goto? It’s easy to make a statement and not back it up with anything but crafty words. You are clearly a talented wordsmith and thus, your points are comprehensive while interfacing with your posts. But please keep in mind that your “tree of life” has a lot of broken branches! Your “indisputable data” is very disputable. I’m sorry to provide another link, but what am I missing here? http://www.icr.org/article/5722/ This article clearly contains many bits of information that discredits much of your indisputable data; and so does the next one; and the next one; etc. And all the atheistic vanity involved in piecing together the evolutionary timeline is overtly obvious. For example, one of your leaders, Stephen Hawking, has affirmed the statement that there is no God! His brilliant mind sits in front of a computer discovering all types of incredible facts ‘proving evolution,’ and yet he can’t figure out how to wipe his own ass! I would assume this inability has something to do with randomism and/or determinism…my bad.
Maybe it’s just me but the world isn’t getting any better. What has technology done? The medical community is still looking for all those “magic pill cures” while they are busy trying to cut, burn and poison the person well. Genetically engineered/modified food, pollution, toxicity, disease – the law of entropy, you name it – we are not that smart and the world is dying, just like the evidence shows!
I don’t have much time or desire to pursue this discussion much further, but because there is no absolute confirmation that God doesn’t exist, I think it’s fair to espouse a conditional ‘please have mercy on me plea if the God of the Bible is real and Christ’s atoning sacrifice for our sins will keep us out of the biblical HELL. I hope you see the logic to cover your ass, just in case.
Greg
Greg,
Once again, you have no arguments here. None. Not one. You say you have no interest in continuing this discussion, in my view you’ve barely been involved. See, in a discussion what people do is respond to one another. They answer the others questions and pose new ones. As to your ad hominem attack against a man with neuro-muscular distrophy, what the hell kind of Christian are you? “Hah hah! That guy who can’t lift his arms and legs is so stupid he can’t even wipe his ass!” Do you think your God would like that, Greg? Is that one of the lessons you learn from your religion? I guess I missed the part of the bible where Jesus walked around laughing at lepers because they were too stupid to keep the skin on their bodies.
Here’s a link that’ll explain ERVs and our fused chromosome #2.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1fGkFuHIu0
Here is a scholarly article about how scientists are using endogenous retroviruses to discover more about our evolution.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20703239
Here’s an article from wikipedia about Human Chromosome #2 and its place in our evolutionary history.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee_Genome_Project#Genes_of_the_Chromosome_2_fusion_site
As to your link, I don’t know a lot about Mendel’s Accountant. I just did some cursory research on it and the program does not seem like it’s been accepted as a viable tool by the greater scientific community. They have apparently not been able to make the program run with populations greater than 1000 yet. I can’t use the program because I have a mac and the program isn’t made for macs. It wouldn’t make much difference if I could use it, I don’t know enough about how programming works to be able to say what makes a good or bad program. No matter if the program is accurate or not, the Institution for Creation Research is making quite a number of assumptions with the data. It also forgets the fact that mutations don’t just occur in the time that a fetus is gestating but that genes continue to have slight mutations for a beings’ entire life. Also, let’s remember that the great and unbiased researchers at the Institution for Creation Research have not used this great tool on their own world-view. I would wonder, since you’re a believer in Genesis, what Mendel’s Accountant would say about the breeding pairs coming off of Noah’s arc. My guess is it would say there weren’t quite enough breeding pairs to sustain a population. I might also wonder what Mendel’s Accountant would say about starting off with just two beings and how long they’d last. I wonder if it’d get to 6000 years? But I guess God made Adam, Eve, and there 1998 other brothers and sisters, and just forgot about those excess two thousand people when he was writing the bible.
And hey, you’re totally right, Greg, I don’t have definitive proof that your god or any other does not exist. For safety sake, I suggest giving sacrifices to river gods whenever you want to drink from their water, or else the god and nymph that live in that river may make a poisonous snake come out and bite you. Please, don’t let me stop you from worshipping your loving god who, no matter how good a person you are, will punish you in hell forever if you commit the sin of not loving him enough. He seems really worth your time.
Jake
Jake,
I’m not looking to pick apart individual evolutionary discrepancies. Had I been interested in pursuing that route, I would’ve presented an enormous fusillade of pro-Christian facts [opinions] supporting the Bible’s inerrancy (like my initial post), and I don’t care much about teeter-tottering back and forth, let the professionals do that. I’m interested in protecting my salvation while preserving the integrity of my faith, period. ‘Cause I still feel that it’s blind faith not to believe!
My attack on sweet Stephen was to show how little we really know about anything, let alone the universe and its ‘creation.’ Big words don’t mean a whole lotta when we can’t figure out something that seems so simple, metaphorically speaking, of course. “Professing themselves to be wise they became fools.” -Romans 1:22
All this crap about religion has little effect on ‘truth and the absolute.’ The premise of life is whether we believe that Christ died for our sins or not, and I’ll be praising Jesus as I’m getting punched in the face this Saturday on the rugby pitch. http://www.northjerseyrugby.com That’s my final answer, wish me luck
Greg
Greg,
If you didn’t want to actually discuss the evidence, you shouldn’t have gotten involved in the conversation. I’m sorry if you don’t like that, but that’s how these things work. What really bothers me about the lack of conversation we had is that I hoped you would come to the table openly and honestly, but you were more interested in just dismissing those things you couldn’t explain as me using my ability as a “crafty wordsmith” to protect my “gospel.” I responded to your comment because I was hoping we could actually discuss your problems with evolutionary theory, but your problem with it seems to be that you don’t actually understand it and you are not interested in learning about it.
There are plenty of Christians out there who have reconciled their faith with the scientific world. One of the preeminent evolutionary biologists out there right now is a Catholic named Kenneth Miller. Perhaps you should wonder why your faith needs every word of the bible to be literally true, except for, of course, those parts of the bible you disagree with and forget about.
You have shown no desire to honestly discuss this stuff with me, so I guess we’re done. If you ever want to come back and actually have a conversation, you are welcome to. However, if you actually come again, be ready to deal with the arguments and evidence that’s put forward to you.
Jake
I took some the highlights from the converstation above between Greg and QM and made an animated video. I hope you like it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCKds7s0r2I
Justin, nice work! You too Jake. I came on to comment on critical thinking in HS’s and encountered this episode. I like the question you posed about what a critical thinking class in public education would/should look like. I imagine it in a jr or sr level high school setting. I imagine it four quarters long, an entire year, at least. The first two quarters would be the foundation: learning what it is to think critically, the fallacies, what fallacious thinking looks like, how to construct a solid, valid and strong argument. The next quarter would be spotting and evaluating examples of critical and fallious thinking. The last quarter would be the best…the most fun…applying critical thinking. That would be the time to bring in the evolution/creation, god and other taboos. I think that would be a good fireplace for these topics.
Thanks for being careful when you spoke for me Jake. It’s challenging to speak for someone and not mis quote or mis represent them. You did a good job. If I could summarize my point it would be: in order to apply critical thinking we must allow room for controversial topics to arise. I don’t think making creationism or the god debate a taboo helped students to think critically. Although I do agree it needs a fire place. Thanks for pressing me on this QM. I’ll keep thinking about it.
No problem, Steve. It was a pleasure meeting you, I really enjoyed going out for drinks with you guys after, chatting in the car before, I thought the whole thing was a good experience for me and I’m excited to see the video go up.
I think I agree, on the whole that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to introduce those controversial subjects as a method of exploring critical thinking. I think what I really disagreed with was 1 – the idea of doing it in a science class and 2 – I don’t think we really have the teachers in place to do it today. Being able to go into this stuff the way you’d need to for kids to learn it and not get sent down that horrible post-modernist road of “everything’s equally valid, man!” requires a strong hand on the tiller, and a teacher that really knows their stuff. Now, I have had teachers in the past who I think could have pulled a class like we’re talking about off but they really were the minority. I was the son of a screenwriter and teacher of screenwriting who sat around and read Shakespeare because I wanted to, but when it came time in tenth grade to read Hamlet I wanted to go back in time and punch the bard in the face. This was my favorite damn play and going through it with bad teachers made me almost hate it. I don’t want school to put kids off the idea of critical thinking, and with some of the teachers and the… more theocratic elements that are out there, I would hate to see a critical thinking class turned into a backdoor for unfiltered creationism.