Creationism in Museums and Schools

[Louis VI the Fat]

I was not being sarcastic. More importantly, I remember it now!

'La théorie de la récapitulation'. Which, if there is a benevolent God, hopefully simply translates as 'theory of recapitulation'. Which is now considered an erroneous biological theory.

Which no doubt will please the critics of biology.
A rejoicing, which, in turn, will to the science crowd only further attest to their unfamiliarity with scientific concepts, progress and perennial critical evaluation.

[Ronin]

Which no doubt will please the critics of biology.
A rejoicing, which, in turn, will to the science crowd only further attest to their unfamiliarity with scientific concepts, progress and perennial critical evaluation.

It is the circle of "Org" life

[Big_John]

Speculating that God made the Universe to look old is a cop out. We may as well speculate that the universe was created complete with our memories five minutes ago. It may be true, but there are an infinite number of such theories and they are all completely untestable. This is why scientists at some point have to apply Occam's razor. On one hand we have an infinite number of theories, all of which require us to assume a priori the existence of an omnipotent creator who for no clear reason sets out to systematically deceive his creations (or some other, henceforth completely unknown reason why the universe could simply pop into existence fully made) and all of which are utterly untestable. On the other hand we have a theory which makes no a priori assumptions and instead states all life forms to have been produced by a natural, already documented phenomenon, as well as making testable predictions such as requiring the Earth to have been around for an awfully long time.

yes, this is simply an epistemic skepticism (which is humorous enough, coming from creationist), and has no bearing on the scientific validity of evolution. a good quote on the matter:

The honest scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you that nothing whatever can be or has been proved with fully 100% certainty, not even that you or I exist, nor anyone except himself, since he might be dreaming the whole thing. Thus there is no sharp line between speculation, hypothesis, theory, principle, and fact, but only a difference along a sliding scale, in the degree of probability of the idea. When we say a thing is a fact, then, we only mean that its probability is an extremely high one: so high that we are not bothered by doubt about it and are ready to act accordingly. Now in this use of the term fact, the only proper one, evolution is a fact. For the evidence in favor of it is as voluminous, diverse, and convincing as in the case of any other well established fact of science concerning the existence of things that cannot be directly seen, such as atoms, neutrons, or solar gravitation ....

So enormous, ramifying, and consistent has the evidence for evolution become that if anyone could now disprove it, I should have my conception of the orderliness of the universe so shaken as to lead me to doubt even my own existence. If you like, then, I will grant you that in an absolute sense evolution is not a fact, or rather, that it is no more a fact than that you are hearing or reading these words.

Incidentally, amid all this clutching at straws regarding carbon dating and such, I hear no attempt to address any of the astronomical evidence regarding the age of the Universe. For instance, the evidence that all the visible galaxies appear to be expanding out from a Big Bang some 14.2 billion years ago, or the evidence that our sun is apparently a main sequence star about 6 billion years old. Am I supposed to believe that this evidence was also planted by a flood?

there are numerous lines of evidence for the age of the universe/age of the earth. creationist will no doubt have criticisms of them as sloppy as the criticisms we've seen on radiometric dating here.

note about radiometric dating: the idea that creationists seemed to try to invoke as a criticism (with all the talk about ashes or whatever) is contamination. and it is true that a few radiometric isotopes are vulnerable to contamination (carbon-14 especially), but many others aren't. moreover, if contamination were responsible for all radiometric evidence for the age of the earth, we would expect radiometric dating to produce random results, not the essentially uniformly old age that they do.

I was not being sarcastic. More importantly, I remember it now!

'La théorie de la récapitulation'. Which, if there is a benevolent God, hopefully simply translates as 'theory of recapitulation'. Which is now considered an erroneous biological theory.

Which no doubt will please the critics of biology.
A rejoicing, which, in turn, will to the science crowd only further attest to their unfamiliarity with scientific concepts, progress and perennial critical evaluation.

yes, recapitulation (aka "the biogenetic law") was a theory put forth by ernst haeckel. recapitulation was never a part of darwinism, and isn't part of evolutionary biology. recapitulation is essentially dead as a theory, though some science textbooks still bring it up as a discussion point, and there are (as always) a few holdouts out there that believe in it, or some reworded form of it.



fellow rationalists, there really is little reason to discuss this topic with people like navaros. as others have pointed out, his MO here is the rejection of rationality. you can't have a real argument with nonsense. don't try.

[Ironside]

Call me crazy, or maybe just a religious softy, but I always rather interpreted the creation story(well, ya know, the 2nd one ) as a general parable about how God gave man life, and man turned from God. Rather than a specific and exact account of actual events. Plus, I was always a bit miffed that Cain suddenly got married, yet the only other people who had been created, if we are to take it literally and exactly, were his father and mother.

No worries, It only took the enlighted ones atleast 1800 years to figure out that the Bible were to be taken entirely literally intead of mostly allegoral.

It's aslo funny that the first group to come to the conclusion that the earth needs to be much older than about those 10.000 years gets almost no mention at all. Those damn geologists.

I was not being sarcastic. More importantly, I remember it now!

'La théorie de la récapitulation'. Which, if there is a benevolent God, hopefully simply translates as 'theory of recapitulation'. Which is now considered an erroneous biological theory.

Which no doubt will please the critics of biology.
A rejoicing, which, in turn, will to the science crowd only further attest to their unfamiliarity with scientific concepts, progress and perennial critical evaluation.

That theory claims that we go through all the previously evolutionary stages, not that there's some remnant development (aka forming legs and then remove them).

It would be simular to claiming the Lamarckism is correct because it actually does seem like some traits caused by environment does get inheirited.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

It's aslo funny that the first group to come to the conclusion that the earth needs to be much older than about those 10.000 years gets almost no mention at all. Those damn geologists.

Absolutely! Those should be the second ones up against the wall when the revolution comes -- right after the lawyers. Bunch of simpering know-it-all rockheads.

[KarlXII]

Absolutely! Those should be the second ones up against the wall when the revolution comes -- right after the lawyers. Bunch of simpering know-it-all rockheads.

Anyone hear the joke about why the Ten Commandments should not be courtroom policy?

Hilarious.