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BY BRIAN WILLIAMS
bwilliams@nwitimes.com
219.548.4348 | Monday, April 07, 2008 | (10 comment(s))
VALPARAISO | The Darwinian theory of evolution, because it has not been disproved by rigorous testing over time, has become accepted knowledge, and disbelieving it is not an option.
That was the conclusion of Murray Peshkin, a physicist with Argonne National Laboratory, in a recent talk on science and religion at Valparaiso University.
Opponents of teaching Darwinian evolution have lost the court fight to keep it out of the public schools, Peshkin said, so they have changed the battle to push for equal billing for creationism, or intelligent design.
"What's wrong is teaching those as part of science -- they are not. They belong to religion because their assumptions and their logic belong to religion," he said.
Dismissing science with "it's only a theory," Peshkin said, is "intellectually appalling" and a material threat to the country. Science in the 21st century offers chances to conquer diseases and achieve other advances, opportunities that could be lost if students aren't taught the best science and if parents aren't taught respect for science, he said.
Scientists have failed to explain the limits of science, Peshkin said. Science deals in what can be observed and measured through experimentation. Assertions or beliefs are not part of it. A theory, he said, is a hunch about how the world works that is then subjected to experimental observation.
Religion, on the other hand, accepts revealed knowledge. The two, therefore, take different approaches to reality, Peshkin said.
But each is valid and the conflict between the two is unnecessary, he said.
Peshkin said experimentation can only disprove a theory, but never finally prove it.
With proof always impossible, then, scientists rely on the repeated successful testing of a theory to make conclusions about the physical world, he said. Newton's laws of mechanics are accepted because they have accurately described observable phenomena consistently over centuries. They have been found to apply not only to planets, as Newton started with, but also to baseballs and jet engines. An airplane designed to fly under a different theory of motion would not get any riders, Peshkin said.
Disbelieving well-tested theories is not an option intellectually or practically, he said.
Since the 1900s, Darwin's prediction of primates' descent from a common ancestor through natural selection has been confirmed by repeated observation. The theory of evolution has been subjected to numerous and varied tests and has not yet encountered limitations, he said.
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HaloBlu wrote on Apr 8, 2008 11:53 AM:
Mike wrote on Apr 7, 2008 5:42 PM:
L.Rosenquist wrote on Apr 7, 2008 4:42 PM:
But you think like an ape wrote on Apr 7, 2008 1:55 PM:
BobC wrote on Apr 7, 2008 12:17 PM:
The animals that humans developed from are extinct but we can see their fossils. The fossil record showing the gradual development of the human species is very impressive. It's fair to say there are no longer any missing links. Of course more fossils will be found, despite the fact most creatures completely decompose after they die.
It's important to understand the fossils are not even necessary to show evolution is a fact. New molecular evidence is now the most powerful evidence for evolutionary relationships, including our very close relationship to the other ape species. Please google "endogenous retroviruses" for more information. "
FSM wrote on Apr 7, 2008 9:27 AM:
It is for this reason that I’m writing you today, to formally request that this alternative theory be taught in your schools, along with the other two theories. I’m sure you see where we are coming from. If the Intelligent Design theory is not based on faith, but instead another scientific theory, as is claimed, then you must also allow our theory to be taught, as it is also based on science, not on faith.
"
ie0209 wrote on Apr 7, 2008 8:03 AM:
Read carefully wrote on Apr 7, 2008 7:51 AM:
Rich wrote on Apr 7, 2008 6:19 AM:
If one acknowledges a living, perfect God, then why whould they think him incapable of creating us? Could He not also create all of the Earth and science itself? "
I AM NOT AN APE wrote on Apr 7, 2008 3:56 AM: