The Nature of Science

 

·       What is known about the universe

·       The method of finding something out

·       Observations using senses

        Scientific fact - many can agree using senses

        Equipment used to extend the range of senses

                Temperature - thermometer

                Radiation - Geiger counter

                Small objects - microscope

        ex. Air

                Indirect evidence

·       Applies to physical problems

        ex. God

                Does not fall under natural law: Not testable using senses

                Dostoyevsky: some things are not meant to be understood

                Objective faith: faith based on reason

·       Everyone has some type of bias.

        Naturalism:  All things can be figured out according to natural law.

Creation-science is not science because  “it fails to display the most basic characteristic of science: reliance upon naturalistic explanations.”  --National Academy of Sciences

        Secular humanism:  Humans can control mankind’s destiny; PMA

        Intelligent Design: The complexity of nature is evidence of creation.

 

The Religion of Evolution  

·           Anti-theistic conclusions

            The universe was not designed and has no purpose.

            Humans are the product of blind natural processes that care                                 nothing about us.

·           The evident zeal of Darwinist to evangelize the world.

Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker): “if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, the person is ignorant, stupid or insane.”

·           Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the British Natural History Museum: “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing...that is true?...eventually one person said “I do know one thing--it ought not to be taught in high school.”

·       Irving Kristol: That Darwinian evolution can gradually transform one kind of creature into another is merely a biological hypothesis, not a fact.  “(E)volution, as generally taught, has an unwarranted anti-religious edge to it.”

·       Stephen Jay Gould, Harvard Professor: neo-Darwinian synthesis, “as a general proposition, is effectively dead, despite its persistence as textbook orthodoxy.”

 

Natural Selection

·       The Theory: 

    Variation pre-exists due to random mutations.

    More organisms are produced than can survive.

    The environment selects against nonadaptive organisms.

    Those that are more fit leave more offspring.

·       Example: Artificial selection in breeding

·       Pierre Grasse: “In spite of the intense pressure generated by artificial selection...over whole millennia, no new species are born....selection gives tangible form to and gathers together all the varieties a genome is capable of producing, but does not constitute an innovative evolutionary process.

·       Tautology: a way of saying the same thing twice.

·       The theory predicts that the fittest organisms will produce the most offspring, and it defines the fittest organisms as the ones which produce the most offspring.

·       Karl Popper, science philosopher: “those organisms that leave most offspring leave most offspring.”

·       Example: Industrial melanism and Biston betularia

·       Grasse: “‘evolution in action’...is simply the observation of demographic facts, local fluctuations of genotypes, geographical distributions...Fluctuations as a result of circumstances...does not imply evolution.”

·       Natural selection is the best of the remaining alternatives.

·       NAS is opposed to “supernatural means inaccessible to human understanding,” including God and any non-material vital force that drives evolution in the direction of greater complexity, consciousness, or whatever.

·       “When you have eliminated what cannot be, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, is what must be.”  --Sherlock Holmes

Arguments against evolution

 

Fossil Record

·       David Raup, curator: “We are now about 120 years after Darwin and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded.  We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn’t changed much...We have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin’s time.”

    Archaeopteryx

            In same sediments as birds

            Sternum: it flew.

            Feathers from scales?

    Pro-Avis

    Punctuated equilibrium: Steven Jay Gould

 

Ape-Men

    Homo erectus: 1891, skull, 3 teeth, femur...& 2 skulls in between

    Piltdown man: ape jaw stained, organgutan teeth filed down

    Peking man: based on a tooth, and photos of bashed skulls

 

Chance

    Eye and egg

    One protein from scratch

 

Entropy

 

The alternative   

    Intelligent Design Theory

           

 

           

·       Science gives us the data.  It is up to us to apply the knowledge.

        Moral decisions can be aided by scientific information.

·        Technology: applied science