Evolution v Creationism: A Dead Issue

[Jose Fly]

As someone who spent a lot of time on the evolution v creationism battles over the last 20 years, I've noticed that in the last 5 years or so the issue seems to have largely gone off the radar. In the message boards that are still around (both Christian and secular) it's barely debated, if at all. Websites specifically dedicated to countering creationist talking points such as talkorigins and pandasthumb have gone silent, seemingly because there just isn't much to talk about.

Surveys have shown that younger Americans accept the reality of evolution at pretty much the same rate as the rest of the developed world. Thanks to national focus on science education by organizations like the NCSE, evolution is more widely taught than ever, even in the deep south. The Discovery Institute (the main "intelligent design" organization) stopped advocating for ID creationism to be taught in schools years ago, and they closed their alleged "research arm" last year.

On the science front, creationism remains as it has for over a century....100% scientifically irrelevant.

So for all practical intents and purposes, this debate is over. There isn't any sort of public debate over teaching creationism, nor is there any real debate about whether evolution should be taught. For sure there's still work to do in some parts of the country (mostly the south and interior west) where even though evolution is officially required, teachers don't teach it either because it's "too controversial" or they don't believe it themselves, but big picture-wise, "evolution v creationism" is in about the same state as "spherical v flat earth"....nothing more than something a handful of people argue about on the internet, but outside of that has little to no significance. And even on that front it's kinda dead....most forums where it's openly debated have a very skewed ratio where there's like 10 "evolutionists" for every 1 creationist.

Glad to see it!

[The Barbarian]

Re: Kitzmiller vs. Dover:

It was, but it completely killed the intelligent design movement. Since it was nothing more than a political strategy to sneak creationist talking points into science classes, Judge Jones' ruling was devastating to that effort. That, plus Behe's admission on the stand that if ID creationism is science then so is astrology, pretty much ended the charade. Good riddance.

It's why the Discovery Institute tried in vain to get the Dover school board to do whatever they had to do to avoid a courtroom showdown. It was, as ID inventor Phillip Johnson bitterly remarked, a "train wreck for Intelligent Design", which was exposed by a variety of evidence to be creationism with clean clothes and a haircut.

ID never recovered from that blow. And it dragged YE creationism down with it. You're right; even young evangelicals are moving away from YE creationism. And there is a slow erosion of creationists in the United States as a whole.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/21814/Evol ... esign.aspx

[Jose Fly]

It's why the Discovery Institute tried in vain to get the Dover school board to do whatever they had to do to avoid a courtroom showdown. It was, as ID inventor Phillip Johnson bitterly remarked, a "train wreck for Intelligent Design", which was exposed by a variety of evidence to be creationism with clean clothes and a haircut.

ID never recovered from that blow. And it dragged YE creationism down with it.

I'll probably never understand why Behe was so eager to participate, since his testimony ended up being extremely damning for the creationists. I guess maybe he was a bit full of himself.

But Barbara Forrest's testimony and evidence showing how ID was a strategic modification of earlier forms of creationism, with the hopes of sneaking creationist talking points into science classes, was invaluable. I think it put ID creationists on notice that if they ever tried to pull this stunt again, the science advocates were quite well prepared to shoot it down.

You're right; even young evangelicals are moving away from YE creationism. And there is a slow erosion of creationists in the United States as a whole.
https://news.gallup.com/poll/21814/Evol ... esign.aspx

Yup. So much for all those predictions and expectations the ID creationists made in their Wedge Strategy. Evolution was supposed to have been overturned by now, design was supposed to be the dominant paradigm, science was supposed to be...something something Christian convictions....something something materialism.....

Funny thing about all that.....they never even accomplished step 1.

[The Barbarian]

Yup. So much for all those predictions and expectations the ID creationists made in their Wedge Strategy. Evolution was supposed to have been overturned by now, design was supposed to be the dominant paradigm, science was supposed to be...something something Christian convictions....something something materialism.....

The jewel of the ID "evidence" was supposed to be the "ID textbook" Of Panda and People. In court, it was shown to have been a hasty rebranding of a creationist text.

He thought: "That's just what I need, it's a good engineering term….. it seemed to jibe... And I went back through my old copies of Science magazine and found the term used occasionally."[22] In a new draft of Pandas prepared shortly after the 1987 Supreme Court ruling, approximately 150 uses of the root word "creation", such as "creationism" and "creationist", were systematically changed to refer to intelligent design.[31] The definition remained essentially the same, with "intelligent design" substituted for "creation", and "intelligent creator" changed to "intelligent agency":

Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc.[23]

The term "creationists" was changed to "design proponents", but in one case the beginning and end of the original word "creationists" were accidentally retained, so that "creationists" became "cdesign proponentsists".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People

That did the creationists no less damage than Behe testifying that ID is science in the same sense that astrology is science.

[Miles]

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...................................................... A FEW OLDIES BUT GOODIES







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[brunumb]

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

Burdett added: "Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding. The laws predict the mutual force between all bodies of mass, but they cannot explain that force. Isaac Newton himself said, 'I suspect that my theories may all depend upon a force for which philosophers have searched all of nature in vain.' Of course, he is alluding to a higher power."

https://www.theonion.com/evangelical-sc ... 1819567984

[Jose Fly]

Yup. So much for all those predictions and expectations the ID creationists made in their Wedge Strategy. Evolution was supposed to have been overturned by now, design was supposed to be the dominant paradigm, science was supposed to be...something something Christian convictions....something something materialism.....

The jewel of the ID "evidence" was supposed to be the "ID textbook" Of Panda and People. In court, it was shown to have been a hasty rebranding of a creationist text.

He thought: "That's just what I need, it's a good engineering term….. it seemed to jibe... And I went back through my old copies of Science magazine and found the term used occasionally."[22] In a new draft of Pandas prepared shortly after the 1987 Supreme Court ruling, approximately 150 uses of the root word "creation", such as "creationism" and "creationist", were systematically changed to refer to intelligent design.[31] The definition remained essentially the same, with "intelligent design" substituted for "creation", and "intelligent creator" changed to "intelligent agency":

Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc.[23]

The term "creationists" was changed to "design proponents", but in one case the beginning and end of the original word "creationists" were accidentally retained, so that "creationists" became "cdesign proponentsists".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Pandas_and_People

That did the creationists no less damage than Behe testifying that ID is science in the same sense that astrology is science.

That was certainly the most famous piece of evidence (and probably the most damning too). But as Dr. Forrest showed, there was a lot more evidence showing that ID was nothing more than rebranded creationism. For example, she showed how IDists referred to themselves as creationists, referred to their own organization as a creationist organization, referred to their own arguments as creationist arguments, invoked the same contrived dualism as other creationists, described the goal of ID in explicitly religious terms, etc.

Like a jigsaw puzzle, when all the pieces were put together the picture that emerged was unmistakable. And for ID creationists, there was no going back. Their short-lived movement had been dealt a death blow.

[The Barbarian]

KEVIN HARRIS: Did you have a chance to ask him about the state of the union as far as the intelligent design movement?

DR. CRAIG: Yeah, I actually did have a chance to talk with Steve one afternoon privately. I said to him that I had the impression that a few years ago the people involved in the intelligent design movement were rather crestfallen and felt that the movement had kind of stalled out and failed to achieve the objectives that, say, a Philip Johnson had envisioned for it. I asked him what the mood was these days. He said following the Dover case with the Supreme Court . . . the intelligent design movement did not support the attempt to teach intelligent design in the schools – they thought that that was a maverick move that was unwise and imprudent. They didn’t support it, but nevertheless they suffered the consequences of that negative Supreme Court verdict that intelligent design constituted religion and so couldn’t be taught in American public schools. He said that really did take the wind out of their sails for a time. But he said since then they have really regrouped. There have been a number of new people who have been involved in the movement – some very sharp young biologists. He said everywhere they go they find among the younger faculty tremendous interest in intelligent design and skepticism about Darwinian orthodoxy and chemical origin-of-life theories and things of this sort.[1] So he seemed to say that the movement is going ahead again at full-steam.
https://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/r ... sign#_ftn1

I see a few creationists peddling it, but there seems to be very little intellectual interest right now. And Michael Denton, a fellow of the Discovery Institute,has written a book (Nature's Destiny) in which he seems to have ripped the guts out of the creationist side of ID:

t is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science–that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called “special creationist school.” According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God’s direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world–that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies.

In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Jose Fly in post #0]

Surveys have shown that younger Americans accept the reality of evolution at pretty much the same rate as the rest of the developed world. Thanks to national focus on science education by organizations like the NCSE, evolution is more widely taught than ever, even in the deep south. The Discovery Institute (the main "intelligent design" organization) stopped advocating for ID creationism to be taught in schools years ago, and they closed their alleged "research arm" last year.

I am sure they do. This is why it is said knowledge is power. Because the "ignorant" are easily manipulated by the "intelligent".

"At grade 12, only 27% of white students, 36% of Asian/Pacific Islander students, 4% of black students, 8% of Hispanic students, and 13% of American Indian/Pacific Islander students scored at or above the proficient level in science." https://www.nsf.gov/nsb/sei/edTool/data ... ol-06.html

"Math and reading scores for 12th graders in the U.S. were at a historic low even before the COVID-19 pandemic forced a massive shift to remote learning, according to results of the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress released in late 2020." https://phys.org/news/2021-02-12th-grad ... -math.html

This is the national focus on science education. Wow, that was beneficial.

But the debate is not over it has actually expanded into an actual theoretical debate of experimentation based on the different worldviews. Like the RATE project. Creationist has their own publications and peer review process.

A second reason is postmodern thought. We on this forum are dinosaurs. We all basically believe that there is absolute truth that should be applied to all. Post modern thought does not believe in absolute truth that applies to all. Post Modern thought believes that truth only applies to individuals. Each individual can decide for himself what is true. There is no longer any reason why ideas must have a logical connection to the average high school graduate. So what is even the reason for debate if ideas do not have to have a logical connection?

So what are you trying to say that the National Science foundation finally dumbed down the curriculum enough to convince those that do not know science a scientific lie that does not need to have a logical connection between its points.

[EarthScienceguy]

[Replying to Jose Fly in post #46]

Denton considers himself an agnostic and yet he wrote several books that show the fallacy of evolution. The arguments against evolution have never been stronger.

How could evolution happen when the human genome consists of 3.5E9 nucleotide sites. If there is a 1% difference between chimps and humans. That means there is a difference of 3.5E7 nucleotide sites. If each generation occurs every 20 years, it means that every generation would have to consist of 116 changes in the nucleotide sites per generation if this evolutionary change took 6 million years. You might say that there are millions or even billions of mutations in a species if the population is big enough. The problem is that you would have all 116 changes in one organism. These mutations would be in 116 different organisms. The mutations would then need to accumulate in one organism or a group of organisms. This accumulation would then take many generations. Therefore making human evolution impossible.

[Jose Fly]

I am sure they do. This is why it is said knowledge is power. Because the "ignorant" are easily manipulated by the "intelligent".

So you believe "the intelligent" are conspiring to teach evolution to "the ignorant", in order to.......what?

But the debate is not over it has actually expanded into an actual theoretical debate of experimentation based on the different worldviews. Like the RATE project.

Boy, you creationists sure do need some new arguments. I remember discussing that with creationists over 15 years ago.

An Evening With RATE

"Thought I’d give you a update on the Bozeman, Montana, RATE
conference held this past weekend. The ‘science’ talks by Russell
Humphreys, Andrew Snelling, and John Baumgardner contained
the standard RATE mantras on He diffusion, Po radiohaloes, and
14C. There was nothing new and which has not already been
debunked..."

LOL, even in 2007 it was "they've got nothing new"!

"...I did
have an interesting conversation saturday morning with RATE
coordinator, Larry Vardiman, who seems like a pretty decent guy.
I asked why no recognized experts on radiometric dating were
invited to participate in the conference, given that none of the
speakers had any training or experience in experimental
geochronology. He was candid enough to admit that they would
have liked to included one on the team, but there are no young-
earth geochronologists in the world. He also agreed that the
mechanism for accelerating radioactivity by nearly a billion-fold
during a single year (the flood year) was a major problem for the
group that in the end will probably only be resolved by invoking a
“cosmic-scale event” or miracle. He further conceded that at
this point they have no physical evidence for this miracle.
Apparently, dissipation of the heat produced during the event is,
in the end, going to require yet an additional miracle."

Did they ever figure that out? I'm betting no.

Creationist has their own publications and peer review process.

Yep, because they can't meet the standards of the actual science journals.

A second reason is postmodern thought. We on this forum are dinosaurs. We all basically believe that there is absolute truth that should be applied to all. Post modern thought does not believe in absolute truth that applies to all. Post Modern thought believes that truth only applies to individuals. Each individual can decide for himself what is true. There is no longer any reason why ideas must have a logical connection to the average high school graduate. So what is even the reason for debate if ideas do not have to have a logical connection?

You creationists need to make up your minds. Some of you (e.g. Sherlock Holmes) complain about schools allegedly teaching evolution as a fact, yet here you're saying they teach that there are no facts.

So what are you trying to say that the National Science foundation finally dumbed down the curriculum enough to convince those that do not know science a scientific lie that does not need to have a logical connection between its points.

So I suppose you were expecting everyone here to just take those claims as true, simply because you say they are? Who exactly are you such that we should take your assertions as unquestioned gospel?