As reported this week by University of Maryland physicist Robert Park in his “What’s New”:http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu, ABS News appears to have lost it’s rocker:
2. CREATIONISM: ABC NEWS AND GETTING THE DINOSAURS ON NOAH’S ARK.
Earlier this year, WN asked a rhetorical question, “Is ABC News
nuts?” http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn021105.html. There
is new information. Last night, ABC Evening News took viewers to
the Museum of Earth History in Eureka Springs, Ark. Disputes are
different in the Bible world. Genesis says a pair of every kind
of air-breathing animal was taken on board Noah’s Ark and in a
world that’s only 10,000 years old, that must include dinosaurs.
Or it may be that the reporter, Jake Tapper, went to school in
Kansas. “Religious views of creat
ion that challenge accepted science are gaining support across
the country,” he told viewers, “The Kansas Board of Education
this week tentatively endorsed new standards allowing more
criticism of evolution in explaining the origins of life.” As
further proof, ABC showed President Bush delivering his
“intelligent design should be taught in schools” remarks. To
balance the President, science had AAAS CEO Alan Leshner, “I have
no problem with people talking about religion as religion or
belief as belief.” Hmmm. “It’s dangerous to talk about
religious belief as if it were science.” So what was ABC’s
conclusion? “Science is increasingly on the defensive.”
Apart from the fact that “Creation Science”, as it was known in the 1970’s and 1980’s, was recognized as thinly veiled Christianity and barred from being taught in the science classroom, it appears the mainstream press has neglected to notice. It also appears that they need better science staffers… or, perhaps, a science staffer at all.
One thing I learned from Bob Park’s little blurb was that the Kansas State Board of Ed has apparently, if tentatively, endorsed the weakening of science standards instead of starting a comparative religion curriculum. Sad. No child left behind, but all of them left in the dark.
Here is a report – not the transcript of the program, but probably pretty close – from ABC’s own website:
“http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Beliefs/story?id=1030003&page=1”:http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Beliefs/story?id=1030003&page=1
What has always shocked me, and still continues to shock me, is that 45% of Americans still believe that humans were created by God all at once 10,000 years ago, as reconstructed (not stated directly) from the Bible. The follow-up quote in the ABC report is an excellent snapshot of the very fundamental problem in this country: “‘I think it happened by intelligent guidance,’ Sharp said. ‘I think it’s impossible to have slime (evolve) into the human brain no matter how long you say it took. I think that’s biologically impossible.'”
What you *think* and what actually can happen in nature can be radically different things. You’d *think* an electron would behave just like a billiard ball, since we are so used to billiard balls and their behavior at our scale in this universe. But you’d be awfully wrong. A billiard ball is not capable of destructive or constructive interference with itself, while an electron is testably capable of this behaviour. Only waves, like those in the ocean, exhibit that behavior at our scale. Thus the popular belief in a “quantum paradox” whereby a wave and a particle are the same thing. This paradox isn’t a mindgame. You can build an experiment to test this idea, and you’ll find out every time that it holds.
So when Thomas Sharp says that he just can’t conceive of primordial ooze (AKA “slime”), rich in proteins and amino acids (the very building blocks of functional life), eventually becoming the human brain, he is not only demonstrating an ignorance of nature that a 10th grader in a decent biology course would find laughable, he is missing the entire point of science. First of all, Mr. Sharp, we all highly doubt that the slime and the human brain share a direct connection in time – to think that is fairly naive. However, the slime and the amoeba share a likely very direct connection. The amoeba and the paramecium, the paramecium and the more complex bacteria, the bacteria and the larger multicelled organisms… it goes on and on. Through a series of microscopic and macroscopic adaptations over billions of years, life grew larger and more complicated. It drew energy from its surroundings to form structure and function which benefitted its existence. The microscopic laws that give the universe order act just as easily on a quark as on a bacteriophage, and structure is inevitable. The benefit of one structure over another is determined by mechanics – how much stress can the organism take, how well can it escape predatory organisms, how well can it defeat invasive lifeforms? From microscopic laws of nature we derive macroscopic organization. Where oxygen is abundant, it is burned as fuel. Where sulphur is abundant, it is consumed as fuel. You can see evolution everywhere, when you look.
Put aside your beliefs when it comes to the natural world. Look with the eyes God gave you, think with the brain God gave you, and work with the hands God gave you. If God is all there is in this universe for you, and you believe that His creation is a wonderous thing, honor Him by studying it with an honest and open mind. If you need no God to give you this world, then it is still worth study and merit, for there is much to learn from a firmament that has exceeded our own planet’s existence by 9 billion years.
If you must make science and the Bible harmonize, why focus on such a literal reading of that book? Why do you make the assumption that a day to God is the same as a day to man? If God is some timeless and omnipotent being, could not a single day in His frame of reference be as a near eternity to ours? Think! Don’t just take what others have said about the book as truth. Mankind distorts truth all the time for gain and purpose. Only a focused mind, full of skepticism, can hope to make any progress on matters of the spirit. To force a 10,000 year reading of the Earth’s age from the Bible by assuming a single day to God is as a single day to man is hubris, at best.
