Your Favorite Conservatives on Evolution and ID

I was amused that you mentioned Jack Chick. I have always been entertained by not just the simplicity of those tracts, but their utter wrongness.

I will say one thing he got right in that tract, the professor had no business teaching students since he (the professor) was totally ignorant of both evolution and physics.

Gluons hold quarks together, they do not bind hadrons together. It is the strong and weak nuclear forces that perform that job. And gluons play no role in those forces. Further gluons have been observed many times, and that data has been verified and proven.

As for the rest of the evolutionary and geological misstatements made by Jack Chick (and I'm being kind here, they are actually lies), well, talkorigins.org explains the truth to all those false claims.

..Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I am a Christian and I sure don't have a problem with evolution. If you believe a god is all knowing and all powerful, why is it such a stretch to think that when he created the earth and its present contents that he would be able to do it using evolution? As far as I have read the Bible doesn't go into details about the tools that he used.

Gluons hold quarks together, they do not bind hadrons together.  It is the strong and weak nuclear forces that perform that job.  And gluons play no role in those forces. 

— jeff-paredo

My understanding is that the strong nuclear force is a result of the quarks of neighboring nucleons (protons and neutrons) attracting each other, via the quark color force (aka exchange of gluons).

Not sure how the weak force fits in - it has something to do with certain decay modes in radioactive nuclei.

Henry

In that management [ruling] religion or its like is an indispensable instrument. Religion makes men faithful to the gods, and hence to the men the gods recommend. ... Only when rulers see or sense that men obey themselves in obeying necessity can human necessity appear as the foundation of human freedom. Machiavelli's Virtue, page 76]

If there is one indisputable fact about the human condition it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded--or even if it suspects--that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe. There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn't work.

I used to claim a certain kinship with William F. Buckley because we both use a lot of big words and know the meaning of some of them.

I'm guessing Buckley said, or meant, "epistemology"...though I'd wonder what hoity-toity school has an "epistemology class."

I see they didn't interview any Objectivists. Objectivists understand that the real, fundamental debate isn't between creationism vs. evolution per se, but rather between moral relativism and moral objectivism. Creationists believe in the unravelling sweater theory of Christianity: Deny the literal truth of Genesis and the whole fabric of Christ's message unravels. And when that happens, people will lose any objective reason to behave morally. This is because creationists believe that the real world gives us no objective truths; no objective criteria by which to judge an act as harmful or beneficial, as good or evil.

In this creationists are really like leftist postmodernists, except they at least have the good sense to not like it. So they instictively recoil at science, since science has this nasty habit of revealing flaws in the ancient holy books.

But in fact the real world does give us objective criteria for determining right vs. wrong. It's too bad that we rational conservatives aren't in the majority in the movement, but that's life.

Please don't consider this an argument, as such, because if you did you would have to dismiss it as an argument from ignorance of the "I can't imagine how non-living matter became a living thing" flavor. But, for me, I really cannot imagine why a creator with infinite wisdom and power would use a process of millions and millions of years of suffering and death to accomplish what he could by fiat. Nor can I imagine that a perfect being, using perfect means, would create such an imperfect creation. Nor can I imagine why the creator would wish to remove all traces of his existence from that creation and make it appear for all the world that his role was wholly unnecessary. Could such a god exist? Sure. But it's obvious that this god does not wish to be found out, and I think we should respect his privacy in that case.

"I don't believe that anything that offends nine-tenths of the American public should be taught in public schools. . . . Christianity is the faith of nine-tenths of the American public. . . . I don't believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle."

William Buckley wrote: "... etymology."

"Gluons hold quarks together, they do not bind hadrons together. It is the strong and weak nuclear forces that perform that job. And gluons play no role in those forces. "

Basically, the strong nuclear force does indeed come from the color force of Quantum Chromodynamics, which is fundamentally carried by the gluons. How this comes about at the level of nucleons (protons and neutrons), however is a bit complicated and I don't believe has been rigorously calculated from first principles QCD yet. This is because very little has been calculated from first principles QCD yet. QCD is a mathematically very difficult non-linear quantum field theory whose most common naturally occuring effects (binding quarks in nucleons and binding nuclons in nuclei) occur in an energy regime where classical analogs that would guide the intuition are, at best, not very applicable or accurate. But there are two somewhat intutive models, intuitive if you have some qunatum mechanics background, that guide the way most people think about the reduction. Corresponding equations can be somewhat hand-wavingly "derived" from QCD with a few fairly plausible assumptions, giving rise to simple emperical equations with an arbitrary (not derived from underlying QCD parameters) parameter or two that can be adjusted to fit data.

One model is an effective potential model using an analogy of the van der Wal's potential from atomic/molecular physics. The van der Wal's force is a short-range residue of the electromagetic force operating between two otherwise neutral atoms. When the atoms are sufficiently close together the electons in the outer shells repel each other and "polarize", redistributing the probability cloud to the side away from the neighboring atom until the forces balance. Classically, this motion would be unstable and the atoms would eventually just scatter off each other. But because of quantum effects, the electrons can get locked into a stationary state where there is a net fixed polarization caused by the mutual proximity of the atoms and in which there is net attractive polarization force left over between the atoms. This is one of the weak bonding mechanisms between molecules and is actually the force that geckos exploit to climb up walls (I'm not kidding - look it up). A force similar to this polarization force is thought to apply to nucleons in proximity caused by gluon-induced, polarized distribution of their quarks.

The other model is based on the quantum field theoretic idea of forces as products of virtual particle exhange. Virtual particles are quantum fluctuations of a field that only last for a time limited by the energy-time uncertainty principle, E*t

Jeff: Sorry, but as an ex-particle-physicist, I can't resist. :-) Gluons *are* the mediators of the strong nuclear force, so as ever, a Steve is right. Quarks come in 3 "colours", but the hadrons (strongly-interacting particles) we observe are colour-neutral: baryons are composed of 3 quarks of different colours, and mesons are quark-antiquark pairs. (For the mathmos out there, it's an unbroken, SU(3) symmetry.) The gluons got their name from their function of holding quarks together. The last I read, quark substructure has not been observed, but then again, I jumped from the ivory tower 12 years ago. I'm not up to date on the current situation regarding quark-gluon plasma, glueballs or whatever.

Henry: Nucleon interactions can be explained by gluon exchange, but iirc it also involves exchange of virtual mesons (rho mesons, for example), which interact at both ends via gluons, of course. The strong force has some weird characteristics. The weak force is involved whenever a heavier quark generation decays to a lighter one, as in beta decay. A free neutron, for example, will decay with a half-life of about 18 minutes into a proton, electron and antielectron-neutrino, due to a down quark decaying into an up quark via the emission of a virtual W- particle.

Anyway, enough. Back to biology and religion.

David Frum wrote: How evolution should be taught in public schools: "I don't believe that anything that offends nine-tenths of the American public should be taught in public schools. . . . Christianity is the faith of nine-tenths of the American public. . . . I don't believe that public schools should embark on teaching anything that offends Christian principle."

Or was it "etiology" Buckley was referring to? If so, how many of us had etiology classes in public school? Must've skipped that page in my curriculum...

Gluons hold quarks together, they do not bind hadrons together. It is the strong and weak nuclear forces that perform that job.

Please don't consider this an argument, as such, because if you did you would have to dismiss it as an argument from ignorance of the "I can't imagine how non-living matter became a living thing" flavor. But, for me, I really cannot imagine why a creator with infinite wisdom and power would use a process of millions and millions of years of suffering and death to accomplish what he could by fiat. Nor can I imagine that a perfect being, using perfect means, would create such an imperfect creation. Nor can I imagine why the creator would wish to remove all traces of his existence from that creation and make it appear for all the world that his role was wholly unnecessary. Could such a god exist? Sure. But it's obvious that this god does not wish to be found out, and I think we should respect his privacy in that case.

Re "Anyway, enough. Back to biology and religion."

Yeah, I guess particle physics is somewhat off topic here. Course, one could argue that religious matters are off topic on a science related blog. ;)

Otoh, particle physics is in one way a lot simpler than biology - fewer basic kinds with which to deal. (leptons, quarks and combinations thereof, plus assorted forces in Part. Phys., 116+ elements in chemistry, vs. millions of species in biology.)

---

Re "[...] etymology."
Re "I believe he meant "entomology". He was riffing on that famous "inordinate fondness for beetles" quote."

Oh, is that what he meant. I noticed the similarity of spelling between the two, but couldn't figure out how bug science would fit in that context.

Henry

Steve and company: let me offer you all another review of the same article: Conservatives and Evolution: a TNR useful survey or disguised whitewash?.

In regard to Dover, PA, I in fact attended the 20 June 2005 hearings in Harrisburg (the state capital), PA on bill #1007--the latest effort to advance Intelligent Design. Though more details are in my post, let me share a few quick comments.

The science expert was Randy Bennett who did an outstanding job in the question and answer session. More so, because many of the committee members--PA State Representatives--were openly hostile.

At one point, the one representative--a YEC, btw--just flat out declared to Randy, a devout Mormon, "Your God is not my God." So we had folks there not only taking upon themselves to decide the validity of science but also the true religion. So much for the Constitution.

The breakdown of bill sponsors, btw, was as follows: Thomas C. Creighton (Republican), Gibson C. Armstrong (Republican), Bob Bastian (Republican) , Kerry A. Benninghoff (Republican) , Scott W. Boyd (Republican), Paul I. Clymer (Republican), Brian L. Ellis (Republican), Arthur D. Hershey (Republican), Dennis E. Leh (Republican), Joseph A. Petrarca (Democrat), Samuel E. Rohrer (Republican), and Jerry A. Stern (Republican).

Although party affliation itself does not prove one's political philosophy, the simple math tells us: 11 Republicans, 1 Democrat -- 91.67% Republican.

But between Randy Bennett, Larry Frankel of the ACLU, and the Americans United Rep, the good fight was fought. Current prediction not fact: Bill 1007 will never make it out of committee.

Still, quite an experience to see all this at work in person.

Btw, you're all far kinder to David Frum than I am. I'm tempted say you're missing how bad his "Christian principle" argument really is.

Best to all.

Re "etymology".
Re "Entomology isn't commonly studied in high-school level classes."

Would a course in history of word origins be any more common in high schools in one on bug science?
And how would "man was created by God" fit into such a course?

Henry

Pat Buchanan wrote: I don't believe evolution can explain the creation of matter. Chris Mooney wrote: Finally, something Buchanan and I agree on. I'm sure physicists don't want us muscling in on their territory. But as with the rest of what he wrote, this line could have come straight out of a Chick tract.

The conservatives by their abandonment of their professed rationality are making a great case for the evo-psychology of tribalism. They make common cause with the fundies for the sake of achieving power, and are unable to disagree with them on any meaningful basis, just like the members of the American Communist party who condoned the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and made excuses for the Gulag.

Members of our species are able to put up with deep contradictions for the sake of group cohesiveness. This is probably a relic of our prehistory as a collection of warring bands based on kinship. OK, it's not prehistory at all - it continues to the present, only with nastier tools (as Londoners can unfortunately attest).

Jan:

That was a kind suggestion and I appreciate the concern and charity that lies behind it. I am familiar with "A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23." I have a degree in Bible from a conservative Christian college (Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota), earned while studying to become a Baptist pastor. I worked for Billy Graham for a number of years. I am widely read in both inspirational and theological literature, and of course I can generally put my biblical knowledge up against that of any Christian. I come by my atheism quite honestly, after years of trying to rescue my faith (which I loved) by just about any means available, moving from fundamentalist to mainstream to liberal Christian, trying to preserve some vestage of the beliefs that had sustained me through many tough times. Alas, I eventually had to admit that while much in the Bible is lyrical and compelling, the sum of the book is incoherent and even dangerously wrong-headed. I am so happy now to see a bigger, more wonderful cosmos than my Christianity ever permitted me. The God of the Bible is cramped, crabbed, and provincial, but reality as we really find it is expansive and mysterious and mighty. So again, I appreciate the place your suggestion came from, but...well, when I was a child, I thought as a child. But now that I am a man, I have put away childish things.

Yeah, I should have made note of Bill Kristol's remark. For someone who doesn't believe in discussing personal opinions, he's sure chosen a strange line of work.

I don't see why he couldn't have meant etymology. The study of the origins of words and concepts is valid enough in primary school as well as high school English and Religious Studies. Eg "goodbye" = "god be with ye/you" was enough to put me off using the word. Don't want to send any nasty (and imaginary) scary dudes after people (assuming you intend to wish them well rather than continuing insanity).

I want to look at Pat Buchanan's comments more closely. I'm pretty fond of Pat Buchanan. I don't know him personally, but I'm fond of the persona that I see on television. I'm a registered Democrat, and it is very important to me. But I agree with Buchanan on some important issues. I agree with him on Cafta, though I'd like to learn more about it. Also, Buchanan strikes me as someone who tends to grapple with the issues. And I think he has some good convictions, for instance, that it is very important to use public resources to help the less fortunate. He also rightly opposed the invasion of Iraq at a time when many pundits not only agreed with it but were promoting it. He was right, and it took professional courage for him to come out the way that he did. He did (reluctantly) vote for Bush in this last election, which I think was a huge mistake. But at least he was reluctant about it.

His comments on evolution are interesting.

1.Whether he personally believes in evolution: "Do I believe in absolute evolution? No. I don't believe that evolution can explain the creation of matter. ... Do I believe in Darwinian evolution? The answer is no."

His answer is interesting. It is interesting that he talks about "Darwinian evolution" in the same breath with the "creation of matter." Darwin didn't deal with the creation of matter. He didn't even deal with the cause of the first cells on earth, at least not in his public writing. Darwin just dealt with what happened after we got self-replicators. Darwin's work covered a much less wide body of issues than people often attribute to him.

And we just don't have a good understanding of the series of events that caused the matter that we associate with the known universe. We should keep working on the issue. But that's not that important in terms of what should be taught in biology class. I guess it comes up because Darwin's ideas get people thinking about big issues. So, it's like if you bring up Darwin, a lot of other issues come up. And I think, as scientists and thinkers, we should be prepared to deal with those kinds of question if they do come up. Even if we just say: "I'm not prepared to deal with the issue. That is not my area of expertise."

But we also should make clear that evolution -- in the sense of biological evolution (cells to elephants) -- is overwhelmingly well-supported, incredibly interesting and hugely important. I regard it as a scientific fact, though I don't like to use the word "fact."

2. What he thinks of intelligent design: "Do I believe in a Darwinian evolutionary process which can be inspired by a creator? Yeah, that's a real possibility. I don't believe evolution can explain the creation of matter. I don't believe it can explain the intelligent design in the universe. I just don't believe it can explain the tremendous complexity of the human being when you get down to DNA and you get down to atomic particles, and molecules, atomic particles, subatomic particles, which we're only beginning to understand right now. I think to say it all happened by accident or by chance or simply evolved, I just don't believe it."

Again, this is an interesting answer. It is conflating Darwinian evolution with cosmology. I think we should try to avoid labels like "Darwinian evolution." It seems to bread confusion and disagreement where it need not be. But Darwin was doing a smaller thing than a lot of people think. He was commenting on what happens after life gets going. However, his ideas open up many of the age-old questions. He didn't deal with them himself, at least not explicitly. But his work gets people examining many of the big questions. And we should encourage that. The examined life is good. But we should also make clear what ideas should be taught in biology class. Those ideas may not overlap with questions about of matter.

3. How evolution should be taught in public schools: "Evolution [has] been so powerful a theory in Western history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and often a malevolent force--it's been used by non-Christians and anti-Christians to justify polices which have been horrendous. I do believe that every American student should be introduced to the idea and its effects on society. But I don't think it ought to be taught as fact. It ought to be taught as theory."

I agree with Pat that evolution has had an enormous affect on the world. Very few, if any, ideas have had as much affect. I disagree with his use of the term "justify." "Rationalize" would have been much better. Evolution doesn't justify unethical behavior.

As for the issue of "fact" or "theory." This is a difficult issue. I think evolution is a scientific fact. But when we use words like that we bring up important issues dealt with by Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant and Wittgenstein. It's hard to know how to classify some claims. I don't object to the idea that evolution should be taught in public school biology classes as a theory. But make sure we get across that it is a very good theory. I also don't object to it being taught as a fact.

We also should convey to people not to get hung up on the issue of certainty. It's hard to get. Are we ever certain? Let's focus instead on justified belief, and work from there. It tends to help us be more productive and cause less violence.

The problem with intelligent-design theory is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable: Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet---a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.

Regarding anti-evolutionists as "Straussian," ...

There's enough wrong with ID/creationism that there's no need to frame it as a left-right issue, which it really isn't anyway.

There's enough wrong with ID/creationism that there's no need to frame it as a left-right issue, which it really isn't anyway.

Re: Frum

The quote is apparently a composite of answers he gave to different questions. It also appears that the interviewer (Ben Adler) was being argumentative and tendentious, at least according to Frum.