Evolution Is Science, Creationism Is Not
The American National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the Institute of Medicine has published a booklet to outline their position on Science, Evolution, and Creationism. The booklet is not only for policymakers and teachers, but for the general public. It "better explains evolution in ways the public can readily understand," said NAS President Ralph Cicerone.
In summary, the booklet says that the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. The data comes from various fields including fossils records, DNA research, and common ancestries.
Evolution is as scientific as the theory of gravitation.
Creationism is a belief, and therefore does not belong in science classroom. Creationism is not science, it is based on the beliefs about an entity outside the natural world.
Interestingly, Physicist Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, made a connection to the US presidential candidates: "When candidates for president can raise their hands to say that they do not believe in evolution, it is clear that we need to do a far better job of educating people," he says. "This is precisely what the new NAS publication attempts to do."
Related:
1. Entire text of the book: Available for free to all in HTML and pdf - http://www.nap.edu/sec
2. Press release - http://www8.nationalacademies.org/onpinews/newsitem.aspx?RecordID=11876
4. Podcast: Lively audio that delivers the main messages of the book, 10 minutes - http://media.nap.edu/podcasts/nax48scienceevo.mp3
-You may subscribe to this podcast at http://www.nap.edu/podcast.html
5. Email announcements: Long and short versions of an email announcement for "Science, Evolution, and Creationism" available for inclusion in your e-mail communications -
http://www.nap.edu/nap_emails/2008/001/ and http://www.nap.edu/sec_summary.html
6. Editorial: Written by Francisco Ayala in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" - http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/105/1/3
5 komentar:
This is about creationism and US presidential candidates: Edwards thinks local school boards should decide what is taught in their schools, but said, “I personally agree with the theory of evolution and believe it should be taught in our schools.”Rudy Giuliani's campaign "successfully discouraged key advisors from speaking to Science about specific issues," "McCain has waffled on the teaching of evolution, telling the Arizona Daily Star that "there's nothing wrong with teaching different schools of thought [on] ... how the world was created."Mike Huckabee was one of the Republican candidates who raised his hand at a national candidates' debate to say that he didn't accept evolution"
Read it here: http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2008/01/06/hot-science-topics-avoided-by-presidential-candidates/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.livescience.com%2Fhistory%2F080103-presidential-cands.html&frame=true
Three cheers for Lawrence Krauss. It is about time all scientists stand up with the biologists against the forces of superstition. There is no sky daddy, or sky mommy, who made people 6,000 years ago or even 6,000,000 years ago. Idiot presidential candidates who either do not know or who pander to ignorance, should not be trusted to command the greatest military force humanity has ever created.
Unfortunately here in what should be The Age of Reason, people who know that they themselves developed , naturally, from a single cell in less than 9 months, can still believe in foolish superstitious explanations.
Forrest Erickson
Some people who are commenting on this blog may be doing so without having had the opportunity to read our book, "Science, Evolution, and Creationism." This conversation might be enhanced and clarified by reading the book online or downloading it in pdf for free at http://www.nap.edu/sec.
According to creationists the world was created by God less than ten thousand years ago, fossils and all. This cannot be disproved. I have an even better hypothesis: the world was created ten minutes ago, including our memories and, of course, all the fossils. This is logically just as unassailable. It is even better because it is an even more convincing demonstration of God's omnipotency :-)
Both these logically unfalsifiable hypotheses have for me the great disadvantage of being BORING. On the other hand, the big bang, stellar and biological evolution have, for me, the compelling advantage of being the opposite of boring. In addition, they arise from a kind of thinking that is needed to survive into the future.
Dates of fossils and geological layers can be established scientifically with high levels of confidence. Therefore creation 10000 years ago is definitely untrue. Even the fundamentalists are split into young-earth and old-earth branches. The escape clause for fundamentalists is that the bible uses a different and encoded language, which makes them unfalsifiable. However some day they have to tell us what the encoding is, and we can then carry out the verification test.
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