主题:【文摘】看不见的战线--进化论与神创论之争 -- 田野
托牛仔高举神权大旗之福,讲授“智能设计”(Intelligence Design)在越来越多的州里被提到了教委讨论的日程上,信徒们对进化论的反扑是猖狂滴,科学界的抵抗也是顽强滴。
Wisconsin Academics Decry Move to Water Down Darwin
Science, 12 November, p. 1113,2004
Wisconsin academics are rallying to reverse a decision last month by a local school board that would require students to "study various scientific models/theories of origins" rather than stick with Darwinian theory only.
The Grantsburg school board's action spurred Michael Zimmerman, dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, to organize a flurry of letter writing by hundreds of scientists and theologians from universities around the state as well as high school science teachers. "We want to send as a strong a message as we can," says Zimmerman. Although Wisconsin state standards mandate the teaching of evolution, the board contends that the district has a right to make the standards more "inclusive."
Last month, the Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania approved the teaching of "intelligent design" (Science, 5 November, p. 971). And a trial over an evolution "disclaimer" in textbooks is under way in Georgia. Says Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California: "After last Tuesday there are a lot of happy creationists around the country."
他们是完全的油盐不进。我。。。。算了。
我觉得给孩子充分的选择自由就可以了。
教会办学和传教的自由一直是有的,有些教会学校甚至享有豁免能够对学生进行体罚。
争论的关键是这些人想把“智能设计”塞入中学(公立学校)的科学教学中,作为和进化论有同等地位的学说。前不久“科学美国人”有一篇对Case Western大学物理系主任的专访,其中提到他和神创论者们在俄亥俄州教委过招的事,我回头找找电子版的给转过来。
我是相信进化论的,不过反思一下,我也觉得进化论还有很多值得研究的地方,也就是说还有很多没有解释得非常令人信服,这也是神创论还有市场的一个原因。这么复杂的系统究竟是怎么演化出来的,确实还有很多让人觉得神奇之处。至少,我们现在没有本事再现进化的过程,哪怕用计算机粗略的模拟也不行,还差得远呢
原文太长,就摘一不分相关的吧,全文的连接在此
Questions That Plague Physics: A Conversation with Lawrence M. Krauss
Chair of the physics department at Case Western Reserve University, Lawrence M. Krauss is famed in the research community for his prescient suggestion that a still mysterious entity called dark energy might be the key to understanding the beginnings of the universe. He is also an outspoken social critic and in February was among 60 prominent scientists who signed a letter entitled "Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking," complaining of the Bush administration's misuse of science. The public, though, might know him best as an op-ed writer and author of books with mass appeal. His 1995 work, The Physics of Star Trek, became a best-seller, translated into 15 languages. He is now finishing his seventh popular title, Hiding in the Mirror: The Mysterious Allure of Extra Dimensions, which he describes as "an exploration of our long-standing literary, artistic and scientific love affair with the idea that there are hidden universes out there." Krauss recently discussed his many scientific and social passions with writer Claudia Dreifus.
SA: You are one of the few top physicists who is also known as a public intellectual. In the middle of the past century, that kind of activity by scientists was much more common. Albert Einstein, in fact, was an international celebrity, whose private views of everything from nuclear disarmament to Zionism were solicited by the press. Why do you think you're such a rare bird that way now?
LK: I can't speak for others. Besides my own research, I see part of my mission as trying to close the disconnect between science and the rest of the culture. We live in a society where it's considered okay for intelligent people to be scientifically illiterate. Now, it wasn't always that way. At the beginning of the 20th century, you could not be considered an intellectual unless you could discuss the key scientific issues of the day. Today you can pick up an important intellectual magazine and find a write-up of a science book with a reviewer unashamedly saying, "This was fascinating. I didn't understand it." If they were reviewing a work by John Kenneth Galbraith, they wouldn't flaunt their ignorance of economics.
SA: How did science illiteracy become socially acceptable?
LK: We all know how badly science is taught in many schools. So many middle school and even some high school teachers have no background in science. When my daughter was in the second grade and I went to her school, I was stunned by how her teacher seemed incredibly uncomfortable with having to teach even the simplest scientific concepts. I think this is common. And there is the reality that science has grown increasingly esoteric, making it more difficult for laypeople to grasp.
The truth is--and I'm hardly the first to say this--after World War II, American scientists became an isolated elite. The secrets that allowed them to change the world also allowed them to shirk responsibility for citizenship. Scientists became a class above society, rather than a part of it. And so for the longest time, certainly until the 1970s, many American scientists just didn't believe that reaching the public was important. Those were good times, with lots of money coming in. The wake-up call came in 1993, when Congress killed the Superconducting Super Collider. That was a real signal physicists were doing something wrong.
We hadn't convinced the public--or even all of our colleagues--that it was worth billions to build this thing. And since then, it has become clear: to get money for what we do, we're going to have to explain it to the public. My predilection is to try to connect the interesting ideas in science to the rest of people's lives.
SA: The big public issue you've been identified with is fighting against creationist teachings in the schools. For the past couple years, you've spent your time traveling, debating creationists on proposed curriculum changes for Ohio's high schools. Was that fun?
LK: It was the least fun of anything I've ever done. Convincing people of the excitement of science is fun; trying to stave off attacks on science feels like the most incredible waste of time, even if necessary. I got drafted after several creationists were appointed to the Standards Committee of the Ohio State Board of Education. They were proposing new standards to create false controversy around evolution by introducing an ad hoc idea called intelligent design into high school science classes.
For nearly a year, I found myself in the middle of what was almost the equivalent of a political campaign. When it was over, we won and we lost. We won because we had kept intelligent design out of science classes. We lost because in the spirit of "fairness," the board added a sentence to the standards saying, "Students should learn how scientists are continuing to critically examine evolutionary theory." I strongly opposed this. I wanted them to say that scientists are continuing to critically examine everything.
As I feared, this sentence opened the door for the creationists' claiming that there is controversy about the accuracy of evolutionary theory. And it's come back to haunt us. Just the other week, I had to put everything I was doing aside because the creationists were back at their old games again in Ohio. One of the model lessons that came out was an intelligent-design diatribe. Basically, they snuck the whole thing in again, through the back door. This becomes so tiresome that you just want to say, "Forget about it, go on." But then you realize that this is exactly what Phillip Johnson, this lawyer who first proposed the intelligent-design strategy, proposed when he said something like, "We'll just keep going and going and going till we outlast the evolutionists."
SA: Do scientists trap themselves when they try to be "fair" and "give equal time" in their debates with the anti-Darwinists?
LK: Yes. Because science isn't fair. It's testable. In science, we prove things by empirical methods, and we toss out things that have been disproved as wrong. Period. This is how we make progress.
I'm not against teaching faith-based ideas in religion classes; I'm just against teaching them as if they were science. And it disturbs me when someone like Bill Gates, whose philanthropy I otherwise admire, helps finance one of the major promoters of intelligent design by giving money to a largely conservative think tank called the Discovery Institute. Yes, they got a recent grant from the Gates Foundation. It's true that the almost $10-million grant, which is the second they received from Gates, doesn't support intelligent design, but it does add credibility to a group whose goals and activities are, based on my experiences with them, intellectually suspect. During the science standards debate in Ohio, institute operatives constantly tried to suggest that there was controversy about evolution where there wasn't and framed the debate in terms of a fairness issue, which it isn't. [Editors' note: Amy Low, a media relations officer representing the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, says that the foundation "has decided not to respond to Dr. Krauss's comments."]
SA: Why do you find this grant so particularly disturbing that you single it out here?
LK: Because we're living in a time when so many scientific questions are transformed into public relations campaigns--with truth going out the window in favor of sound bites and manufactured controversies. This is dangerous to science and society, because what we learn from observation and testing can't be subject to negotiation or spin, as so much in politics is.
The creationists cut at the very credibility of science when they cast doubt on our methods. When they do that, they make it easier to distort scientific findings in controversial policy areas.
We can see that happening right now with issues like stem cells, abortion, global warming and missile defense. When the testing of the proposed missile defense system showed it didn't work, the Pentagon's answer, more or less, went, "No more tests before we build it."
既然说成是宗教,自然不是用理辩得倒的.
不过美国毕竟是个在教堂结婚,死了插十字架的国家.教会又是个有政治经济影响力的实力派团体...
瞎子点灯白费蜡。就是爱因斯坦再世,把相对论全部推演一遍,也不能说服他们什么的。---- 我就不用费那个力气了。 不过,同样道理,想说服我,就这些所谓的学说,也照样是瞎子点灯白费蜡。我也油盐不进,hiahiahia。。。
很久以前看的,倒不是说神造世人,而是以科学的方法反证古文明的存在,比如说某猿人(忘了是哪个猿人)的脑容量比现代人大,南美的石堆有航天意义,西藏的单位达到量子级别等等的.印象中证明古文明是有的,退化说的是现代人不如可能存在的古文明.
要说神话,到是真有不少奇怪的巧合存在.以前贴过一篇关于创世纪的东西方的雷同.
http://www.cchere.com/article/264654
不过,有未知根本不代表一定有个主全知。我很反感这种 1+1 !=3 就能证明 1+1 == 4 的莫名其妙的说法。
而这种 “因为科学有未知,所以科学永远不可能完善,所以一定有一个主宰来主导而不是科学”这种逻辑,没完没了地出现在我面前。
----- 嗨,算了,反正这里没有谁信教,否则我退避三舍。我已经放弃了和教徒辩论的打算了。
其中相当多的一部分都是造谣。
比如说很有名的所谓人的脚印和恐龙脚印平行,证明远古的人类存在。后来神创论者不能不承认,那根本不是人的脚印,而是像人的另一种恐龙脚印。
有一个水晶头骨,号称是远古的神物,有什么什么异象,被渲染得很厉害,实际上它是现代科技伪造的古物,而且它也根本没什么奇迹显现。
至于猿人的脑容量大,这是根本不可能的,有这么一个例子,进化论早就死了,根本不用现代的教徒们这么争吵。这恐怕又是轮子功们的造谣。