evolution creeds

John Grehan jrg13 at psu.edu
Tue Aug 17 21:23:01 EDT 1999


Neil Jones posted the creed required by the The Creation Research Society
and pointed out that it was religion based on faith while science is based
on having proofs that are disprovable. While I agree with some of the
points I sometimes wonder about the role of faith in science as well.
However when it comes to creeds secience and religion might sometimes
have something in common.

The National Association of Biology Teachers, for example, endorses certain
tenets of science, evolution and biology teaching, including (I paraphrase
slightly):

(1) Evolution is affected by natural selection, chance, historical
contingencies and
changing environments.

So it seems that orthogenetic processes don't get the official stamp of
approval by
the Association and are not to be taught?

(2) Natural selection is the primary mechanism for evolution.

This might be the most popular view, but there are others. Interesting that the
popular view gets the official endorsement.

(3) Natural selection has no specifici direction or goal

Interetingly this is how many evolutionists "explain" adaptions - by
stating what
they are "for"

(4) In science a theory is not a guess.

It might be a critically evaluated guess, but a guess remains a guess.
Calling it s theory
does not change that.

I don't know what happens to teachers that cannot conform to all the
tenets, but I
certainly know that I don't go along with all of them. Does that mean I would be
banned from teaching evolution in the classroom? Perhaps I should not be allowed
to publish on evolution either.

Sorry for the lepslist posting. I realize this is perhaps getting away from
moths
and butterflies.

John Grehan



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