Sitaatteja

"Evoluutiolla tarkoitetaan yleisessä merkityksessä ajassa tapahtuvaa muuttumis- ja kehitysprosessia. Teoriana sillä tarkoitetaan biologista evoluutiota eli populaatioiden perinnöllisten ominaisuuksien siirtymistä ja kehittymistä sukupolvien saatossa.

Evoluutioteoria on nykyisin vallalla oleva tieteellinen käsitys lajien synty- ja kehitysmekanismeista. Sen esitteli englantilainen Charles Darwin kirjassaan Lajien synty 1859.

Luonnonvalinta on keskeinen osa kehitysoppia. Luonnonvalinnan vaikutuksesta ympäristöön parhaiten sopeutuneet yksilöt saavat enemmän lisääntymiskykyisiä jälkeläisiä kuin huonommin sopeutuneet yksilöt.

Väite siitä, että ihminen ja muut elolliset olennot ovat liian monimutkaisia syntyäkseen sattumanvaraisesti. Niiden syntymiseen on tarvittu jonkinlaista korkeampaa älyllistä voimaa, Suunnittelijaa.

Älykkään suunnittelun kannattajien mukaan luonnonvalintaan pohjautuva tieteellinen evoluutiomalli on riittämätön selittämään elämän alkuperän, monimutkaisuuden ja monimuotoisuuden."

Vesa Vanhalakka, Aamulehti 12.05.2005

Ilkka Niiniluodon korvissa älykäs suunnittelu kuulostaa ilmeisesti tällaiselta:

"Älykäs suunnittelu on sinänsä kiinnostava teema, mutta luonteeltaan uskonnollinen tai uskonnonfilosofinen oletus"

Ilkka Niiniluoto

Ylioppilaslehti, 29.10.2004

Tukholma. Joka neljäs ruotsalainen kyseenalaistaa evoluutioteorian uskoen Jumalan tai jonkun muun korkeamman voiman luoneen maan elollisine olentoineen. Tiedot ilmenevät Ruotsin television SVT:n teettämästä tutkimuksesta, johon vastasi 1 000 ruotsalaista.

Vähiten vastakaikua evoluutioteoria saa vanhempien naisten keskuudessa, pienissä kaupungeissa, Länsi-Ruotsissa sekä Smålannissa, joka on uskovaisten vahvaa tukialuetta. Toisaalta myös verraten moni ikäryhmään 15-29 kuuluvista nuorista naisista hylkää evoluutioteorian.

Tutkimuksessa käy ilmi myös puoluekannan vaikutus uskonasioissa, sillä kristillisdemokraateista yli 50 prosenttia on valmis hylkäämään evoluutioteorian, kun taas ympäristöpuolueesta ainoastaan yksi prosentti ei kelpuuta evoluutiota.

Samankaltainen tutkimus 1990-luvun lopussa paljasti, että vain puolet ruotsalaisista uskoo evoluutioteoriaan. Vastaavia lukuja on saatu myös Yhdysvalloista, jossa kyselyjen perusteella 60-70 prosenttia ihmisistä uskoo kirjaimellisesti Raamatun luomiskertomukseen.

Lähde: Helsinginsanomat: www.hs.fi, 20.4.2006 klo 00:10

"DNA Repair Machines

All the information for heredity is encoded in DNA molecules that are constantly under attack from sources inside and outside the body—by sunlight, ionizing radiation, other environmental carcinogens, and free radicals from the normal cellular metabolism. Surprisingly, most of this damage comes from the chemical reactions that are the normal processes needed for life, so life is impossible without DNA repair even in the absence of environmental toxins."

(TSRI News & Views, Vol 6. Issue 13, 10.4.2006:
"Enzyme Crystal Structure Reveals "Unexpected" Genome Repair Functions")

Tämä ei ole sitaatti, vaan
tähän blogaukseen on tarkoitettu osoitettavaksi mahdolliset kommentit esittämiini sitaatteihin liittyen.

"I’m actually not a methodological pluralist, in the Feyerabendian sense of ‘letting a thousand flowers bloom’. And I’m not a relativist or a postmodernist either. At least the people who normally call themselves these things would not see me as one of theirs. "

Steve Fuller, blogissa 12.07.2005

Fuller määrittelee itse positionsa tieteen kentällä
seuraavasti: hän ei ole postmodernisti vaan pikemmin
valistuksen perinnettä jatkava edistyksellinen
filosofi (mutta kannattaa kyllä konstruktionismia
ja relativismia) (’Steve Fuller replies’).

Samaiselta sivulta löytyy tarkennus sille, mihin tekstiin on tarkemmin ottaen viitattu:

‘Steve Fuller Replies’, http://www.michaelberube.
com/index.php/weblog/steve_fuller_replies/,
posted 051205.

Anna Rotkirch & J.P.Roos, viitteissään, Tieteessä Tapahtuu, 2/2006

*****

Olen kopioinut kyseisen Tieteessä Tapahtuu-lehdessä viitatun tekstin tänne. Lukija voi verrata halutessaan Anna Rotkirchin ja J.P.Roosin esittämää siihen, mitä Fuller tekstissä, johon he viittaavat, sanoi. Yllä olevaa sitaattia voi myös verrata siihen, mitä Fuller eräässä blogissa omaksi positiokseen on kertonut.

[Minä en ainakaan ole keksinyt vielä syytä sille, miksi akatemiatutkija Anna Rotkirch ja professori J.P.Roos ovat viitanneet kyseiseen tekstiin. Viitatusta tekstistä kun en edes löydä kohtaa, jossa Fuller kertoisi suhteestaan konstruktionismiin ja relativismiin. Jos joku muu löytää, ilmoittakoon.]

Dear me, what a load of … responses!

First, on a rhetorical note, many – though not all—of you guys seem to think I bear the burden of proof of showing that your preconceived ideas about ID are wrong. If I don’t refute something you already believe about it, then I must be wrong. Well, things might be a bit more complicated than that. I’ll take these in some kind of order:

1.‘ID people aren’t biologists’. Michael Behe is a biochemist, Scott Minnich (one of the defence’s expert witnesses) is a microbiologist. These fields are normally seen as part of biology, at least when evolutionists practice it. Of course, not all ID people are biologists, but then neither are all defenders of evolution—especially the philosophers. One non-biologically trained philosopher stands out in this context: Michael Ruse, who established the benchmark that was used in the 1982 Arkansas to kick Creationism out of the classroom.

2.‘ID people are mostly Christian’. So are most scientists of the modern era. In fact, the scientists these days who most loudly flaunt their anti-Christian, atheist colours can’t escape smuggling some kind of theistically inspired thought, including James Watson’s desires to play God, Steven Weinberg’s peculiar fascination with the aesthetic quality of simplicity and the anthropic principle (both of which have Newtonian provenance), Dawkins’ compulsive resort to design-based metaphors and nonsense talk about ‘design without a designer’ without much literal to replace it with. At the end of the day, the main argument for design is an attenuated version of Kant’s view that we need to presuppose a purposeful unity in science in order for science to be possible – at least at the scale and intensity in which Newton did it. The question to ask here is what value, if any, does atheism contribute to good science?

3.‘Modern evolution theory is about more than just Darwin’. Yes, of course it is. But even evolution’s staunchest defenders have remarked on the strong iconic role that Darwin continues to play in this field, which is quite unusual in the natural sciences. An important reason is the politically correct lesson that his life teaches: the idea that science causes you to lose your faith. Newton, unfortunately, thought his theory confirmed his reading of the Bible. Not very politically correct.

*****

4.‘ID is the new phlogiston’. Maybe so. But that does not phlogiston was a scientific concept dealt with by scientific means. Being true and being scientific are quite different things. One thing that ID does share with phlogiston is that it’s part of a conceptual system that is incommensurable to that of the respective dominant position: i.e. ID is cutting reality at different joints from Darwinism. In particular, ID is primarily as theory not of life, but of design, which is a concept indifferent to the life/non-life distinction. God creates the universe like we create artefacts. The revival of this analogy, which was the basis of the mechanical world-view that launched the Scientific Revolution, is one of the most exciting features of ID. Here Dembski’s work on trying to define design as a distinct explanatory category is quite interesting and worth pursuing, though not yet successful. He’s the one who’s pursued a research agenda that is least parasitic on weaknesses in evolution, which I agree is not an ideal way to run a would-be science.

5.‘ID is just a front for the notorious Wedge document that would re-Christianise America’. So what? We don’t throw Darwin off the curriculum because many of his followers supported eugenics and even Nazism, and have been generally opposed to elaborate state-based welfare policies. If judged scientific theories by what we think of what motivates them, then we wouldn’t have much science left. This is why it’s important to distinguish the contexts of discovery and justification: ID can be as religiously motivated as you like. What matters is whether it can be developed, criticised and tested without having the motives. And the answer is yes.

6. ‘Newton and Einstein were “religious” in a good sense because they were open-minded guys who did real science. ID people are “religious” in a bad sense because they’re closed-minded guys who are really doing religion’. I slightly caricature here the dumbest comment made so far. As so often happens, people tend to read history – especially history of science – already knowing what happened in the end and then projecting that back into the original situation. How do you suppose Newton appeared before he became canonical – or for that matter any of those nonconformist Christians who started the Scientific Revolution? Many went underground with their beliefs, and when those beliefs were either persecuted or regarded as somewhat loopy. Some things never change…

I’m sure I left out some truly incisive criticisms. If so, I’m sure one of you will remind me of it.

Steve Fuller, blogissa 5.12.2006

The Guardian, 27.3.2006, kirjoittaja: Madeleine Bunting

Why the intelligent design lobby thanks God for Richard Dawkins

Anti-religious Darwinists are promulgating a false dichotomy between faith and science that gives succour to creationists

...

But while Dembski, Dawkins and Dennett are sipping the champagne for their very different reasons, there is a party pooper. Michael Ruse, a prominent Darwinian philosopher (and an agnostic) based in the US, with a string of books on the subject, is exasperated: "Dawkins and Dennett are really dangerous, both at a moral and a legal level." The nub of Ruse's argument is that Darwinism does not lead ineluctably to atheism, and to claim that it does (as Dawkins does) provides the intelligent-design lobby with a legal loophole: "If Darwinism equals atheism then it can't be taught in US schools because of the constitutional separation of church and state. It gives the creationists a legal case. Dawkins and Dennett are handing these people a major tool."

There's no room for complacency, urged Ruse over lunch in London last week. Last December's court ruling against the teaching of intelligent design in some Pennsylvania schools may have been a blow, but now the strategy of the creationist/intelligent-design lobby is to "chisel away at school-board level" across the US. The National Centre for Science Education believes that as many as 20% of US schools are teaching creationism in some form. Evolution is losing the battle, says Ruse, and it's the fault of Dawkins and Dennett with their aggressive atheism: they are the creationists' best recruiting sergeants.

Ruse has got to a reckless stage of his career. He prefaced the essay he submitted for Dawkins's festschrift with the above quote from Dembski and went on to declare that he "felt intensely irritated with Dawkins ... It's bad enough having to fight the enemy without having to watch my back because of my friends." The editors were horrified and ordered a more deferential rewrite - which Ruse duly provided.

Even more reckless, Ruse put on the net an email exchange between himself and Dennett in which he accused his adversary of being an "absolute disaster" and of refusing to study Christianity seriously: "It is just plain silly and grotesquely immoral to claim that Christianity is simply a force for evil." Dennett's reply was an opaque one line: "I doubt you mean all the things you say."

But Ruse has got a point. Across the US, the battle over evolution in science teaching goes on. Just in the past month there have been bills in state legislatures in New York, Mississippi, Nevada and Arkansas promoting intelligent design. Last November the Kansas education board promulgated a new definition of science that allowed for supernatural explanations of natural phenomena. A school district in Kansas rebelled last month, accusing their board of "an utterly false belief that evolutionary science and the scientific method is based on atheistic philosophy. Promoting this false conflict between science and faith erects unnecessary barriers." At the heart of many of these local controversies is the firmly held belief that Darwinism leads to atheism, indeed that it is atheism. Across the US, a crude and erroneous conflict is being created between science as atheism and religion.

...

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