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Reading Railroad One Phil Drietz of Delhi, Wisconsin has been reading Scientific American but I don't he's been doin' it right.

The Sensuous Curmudgeon has already rained justifiable scorn on Mr. Drietz but there were a couple of points I thought were worth mentioning. Mr. Drietz asserts:

I have found that interwoven in all the neat science stuff there is a constant philosophical under-current in support of macro-evolution, old-age of the earth and universe, etc.

Most of it is the same ol' guff ... DNA has to be designed because it couldn't come about by "pure random additions of increasingly complex genetic information until we have things like the human brain." Of course, that just shows his deep ignorance of evolutionary theory and/or his confusion of "random" with "non-intentional."

And the discovery of soft "tissue" in a few dinosaur bones should, applying "parsimony," lead us to accept that the "simplest explanation for the data" is that "that the 67 million year radiometric generated figure is totally erroneous" ... even though that means that everything we know about subatomic physics, upon which all our our science of electronics, like the computer technology Mr. Drietz is using to display his ignorance for hundreds of millions to see, has to be completely wrong! Not to mention all of geology, cosmology, astrophysics, astronomy, etc., etc. One anomaly is supposedly enough to throw out all that! ... Parsimony, indeed!

But this is what I found funny/appalling:

Is it any wonder that in a recent survey of 900 high school biology teachers, only 28 percent were found to be teaching mainstream evolution effectively? The majority of teachers evidently know it's a philosophical viewpoint with no real science to support it, and so they try to ignore it or even teach intelligent design in place of it or with it.

We now know beyond a doubt that a segment of the "scientific community" has been lying to us about macro-evolution ...

Already, we know Mr. Drietz' reading skills are less than stellar ... only 13% of biology teachers are creationists who think there is no real science to support evolution. The other more or less 60% are, in one way or another, trying to avoid trouble with people like Mr. Drietz.

But, can anyone possibly confuse high school biology teachers with the scientific community?
Link - Posted by John Pieret @ 9:42 PM "But, can anyone possibly confuse high school biology teachers with the scientific community?"

In a world where millions think TV weather guys are climate scientists? I'd say it's a lock.

# posted by Mike from Ottawa : 10:50 PM

Yeah, I know. I just can't help expressing my amazement nonetheless.
 John Pieret : 5:51 AM

Also note the suggestion that maybe the scientists are fooling us about geocentrism, too.

 Anonymous : 6:43 AM

But anybody who believes in an immaterial soul believes that everything we know about subatomic phsyics is wrong. After all, subatomic physics rests upon the 1st law of thermodynamics. So all people who believe in an immaterial soul, believe that physics is wrong and that the immaterial (non-energy) can interact with the material (energy). Anybody who believes that souls are not of nature (i.e. supernatural) rejects the 1st of thermo. and so can't really be called scientific, even if they do believe in evolution.....

I think this is correct, and I'm possibly wrong. But I wrote it more because I know you're smarter than me, and more learned than me, and therefore will give a decent or undeniable reply that doesn't jetison the 1st law of thermo.
 Brian : 9:02 AM

You're simply assuming materialism and, unsurprisingly, concluding materialism.
 Mike from Ottawa : 9:29 AM

Brian: some people think that quantum mechanics provides a loophole for the immaterial soul to act on the material world. In QM it is frequently the case that an observation can have more than one outcome, each consistent with the 1st law, with no way to know in advance. So the soul could conceivably act to select one outcome over another.
 Anonymous : 10:34 AM


The 1st Law applies to the material universe, which "souls" purportedly are not a part of. Whether souls are immaterial things interacting with the material universe is a trickier question but there are ways to think of souls that avoid the problem.

Drietz, on the other hand, is talking about material things (radioative elements in rocks). He can posit Omphalos (which is hardly parsimonious) or some change in the rate of radioactive decay (which would have profound and detectable consequences for the universe which we don't observe, also violating parsimony). He is violating his own (supposed) criteria for science.
 John Pieret : 12:08 PM
 oakleyses : 9:37 PM
 oakleyses : 9:38 PM
 oakleyses : 9:39 PM

 Name: John Pieret
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