Re: possibly OT: NYT article on GA creationism/evolution debate

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

cliff parker wrote:
> ...  On the other hand when texts say, as my son's
> biology book does, that life is believed to have spontaneously developed
> from inorganic substances some 3.5 billion years ago while giving little to
> no evidence to support such a statement students are not really given the
> opportunity to think critically about the subject are they?  How honest is
> that?  Sounds more like indoctrination to me.

There are valid grounds for concern, but let's not
over-react.  Alleging dishonest indoctrination is going
too far.

Two wrongs don't make a right.  I agree that PbBA (Proof
by Bold Assertion) is unscientific.  I agree that many
textbooks engage in it.

But let's keep a grip on reality.  We have excellent
methods -- physics methods -- for determining the age
of fossil-bearing rocks.  So the aforementioned bold
assertions about paleobiology !!could!! be rephrased
in scientific terms.

There are lots of fine, honest reasons for abbreviating
the discussion of a topic:

1) Just for brevity, for efficiency, if a fact is
well-established the author is not normally obliged
to defend it in detail.  Perhaps this particular
author should have better anticipated vicious attacks
in this area, and provided a more-detailed defense,
but the omission hardly qualifies as dishonesty.

2) For pedagogic reasons the initial, introductory
discussion of almost ANY topic is incomplete and
unscientific.  You need to get a certain number of
assertions "out there" on the table before you can
even begin to discuss how well they fit together.

Children don't have the resources to check assertions
about carbon-dating the same way a professional
researcher would -- so at some level they are at the
mercy of "the system" to maintain the integrity of
the chain of evidence.

3) An elementary textbook is not expected to be the
final word on the subject.  I assume the school has
an encyclopedia.  Anybody who wants the evidence can
get it.  (Alas, anybody who doesn't want to see the
evidence can always find ways of not seeing it.)

===

Constructive suggestion: this particular textbook
would have been much improved if it had included a
"for further reading" section with pointers into
the scientific literature.

=============

We need to distinguish between
 -- asserting a scientific fact, versus
 -- trying to _prove_ a fact using PbBA.

There's nothing wrong with an assertion, as long as
you don't pretend that the assertion is a proof.

In second grade my teacher asserted that two plus
two makes four.  I'm quite sure she didn't "prove"
it in any deep mathematical sense.  (I very much doubt
that she, or anyone else within many miles, knew
enough about the axioms of arithmetic to even imagine
that such a thing was provable.)

The problem arises when lunatics see scientific facts
asserted without proof and think that if they make their
own assertions, without proof, they are entitled to an
equal hearing.  They're not.  To say that all assertions
should be given equal consideration is really bad policy.
It gives the biggest advantage to the biggest liar.

A thousand pieces of weak evidence do not outweigh one
piece of strong evidence.  A million loud assertions do
not outweigh one piece of real evidence.