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

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 10:21 -0500 8/24/02, James Mackey wrote:
> I must interject here that the chain from scientific evidence of the age
> of the earth to the conclusion that the earth is old seems strong,
> howver because that is strong does not mean that the conclusion that
> life arose by spontaneous generation 2 - 3.5 billion years ago is
> strong.  I certainly agree that at the k-12 level  (or even college) one
> cannot assert all of the evidence for an idea.  My objection would be
> the implication of that approach that there are NO other ideas about the
> origin of life that are possible.  As I read the initial statements
> about that decision, I concluded that this was one of the major reasons
> many parents felt compelled to take the steps they did.  I would not
> criticize them for doing so!

While I believe that life arose spontaneously some 3.5 BYA, it is not
appropriate to put that in an introductory science textbook, and
argue or even imply that we know that for sure. While we have some
ideas about how life *might* have arisen spontaneously, we have never
successfully created life, or even generated anything close enough to
argue that we even know "in principle," how it happened. And
evolution does not deal with that, either. Evolution talks about
"descent with modification," and not "the origin of life."

Since that is still an open question, scientifically, it should be
presented as such in textbooks. To imply more is disingenuous.

But this is part of the problem with textbooks. When all they do is
present factoids, it is hard for the students to separate out the
well-established factoids from the speculative ones. The easiest
things to prove by appeal to authority are the false things.

Science education will, IMO, only be a well-taught subject when we
put the emphasis on the process rather than on the results. Both are
important, but the results are tentative, the process is not.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto:haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto:hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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