The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe
 

Podcast #27: January 25th 2006 (Download MP3)

Topics:

Issue #1. News Items

Issue #2. Ask The Skeptic

Issue #3. Science or Fiction

Issue #4. Two Views of American Education

Issue #5. The Government and Wacky Science



Issue #1. News Items



Most earth-like planet discovered to date around another star:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11013519/?GT1=7538



Researchers document “stolen” memories:
http://www.world-science.net/exclusives/060121_memoryfrm2.htm



Calif. School Scraps 'Intelligent Design'
By JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press Writer

Tue Jan 17, 9:41 PM
FRESNO, Calif. - Under legal pressure, a rural school district Tuesday canceled an elective philosophy course on "intelligent design" and agreed never to promote the topic in class again.

A group of parents had sued the El Tejon school system last week, accusing it of violating the constitutional separation of church and state with "Philosophy of Design," a high school course taught by a minister's wife that advanced the notion that life is so complex it must have been created by some kind of higher intelligence.

In the federal court settlement, the district agreed to halt the course at Frazier Mountain High next week and said it would never again offer a "course that promotes or endorses creationism, creation science or intelligent design."

"This sends a strong signal to school districts across the country that they cannot promote creationism or intelligent design as an alternative to evolution, whether they do so in a science class or a humanities class," said Ayesha N. Khan, legal director for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which represented the parents.

In a landmark lawsuit, Americans United successfully blocked the Dover, Pa., school system last month from teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in high school biology classes. U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is religion masquerading as science.

However, some activists contended that Jones' ruling opened the door to teaching intelligent design in philosophy or religion classes.

The settlement in the El Tejon school district was announced just before a judge was scheduled to hold a hearing on whether to halt the class midway through the monthlong winter term.

All five of the cash-strapped district's trustees voted to settle the potentially expensive case, said Pete Carton, the district's attorney. The class started Jan. 3 with 15 students.

El Tejon Superintendent John Wight said the subject was proper for a philosophy class. But Americans United argued the course relied almost exclusively on videos that presented religious theories as scientific ones.

District officials were encouraged to settle by the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that supports intelligent design and which had filed a court brief in favor of the Dover school board.

The El Tejon class "was misconceived," said John West, a senior fellow at the institute. "It was almost all about Biblical creationism, not intelligent design."

Sharon Lemburg, a social studies teacher and soccer coach who taught "Philosophy of Design," defended the course in a letter to the weekly Mountain Enterprise. "I believe this is the class that the Lord wanted me to teach," she wrote.

Frazier Mountain High, in the Tehachapi Mountains about 75 miles north of Los Angeles, draws 500 students from a dozen small communities.

Similar battles over intelligent design are being fought in Georgia and Kansas.



 

Issue #2. Ask The Skeptic

Question: “I'm a Christian but I don't believe ID and creationism are science nor can scientists deal meaningfully with metaphysics or the supernatural. Although I agree with your comments on ID and creationism you are ignoring the real problem - evolution.

I'm all for acknowledging scientific evidence, I believe that natural selection is fact and that DNA mutates at some statistical frequency. But I also see major gaps in evolution theory. Let's start with the most basic. The theory is based on the postulate that life originated spontaneously on Earth unassisted by God by some fortuitous mixing of some materials of the universe. A happy accident? What proof do we have of this? Can you recreate this event? No you can't. You believe that it happened as an act of faith. Is that any different than believing in God as a similar act of faith? Can you really be so certain about evolution when it's based on something that can't be proved or demonstrated?

Give me a real email address and I'll expand my views and gladly challenge you to a discussion on this question.”

Answer: Thank you for your question. First, let me correct a misconception in your question – evolutionary theory does NOT deal with the origin of life from non-life. Evolution deals with the change in species over time due to genetic variation and natural selection. It concerns itself with what happens to life after it develops. How life first arose is a separate scientific question.

But let’s deal with that question, as it (and not evolution) is the real focus of your question. What we have been able to confidently infer so far is that the atmosphere of the early earth contained much ammonia, CO2, and water vapor. When subjected to energy – sunlight, electrical storms – these compounds spontaneously form into organic molecules, including amino acids which are one of the basic building blocks of life.

We also know that after a few hundred million years the most primitive cells first appeared. We do not have any direct evidence for how, exactly, this occurred. There are several major hypotheses, all of which are plausible, but there is no direct evidence to support any particular mechanism. However, it is important to note that no one believes that complex modern cells spontaneously arose. All that would be theoretically necessary is for a simple molecule (a precursor to RNA) to arise that was able to make a crude copy of itself. That is all that is necessary for evolution to get a toe hold and start accumulating complexity. It then took about 3 billion years for modern cells to evolve – hardly spontaneous.

So at present there are a number of hypotheses regarding the origins of life from the organic soup of the early earth. Scientists, however, do not “believe” in any particular hypothesis on faith. To suggest this is to completely misunderstand logic and science. Science admits ignorance and the limits of our knowledge, and our ultimate ability to know, but still tries to come up with the best answers possible and then figure out ways to test them. Science also, by necessity, restricts itself to physical mechanisms. The methods of science cannot deal with metaphysical causes.

Your question also falls into the logical pitfall known as the “god of the gaps.” This fallacy takes any current gap in scientific knowledge (usually dealing with questions of origins) and then inserts god into the gap. We don’t know how the first life appeared – therefore god did it. There are two logical fallacies in this line of reasoning: the argument from ignorance (making a positive claim based upon lack of knowledge) and confusing "currently unknown" with "unknowable". The latter fallacy also needs to be put into historical context. The god of the gaps has been around for centuries, but our gaps in scientific knowledge have been constantly shrinking and shifting, and god along with them.

Philosophically, I think it is best to relegate faith to those questions that are inherently outside the realm of science – because they deal with value or moral judgments, or with the ultimate questions of meaning or reality that are not amenable to scientific inquiry. Inserting god into scientific questions that are currently unknown is not legitimate.

Regards, Steven Novella
NESS president
Host, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe
www.theness.com



Issue #3. Science or Fiction

Each week our host will come up with three science news items or facts, two genuine, one fictitious. He will challenge our panel of skeptics to sniff out the fake – and you can play along.

Theme: Atomic Clocks Item #1 – The atomic clock at The US Naval Observatory is actually 556 atomic clocks
Item #2 – There is an atomic wrist-watch
Item #3 – A cesium fountain atomic clock neither gains nor loses a second in 60 million seconds



 

Issue #4. Two Views of American Education

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10663340/site/newsweek/
Fareed Zakaria, columnist for Newsweek, writes about how American education compares to other countries. He raises points that skeptics and scientists have dealt with for years – namely the relative value of rigor vs freedom of expression as teaching philosophies.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10753446/site/newsweek/
George Will, also a Newsweek columnist, wrote a recent column about American education, decrying the lack of value placed upon rigor and content in favor of newagey concepts of diversity. Although he does not use the term expressly, Will is referring to the postmodernist philosophy that has infiltrated and warped the American education system in recent decades.

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Issue #5. The Government ans Wacky Science

 The Register
Scientists moot gravity-busting hyperdrive
Mars in three hours - theoretically
By Lester Haines
Published Friday 6th January 2006 15:03 GMT

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/06/hyperdrive/