Friday, January 4, 2008
The National Academies of Science yesterday released a new edition of
Science, Evolution, and Creationism, a report first issued in 1984 and
updated in 1999. Much has happened in the war between science and
religion in the intervening years. The panel that produced the report
was headed by Francisco Ayala, a biologist at UC, Irvine, and a former
Dominican priest. Clearly intended for a lay audience, the report refers
to evolution as "the foundation of modern biology." Hearing only the
briefest mention of the NAS report on the morning news, I went to
Google "News" to get an idea of the press reaction. The first item that
came up was a press release from The Discovery Institute calling
the "foundation of modern biology" description "outrageous hype." The
Discovery Institute, you will recall, is where intelligent design was
dreamed up. Released on the day of the Iowa Caucus, the Science,
Evolution, and Creationism report was all but ignored by mainstream
media. The report stresses that acceptance of evolution does not require
abandoning belief in God. However, there is a growing mountain of
evidence supporting evolution and not a shred of evidence for the
existence of God.
Ironically, on the day NAS released its report, Science, Evolution and
Creationism, the Republican Caucus in Iowa was picking an avowed
creationist to be their choice as the nominee for President of the United
States. Could we have designed a worse procedure for selecting nominees
for "leader of the free world"? The NAS report was intended to explain to
the American people the absolute certainty of evolution, and the sheer
foolishness of creationism. Asked on ABC Good Morning America if he
thought creationism should be taught in the schools, he dodged, saying he
favors education.
There it sits like a monument to past glories, on the launchpad where it
has been for a month. Maybe in another month they will get the fuel gauge
working, but by then a Russian cargo ship may be blocking the docking port
on the ISS. The aging shuttle was to have been launched on December 6.
They still have 13 launches to go in the next two years to complete the
ISS in time to abandon it on schedule.
A federal Judge yesterday severely limited the Navy's use of sonar on a
training range of the Southern California coast. Balancing national
security and the welfare of whales is not a new problem. Twenty years
ago, in an effort to monitor global temperature change, it was proposed to
locate huge hydrophones off lonely, fog-shrouded Herd Island in the
Antarctic, perhaps the gloomiest place on Earth - which is why no one
lives there. But whales love it. Sound pulses from Herd would be detected
in Coos Bay, OR. Speed of sound is related to water temperature, giving an
ocean-average temperature. It was cancelled to protect the whales.
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