Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!sytek!syteka!jtm From: jtm@syteka.UUCP Newsgroups: net.origins Subject: How to fill a vacuum Message-ID: <496@syteka.UUCP> Date: Tue, 18-Dec-84 21:45:49 EST Article-I.D.: syteka.496 Posted: Tue Dec 18 21:45:49 1984 Date-Received: Fri, 21-Dec-84 07:46:09 EST References: ihuxl.1451 Lines: 54 Creationists are filling a need of the semi-literate of this country and the world. The teaching of rigorous analytic techniques and adherence to honesty as an integral, and inseparable, partt of the scientific method has been put on the shelf in our elementary and high schools, and worst of all in our universities and colleges. The emphasis is now on training programs which will earn the degree candidate some big bucks at the expense of learning about the process of learning itself, the prime goal of the now-maligned liberal arts curriculums. Professors are motivated not by furthering their respective fields of knowledge but by the need to publish something, anything, better yet something that will make them a star. White lies are accepted as a way of holding academic confusion at bay for awhile. What do you say to a student who asks "what does all this mean"? You can say "no one knows, just bang away at it for ever" or you can say "oh, it means X". So to the befuddled mind that has gotten far too little training in constructive thought processes, the solution is: find a label with some ring of truth to it and hang on tight. Get a bunch of these people together and you have a consensus that passes for truth, at least among them. Before long you have several such groups in a shouting match with each other over whose label best describes the thing they all want explained. And the search for truth is trampled underfoot. Who are the Creationists arguing with? That is, who are the Evolutionists? It appears we have a case of those for/those against. If your not a Creationist, your an Evolutionist. But evolution is simply a term for the scientific communities current set of theories on the history of life as we know it. (Poorly worded but to the point.) The goal of science is to further understanding, NOT to settle on an ultimate set of theories. Are the Creationists aiming their scimitars at the writings of Darwin or Mendel? Or at the institutions, private and publicly funded, which have encouraged and aided study which has led to the current body of works reflecting our understanding of what has gone on in the last ten billion years? Oh, excuse me, I guess that could be ten thousand years, couldn't it? I've never seen a published scientist say how old the universe is, just how old he/she is currently assuming it is for purposes of formulating a model from which to build and test further hypotheses. But if I'm in a corner, what the hell: the universe is ten billion years old and life has been gradually and uniformly progressing as static from a gigantic washer/dryer complex in an adjacent galaxy has caused subtle changes in electricity that cause evolution. There. Prove there's no washer/dryer complex in some adjacent galaxy. While you're doing that, I'll publish this theory. Might make a few bucks and my mom'll think I'm still a good little boy. "There can be no image of the world by which one may understand it. Such an image would of necessity be the world itself." Lao-Tsu, pre-Commie Chinese proto-evolutionist/creationist. Jim McCrae - {hplabs,decvax}!sytek!jtm