A response is offered to several of the points made by Ms. Nichols.

Tim Gaudin

>Well, I couldn't stand to see Stephen out on the limb all by himself, so
>I'll join him--
>
>All,
>Did anyone observe God create life?  Did anyone observe evolution create
>life?
>Since life is not currently being created now, then the investigation
>into the origin of life is a historical investigation, not a scientific
>investigation.

This is nonsense.  On what basis does Ms. Nichols exclude the
historical sciences from "scientific investigation?"  Does she truly
think it is not possible to investigate the past scientifically?
Such a view would exclude not only the historical sciences like
cosmology, historical geology, evolutionary biology, and physical
anthropology, which together comprise broad, important, and vibrant
areas of modern science, but even topics like forensic science. Is it
not possible to make scientific, repeatable observations about, say,
crimes that happened yesterday?  If not, our criminal justice system
is in for serious difficulties.  And if we can accept the validity of
something like forensic science, why not the others? Clearly,
historical science is science.

>Today life reproduces after its own kind.  But, at one
>point it had to be caused to come into being.  Evolutionists believe
>that natural forces are the cause of the origin of life.

Science restricts itself to natural explanations for natural
phenomena.  It is this methodological assumption that in large part
separates science from theology.  This is not to say that the
supernatural does not exist, or that supernatural explanations cannot
be true (a matter for philosophers and theologians to debate, and
well beyond my purview), only that supernatural explanations are not
Science.

>Creationists
>believe that a supernatural force caused life to originate.  Either way,
>it happened once and in the past.  And the acceptance of either theory
>is a matter of faith.


This last statement belies a complete misunderstanding of the
distinction between science and religious faith.  Science is based
only on the "faith" that one can make reliable, repeatable, and
falsifiable observations about the nature of the natural world.
Scientists do not "believe" in evolution in the same way that a
Christian believes in some doctrine of Christianity.  Rather, a
scientist accepts evolution because it is consistent with what we
observe about the natural world.  To conflate the two misrepresents
both ways of trying to understand the world.

>One's beliefs about the origin of life necessarily colors their
>assumptions about the way in which the universe works today.  It also
>biases the way in which one investigate the way in which the universe
>and the life within it works today.  It's not wrong to be biased.  It is
>wrong to deny your own bias and vilify others for having a different bias.
>That brings us back to academic freedom.  It's wrong for one bias to
>monopolize the discussion and to shut out the opposition.

This is a very clever rhetorical slight of hand.  Falsely equate
"creation science" with actual science, accuse scientists of
rejecting the former because of "bias" rather than any objective
evaluation of the evidence, and then invoke academic freedom to
advance your viewpoint.  However, as I note above, "creation science"
is not science, and so it is hardly "biased" to exclude it from
science curricula or scientific discussions.  It is no more a
violation of academic freedom to exclude creationism from the
scientific discussions than it is a violation of academic freedom to
exclude discussions of paleontology from, say, a computer engineering
classroom.  Moreover, "creation science" is based entirely upon the
willingness of creationists to discuss matters publicly that they
know nothing about, and to spread either willful ignorance or
misinformation under the guise of scientific evidence.  I think this
was amply demonstrated by the exchanges between Dr. Honerkamp and Dr.
Nichols concerning carbon dating.  Academic freedom was never
intended to protect the dissemination of clearly erroneous or
intentionally misleading information.

>I don't expect evolutionists to accept a supernatural cause for the
>origin of life.  I do expect them to be honest enough to admit that
>their prior rejection of a supernatural cause is the reason that they
>reject theories that include, for example, a worldwide flood as a part
>of an explanation for mass extinction and fossilization; coal, oil and
>natural gas formation; mountain and canyon formation; and the
>unreliability of radiometric dating.

This is in an interesting set of statements.  Of course,
historically, Western Science began with the assumption that the
Bible was literally true, and that, as one example, one could explain
the geological record through the actions of the Biblical Noachian
flood.  The reason that these biblical explanations were abandoned by
Western scientists was not because of any anti-religious bias.
Indeed, most of the people to whom we owe the basics of our current
understanding of Historical Geology were devout Christians.  The
problem was that the evidence did not fit.  You simply cannot explain
the historical geological record with a single, fairly recent global
flood [an excellent summary of this is contained in an article
published recently in American Scientist, 1998, 86(2): 160-173; or,
you could take our wonderful course in Historical Geology (GEOL 112)
here on campus]

>Or that their same a priori bias
>against all things Biblical is the basis of their rejection of the
>creationist theory that the "kinds" of life are separate and distinct
>from one another, that variation within a kind is to be expected as a
>result of natural selection on the genetic information inherent to that
>kind, and that one kind cannot give rise to another kind.  (The idea of
>"kinds" comes from the KJV interpretation of the Hebrew word bara.
>Creationists who work in this particular field, small though it is,
>equate the Biblical bara/kind with the Linnean classification level
>family-- although there is not a firm consensus on this.)

Creationists  are notoriously slippery when it comes to the use of
the word "kind." It is noteworthy that Ms. Nichols offers no real
definition, but suggests that the term might be equivalent to a
Linnean "Family."  In biological parlance, the Linnean "Family" is a
historical entity, a group of living and extinct species that share a
remote common ancestor, and that share a set of similarities they
inherited from that common ancestor.  As such, families do not
reproduce themselves, nor can they be the subject of natural
selection.  Natural selection acts on species, on populations, and on
individual organisms, which are capable of reproduction and the
exchange of genetic information.  That new "kinds" of animals can
arise through the process of natural selection is amply demonstrated
both in the genetics lab and in the fossil record.

>We all have observed mountains and canyons, variation and natural
>selection, but only a select few get to voice their opinions on the
>origins of the things that we all observe.
>No need to respond, I'll just ask Stephen for updates.
>Suzanna Nichols


--
Timothy J. Gaudin, Ph.D.
Department of Biological &
        Environmental Sciences (Dept. 2653)
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Avenue
Chattanooga, TN   37403-2598
Ph: (423) 425-4163     FAX: (423) 425-2285
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