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Short Sharp Science: A New Scientist blog

Nobel laureates support repeal of creationist bill

Andy Coghlan, reporter

End-of-term exam for members of the Louisiana legislature

Question 1: Is science equipped to evaluate supernatural explanations for our observations? Explain your reasoning.

Answer: No. "Because the scope of scientific inquiry is consciously limited to the search for naturalistic principles, science remains free of religious dogma... An explanatory principle that by its nature cannot be tested is outside the realm of science."

42 Nobel laureates, 19 April 2011

Forty-two Nobel laureates have backed the repeal of a Louisiana law allowing creationism to be taught in science lessons. They have weighed in to support repeal of the "misguided" Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) of 2008, which allows teachers to bring "supplementary materials" of their own choice into science classes to widen debate on science subjects including evolution, cloning and global warming. In the words of the laureates themselves, "this law creates a pathway for creationism and other forms of non-scientific instruction to be taught in public school classrooms".

The Louisiana saga is the latest attempt by creationists to challenge the teaching of evolution in schools. In previous high-profile cases, creationists have attempted to disguise creationism as other concepts such as "intelligent design", a ploy that was successfully demolished at a trial in Dover, Pennsylvania, in 2005.

In their letter, the laureates back SB-70, a bill introduced to the Louisiana legislature on 15 April by Democratic state senator Karen Carter Peterson. Their letter was posted online by 17-year-old Louisiana schoolboy, Zack Kopplin, from Magnet High School in Baton Rouge, who has spearheaded the fight to get the Louisiana act repealed. The laureates include 17 chemists, an equal number of physicists and eight winners of the medicine Nobel.

Naturally, Kopplin is delighted with his new and prestigious support, as he made clear in an update to his repeal movement blog on Facebook:

It's only been three years since the act was passed unanimously by the Senate. Now there's a repeal, with a groundswell of support, that will be heard in that same chamber. This is a remarkable victory for science. The Louisiana legislature should listen to these 42 Nobel Laureate scientists urging them to repeal this law.

Kopplin has brought together an alliance of students, clergy and businesses to fight for repeal, claiming that the law has made the state a scientific "laughing stock". The clergy have joined up for fear that they will all be tarred with the same "extremist" brush, and businesses are worried that high-tech, science-based industries on which jobs depend will quit any state seen as "anti-science".

Naturally, the Louisiana Family Forum, the loudest supporter of the current law, will be seeking to oppose repeal. And a report last week from the Associated Press cited a spokeswoman for state governor Bobby Jindal as saying that the governor "opposes any attempts to repeal the law".

But with the heavyweight support from the Nobel laureates, and the introduction of the repeal bill, Kopplin and his supporters have new hope. Final word to the laureates, then:

Teaching religious ideas mislabelled as science is detrimental to scientific education: it sets up a false conflict between science and religion, misleads our youth about the nature of scientific inquiry, and thereby compromises our ability to respond to the problems of an increasingly technological world.


Elsewhere, "creationist" bills are also on the ropes. Tennessee's "monkey bill" was designed, like the Louisiana act, to open up debate on "controversies", including "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global warming and human cloning". As reported by the National Center for Science Education, the bill looks like it will run out of time for consideration by the senate education committee in the current legislative session, although it could be considered when it adjourns next year.

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As scientists, what do we do with the fact that in development, the human brain and the heart both form first BEFORE the primitive structures - the aorta and spinal cord? The fact that complexity exists before simplicity throws Darwin's antiquated and pre-scientific musings out the window. Virchow's and Schwann and Schleiden's work also discredit Darwin's erroneous and non-existent mechanism. And what really does Natural Selection explain? We can neither prove Creation nor Evolution - so what? We don't know. Live with that. It's called a mystery. Enjoy it. Stop throwing stones. Creation is religion and so is Evolution - both evidence-less belief systems, of the two, Evolution is the weaker argument scientifically. It has a mountain of Thermodynamics to climb with no energy to climb it. As a human scientist, Creation holds more promise for the future than does the dead dog of Evolution and its bastard stepchild, allopathic medicine. They are now hurting more than helping progress.


Evolution is not "evidenceless", it's been observed, directly and over a course of months, in fruit flies. I've got a program running in the background that uses the same principles to create a picture of Darwin (or anything you choose, it could equally well do one of Jesus). There's plenty of evidence, and certainly far more than exists for traditional biblical creation. I suspect you're confusing "evidencelesslness" with a "theory" - yes, outside of pure mathematics it's nigh-on impossible to prove something 100%, but evolution is still the vastly more likely explanation for the world we see. Yes, creation is also a theory, but one with a similar evidential basis as the Flying Spaghetti Monster (all hail his noodly appendage) who was created to mirror the statistical likelyhood of {insert deity of choice} creating the universe.


Since evolution is "truth", there would be no problem if critical thinking were encouraged right? It should strengthen the position of evolution because of the "mountain of evidences" that will further establish it. Unless of course evolution is false...


@Jeff Prystupa
The brain and heart _don't_ form before the "primitive" structure. Unsurprisingly their "primitive" precursors form at the same time, in the fifth week of gestation.

And in what way exactly does the work of Virchow, Schwann and Schleiden discredit Darwin? Schleiden was in fact one of the first German biologists to accept Darwin's theory of evolution. So he's a good example to the contrary of your assertion.

As for what does natural selection explains? That you don't need a designer to have complex things emerge from simpler things. It has proven itself as a practical design principle in industry, something that can't be said for creationism (since it doesn't really tell you anything). Evolution has a great problem solving capacity which we can take advantage of (just look at all the various applications of genetic algorithms). Evolution has application value, you can use it to make things, as well as predictive value in how something like an epidemic progresses; creationism has at best some theological value.
But creationism is not science, because it does neither investigates itself nor the world; it does not test itself and it has no practical application. In fact it is the opposite of science, in that it denies what we find out in the world in favour of what it wants to find. In addition, it implicitly asserts that God is actively out to deceive us; because everything from biology to cosmology conflicts with a literal creation account. So given the choice that creationism is right and God is a big fat liar, or that creationism is wrong, I'll go with the latter.

In closing, I'll link to some advice Saint Augustin left us:


That same evolution may well dictate how fast parts of the body grow, such as growing a brain and heart faster than other parts of the body. This is particularly important in humans, who require their brains to develop at a rather impressive speed in the womb in order to survive. Moreover, to use your example again; it seems to make logical sense that the components would develop so that they're useful by the time they're connected together. I see no reason for evolution to be incompatible with this example, and if that is the only reason you have for justifying creationism, thank you and good day sir.



I was going to write a line-by-line argument debunking everything you wrote, then I got to this little gem;

"Evolution is the weaker argument scientifically"

You've already done more than I ever could in discrediting you.


Science cannot be determined by law, the courts, or popular opinion. If the evolutionist dogmatists want to prove their theory let them do it with science.


Mr Prystupa, do I understand correctly that you are going against the 42 NOBEL LAUREATES? Do I understand correctly that you "think" evolution is not possible? Please clarify for me, thankyou.


In response to Jeff Prystupa's comment, Creation (by a supernatural entity) is not a scientific explanation at all. It posits that the explanation for something complex and partially known is something presumeably even more complex and completely unknown, and if theology is to be believed, unknowable.
At best, that's a conjecture in need of a cogent explanation itself. But there isn't even a grounded (non-abstract) vocabulary in which you can discuss the question of supernatural creation. It's all words in the air, supported by the heat of their utterance.


Just have to refute one of the "not even wrong" points in Jeff's post.
The most direct subject of evolution is the information embodied in the genome. This information, arguably the essence of (each type of) life, is conserved from generation to generation and includes the instructions for constructing (through direct and indirect processes) ALL of the organism's body. The information constructs the body in an order determined by many constraints including the constraint of feasible incremental modification of earlier construction processes of simpler ancester organism types. The information however is constructing a whole organism, and there is no complexity before simplicity because all of the information needed for the entire construction process was always there (as far as the new organism is concerned), passed in the genome from the parent instance(s) of the organism.


It is tiresome to keep hearing the line "evolution is religion" spouted. It is not. It is science. There is evidence for it. It is not under debate by any respected scientist. That does not mean there aren't many open questions, some of them very difficult. But we should never let complexity daunt us. Gravity, disease, light and so many other things were considered very mysterious. Now we have greater understanding - and while there is less mystery, the way it all works is quite marvelous, and should be inspiring to all.


Jeff i'm afraid evolution has more scientific evidence proving its existance than any other theory humanity has come up with. Unfortunately it is people like you that seek to confuse the situation just like these American governors. Creationism theory IS NOT A SCIENTIFIC THEORY and therefore cannot be taught as science.


Sighs at 1st comment.


Jeff Prystupa, either you have a great sense of humor, or your 1980's TRS-80 wrote the comment after a 200 degree heat spike damaged it's CPU. No human could have put together that comment.


Jeff said: "Creation is religion and so is Evolution - both evidence-less belief systems, of the two, Evolution is the weaker argument scientifically." That of course is a lie. A simple, openly stated lie, easily disproved. One need only look at the multiple independent lines of evidence for evolution found in: patterns of morphology, co-evolved relationships, convergent evolution, observed speciation, Lenski experiments, shared DNA, inherited ERV markers, molecular biology, vestigial traits, atavisms, genetic mutation, embryology, the fossil record, paleontology, archaeology, transitional species predictions, radiometric dating, dendrochronology, thermoluminescence dating, ice core dating, biostratiography, archaeogenetics, biogeography, plate tectonics, geology, chemistry, and physics.

But of course Jeff's use of the term "allopathic" puts him firmly in the camp of "believers in anything without evidence". If we value justice, let's hope he's never on a criminal trial jury.

And let's continue to teach our kids actual science - it's worked well so far. Just compare how much our knowledge of nature has progressed over the past 2000 years as compared to our knowledge of, for example, demons, or angels, or gods.


Creationism belongs to the medieval age, not the 21st Century. Repeal the creationist bill no matter what.


Yaaaaawn. What a predictable rant.


Don't pretend Religion is Science, end of story.

Religion has it's place and it falls to the individual where that line is drawn - or isn't drawn.

Science promotes progress not simply for one belief over another (in parallel, yes. In juxtaposition and from different perspectives, yes, and that's why we have paradigm shifts. No one can claim that Darwin knew perfectly what the natural world had to offer, nor can we attribute that to any one person, it is a collaboration, a scientific mosaic that provides us with a clearer picture). Science ushers humanity towards humbling answers about what we are, what we may come to do and fundamentally acknowledges our individual worth not in retrospect after death but in each moment and in that we can immediately appreciate those people we touch and the lives we come to affect not simply because there is judgement but because we can appreciate each other and our human frailties.

If we are to break down all boundaries between Science and Religion then start letting Scientists into Religious establishments and see how Religions would react. It would be pure anarchy if the tables were to turn.

Religion simply must let Science move forward and those people who teach Creationist "Science" should be ashamed of how they are limiting the world around them.

And finally: If we are expected to take Religion "Science" as valid then first it must stop pretending to be "Science" and start providing evidence to support its claims rather than continuously using antiquated ad hominem arguments.


haha that's Trolling with a capital T. lol

way 2 go Jeff !!!


Can you backup your statement about how creation holds more promise than evolution ? Infact, it seems like vice versa position looking how many crimes , ignorance and irrational thought in today's world which is motivated by religion.

Evolution is certainly more substantiative than creationism, disproving it with empirical evidence with alternative theory still would not give any credibility to validate creationist ideas. However desperate human ego might need self assurance there is more evidence that we are related to apes.

Are you suggesting homeopathy , accupuncture and chiropractry to a patient in critical care ?


Is it nice on your planet?


Jeff, dude, WHAT? So, you're saying that a religious theory is more scientifically plausible than a SCIENTIFIC theory. Here's my opinion on how science works: Observations are made of the physical world around us, and this observational knowledge is then used to (accurately) explain other phenomena. We've studied the atomic structure of the various cells and associated molecules in our bodies, and have plausibly theorised how we came to exist. As is the case of allopathic medicine: Studies of our physiology have GREATLY helped to determine how to treat illnesses and injuries. I find it easier to believe that, being comprised of atoms and molecules, various combinations of these same atoms and molecules were crucial in the formation of life.


Religion and science should never mix. Two different mind sets. Religion, beliefs. Science, when done right, fact as it stands today.


Anon said "religion is a matter of belief".
But I rather think that religion relies more on a confusion about what belief is or ought to be. Belief ought to be rational justified belief, consistent with other beliefs and known facts.
But the kind of belief relied upon by religion can be summed up by the equation "belief = ignorance + wish + hope"
For "I believe I will go to heaven when I die"
we can substitute:
"I do not know where I will go when I die or if I will continue in some fashion" +
"I really wish I could continue on somehow and not just end and miss out" +
"I fervently hope that's true".


For "I believe god determines our fate and enacts justice in so doing."
we can substitute:
"I do not know what will determine my fate. a human life is so complex." +
"I wish that my fate can be influenced positively by my acting in a good manner and that some observer and judge is there to see and weigh that to hand out the reward I deserve." +
"I hope that's how it works because otherwise I feel I might be missing opportunities to freeload, and I might feel that other freeloaders will get off scot free."

Note that some of these wished and hoped for things (like the latter one) may in fact be partly true, for example justice wrt behaviour being enforced by societal norms and reputation/shunning mechanisms. The cause and effect relationship you are wishing for may to some degree exist but for a different reason that you are supposing.


When I finished my Biology degree, I got a teaching job in a Catholic school. I asked if there were special considerations around teaching evolution there and the Mother Superior said "No, you teach the best you know. The Bible was never trying to be a recipe book. We didn't know HOW people were made before, and now we're learning- exciting isn't it?"


Why do scientists who subscribe to the evolutionary theory always assume that religion is incompatible with the observable and provable sciences? They always claim that there's "mountains" of evidence in favor of their theory but deny any other 'interpretation' of that same evidence than those supporting their view. Another point I have is that they assume that the realm of religion is "supernatural." Most physicists today support the theory that there are many other dimensions of reality. Who's to say that not seeing something proves its inexistence? And on the subject of the origin of life, what theories are there for the space and matter for the big bang to occur withen anyways? I like most areas of science because it explains things and its cool, but every time I come across some airhead's article about the supposed age of "evolution" of different species, I can't help but notice how it invariably reads like a b grade novel. It's all just guesswork. If you're going to assume that all life comes from some infiinitly small peice of matter, at least think far enough to create a theory of where that came from! When people talk about evolution as if its a proven fact, they really show ignorance of one very important fact. The strands of coded nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon, and oxygen called dna are erroneously thought to somehow get scrambled over the ages and therefore change into a different form of life. Ok. I'm done arguing for now. Counterpoints please. Oh, 1 more thing: evolutionists use the commonality of all life as a defense for the common origin of species from one creature. Technically, your theory is close if you consider God the origin, and forget everything else Darwin made up while on shrooms.


Wow - Jeff P. and Need More Proof. So much so wrong but I'll just suggest that your use of the word "proof" and saying neither is provable only proves that neither of you are scientists. I think you're confusing the issue with geometry.

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