Head scientist vows to toe the line on Darwin and global warming

Watch out, the 'Thought-Police' have struck. Don't be surprised when Dr. Gavriel Avital is sent to a 're-education clinic' somewhere in an undisclosed area of the Negev for re-programing. Big Brother is in control!

Neither evolution nor the Big Bang theory disprove the existence of god; so if you like to believe in something or someone that directs all this and that watches over you, you can still cherish your beliefs. Indeed, who's to say that the BB and evolution were not the mechanisms created by god to accomplish what was desired? To me, the BB and evolution seem like much more miraculous ways to take care of business than just dividing a bunch of dark and light or forming a man from a lump of clay. Yes, these theories might contradict the holy books, but those books are products of their times when people needed explanations and scientific theories were scarce. If it makes you feel better, why not just call god the father (or mother) of science and accept these wonderful mechanisms as his (or its).

Cowardice is at the root of clinging to dogma not science. A poor theory with such terrible (Shoah) consequences should be questioned. A reactionary idea is a swing from error into another error, why such need to toe the party line? Study the history of the rise of this theory and there is little science involved (Haeckel's imagination, artistic flair, power of image...).

...because it's melting in the sun following global warming??? anyway, avital is right with his words. and students, whereever they live, should be taught to think not only of the theory of evolution but of other theories, too. to say it in other words: students should be taught to THINK and not to take each and every given theory for granted! the theory of evolution, like the theory of global warming, contains lots of things one has to BELIEVE IN just as one has to believe in other things. so, why is there such an outcry when one man says that different theories should be taught so that students learn to think about?! instead of applauding the man he is harassed. how absurd!

Dear Mr. Cohen, please stop using antibiotics immediately. Most of the current antibiotics are made to counter the evolution of bacterial resistance, and the PREDICTIONS based on evolutionary theory. If you think evolutionary theory is wrong, stop using immediately what this theory has generated. Just because you clearly are completely ignorant of the experimental proofs of evolution, it doesn't mean they don't exist. Maybe you should move to Saudi Arabia, where it is accepted that the Earth is flat.

Lou, thanks for your polite response! However, I didn't really understand what you said. Even so, I agree that the power of an hypothesis, which is scientific and, therefore, potentially falsifiable, does lie in its predictive power. The Theory of Evolution has zero predictive power! For example, it has no power to tell us how evolution occurred in the absence of RNA/DNA because the world is no longer empty of DNA/RNA. Therefore, it cannot tell us how biology evolved in the absence of these self-replicating molecules. Evolutionism does not need predictive power because it is not a scientific theory but an historical one. It predicts backwards, so to speak! It tries to tell us what happened in the past before science and scientists and human beings existed. It does this very badly in my opinion, but my opinion is not based on science since Creationism is no more scientific than Evolutionism.

But judging by the comments here and other places regarding science disappoints me. I hope this is not the future the Jewish nation is heading for.

of the univeres to make it look old??? if he created an old universe , what would be the reason for this? to deceive atheist and believers alike . that would render him a dsyfunctional God...come to think of it , if you read the bible, the amount of racism, chauvinism , intoelrance , violence , epic brutality and genocide would definitely make it the work of a dysfunctional god. further proof that this god is more like the humans who actually created him. religion nowadays is a far cry from spirituality. this is why you dont need to be religious to be spiritual. light speed has always been constant . you see if the obesrvable universe is only 6000 light years old , that mean that any obejct that is farther then this distance, would need to emit light that is faster then the actual speed of light. But if its the case then ... 1: if light was faster at the beginning of the universe , it would only mean 1 thing, that our universe is much older then the 13.5 billions years.

... a more successful form of life occurs, that doesn't mean others must vanish. Each has a niche. The amoeba is successful in its niche. Extinctions don't occur because of the introduction of new forms, they occur because of eradication of the niche.

The theory of evolution does not explain how DNA and RNA came into being but rather how species evolve based on outside conditions and needs (by natural selection). How life started on earth is still a mystery and no guess has anything to do with what the theory of evolution because these are two different questions. There's no atheist rule in anywhere. It's just that science follows scientific theories. Do you have a better theory? Can you explain how species emerged without saying "God done made them animals and fish"? If you have a SCIENTIFIC theory that proves evolution wrong, I'm sure the scientific community will consider it. It so happens that evolution is the only scientific theory. This whole debate about evolution is a religious matter. There are no conflicting scientific views.

froy, one of the tenents of your evolutionary theory is that lower life forms evolved to higher or complex life forms. This is what the original poster was referring to, to which you posted a totally ignorant reply. The original poster's question was - that if lower life forms evolved to higher and more complex life forms, why do we still have the nagging lower life forms like Amoeba still with us - after the so called "billions and billions of years" of fairly tale.

The scientific method is to propose a theory to describe reality and then try to falsify it by investigating new cases. Strong theories like the evolution theory, quantum mechanics or relativity are still there because they have been proven useful. Science does not deny a "divine creator", for science that is irrelevant, it simply describes what we see/measure.

so much for the pursuit of truth and the freedom to discover. Science is being a status quo all of it's own , like the catholic church was in the middle ages- if you disagree (even with a Phd science in play) you are devolved. Now tow the line or leave is becoming the norm even for hightly educated scientist. And this has nothing to do with the God yes or no question. Stupid really, it once was not like that and far more freedom was ensured especially with theories that could never ever be proven beyond reasonable doubt.

glkobal warming may be a myth, because of the fumbling of the UN, but CO2 air pollution is like somebody farting in your face.

The power of a theory lies in its to predict an outcome. One weighty book, "The Quark and the Jaguar" by Murray Gell-Mann addresses this. Also Steven Weinberg was taken by the statistical nature of quantum mechanics and the high degree of accuracy in predicting an outcome. Being a believer, I am attracted to Anselm's definition of God, "such that there is no greater than." He also said that faith leads to logic. That was hard to accept since I believed the opposite. I found that I was wrong(scientists believe in a theory first.) Finally, existence is eternal. Zero is always zero and some "thing" cannot become zero. My best to you. Lou

With the astonishing level of ignorance about science I see in these comments it's no big wonder that people still believe in creationism and other fairy tales. Evolution doesn't have anything to do with "all creatures on earth ultimately evolving into humans". It's a million-years process where new species appear through a series of random genetic mutations, the most apt survive and the least become extinct. Living beings that we see now are here because they were better adapted to their environment than their competitors. When a mutation occurred, if it provided an edge over the non-mutant, it would give the mutants the upper hand in the race for survival. But this is a random and slow process, so it's completely impossible to witness evolution in a single lifetime. People should read a little bit before posting such ridiculous nonsense.

science works by providing you evidence, then draws conclusion... bible gives you tenets whithout evidence that you should not question. the theory of evolution doesnt say that we come from apes, rather that we share common ancestry. 3species, man, chimpanzes,orangoutan share over 98 % of their respective dna... that is what sicence tells you. period. the bible tells you that we come from mud.(adam adamah) man dna vs mud dna = 0. anymore question? evolution is the way of life whether you beilieve it or not . sicentist dont gather around every tuesday night and pray that they believe in gravity, that whatever goes up must come down , hallelujah...if they did i would be skeptic about Newton's law , wouldnt you be? evolution is an understanding not a belief . natural selection is at work everyday, yes even in Israeli politics.

The Theory of Evolution is like the Big Bang Theory. Like Evolutionism, Big Bangism is an HISTORICAL hypothesis and is not science. The astronomers, who discovered that microwave radiation was expanding at the edge of the universe, were behaving like scientists. As soon as these astronomers said that the expanding universe should be traced backwards beyond the time when humans could observe and test, they became historians. So, these astronomers were behaving like scientists at one moment and like historians later, even though they couldn't recognise that they had changed. It is not logical to say that because the universe is expanding now that, therefore, it has expanded from the smallest possible unit. Why not? Because human beings can never know whether the universe came into existence with an age built into it. For example, the stars began not as stars, according to the Old Testament, but as stars with light falling on the earth. This means age!

i don't understand why creatures have apparently stopped evolving! How come we still have apes? monkeys? lions? etc etc? When these creatures reproduce, why do we get even more apes, monkeys and lions, instead of something more "evolved"? If the theory of evolution is correct, will all creatures on earth ultimately evolve into humans (assuming that we are at the top of the evolutionary pyramid) I don't really buy this theory. It begins to fall apart as soon as you scratch beneath the surface.

Global warming is a leftist scam. It is not an 'inconvenient truth' For leftists, it is a most convenient lie. Armed with this rubbish, they can control the lives of all of us in any way they like. In the name of saving the working class, Stalin killed 12 million people. Mao killed 100 million. But these greenies have bigger fish to fry. They want to save the planet. How many may they kill for this noble cause? What rewards can they expect for this 'heroic' campaign?

One that controls the universe and answers prayers. From black holes to the destruction of suns. Judging humans actions and thoughts all the while. Hard to fathom those that would believe a fairly tale and are willing to die for. Everything in the universe being finite except human immortals is the most obtuse thing, promised by religion and they are the gate keepers.....how absurd!

Global warming is a fraud, and the universities who make such claims are simply suppressing evidence. Meanwhile, in the name of this fraud, the rainforests of indonesia are being burnt down, to grow palm oil, and many species of primates being brought to extinction.

Unbelievable! Where would all these scientists be if Darwin had "towed the line"... Narrow mindedness is narrow mindedness is narrow mindedness. Isaac

I applaud Dr Avital for his courage and his logic. The Theory of Evolution is an HISTORICAL hypothesis since what happened in the past, such as how DNA and RNA came into existence, can never be tested in the lab. Evolutionism is made up of guesses and hunches, into past history, as to what might have happened before human beings were around to apply scientific testing to what was happening. The evolution we see today is what we also call variation and is the result of the activity of DNA. Evolutionism requires another sort of evolution to have occurred, namely, variation when no RNA or DNA exists. This is an historical guess. It can never be tested in the lab because the route by which DNA was derived from Darwin's slime can never be reproduced in the here and now for scientists to test in the lab. Miller's spark through primeval gas was ridiculous since he excluded OXYGEN, which biological creatures require to live. Atheist totalitarianism rules in science! Not OK!