Posted on 02/20/2006 5:33:50 AM PST by ToryHeartland
Churches urged to back evolution By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter, St Louis
US scientists have called on mainstream religious communities to help them fight policies that undermine the teaching of evolution.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) hit out at the "intelligent design" movement at its annual meeting in Missouri.
Teaching the idea threatens scientific literacy among schoolchildren, it said.
Its proponents argue life on Earth is too complex to have evolved on its own.
As the name suggests, intelligent design is a concept invoking the hand of a designer in nature.
It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other Gilbert Omenn AAAS president
There have been several attempts across the US by anti-evolutionists to get intelligent design taught in school science lessons.
At the meeting in St Louis, the AAAS issued a statement strongly condemning the moves.
"Such veiled attempts to wedge religion - actually just one kind of religion - into science classrooms is a disservice to students, parents, teachers and tax payers," said AAAS president Gilbert Omenn.
"It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other.
"They can and do co-exist in the context of most people's lives. Just not in science classrooms, lest we confuse our children."
'Who's kidding whom?'
Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, which campaigns to keep evolution in public schools, said those in mainstream religious communities needed to "step up to the plate" in order to prevent the issue being viewed as a battle between science and religion.
Some have already heeded the warning.
"The intelligent design movement belittles evolution. It makes God a designer - an engineer," said George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory.
"Intelligent design concentrates on a designer who they do not really identify - but who's kidding whom?"
Last year, a federal judge ruled in favour of 11 parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, who argued that Darwinian evolution must be taught as fact.
Dover school administrators had pushed for intelligent design to be inserted into science teaching. But the judge ruled this violated the constitution, which sets out a clear separation between religion and state.
Despite the ruling, more challenges are on the way.
Fourteen US states are considering bills that scientists say would restrict the teaching of evolution.
These include a legislative bill in Missouri which seeks to ensure that only science which can be proven by experiment is taught in schools.
I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design Teacher Mark Gihring "The new strategy is to teach intelligent design without calling it intelligent design," biologist Kenneth Miller, of Brown University in Rhode Island, told the BBC News website.
Dr Miller, an expert witness in the Dover School case, added: "The advocates of intelligent design and creationism have tried to repackage their criticisms, saying they want to teach the evidence for evolution and the evidence against evolution."
However, Mark Gihring, a teacher from Missouri sympathetic to intelligent design, told the BBC: "I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design.
"[Intelligent design] ultimately takes us back to why we're here and the value of life... if an individual doesn't have a reason for being, they might carry themselves in a way that is ultimately destructive for society."
Economic risk
The decentralised US education system ensures that intelligent design will remain an issue in the classroom regardless of the decision in the Dover case.
"I think as a legal strategy, intelligent design is dead. That does not mean intelligent design as a social movement is dead," said Ms Scott.
"This is an idea that has real legs and it's going to be around for a long time. It will, however, evolve."
Among the most high-profile champions of intelligent design is US President George W Bush, who has said schools should make students aware of the concept.
But Mr Omenn warned that teaching intelligent design will deprive students of a proper education, ultimately harming the US economy.
"At a time when fewer US students are heading into science, baby boomer scientists are retiring in growing numbers and international students are returning home to work, America can ill afford the time and tax-payer dollars debating the facts of evolution," he said. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4731360.stm
Published: 2006/02/20 10:54:16 GMT
© BBC MMVI
I noticed.
Abiogenesis is a pipe dream that follows nothing but imagination.
"but are willing to not only accept, but base their living philosophy on, magic"
An opinion based in ignorance. Biblical assertions have the strong proof behind them of fulfilled prophecy, and the statistical science that is documented in "The Bible Code Bombshell." The fact that you are too pig-headed to even read that powerful scientific evidence limits the value of your opinion severely.
Jethro Bodine is Jed Clampett's nephew.
Still paranoid, I see...
Paranoia is never having to provide evidence.
Unless they change their minds :-D
Not true. He evidently couldn't forgive mankind without killing His own son. It's apparent even God must obey some sort of outside "law."
I'm just asking for someone to prove Evolution exists. Sheesh. Is that so difficult?
It seems to be difficult for those (animals) that hang onto that word to validate their existence. Lots of talk about nothing. They are just monkeying around with a word.
That's right! We don't need no pointy-headed larnin', no sirree! Everything we ever needs to know is right there in the Bible!
Luckily, those Bible readers saved us from the preferred candidates of the secularists:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2004-06-02-religion-gap_x.htm
Yeah Dimensio! Quit posting facts and exposing Creationist' lies and logical fallacies by throwing their words in their face.
Now that's funny!
God's a liar? or is Dimensio and his thinking? Your choice.
I believe that at least your higher order of animals that live in packs have a rudimentary law, or morality, of their own -- basically there are rules you live by in the pack, and if you break them, exile city, dude.
Of course, that's just my WAG.
Everything we ever needs to know is right there in the Bible!
should be '.....is right in that thar Bible'.
Job 26:7
He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing
this is Job speaking. in Ch. 38:4-6, the Lord responds, and says
4 Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding.
5 Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
6 Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
IE Job says the Earth hangs upon nothing, and the Lord corrects him and says it has a foundation and a corner stone.
BOOKMARK
I think assigning only the barest minimum of intelligence to different species is not necessarily the best thing.
Not all Bible readers are know-nothing bohunks who don't accept evolution. If you noticed, the post to which I responded recommended ignoring text books for what was in the Bible. I'm sure a great many Christians on this forum would consider it the height of stupidity to ignore scientific teaching and replace it with exerpts from the Bible.
From the imagination of evolutionists and public education
Honestly, I can't believe this nonsense is still being bantered about.
Everything we ever needs to know is right there in the Bible!
We all need education. It would certainly benefit YOU to get the 'basics' first; otherwise, you will be deceived and you already proved that.
Also, DON"T mock God because you will be the looser. Test Him!
Mea Culpa.
Quit posting facts and exposing Creationist' lies
I wasn't responding to you or anything you said - I was responding to FreeDum's post to you about exposing Creationist lies.
"Honestly, I can't believe this nonsense is still being bantered about."
You need to take a science course.
I don't mock God. I mock folks who think they speak for Him. God's a big boy and can take care of Himself. It's quite evident from your post that you are confusing yourself with Him, which, if I remember correctly, is blasphemy -- which is the one unforgiveable sin.
It is ALL about information!
It is all about information.
There's another creationist who insists it's all about organized matter. You need to get together.
He evidently couldn't forgive mankind without killing His own son
God didn't kill His Son. Our sins did. Truly, the greatest gift of all. And what did that accomplish for you? Are you grateful? Or are you acting self-righteous and putting parameters around our Heavenly Father - so YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THINGS?
No doubt in my mind. I get a real chuckle but, don't feed them!
What do you think is the organizing principle - organization implies a blueprint for organization: information
You're not a bigot. And that's not too surprising since you are unfamiliar with the meaning of the word. But thanks for trying to play smart guy. Better luck next time.
"...I do not understand why such an enlightened nation is embroiled in a senseless science vs. religion turmoil..."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That is why you are there baffled and bamboozled and we are here.
Get over it. Darwin sucks. He had bad teeth too. Evolution is nothing more than delusion and illusion...a social science theory nothing more.
That says it all.
What information are you talking about? How do you identify it? How do you measure it? How does it affect the phenotype? Does having more information make for a longer genome? More genes? More pseudo genes? More chromosomes? More complex reactions between homeobox genes?
More genes, chromosomes, pseudo-genes and even repeated features ((such as body segments) from over triggered and confused HOX genes) all result from replication errors. Is this the information increase you are looking for? Or is the information you are looking for more esoteric, something nobody has been able to describe or adequately measure yet?
If you want to see how information can start out real small and increase in size rapidly play the simple computer game of 'life'.
Many evolutionary proponents have dealt with the 'information' canard. Go to talkorigins.org or talkreason.org.
Hint: Understand what you are talking about and have respect for God. God is not a big boy and neither are you, junior. God is The Almighty, The Creator of The Universe.
Wisdom comes with fear (respect) of The Lord. It is obvious you have neither.
I'm not confused - you are. I'm merely quoting HIS WORDS.
and that is not blasphemy. Check out your own words and you might see some blasphemy.
"Get over it. Darwin sucks. He had bad teeth too. Evolution is nothing more than delusion and illusion...a social science theory nothing more.
That says it all."
Indeed. It says more than you know. :)
You mean aside from the real research he does?
What do you think is the organizing principle - organization implies a blueprint for organization: information.
Glad to see the two of you are in sync with your hypothesis'. Any idea yet when and where your paper will be published?
Those with the guns do make the rules. That's why the Founders put the Second Amendment in the Constitution.
The evidence of a superior intelligence contributing to the lives of His creatures is trumping the Naturalistic Only dogma!
OTOH, the Dover school board members who pushed for ID in science class were all swept from office by candidates opposed to ID in science class. Dover is in York County PA, which voted almost 2 to 1 for Bush over Kerry:
Dover is in York County, which supported George W. Bush in the last two presidential elections. According to unofficial vote totals for 2004, Bush received 114,621 votes and John Kerry received 63,628 votes. [my note: that's about 64% for Bush]
You are back...amazing when considering the evolutionary trends.
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary
1 a (1) : a solemn usually formal calling upon God or a god to witness to the truth of what one says or to witness that one sincerely intends to do what one says
"You are back...amazing when considering the evolutionary trends."
I'll take that in the spirit it was given. :) It says a lot about you and the depth of your convictions.
I thought one from each column was necessary to call Bingo. Did the rules change while I was gone?
Res Ipsae Loquuntur
Oh I'm convinced all right..convinced that EVOs are cracker jacks.
OF MICE AND MEN
Striking similarities at the DNA level could aid research
- Sabin Russell, Chronicle Medical Writer
Thursday, December 5, 2002
Matching newly minted genetic blueprints of mice and men, scientists have found a wealth of common chemistry between human beings and our tiny, four-legged ancestors.
In a series of publications today in the British scientific journal Nature, international teams of researchers published a nearly complete sequence of the genetic instructions of "Black 6," the most common breed of laboratory mouse, and matched its traits with the recently decoded human genome.
The genetic code of the mouse, published on a public Web site (www.ensembl.org), is expected to speed the work of laboratory scientists studying human diseases around the globe.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, called the feat "a tremendously exciting and defining moment for biomedical research."
Among the findings are that mice and human beings both carry about 30,000 genes. Differences within these individual genes -- the precise sequences of the four-letter DNA code -- spell out the obvious differences between the two mammalian species. On a letter-by-letter basis, the genes are 85 percent the same.
Comparing the two genomes provides an evolutionary history of the two species, traced out in the diverging sequences of DNA. Mice, compared with humans, are more richly endowed in genes for sex, sense of smell, and immunity against pathogens.
TAIL LOST IN TIME
Human beings, in turn, carry the genes for growing a tail but apparently lack the ancient instructions -- lost in 75 million years of evolution -- for completing the process.
"Comparing genomic information across species allows us to glean important information about ourselves," said Eric Lander, director of the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research and lead author of the 42-page report on the mouse genome.
By comparing the two genomes, researchers were able to discover 1,200 new human genes as well as 9,000 mouse genes never before identified.
Researchers found that 90 percent of genes linked to diseases were the same in mice as in human beings. The mouse has been the mainstay of laboratory research on human illness and will most likely become a more essential player in future studies.
About 25 million mice are used in laboratories around the world to test new drugs and new notions about the biochemical machinery of living organisms.
David Haussler, director of biomolecular science and engineering at UC Santa Cruz, worked on the species-to-species genome comparisons and is a co- author of the report. "This is very, very significant," he said. "You can learn so much more by comparing genes that evolved from a common ancestor than by studying one gene alone."
SURVIVING GENETIC MATERIAL
Raymond White, a human genetics researcher at UCSF's Ernest Gallo Clinic and Research Center in Emeryville, said the points of similarity between mouse and human genomes were vitally important -- they represent bits of genetic material that have survived, intact, over 75 million years of evolution. It's nature's way of saying something is working.
The research that has pinpointed these biologically "conserved" regions on the two genomes allows researchers to focus on the important parts of the human genome, and to ignore the much larger amounts of genetic information that is essentially meaningless -- some biologists call it "junk" DNA.
Mouse-to-human genome comparisons have shown that, in addition to common genes, the two species share a surprising amount of DNA code that controls when and how these genes turn on or off. These "regulatory regions," which might have been dismissed as "junk," take up more space on the genome than the genes themselves and promise to become a fertile area for research.
The catalog of mouse and human genes yielded by these genome projects will cut years of time from otherwise painstaking laboratory research. When a particularly interesting spot on a chromosome captures a researcher's attention, said White, it can take "three or four years, and three or four post-docs (PhD researchers), to find the specific gene." Now, with the gene catalog in hand, it can take five minutes of computer time.
The publication capped a two-year effort of the Mouse Sequencing Consortium,
a group of hundreds of scientists from 27 institutions in six nations. Funders of the $130 million effort include the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy in the United States, and the Wellcome Trust and the Medical Research Council in England.
By who, a cloaked figure in a dark alley saying: "pssst, I got ur science right here...."
I'm not going to bore you with the details because you probably won't believe me anyway, but suffice it to say that medical science does not consider these things vestigial, or gills, or tails...
Recapitulation theory (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) is nonsense, and has been shown to be nonsense.
PATER NOSTER, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.
Pax vobiscum
Brings back memories of eight years in Catholic grade school going to mass each day before classes.
I'm glad you are glad.
For some so little means so much.
Brings back memories of eight years in Catholic grade school going to mass each day before classes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.