Churches urged to back evolution

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.

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."

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.

"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.

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."

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

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.

Recapitulation theory (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) is nonsense, and has been shown to be nonsense.

It's not exactly like Haekel thought it was, in that the embryo does not go through all the evolutionary steps in its phylogeny.

But it's not complete nonsense either; Haekel noticed some real phenomena and generalized too far.

In fact, there is an uncanny resemblance between the evolution of reptiles into mammals and the embryological development of the jaw and ear

Ear, Nose & Throat Journal, Sept, 2003 by Robert Thayer Sataloff, Jesse C. Selber

In the embryology of present-day mammals, the developmental process in the bones and muscles of the first and second branchial arches involves a re-enactment of the evolutionary process than begot the mammalian middle ear. Meckel's cartilage grows back to meet a primary jaw joint and becomes enveloped by intramembranous bone. The posterior portion ossifies into the articular, while the posterior portion of the upper jaw ossifies into the quadrate. In mammals, the dentary expands to make up the entire mandible, while the condyle grows back to meet the squamosal component of the cranium, forming the second jaw joint. The articular, quadrate, and stapes separate from the other intramembranous bones of the jaw and become isolated as middle ear components--that is, the malleus, incus, and stapes.

Those with the guns do make the rules. That's why the Founders put the Second Amendment in the Constitution.

If the University Professors were in charge of the government, our rifles and pistols would do us zero good against their military. Think Waco Texas (not that I agree with Branch Davidians in any way). Proof that the Second Amendment only works in a nation where communities require personal responsibility and character. Science does not produce personal responsibility or character.

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]

There are many Theistic Evolutionary Catholics in that area of the Blue state.

The Gallup Organization has been polling the public on this issue since 1982, when 38 percent indicated a belief in the creationist explanation of life's origin, 33 percent believed in theistic (God-directed) evolution, and 9 percent chose the “no God” account. The trend has been steadily toward creationism, and by November 2004, 45 percent chose the creationist explanation, 38 percent the theistic evolutionist account, and 13 percent the “no God” explanation.

Link

Our Declaration of Independence contradicts the core beliefs of Evolutionists. It is hard to call on a Source superior to all men, when that superior Source is not a definer of rights. Anything else leaves us with, "He with the biggest guns makes the rules", completely disarming freedom. A theistic evolutionist strips the superior Source of His personal attention to individuals in His creation.

You are the first persom to EVER use the Declaration of Independence as science text. Please provide the cross-reference to or from other scientific works. What does the Declaration say about Evolution? About Physics? (standard CRIDer run/fallacy #2: Strawman and #4: Begging the question)

No one is attempting to deny God. This is a standard CIDer canard and strawman. Science is silent on God and attempts to explain how things work and why they work. Science depends on non-supernatural explanations.

Then you have no problem with alternate common sense explanations explaining life. Again your interpretation of the facts is the limited one. Science by definition should not be limited when such a large number of credible scientists wish to weigh in.

And planes are held up by angels. You can make unsupported statements all you want, but an assertion is not an "alternate common sense explanation." It is an ignorant shot in the dark. And please O please site specifically how many biologists have weighed in in support of Creationist mythology. Oh, and name them. (standard CRIDer run/fallacy #1: pure lies presented as "facts" or "arguments.")

Remember that next time you drive a car or fly. Or use the bathroom. Or plug in your computer.

I am sure you will acknowledge that none of these "discoveries" demonstrates a speck of superiority. Having a cell phone with iTunes on it doesn't add a whit to a person's character. In fact it is an easy case to make that a person who has indulged in higher education exhibits stunted character growth.

You must be taking lessons from RunningWolf or Havoc or Creationist in non sequituers and strawmen. No one, certainly not me, has brought up any issues of superiority, character or anything else that is philisophical or sociological. Mine was a strictly scientifi argument that says you can't pick and choose which parts of science you can decide to "believe" or not. (CRIDer run/fallacy #2 again among others)

Salvation through knowledge is beginning to fall on deaf ears as people begin to recognize the agenda of the materialists who, by definition, are forced to deny unalienable rights. The evidence of a superior intelligence contributing to the lives of His creatures is trumping the Naturalistic Only dogma!

Nice rant -- not argumentation of any kind, doesn't address the topic at hand -- just ranting. (Standard CRIDer run #8 -- yell "Praise the Lord" and fall on the floor).

I ask again -- can't you CRIDers take on arguments using facts and logic? Your entire post addresses issues that have nothing to do with TTOE or its scientific basis.

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