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Tough Assignment: Teaching Evolution To Fundamentalists
Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette ^ | 03 December 2004 | SHARON BEGLEY

Posted on 12/18/2004 5:56:30 PM PST by PatrickHenry

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To: Havoc
I'm talking about the authority of the evidence. It's like chain of custody. Heresay and inference aren't valid evidentiary methods. Theory is not truth. You may call it fact; but, truth and fact are not identical in nature. That is perhaps why you might prefer to use the word fact. If you have nothing but modern evidences and infinite possibilities for causality, an inference isn't true, nor is it necessarily fact. It is a working hypothesis. In absence of capacity to falsify and exclude all other possibilities, you are left with a hypothesis at best - not a fact.

This seems like a reasonable statement, but I think you have closed your eyes to 200 years of accumulated evidence in physics, chemistry, biology and geology. We send people to the gas chamber on far less evidence. Using your standard, no criminal would ever be convicted.

501 posted on 12/20/2004 12:52:42 PM PST by js1138 (D*mn, I Missed!)
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To: PatrickHenry
Stop trying to confuse the issue with facts!

That's just mean!

502 posted on 12/20/2004 12:53:45 PM PST by wireman
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To: Wallace T.
The best that can be done by scientists is to come to a working hypothesis.

No, the best that can be done are laws and theories -- much stronger statements.

503 posted on 12/20/2004 12:54:04 PM PST by js1138 (D*mn, I Missed!)
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To: js1138

My favored tools for baking are a socket wrench, volume 21 of the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica ("PAYN-POLK"), a graphing calculator, a half-gallon of gasoline, and a leaf-blower.


504 posted on 12/20/2004 12:57:01 PM PST by general_re ("What's plausible to you is unimportant." - D'man)
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To: PatrickHenry
APE GIVES BIRTH TO HUMAN BABY

Oooook! Oooook!

505 posted on 12/20/2004 12:57:08 PM PST by longshadow
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To: Wallace T.
Mainstream science also works from naturalistic presuppositions that may cloud their objectivity ...

It's a common error to assume that all scientists are philosophical naturalists. Or materialists, I've seen both terms. By that I mean the philosophical position that only the material world exists. The techniques of science are necessarily limited to the material world, so the practice of science requires procedural naturalism. If there were a way to objectively observe, measure, and test spiritual phenomena, science would leap at the chance.

506 posted on 12/20/2004 12:57:21 PM PST by PatrickHenry (The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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To: chronic_loser

Very interesting, I am always open to learning more, I will have to read Kline in the very near future. I'm always troubled by why God would use night/day references if He didn't mean a literal "day". I hope to one day be able to study the text in the language it was written in. Thank you for the info.


507 posted on 12/20/2004 1:05:10 PM PST by ThisLittleLightofMine
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To: longshadow
They may be square, but not integrable.
508 posted on 12/20/2004 1:07:19 PM PST by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: js1138

Working hypotheses, theories, and laws are only as strong as the underlying assumptions and the supportive evidence. Much evidence exists to support an old universe and macroevolution. There is some evidence that contradicts these positions, more so macroevolution than the age of the universe. However, the underlying assumption of mainstream science, that of non-intervention by an intelligent designer, is incorrect.


509 posted on 12/20/2004 1:07:36 PM PST by Wallace T.
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To: PatrickHenry
If there were a way to objectively observe, measure, and test spiritual phenomena...

Then they would, by definition, be reclassified as natural phenomena.

510 posted on 12/20/2004 1:08:31 PM PST by js1138 (D*mn, I Missed!)
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To: Wallace T.
It is difficult for scientific observation to come to an irrefutable conclusion.

It's damn near impossible for any sort of inductive process to come to an irrefutable conclusion, but I'd bet good money that you don't let that stop you from employing the process in other parts of your life. You can put your hand on a hot stove and get burned 10,000 times in a row, and it's still not irrefutable proof that you'll get burned on the 10,001'st try - you never know for sure, really. But I bet you only had to do it once to take a single experience as proof enough and modify your behavior appropriately.

Forget science - you don't get certitude anywhere in real life, and yet you surely believe in all sorts of things that are fundamentally uncertain. You can certainly object to the nature or the amount of evidence, but if you object to it on grounds of a lack of certitude, then you also have no legitimate right to believe almost anything you currently believe to be true. You don't know for an irrefutable fact that your house is still going to be there when you leave work tomorrow, but I suspect you believe it will be there anyway, based on the evidence available to you.

511 posted on 12/20/2004 1:10:26 PM PST by general_re ("What's plausible to you is unimportant." - D'man)
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To: js1138
Then they would, by definition, be reclassified as natural phenomena.

I suppose. Either way, until such matters can be objectively studied, we can't fault science for not dealing with them. Even if a scientist had no bias against the existence of such phenomena, there would be nothing he could do about them, so his scientific work would be indistinguishable from that of a scientist who literally believed that no such phenomena existed.

512 posted on 12/20/2004 1:12:07 PM PST by PatrickHenry (The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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To: Wallace T.
However, the underlying assumption of mainstream science, that of non-intervention by an intelligent designer, is incorrect.

Science cannot be done without the assumption of non-intervention. Science is looking for regularity.

513 posted on 12/20/2004 1:13:10 PM PST by js1138 (D*mn, I Missed!)
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To: JFK_Lib
"Creating the laws of physics and chemistry that, over the eons, coaxed life from nonliving molecules is something he finds just as awe inspiring as the idea that God instantly and supernaturally created life from nonlife." - Professor Collins

Professor Collins accepts the miracle of the creation of physical laws. Creation of time and light are not much different. The miraculous nature of it all wears off when one is born into it.

514 posted on 12/20/2004 1:14:17 PM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: PatrickHenry

Eeew.


515 posted on 12/20/2004 1:15:25 PM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: PatrickHenry
...so his scientific work would be indistinguishable from that of a scientist who literally believed that no such phenomena existed.

Science is pretty much the business of demonstrating how things can happen through regular and repeatable causes. Granted there are unique events like asteroid strikes, but the physics of asteroids is comprised of regular, lawful phenomena.

516 posted on 12/20/2004 1:17:06 PM PST by js1138 (D*mn, I Missed!)
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To: general_re

I understand the reasons for most of it, by why the leaf blower?


517 posted on 12/20/2004 1:18:31 PM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: Havoc

"In at least the last 3000 years, no one has ever witnessed a chimp giving birth to a human being or anything similar. Argument sunk.. period."

What does this have to do with the theory of evolution?


518 posted on 12/20/2004 1:18:49 PM PST by atlaw
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To: Junior

That's to apply the icing. I still prefer the old fashioned method, using the drill press.


519 posted on 12/20/2004 1:20:37 PM PST by js1138 (D*mn, I Missed!)
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To: Wallace T.

Creationism is spookism. The founder of Kwanza says so, and the evolutionists here agree. So the fact is, you can't associate some theory of some people with some other something or other (qh)


520 posted on 12/20/2004 1:27:28 PM PST by D Edmund Joaquin (Karenga says Kwanzaa is an "oppositional alternative" to Christianity - which he calls "spookism")
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