Posted on 10/07/2005 7:23:15 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
To keep this all in one daily thread, here are links to two articles in the York Daily Record (with excerpts from each), which has been doing a great job of reporting on the trial:
Forrest cross-examination a rambling wonder.
About the time that Richard Thompson, head law guy at the Thomas More center and chief defender of the Dover Area School Board, started his third year of cross-examination of philosopher Barbara Forrest, it was easy to imagine that at that moment, everyone in the courtroom, including Forrest, who doesn’t believe in God, was violating the separation of church and court by appealing to God for it to please, Lord, just stop.It wouldn’t have been so bad if there was a point to the ceaseless stream of questions from Thompson designed to elicit Lord knows what. He’d ask her the same question 18 different times, expecting, I guess, a different answer at some point. And he never got it.
Thompson, who said he’s a former prosecutor, should have known better. Forrest, a professor at Southeastern Louisiana University and expert on the history of the intelligent design creationist movement, was a lot smarter than, say, some poor, dumb criminal defendant.
Here is a summation of Forrest’s testimony: She examined the history of the intelligent design movement and concluded that it’s simply another name for creationism. And what led her to that conclusion? The movement leader’s own words. They started out with a religious proposition and sought to clothe it in science. The result was similar to putting a suit on your dog.
[anip]
Thompson was in the midst of asking Forrest whether she had heard a bunch of things that some people had said to indicate, well, to indicate whether she’d heard a bunch of things that some people had said, I guess, when the topic came up.
Thompson asked whether she had ever heard a statement by some guy — frankly, this one caught me off-guard and I didn’t catch the guy’s name — who said that belief in evolution can be used to justify “cross-species sex.”
This came on the same day that Thompson grilled Forrest about her opposition to the so-called Santorum amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act that seemed to encourage, sort of, the teaching of intelligent design. Our U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum is a friend of the intelligent design people.
He also has a strange obsession with bestiality, commenting that court decisions that uphold the right to privacy would lead to — naturally, and you know you were thinking it — man-on-dog sex.
Dover science teachers testified that they fought references to intelligent design.
Defense attorney Richard Thompson [he represents the school board] said differing opinions on whether teachers and administration worked in cooperation to create the Dover Area School District’s statement on intelligent design comes down to perspective.
Using your logic, the fact that there are no unicorns that exist today is not evidence they never existed.
As Rush would say, this is using absurdity to expose the absurd.
Way to ignore all the posts pointing out that you missed the many transitional forms, both in the fossil record and on the Earth today.
But if you'd rather argue semantics, it is not incumbent upon me to prove that there have never been any unicorns on Earth. IDers are the ones making claims that they can't back up with any hard science.
Evolution has evidence to back it up. ID has only feelings and wishful thinking.
LOL.
a very interesting article by Behe at the link you provided. I do have one question for you. Why would you ever think that this article reflects poorly on Behe?
I would suggest that if Behe is as articulate on these matters during the trial, he is going to come across very well for the defendants. Even thugh i have nevewr read this particular article by Behe - I did read his book - his reasoning for ID, and against evolution, is very similar to what I have been stating; but then I'm a really smart guy.
Evolutionists have been put in a position of having to 'creating' explanations to fill in gaps for which they cannot provide evidence. It's called speculation.
obviously, I failed to gain sufficient enlightenment from the contemplation of my toenails to divine their reasoning.
I still can't follow it.
I must turn to the Holiest of Holies, and seek wisdom from my navel lint.
Since it was written BY Behe, I wouldn't expect it to reflect poorly on him.
I don't play the quote mining game, and I wish to argue against the best case that can be made for my opponent.
Behe does not appear to be a young earth creationist, nor does his current position appear to differ much from mainstream science. If he wants to believe the game of life was set up at the moment of creation, I am not going to oppose his belief or ridicule him.
Such a belief, however, has no effect on the findings or conduct of science. It has no impact on the accepted age of the earth, no on common descent. It has no discernable impact on Darwinian evolution, except to say that the cards were rigged from the beginning.
A theory that has no impact on current practices and which predicts nothing different from current expectations is something of a hollow shell.
Like ID, the evidence to support the claim is very hard to see...
Because the entire modus operandi of the ID movement is predicated on not clarifying this blurry zone. The whole idea of being able to peacably meld science & religion into a nice package has a lot of popular appeal. I think it's incredibly appealing. Unfortunately, it doesn't work - and those of us who are left realizing the constraints of the scientific method are stuck looking like atheistic pessimists, much like the physician who is ignored by the villagers when the snake-oil salesmen rolls through town in his colorful carriage...
From monkey to monkeygirl.
No this thread isn't about ID. ID never got out of bed. The fight in the kitchen is over wether or not ID has a right to breathe. The pitchfork crowd is afraid someone that reads a bible may find some comfort in the debate. Hence, slurs and more slurs. The debate may end on this thread but it will go on in our society.
there are lots of people that find the debate imminently interesting and relevant to their existence and don't want it controlled either by old testament creationists, or the people that are so full of hatred for them.
Must be.
Did the previous connectthedots keep repeating "there is no evidence for evolution" while ignoring all the posts showing the evidence for evolution?
And today, there are evolutionists who acknowledge that absence of tranistional fossils and at the same time claim that all currently living species are 'transitional' life forms.
Claims of proof a very few small transitional fossils is speculation, especially when one considers that there ought to be thousands of them, especially if all life forms today are 'transitional'. How would anyone know they are 'transitinal'?
Wrong on both counts. I know several people who have unicorns sitting on their book cases and knick-knack shelves.
Forget it! He's making way too much money selling charlatan books to fools to get up on a stand and swear to tell the truth.
For the last time, there are transitional forms in the fossil record. Read the posts again.
And you have continued to ignore vestigal legs in both whales and boas. Care to explain why your "intelligent designer" puts that transitional evidence in every single one of those creatures?
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