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.
Maybe that's why the bears give me such a wide bearth.
To quote the late great politician's politician, "Francis Urquhart" (known to his friends as "FU"), "You might think that, but I couldn't possibly comment."
All of them, except the ones that will go extinct within the next million years or so.
There are literally thousands of known transtional fossils, and anyone who denies their existence is either a liar or incredibly ignorant.
Ah...than you admit there are scientists behind the debate. Then you expose yourself by the question as one who has misrepresented the debate. Thank you! Now you want me to name them and than you want to quibble over what is in their mind. What IS their REAL motive. Spare me. If you know anything about Intelligent Design, (which you don't) than you know it was furthered initially by many scientists, that initially tongue in cheek described themselves as being from the Church of the Big Bang...The debate has been sidetracked a bit by the fact that the creationists, for obvious reasons joined with them, but it is not about religion. AS far as naming names, look them up yourself...
Read and weep:
"Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory," William Dembski, one of the movement's chief proponents, said in a 1999 interview in Touchstone, a Christian magazine that Forrest cited in her testimony.[emphasis added]
What was that you were saying about being "uninformed..."?
http://www.gcssepm.org/special/cuffey_05.htm
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/transit.htm
Which life-forms, that exist today, do you think are transitional?
All of them, including humans.
Why is a transitional form, simply not a life-form?
Because all life continues to be affected by changes in allele frequency and random genetic mutation. Any undesirable resultant trait changes this causes are weeded out through natural selection, while beneficial ones are kept due to their contribution to the increased reproductive success of the heritable code of that species.
Why do evolutionists even have to bother creating the fiction of transitional forms?
They don't. All evidence points to transitional forms being fact, not fiction.
The obvious reason is that without the propaganda of the existence of transitional life-forms, no reasonable person would believe in evolution.
Does this mean, conversely, that without the propaganda denying transitional life-forms no reasonable person would disbelieve evolution?
Mike Gene as well. IDthink.net
The Grand Master read and laughed -- something he rarely does, considering his awesome responsibilities. You may affix the oak leaf cluster to your Order of Uranus.
On behalf of the Grand Master, I am,
PatrickHenry
Demski is not Intelligent Design, and it is not him, just as Darwin is not Evolution. Though that analogy gives Demski way too much credit. By throwing that silly quote at me, you show yourself as one being unable to understand the actual debate itself(uninformed) There are others here that claim religion has never been mentioned,(so how could youy bash it) you guys have to get your act together.
I stand humble and in awe in his Emmense Shadow.....
"Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory," William Dembski, one of the movement's chief proponents, said in a 1999 interview in Touchstone, a Christian magazine that Forrest cited in her testimony.[emphasis added]
Read and Laugh...is the case fellas.
Transition from what to what?
The lack of evidence is actual evidence. In the case of evolution, the lack of a fossil record of transitional forms is actual evidence that transitional forms did not and do not exist.
First of all, lack of evidence for a thing's existence does not equal evidence that said thing never existed. That's just nonsense.
Second, the fossil record does contain evidence of transitional forms. Archaeopteryx is a transitional form. Hylonomus is a transitional form. There are others - a simple Google search will bring up dozens more, if you're at all interested in seeing the evidence.
While it is true that the fossil record does not show every single transitional form, it is a falsehood to claim that the fossil record lacks transitional forms entirely.
Which life-forms, that exist today, do you think are transitional?
How about whales? They have vestigal leg bones. There are species of cave salamanders with regressed eyes that lack the apparatus to see. Pythons and boa constrictors have vestigal pelvic bones. How's that for starters?
Methodological naturalism proves at last nothing more than an artificial restriction on thought, and it will eventually pass. Despite would-be gatekeepers like Pennock, the argument for design is gaining strength with the advance of science and for a simple reason once described by the physicist Percy Bridgman: "The scientific method, as far as it is a method, is nothing more than doing one's mind, no holds barred."
No holds barred, even though that may force us to conclude that the universe reveals, in its intelligent design, traces of its intelligent designer.
Who does he suggest is the intelligent designer of the universe? Behe is arguing the same line as Denton, namely fine tuning or the anthropic principle. Both Behe and Denton have retreated to the mainstream position on common descent and the age of the universe. What they have left is the anthropic principle.
I have nothing against the anthropic principle, other than it's complete lack of usefulness in the conduct of science. It is a quasi-religious concept in that it assumes the physical constants are what they are by design. Other than being useless it is harmless.
I don't care if there are scientists backing ID. They have to be right, or at least interesting to merit attention. The ID scientists are not even wrong.
The vitriol in this post appeared to be directed at people empty-headed enough to buy into the "evolution promotes every sort of immorality known to man" mindset, not against faith in general. Many of the scientifically literate people who post here (and accept the evidence that supports evolution) are also people of faith.
Interesting, you send it again, convinced of its meaning...hmm okay, sad to say, but if the quote meant what you seem to think it means(it doesn't), it does not characterize or define the Intelligent Design debate, it being the thoughts of one man. As I pointed out to you before. I feel bad you guys are high fivin each other, when I am actually embarrassed for you.
I thought this thread was about ID, not religion. Why don't the ID advocates explain themselves to these people?
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