Posted on 11/08/2005 4:17:17 AM PST by PatrickHenry
For the past six weeks, the debate over evolution and intelligent design has played out in a Pennsylvania courtroom.
Today, Kansas gets the national spotlight back — and with it, the possibility of a federal lawsuit here.
“What’s going on in Kansas,” said Kenneth Miller, a Brown University biologist, “is much more radical and much more dangerous to science education” than the contested decision in Dover, Pa., to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design” in public school science classes.
Intelligent design speculates that the world is too complex to have evolved without the help of an unknown designer — an alien, perhaps, or God. Such teachings in public schools, the ACLU says, violate constitutional restrictions on the separation of church and state.
“Absolutely, absolutely,” said T. Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, when asked if the new science standards Kansas is expected to adopt today could be vulnerable to litigation.
An official with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which helped defend the Dover school board, said Kansas should be able to avoid legal scrutiny. Casey Luskin said the standards here critique evolution, but they don’t promote intelligent design.
“It’s definitely a different issue in Kansas” than in Pennsylvania, Luskin said.
‘More radical’
It’s a different battle, perhaps, but definitely the same war. Many of the participants in the Pennsylvania trial are veterans of the Kansas evolution debates, and are keeping a close eye on today’s meeting of the Kansas Board of Education.
Miller, for example, testified in the Pennsylvania trial against intelligent design. He came to Kansas in 2000 to campaign against conservative school board members the last time the evolution debate flared up here.
The new Kansas standards literally change the definition of science, he said, so that natural explanations aren’t necessary to explain natural phenomena. That opens the door, he said, for astrology to be taught in public school classrooms.
“Is this what proponents on the Kansas Board of Education have in mind?” Miller asked.
Michael Behe, a Lehigh University scientist, wrote “Darwin’s Black Box” — a touchstone text of the intelligent design movement. He testified in Pennsylvania, and before the Kansas Board of Education when it held hearings on the science standards.
“I think having students hear criticisms of any theory is a great idea,” Behe said. “I think in one respect, it’ll mean it’s permissible to question evolution. For odd historical reasons, questioning evolution has been put off-limits. If Kansas can do it, it can be done elsewhere.”
More evolution?
Luskin agreed.
“In contrast to what everybody has said, Kansas students will hear more about evolution and not less about evolution,” he said. “This is a victory for people who want students to learn critical thinking skills in science.”
But Gunn noted that the vast majority of scientists believed in evolution as a proven explanation for the origins of life. The “handful” who don’t, he said, have resorted to making their case through politics instead of through traditional scientific methods.
“Do we teach both sides of the controversy on astrology in science class? Do we teach both sides of phrenology?” Gunn said. “This is not a scientific controversy, it’s a political controversy.”
Testimony in the Pennsylvania trial wrapped up on Friday. A ruling in that case is expected in January.
Heh. That's the first time I've ever seen the phrase "Kabbalist Big Bang Evolutionary creation scenario".
Once, many years ago in a galaxy far, far away, I had such a moment. I found that a Darwin quote posted on dozens of creationist web sites was in fact fabricated from two partial sentences taken from two different letters. Of course the fabricated quote implied the opposite of the author's intentions.
FR must be monitored by the inbred community of creationists, because this fabricated quote no longer shows up on google.
Such moments are to be treasured.
There is no more certain demonstration of the religious motives of the ID movement than to observe the horror of the ID advocate when they find out that ID theorists accept evolution as a fact and accept the age of the earth as a fact.
Tell me something...you prattle on about 'an evidence based war.' If something is a THEORY then there will be some evidence, but not enough evidence to prove beyond doubt that something is true. That's the definition of a theory. So I could rightly say that you have lost the evidentiary battle, and you could as well.
And I don't know whether YOU will go to heaven...that is your problem. I know the requirements for eternal life. I do my best to follow them. If I am right, terrific. If I am wrong, I can rot in the ground and never know better.
I am shocked (and amused) that so-called scientists will fight so bitterly and emotionally to defend a theory that is clearly flawed, when you eggheads are supposed to welcome skepticism and challenge to the status quo.
Even for an utter moron like myself, it is a pretty big stretch to look at life here on earth and believe that the beauty, intricacy and balance was all achieved randomly.
Let's see...I'm a moron, nasty, and me and my God are evil. Another brilliantly conceived defense on your side. I'm convinced.
No sir, don't want anyone questioning evolution. Nope. The sky might fall. The world might end. People might begin to think for themselves.
As far as Pascal's wager goes, it is intuitive, just as one can intuit that intelligent cause is more plausible than undirected process. The fact that Pascal said it long before I did actually makes it seem more plausible.
I'm no scientist, and to be honest the whole debate doesn't mean enough to me to get me to seriously think about it, but you vitriolic eggheads caused me to look around at who was on what side, and I kind of liked this from The Real Skeptic:
There are some things we will never know for sure. All we can do is obtain as consistent a picture of their operation as possible so that we can test those pictures against reality. If we decide that the pictures are not pictures of operation, but are merely pictures of a name, then we have nothing to test. If we lock the pictures away from development by the discovery of subsequent facts, as we do when we label them names and embody them in meaningless laws, we have created a reality we use to test reality that doesn't exist in reality and our technology will be distorted by the inaccuracy of the picture we have created.
The evolution expert, after defining the term theory to mean something more or less verified, goes on in true empirical fashion to claim empirical theories have been verified to the point that they can never be questioned. Theories are the end product of science, he states, not a stage on the way to truth and as such are very unlikely to change. He claims that our unscientific theories are actually hypotheses and that in science hypotheses are hunches or conjectures. He then states that Copernicus' picture of the planets circling the sun was a hunch rather than a theory and only became a theory after centuries of observation and thinking determined it was compatible with everything we knew about the solar system.
In fact, the Copernican picture was a theory, and it didn't become fact until we started shooting rockets into space on the basis of the picture. The rockets missed more than hit their targets and when they hit their targets, they had a tendency to crash because we have an inaccurate picture of gravity, but they were the measuring rod that turned Copernican theory into fact.
Then he addresses the concept of fact, or should we say the empirical hypothesis of the nature of fact. The writer claims that fact is a word that makes scientists uncomfortable because it implies that accuracy can be tested.
Well, golly gee, isn't that something we all try to avoid. Testing reality for accuracy might show reality to be accurate and empirical facts to be the hokum they are.
He then goes on to state that the basic characteristic of a scientific statement is that its accuracy can be tested by comparing it to observation in the natural world, that it must be falsifiable. Under these conditions, measuring the fact that objects of different weights drop at the same rate is not a scientific statement because there are no conditions under which it can be falsified. Let me reserve comment on this idiocy, which has become evolutionary doctrine as a result of the rantings of that great evolutionary thinker, Jay Gould, for a moment.
Our empirical advocate then concludes his story with the statement that evolution is not a hypothesis, it is a rich theory that explains why the biological world is the way it is. He doesn't explain how it does this, he just claims it does, and he rests that claim on the same basis that empirical science rests all of its assertions, the evidence is so overwhelming that biologists have trouble understanding how someone could not accept it. To do so would be akin to studying whether the sun revolves around the Earth. (As an aside, this is quite refreshing. Usually evolutionists argue that to believe otherwise is to believe the Earth is flat, a notion that was never believed by anyone in the history of the world, but one that effectively silenced evolution's early opponents. For reference, the flat Earth notion came up by map drawers who wanted to keep potential sailors away from lucrative trade routes and thus populated the edges of maps with monsters and a line showing where the world ended.)
I'm waiting for more cogent facts and stimulating debate from the other side.
If you think I wrote that I decide who is f--ked, you need to re-read the post a little more carefully. What I said is that there are no consequences in my beliefs. Calling God evil, on the other hand, or some of the other shenanigans on this thread have consequences. That's the point I was getting to.
If you're going to throw around the compatibility of 'evolution' with Christianity, I'd be curious to know exactly what you mean. Do you mean that Christianity and natural selection are compatible, OR that Darwin's theory of common ancestry and Christianity are compatible?
You DO understand that Darwin claims that all life decended from more simplistic life over time, which is difficult to square against Christianity without making as many twists and turns as the evolutionists have done over the years and on this thread.
Evolution is just as much a 'belief' (that is, not a FACT), as any religion. Just because some eggheads claim that they can prove it (which they can't or we wouldn't be having this debate), it doesn't become true.
I can't say that I understand what you claim to believe, nor do I get the compatibility between the two things you are comparing, but that's okay with me.
Lighten up. It's amusing to watch the other side belittle me for my beliefs then puff up their own.
Your side doesn't have a theory. "God did it, so stop asking" is not a theory.
Once you have been able to formulate a theory, it should be heard and discussed and debated. And it will.
But the creationist PC machine hasn't yet bothered to come up with one. Until then, whining doesn't help your case - this doesn't get decided by emotion, only evidence.
My wife and I were talking over coffee a few moments ago, and she has a request for the evolutionists:
Please explain the evolution of flower seeds.
I realize that I'm moronic and my God is blah blah blah, but my guess is that you'll come up with the name of some fancy schmancy theory or postulate or named argument where this has been asked before. In the end you'll be where you must find yourselves quite often...backed against the back wall of your ivory tower.
michael denton, an australian doctor and molecular biologist, has written a book, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. It is all about science - nothing about religion. I can't go over everything in the book. maybe your familiar with it. he is not a "creation scientist." i see no reason why any evolutionist would object to this book being used in a science class.
like you say - it's a curable condition, if you have the desire.
Of course it is, just as 'we all decended from fish, so even though there are large gaps in logic and it seems stupid, we don't want to hear anything else.'
Actually, intelligent design seems simple and intuitively plausible:
The theory of intelligent design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection. ID is thus a scientific disagreement with the core claim of evolutionary theory that the apparent design of living systems is an illusion.
You guys don't WANT to discuss and debate. You want to supress and protect.
And to suggest that the emotional side of the argument is ID is absolutely ludicrious.
What is the actual, logical reason that ID should not be MENTIONED in schools? I'd like to hear it.
Of course it is, just as 'we all decended from fish, so even though there are large gaps in logic and it seems stupid, we don't want to hear anything else.'
Once again, a creationist lies about the substance of the ToE. By now, we should be used to this.
What is the actual, logical reason that ID should not be MENTIONED in schools?
I never said it shouldn't be mentioned in schools. Of course it should.
ID should be mentioned in science classes only to be debunked. Because it's not even vaguely scientific. Students should be shown why treating pretending that it's science is silly.
ID should also be mentioned in history classes, preferably in the context of Soviet "ideological-outcome science." Because that's exactly what it is - ignoring evidence that doesn't serve the ideology.
ID belongs in philosophy and comparative religion classes. Not anywhere else.
If you can reduce ID to what you wrote, why can't I sarcastically reduce your THEORY to what I wrote?
Okay, so what does the science teacher say to debunk ID in Science class (dumb it down so I can understand it [that was sarcasm])?
I'd be careful what I say about the Soviet Union, because I've been resisting saying that you and the ACLU are on the same side on this one.
Two more questions, as I'm getting bored with this:
1. Does your side need to ignore any evidence to make the TofE plausible?
2. What evidence do we ignore?
Theory: a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena; "theories can incorporate facts and laws and tested hypotheses"; "true in fact and theory"
Hypothesis: a tentative theory about the natural world; a concept that is not yet verified but that if true would explain certain facts or phenomena; "a scientific hypothesis that survives experimental testing becomes a scientific theory"; "he proposed a fresh theory of alkalis that later was accepted in chemical practices"
Observation: any information collected with the senses
Data: factual information, especially information organized for analysis or used to reason or make decisions
Fact: when an observation is confirmed repeatedly and by many independent and competent observers, it can become a fact
Belief: any cognitive content (perception) held as true; religious faith
Dogma: a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof
Impression: a vague idea in which some confidence is placed; "his impression of her was favorable"; "what are your feelings about the crisis?"; "it strengthened my belief in his sincerity"; "I had a feeling that she was lying"
Based on this, evolution is a theory. CS and ID are beliefs.
Hope this helps.
Islam hasn't spread because people loved its message. It was jammed down their necks. They were smart enough to pick on relative weaklings.
Evolution, on the other hand, conforms to all three. We see evolution within populations. Evolution makes predictions - evolution predicted that we'd find some of the fossils that have now been discovered, based on gaps within the fossil record. Finally, evolution is falsifiable - any number of discoveries such as a million-year old Homo Sapiens skeleton would do it.
How do we test ID? What predictions does it make for future discoveries? Most damningly, what possible find would prove ID to be incorrect?
Without meeting those three criteria, ID fails to qualify as a scientific theory and should not be taught in science classes. Words mean things, after all.
Red herring. Already covered. Please see Post #365. Still waiting for the answers to my questions.
Red herring. Already covered. Please see Post #365.
Two observations, then I'm going to get myself some breakfast:
This is why I very seldom post on FR anymore. And though it may have a lot to do with the subject (you really DON'T have anything but semantics and personal attacks since your 'theory' is a bust), debate on this forum is boring because the other side never bothers to READ what you post.
Your arguments get more and more amusing. You are ramming down our throats a 'theory' that is arguably provable to be false (or at least shaky on its foundations), and refusing to even acknowledge a theory that is perfectly plausible.
Sorry guys, I'm bored, and I'm tired of hearing the same crap over and over again. Enjoy your debate. I think in the end my side is going to win, and you and the ACLU and the Separation of Church and State people are going to get smacked around.
Ah, so you admit that it *is* about pushing religion. It's not about science at all.
Very enlightening.
Just spell the name right. No matter the outcome, all of this publicity represents a major victory for the ID movement.
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