Posted on 11/22/2005 12:44:07 PM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
THE first court trial over the theory of intelligent design is now over, with a ruling expected by the end of the year. What sparked the legal controversy? Before providing two weeks of training in modern evolutionary theory, the Dover, Pa., School District briefly informed students that if they wanted to learn about an alternative theory of biological origins, intelligent design, they could read a book about it in the school library.
In short order, the School District was dragged into court by a group insisting the school policy constituted an establishment of religion, this despite the fact that the unmentionable book bases its argument on strictly scientific evidence, without appealing to religious authority or attempting to identify the source of design.
The lawsuit is only the latest in a series of attempts to silence the growing controversy over contemporary Darwinian theory.
For instance, after The New York Times ran a series on Darwinism and design recently, prominent Darwinist Web sites excoriated the newspaper for even covering intelligent design, insulting its proponents with terms like Medievalist, Flat-Earther and "American Taliban."
University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers argues that Darwinists should take an even harder line against their opponents: "Our only problem is that we aren't martial enough, or vigorous enough, or loud enough, or angry enough," he wrote. "The only appropriate responses should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many school board members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians."
This month, NPR reported on behavior seemingly right out of the P.Z. Myers playbook.
The most prominent victim in the story was Richard Sternberg, a scientist with two Ph.D.s in evolutionary biology and former editor of a journal published out of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. He sent out for peer review, then published, a paper arguing that intelligent design was the best explanation for the geologically sudden appearance of new animal forms 530 million years ago.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel reported that Sternberg's colleagues immediately went on the attack, stripping Sternberg of his master key and access to research materials, spreading rumors that he wasn't really a scientist and, after determining that they didn't want to make a martyr out of him by firing him, deliberately creating a hostile work environment in the hope of driving him from the Smithsonian.
The NPR story appalled even die-hard skeptics of intelligent design, people like heavyweight blogger and law professor Glenn Reynolds, who referred to the Smithsonian's tactics as "scientific McCarthyism."
Also this month, the Kansas Board of Education adopted a policy to teach students the strengths and weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory. Darwinists responded by insisting that there are no weaknesses, that it's a plot to establish a national theocracy — despite the fact that the weaknesses that will be taught come right out of the peer-reviewed, mainstream scientific literature.
One cause for their insecurity may be the theory's largely metaphysical foundations. As evolutionary biologist A.S. Wilkins conceded, "Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one."
And in the September issue of The Scientist, National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell argued that his extensive investigations into the matter corroborated Wilkins' view. Biologist Roland Hirsch, a program manager in the U.S. Office of Biological and Environmental Research, goes even further, noting that Darwinism has made a series of incorrect predictions, later refashioning the paradigm to fit the results.
How different from scientific models that lead to things like microprocessors and satellites. Modern evolutionary theory is less a cornerstone and more the busybody aunt — into everyone's business and, all the while, very much insecure about her place in the home.
Moreover, a growing list of some 450 Ph.D. scientists are openly skeptical of Darwin's theory, and a recent poll by the Louis Finkelstein Institute found that only 40 percent of medical doctors accept Darwinism's idea that humans evolved strictly through unguided, material processes.
Increasingly, the Darwinists' response is to try to shut down debate, but their attempts are as ineffectual as they are misguided. When leaders in Colonial America attempted to ban certain books, people rushed out to buy them. It's the "Banned in Boston" syndrome.
Today, suppression of dissent remains the tactic least likely to succeed in the United States. The more the Darwinists try to prohibit discussion of intelligent design, the more they pique the curiosity of students, parents and the general public.
Stop lying. Why did you post THIS on your homepage:
"Breaking down the sexual barriers between the races is a major weapon of cultural destruction because it means the dissolution of the cultural boundaries that define breeding and the family and, ultimately, the transmission and survival of the culture itself."
Don't deny you did.
Science regularly postulates causes regarding the unobserved. Postulating what CANNOT be observed is the job of ideologies.
You are.
First you are found to have racist crap on your profile page. When people point it out in disgust, you delete it, replacing it with some nonsense about how the Jacobins made you take it down. Then you deny it, daring people to prove it. Now you're pleading ignorance.
I don't buy it for a minute.
CarolinaGuitarman, you raised the Sam Francis quote back on 11/18/2005 here.
And Liberal Classic, you’ve already been indignant on that same thread and date here.
Getting upset all over again on a brand new thread with the same Freeper over the same thing is called stalking or flaming.
It serves no useful purpose.
Long ago a bunch of posters here ganged up on another poster who used the phrase "1720 is a big number." The stalking and flaming was unrelenting
Worse, it made everyone who ganged up to ridicule him look very mean-spirited to the Lurkers. That hurt their argument – every single time - because the people we all try to convince are the Lurkers, and they are frankly turned off by meanness.
And just in case anyone should jump to the conclusion that only those who support intelligent design or creationism make embarrassing posts, you ought to take a look at the exchange here. But I trust that AndrewC will not be following the other poster around from thread to thread rubbing it in.
So is this post.
"Science regularly postulates causes regarding the unobserved. Postulating what CANNOT be observed is the job of ideologies."
I said causes, not the unobserved. . Why are you changing what I said?
No, I'd probably say it was made by fellow humans. That's because I know that humans have made flint arrowheads in the past.
If I were on Mars and saw somethnig similar, I'd say it was probably the work of Martians, making the assumprion that they hunted (and using the fact that the properties of flint, ballistics, etc, are the same on Earth and Mars).
If I saw a Martian, I wouldn't know whether he/she/it was designed or evolved until I was able to examine him/her/it in detail; for example, if his/her/its genetic material had lots of "junk" in it, I'd have to conclude he/she/it was evolved rather than designed.
The hell it doesn't!
If you believe I am stalking, take it to the moderators.
If you think I am arguing this to make creationist look bad, I don't know what to tell you. This isn't about crevo threads. This is about interracial marriages causing "social destruction."
This statement is slicker than a greased pig. The quote was in your profile page.
This is often what science deals with. Now that we've seen the motions of the planets all our lives, we deem them "natural" in their patterns. Does that make them "natural?" Actually, we still don't know exactly what causes them to retain their so-called "natural" patterns, but once we know, we will call it a "natural" cause. Who's to say whether it is a product of design? It is certainly not unreasonable, or unscientific, to consider it as such. Especially if one cares to be "agnostic" about it.
But hey, if that is the ‘game’ you would like to play…
The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection had been discovered. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. Everything in nature is the result of fixed laws.
Darwin, Charles. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin with original omissions restored. New York, Norton, 1969 (p.87)
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly. 1) No gods worth having exist; 2) no life after death exists; 3) no ultimate foundation for ethics exists; 4) no ultimate meaning in life exists; and 5) human free will is nonexistent.
- William Provine (from Darwin Day speech)
I have argued that the discontinuous gap between humans and 'apes' that we erect in our minds is regrettable. I have also argued that, in any case, the present position of the hallowed gap is arbitrary, the result of evolutionary accident. If the contingencies of survival and extinction had been different, the gap would be in a different place. Ethical principles that are based upon accidental caprice should not be respected as if cast in stone.
- Dawkins
The time has come to take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We must think again especially about our so-called “ethical principles.” The question is not whether biology—specifically, our evolution—is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible. Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will.... In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Like Macbeth’s dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without existing in substance.Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place.
-Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, “The Evolution of Ethics,” in Religion and the Natural Sciences: The Range of Engagement, ed. J. E. Hutchingson (Orlando, Fl.: Harcourt and Brace, 1991)
A. Promote the civic understanding and acknowledgment of the naturalistic worldview, which is free of supernatural and mystical elements.
B. Gain public recognition that persons who hold such a worldview can bring principled actions to bear on matters of civic importance.
C. Educate society toward accepting the full and equitable civic participation of all such individuals.
Brights
Hmmm… What is your stance in regard to these ‘beliefs’? They are only ‘beliefs’… Go ahead and justify them with your ‘spam’ but know this – A steady state universe and gill slit theories were taught and believed recently. Are you suggesting all should accept this ‘new doctrine’ without any questions? Do you believe your material mind ultimately comes from mindlessness?
"Since Darwinian evolution seeks to promote 'no-design' as a scientific concept, and since all scientific concepts are tentative and refutable, then the disagreement with the hypothesis of no design is scientific. It simply reflects the alternative. In other words, if it is scientific to argue against design, it necessarily is scientific to disagree and argue for it."
- John H. Calvert
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