"Darwinist Ideologues Are on the Run"
Posted on 01/30/2006 10:27:35 PM PST by Sweetjustusnow
The two scariest words in the English language? Intelligent Design! That phrase tends to produce a nasty rash and night sweats among our elitist class.
Should some impressionable teenager ever hear those words from a public school teacher, we are led to believe, that student may embrace a secular heresy: that some intelligent force or energy, maybe even a god, rather than Darwinian blind chance, has been responsible for the gazillions of magnificently designed life forms that populate our privileged planet.
You're arguing apples and oranges. While it's true that biblical creationism is not the "only alternative to purely naturalistic evolution", the fact remains that the push to get ID into the schools is being done almost exclusively by biblical creationists for the purpose of making the schools more "God friendly".
George Will and Krauthammer are concerned about the latter, and the former is irrelevant to that concern.
If you doubt the fundamental (no pun intended) motivations of most members of the "ID movement" are as I describe, sit down and spend a few days reading the testimony in the Kitzmiller trial, for starters.
Over a dozen "missing links" have been found, son. Try cracking open a science journal and stop trying to "learn" about biology from the creationist talking-points.
Is it too much to ask that you *learn* something about the subject before you spout off about it? We've got better things to do than correct your lies.
Is this the complete friggin' idiot ping list?
For someone with "better things to do" you sure are investing a lot of time and work to this thread 'Son'
I suggest you go to http://reasons.org and do a search for "retro viruses" or "junk DNA". I make no claims here. I merely suggest that you check it out. If you find fault with it, then please let us know (I'm sure you're not waiting for my permission).
"Reasons to Believe" is an "old-earth" creationist organization founded by Hugh Ross, Ph.D., an astrophysicist who, if I am not mistaken, has done post-doc work at Caltech (or some such institution). I vaguely recall reading years ago that he was some kind of child genius who had read every book in the local public library by the time he was 12 or something like that. He also claims to have studied the Bible and other major holy books in depth and came to the conclusion that the Bible really is literally true -- so long as it is interepreted correctly ("long" creation days, for example).
If I printed out #15, not only would it be taller than I am, it would need an elevator and an area code.
I believe in truth, and in correcting falsehoods lest they spread. If people could stop posting ignorant disinformation, it would be better for everyone's use of time. Was that really hard to figure out for yourself?
'Uncertainties'?? How about fabrications like 'Piltdown Man', do you teach that little bit of Darwinism treachery in class? Or do you mean the 'uncertainties' such as the fact that Darwin himself wrote that unless and until the missing linking fossils and transitional forms are uncovered his theory is dead in the water? I hope you teach this, it's all part of the story of 'evolution'.
If you give it a fair chance in your scientific mind which is supposed to be open to all possibilities, you just might agree that the greatest scientific event in all eternity was God's CREATION of the universe from nothing. Certainly a worthy scientific discussion for the classroom, eh?
It is presumptuous of mankind to behave as if it can even begin fathoming the complexity of the Supreme Being's universe. The recent insights into previously unseeable micros, other-dimensional laws of physics and evidence of possible multiverses (where three theories land at) should humble the wisest to admit that it's just far grander and complicated than they can pretend to understand with the limited tool set they presently have.
Science is, at it's most basic definition, what we know and what we're doing to learn more. When we start learning that there are more levels at the fringes of what we can presently see but are limited by our current tools and knowledge frameworks...I can't help but see this as a humbling evidence of a vastly higher intelligence that loves us.
If it mocked or played with us we could all still be believing in the four humors and "know" that all diseases were the result of accumulated sin. There's a driving force out there that wants us to comprehend everything we can to the limits of our abilities. If it were all brutal survivalism many arguments exist that we would never have progressed beyond protoplasm or the Earths frequent bouts of mass biological exterminations (at least four major ones by all agreed parties, thirteen or more by most other scientists). Life is tenacious, evolvement is undeniable, extinction of whole classes of species has occurred time and again without the intervention of mankind's influence yet a shocking amount of slaying has occurred due to mankind in recorded history.
Now a group of mankind itself strives to force policies to push for it's own extermination in the foolish ideal that we (the human race) is somehow the ultimate death knell of our planet (Greenpeace, PETA, etc.)
They discount or ignore that life itself has surpassed every test put upon it by environmental and galactic calimity thrown against this rock over the millennia. It's been over seven thousand years since the last big purge while most scientists agree that a new one is past due.
Out tenuous position in this period of relative stability is a blessing that may be taken away in a moment. We are a culminmation, scientifically, of a line left alone long enough to comprehend it's own fate. I think it says a lot for us that we gave burial ceremonies long before any of us had a written language.
So I believe there's a Divine or higher evolved intelligence involved with us. We humans have done more in a few thousand years than all other known species...though that's all we know.
You're the troll moron.
"ERV" returns one hit, which mentions ERVs in passing and doesn't argue for or against them.
"retrovirus" returns four hits: one comment in passing, two which are "members only" for some reason, and one which makes an unsupportable claim:
Evolutionary biologists maintain that junk DNA provides incontrovertible evidence for evolution. This study demonstrates that one class of non-coding DNA, endogenous retroviruses, plays an important role in protecting the cell from retroviral infections. The functional importance of junk DNA indicates that careful planning by an Intelligent Designer, rather than undirected, random biochemical events, shaped the genomes of organisms.This is, in a word, wrong. It misrepresents the features of "junk DNA" which are "smoking gun" evolutionary markers, and those features have nothing to do with whether the material happens to have some function or not. Furthermore, functionality does not "indicate that careful planning by an Intelligent Designer, rather than undirected, random biochemical events, shaped the genomes of organisms", because evolution itself can and provably does produce functional DNA sequences. It only "indicates" a designer if one is reckless enough to deny the proven productivity of evolution *and* presume an ID conclusion a priori (instead of validating that hypothesis via its predictions like any scientific hypothesis).
Furthermore, the evolutionary changes in ERV fragments have been identified -- that is, how evolution produced DNA functional for the organism from the original viral DNA has been reconstructed. It's not like the ERVs were "designed in" in their current form.
Finally, Ross's entire paragraph either overlooks, is ignorant of, or dishonestly glosses over the fact that ERVs have markers which unambiguously identify them *AS* retroviral fragments. So contrary to his entire handwaving paragraph, they *are* the result of ancestral insertion events, were *not* "designed in" from the start, and *are* the kind of "smoking gun" evidence for common ancestry that can't be handwaved away in the manner Ross attempts.
I vaguely recall reading years ago that he was some kind of child genius who had read every book in the local public library by the time he was 12 or something like that.
Well he needs to read some biology textbooks as an adult to keep up with the field.
It's even more presumptuous for anti-evolutionists who can't even get gradeschool biology correct because they haven't bothered to get an educatino on the subject to think they can "refute" 150 years of evolutionary biology and the overwhelmingly massive amount of evidence and research which supports it, along multiple cross-confirming lines.
However much may not still be known about the Universe -- and the average creationist is shocked to discover how much *is* known every time they presume to make a declaration on the evidence that "doesn't" exist -- the anti-evolutionists know a great deal less than even that, if their past performance is any indication.
For pete's sake, that was debunked over half a century ago. And it hasn't been taught since then either. Why don't you guys stop living in the past?
Or do you mean the 'uncertainties' such as the fact that Darwin himself wrote that unless and until the missing linking fossils and transitional forms are uncovered his theory is dead in the water?
Wow, you haven't actually bothered to *read* Darwin, have you? He said no such thing, but he did say something quite reasonable that someone with brain-damage might have been able to mistake for something that incredibly stupid.
Meanwhile, how about countless CURRENT creationist fabrications?
Summary of the ability of the two creationists (Hovind and Havoc) to present information they *know* is false, and to *fail* to retract when reminded of their falsehoods, is presented here, along with links to all appropriate documentation.
(Quick aside -- TheCrusader, do you condone this behavior of your fellow creationists? Yes or no? Is lying for the "cause" of creationism acceptable to you?)
This sort of behavior, unfortunately, is *typical* of creationists. Here, want dozens of more examples of their distortions? A few more for the road? Another? Still more, perhaps? How about even more? Ooh, here are some good examples. And there's lots more where that came from, like this and this and this and lots more here and *tons* here and countless more here and yet more here, a goodie... Wait, there's more over here, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., *ETC.*, etc., etc., etc., . How about 300 more creationist misrepresentations? Not enough, you say? Well then visit Creationist Lies and Blunders. Hey, what about Freeper metacognative's (he's a creationist) ability to accuse Daniel Dennett (evolutionary scientist) of wanting to put Christians into concentration camps for their beliefs, when Dennett was *actually* clearly writing about how RADICAL ISLAM may need to be contained? The ugly details here.
TheCrusader, do you condone all *those* creationist misrepresentations of the evidence, and their misquotations of what scientists have actually said?
So keep telling lies about science, TheCrusader -- it'll make it *very* clear to the lurkers which side is *actually* the one that engages in falsehoods, frauds, and misrepresentations.
I hope you teach this, it's all part of the story of 'evolution'.
No, it's the creationists' idiocies and fixations, because they can't deal with evolutionary biology on the actual evidence and research, so they fling weird accusations as a lame substitute.
If you give it a fair chance in your scientific mind which is supposed to be open to all possibilities, you just might agree that the greatest scientific event in all eternity was God's CREATION of the universe from nothing. Certainly a worthy scientific discussion for the classroom, eh?
Sure, I'm all for teaching this: Evidence for the Big Bang.
...and that's only a *TINY* fraction of the evidence for evolution.
Here's part of a post I wrote a while back trying to get across the magnitude of the evidence:
I am not claiming that all of TOE is crap, just that parts of it, i.e. ape to man is simply speculation based on a few bones and common genes found over a million years. I just don't buy it.
It is far, far more than "simply speculation". First, see the "mega-post" linked above. Then note that even though it's *HUGE*, it's only a vanishingly small fraction of one percent of the amount of evidence that has been accumulated supporting and validating evolution.
I recently went to a large university library in order to find a copy of a paper I couldn't get online (and PubMed, an online database of biology-related research papers, has over TWELVE MILLION papers cataloged). The archived biology journals filled the second, and half of the third floors of the library. Each volume of bound journals held around a thousand pages, and was the size of a big-city phone book. Each shelf held about twenty volumes in a row. Each 8-foot-tall rack held eight shelves. There were about twenty five racks to a row (fifty when you count both sides of the "aisle"), they were *really* long. It was a chore hiking up and down them. There were about seventy rows. I got lost in them several times. And that was just the one floor, there were more upstairs.
And of course, those weren't all the journal articles, just the ones from the biggest journals, and not a lot of the ones published in languages other than English.
*That's* the kind of magnitude of evidence we're talking about. You could hike into those stacks, walk as long as you like, and then pull out a volume at random and flip it open to any page you chose, and I'd make money betting you that if the exact page you chose didn't contain a study providing supporting evidence for evolution, flipping 2-3 pages on either side would. You could literally spend the rest of your life trying to read it all, and not make it through a fraction of it.
Even just the dozens of different specific ways in which "ape to man" has been validated involves enough evidence to literally bury people under.
"Simply speculation"? Not hardly.
Come on, you're smarter than that. Are you suggesting that today we know EVERYTHING about the human body? Is the appendix the only part of the human body that was said to serve no purpose? What happened to all the others? OOPS!
It's truly frightening to regard the gaps in education that those we elect suffer. The worst fate is suffered by the captive audience composed of our youth at the hands of idealogues pretending to be teachers. I felt compelled to spend half my time "straightening out" fellow students while I could easily have frittered it away smoking pot and listening to music (the late 1970's being what they were). Ponder the results of the rap/materialistic youth when they get around to voting.
Back to subject, Yes - those of us who bother to keep up on science and work to understand it have a responsibility to reign in our representatives when they merely pretend to understand those issues. What may be easy for you or I to see is almost impossible for a person who started out shaking down smaller children for their lunch money.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.