Posted on 10/19/2005 11:23:30 PM PDT by nickcarraway
No sooner had the Darwinists ended their 80th anniversary celebrations of the Scopes trial than they turned their attention to conducting censorship trials of their own. The ACLU has gone from defending teachers to prosecuting them. In a federal courtroom this week, the ACLU argued that science teachers in the school district of Dover, Pennyslvania, are not free under the Constitution to question evolutionary theory. That the Dover school board has to defend the constitutionality of its science curriculum before a federal judge is one more illustration of the insane First Amendment jurisprudence of the last 50 years.
The elite, sensing a chance to score a victory against critics of Darwinism, are watching the trial breathlessly. Slate has assigned famed correspondent Hanna Rosin to cover the trial; the New York Times dispatched Laurie Goodstein -- note that she is a religion not science reporter for the paper -- to cover it. There is an all-hands-on-deck feel to the reporting, which has been made even more critical by the presence of the Dover school board's star witness, Lehigh university biochemist Michael Behe. A dreaded scientist who perversely refuses to accept the overwhelming and obvious "consensus" in favor of Darwinism.
While neither Rosin nor Goodstein are up to the task of explaining evolutionary theory convincingly, they do realize the sacred duty of stopping this scientist. He's wandered much too far on to the Darwinists' turf.
Garbling the elite's dogmatic schema, Goodstein, in the Wednesday edition of the Times, had Behe challenging the "Darwinian theory of random natural selection." Random natural selection? No, no, Ms. Goodstein, nature selects not randomly but necessarily, choosing random mutations that happen to prove useful, under Darwin's theory. What is nature? And how does it choose with such incredible precision and marvelous efficiency? Well, that's not important and certainly not within the province of science, even if Aristotle, who probably believed in Gods and went to temple, did consider these questions in The Physics and concluded that nature requires an intelligent cause.
Goodstein doesn't have the Darwinian terminology down, but she is keenly aware of the elite's favorite argument for evolutionary theory: the scientific establishment says it is so and no reasonable person would question these omniscient scientists. Here's how she presents that point: "Scientific critics of intelligent design -- and there are many -- have said for years that its proponents never propose any positive arguments or proofs of their theory, but rest entirely on finding flaws in evolution." What delightful casualness.
Never mind that through history scientists -- and there are many -- have considered it "science" to examine a theory and find it inadequate if it couldn't explain the facts they did know, such as that beings in nature contain awe-inspiring intricacy, beings they couldn't replicate with their own intelligence. But then what do they know next to the scientific experts at the ACLU?
Aristotle was one of those creationists in a cheap toga who concluded that the abundant design in nature points to an intelligent cause even if that cause isn't visible. "For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true," he wrote in The Physics, a book that the ACLU would argue violates the separation between church and state.
Though Darwinism resembles an astonishing fable of chance -- the Greek mythmaker Empedocles, not Darwin, deserves credit for launching the idea that nature is undesigned and the product of genetic happenstance -- Goodstein feels confident enough to lampoon Intelligent Design as no more scientific than "astrology." She provides no proof in her story, but leads with the claim that Behe "acknowledged that under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would fit as neatly as intelligent design." Doesn't Goodstein know that astrology is one of her secularist audience's favorite hobbies?
The problem with Behe's testimony for Hanna Rosin was not too little scientific explanation but too much. She found it all very taxing.
"The courtroom, it turns out, is a poor place to conduct a science class. Behe runs through specific examples of 'irreducible complexity' -- his idea that certain biochemical structures are too complex to have evolved in parts: blood clotting cascades, the immune system, cells," she writes. "He claims his critics have misread crucial bits of data. To a nonscientist such as myself (and presumably the judge), this is like Chinese: I recognize the language, but I have no idea whether the speaker is faking it. I have no context, no deeper knowledge of the relevant literature. The reporter seated next to me has written only four lines of notes for three hours of testimony. The mere fact that the trial is being conducted in such highly technical language means, for the moment, ID is winning."
Nevertheless, she is sure Behe's wrong, and adduces herself as evidence that intelligent design is impossible, "I need look no further than myself for counter-evidence: weak ankles, diabetes, high probability of future death. If there is a designer, she doesn't seem so intelligent."
Scientists who stood alone used to inspire a little more deference in the left. But Michael Behe is one nonconformist they won't defend. The silencers of unpopular science once feared ACLU lawyers. Now they retain them.
George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.
Thanks for setting the record straight.
He definitely was NOT an evolutinist!
In the thought experiment, as the live albatross decides to fly away, he musters molecular machinery in his body to accomplish that end by successful communication, i.e. the reduction of uncertainty (Shannon entropy) in the molecular machinery in going from a before state to an after state – which also results in the dissipation of heat into the local environment.
The dead albatross and the cannonball cannot successfully communicate. You'll have to take my word for that because I have no intention of tossing dead albatrosses and cannonballs until they, or I, reach maximum entropy with the environment.
The observations I gave you are obviously thought experiments, I haven't actually been to the leaning tower of Pisa. But Einstein’s relativity is also based on thought experiments as were many before him going way back to the ancient Greeks. Thought experiments lead to the next step of the investigation.
Again, it is not rocket science.
For the Lurkers here, anyone who has had a housecat or a teenager or a spouse - voted in an election or sat on a jury - knows what free will is and knows he does not need to scale the Leaning Tower of Pisa and throw a live albatross, a dead albatross and a 12 lb cannonball over the side to prove it.
You call the cell intelligence and flatworm intelligence “highly determined”. I certainly don’t agree. The cell is given a choice of which way to go and he chooses. The flatworm which regenerated from the half that didn’t have a brain is presented with a light stimulus and he chooses to scrunch up just like the one which regenerated from the half which did have a brain.
I reckon we can argue over what is the proper threshold definition for intelligence, if you’d like. I’d say intelligence would have to be more than awareness (consciousness); intelligence would require decision making and action based on that decision.
Give the flatworm a choice, scrunch or be zapped. Give the teenager a choice of a new car or a promiscuous date for his sixteenth birthday. Give the live albatross a choice to fly away or go *splat*. Give the dog a choice of Alpo or Kibbles n Bits. Give the wife a choice of wall color for the nursery.
By observation we can see that choices get made - some choices are more predictable than others but they are choices nonetheless.
So very true, AG.
The live albatross just might fly.
After a thorough behaviorist undergrad education, I had to come to grips with determinism.
I decided that those types of altruistic behavior to the detriment of the organism demonstrate that all is not stim/response (SR) determinism.
Based on evidence CONTRARY to the 5 sense, the human ON FAITH sacrifices for the benefit of the other and not him/herself.
Some will say, "...but they did what they wanted..."
No, because they went contrary to what they preferred and what their 5 senses dictated.
They transcended SR determinism.
"Greater love has no man than this; that a man lay down his life for his friends...."
The SR model helps us to make better predictions - but it is not absolute. In the end, qualia (pain/pleasure, likes/dislikes) is a very personal matter and is not constant - today your dog might do his trick for a reward of Bacon Strips, but his tastes may change at any time [even during a dog show] and it might now require a Pupparoni to get him to run the course. Lion tamers have weapons for a reason.
Love is qualia also since it can only be experienced and cannot be fully described. Love means different things to different people and at different times. The expression of a man laying down his life for his friends speaks to the greatest love.
BTW, I saw a film once of a most amazing case of altruistic behavior in the wild. A mother moose was standing with her calf when an Alaskan Brown appeared in the distance. She nudged the calf down to the ground and ran straight to the bear. She made a choice to be eaten contrary to her self-interest - and acted on it. I haven’t seen this kind of behavior outside of herds. And in the herds, such as the Black African Buffalo, it is the male who goes back to confront the predator in a battle to the death (which he often wins) - not to offer himself as an alternative dinner.
And getting back to humans (v animals) I find it particularly interesting that most all animals are born with both the ability and the instinct to find their mother's milk - but a human baby must be literally brought to the stimulus. It is as if human mothers are forced to the decision and action with a deck stacked against the newborn – as the mother’s pain is so intense during childbirth she’s apt to want to die or kill the man who did it to her. The only advantage the newborn has is that the human mother forgets that pain almost instantly.
Even so, some humans and animals are known to abandon their young. They love less it would appear.
Great stories about the mother moose and the black buffalo. There is definitely an awareness that is part of what drives them to do what they do.
Then there are the stories of incredible loyalty shown by some pets to their humans.
And some humans to the families, neighborhoods, nations.
Determinism is not the final word.
And conversely, sometimes of humans to their pets.
Truly, just as you say xzins, "determinism is not the final word." It appears that free will (the ability to make choices, or decisions) is not bound by the predictions of the physico-chemical laws.
I'm just looking in briefly here, and must go away again. Am working on a big project this weekend. But I had to write to thank you for your excellent posts, xzins.
BB, thank you for your kindness.
And best wishes on your project.
I just returned from the mall where I saw a BB Calendar with weekly BB poses. She sure was a hottie, wasn't she!?
You certainly are missed around here, my dear sister in Christ. I pray for you God's grace and Light in whatever you are doing.
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