Posted on 10/20/2005 3:00:56 PM PDT by DoctorRansom
Dear Friend, We can forget sometimes how much personal courage it takes to stand up for your convictions. But, these last few weeks, as the ACLU's intelligent design case has unfolded in Dover, Pennsylvania, we've seen ordinary people do something extraordinary. Christy and Bryan Rehm and the other plaintiffs in this historic case have put themselves on the line to protect their children from religious zealotry and to defend your and my religious freedom. We owe these courageous people more than our admiration. We owe them a debt of gratitude. You can let them know you appreciate the tremendous stand for liberty they have taken by sending them a message of support today. Our ACLU attorneys are providing their dedication, guidance and expertise on the legal issues, but your personal messages can add something more. Believe me, every positive note will make a world of difference to these brave parents and teachers. We'll forward these letters to the Rehms and their fellow clients, and with your permission, share our favorite messages with our larger community of supporters online. Defending freedom means being willing to stand up to those who would undermine it. None of the rights and liberties the ACLU has advanced for the past 85 years would have become reality without the courage of our clients, everyday people who have stood up for their beliefs, often in the face of tremendous public pressure or downright intimidation. The parents and teachers involved in this 21st Century version of the Scopes Trial are making a difference not just in their communities, but are influencing a nationwide debate that is about more than just science education -- it is about the role of religion in our society and our government. With the support and partnership of members nationwide, the ACLU will continue to resist the growing movement of political leaders and organized extremists with a faith-based vision for America that pushes aside religious liberty and tolerance to promote and enforce one particular brand of religion, using government power and taxpayer dollars. Stand with the ACLU today and send a loud and clear message that you support the parents and teachers who are challenging the Dover School Board's efforts to inject religious doctrine into the science classroom. Tell them you support their courage. Click here. Together, we'll preserve America's tradition of religious liberty with every ounce of energy we have. Sincerely, Anthony D. Romero Executive Director American Civil Liberties Union
Since science concerns mankind, and mankind is more than science, there is a point where the field of study brushes up against another.
And, if science wants to treat aspects that touch on matters at the borderline of its field, they may have to account for it.
Isn't that throwing the baby out with the bathwater? How about letting inferences stand for what is needed when the lab won't do? A wish comes before flight.
Michael Denton, author of "Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, has written a new book, "Nature's Destiny," on intelligent Design. In it he says this:
"it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes.This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law.
Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies."
Behe, the chief defence witness at Dover, has this to say about evolution:
I didn't intend to "dismiss" the fossil record--how could I "dismiss" it? In fact I mention it mostly to say that it can't tell us whether or not biochemical systems evolved by a Darwinian mechanism. My book concentrates entirely on Darwin's mechanism, and simply takes for granted common descent.
Not at all.
Creation of well ordered snowflakes from totally random water vapor indicates that order can arise spontaneously. This disproves his assertion to the contrary.
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First, snowflakes are symmetrical, not "ordered" in the Darwinian / Evolutionary sense. Their symmetry serves no useful evolutionary purpose therefore the whole snowflake analogy is nothing but a strawman.
Just because the symmetry looks "attractive" even "artistic" to humans does NOT denote order in any useful, or even remotely evolutionary sense.
I can create a perfect plane of demarkation between water and oil every time. Perfect "symmetry" even between two DIFFERENT compounds, but that does not denote "order."
All the secular fundamentalist evolutionists have left are strawmen... Evolution has less of a basis or foundation that I ever dreamed before. It's such a total fallacy that I can see why it is so completely attacked as a religious con!
You're barking at the wrong guy. I've been pointing out for some time that there's no difference between ID and Darwinism in two critical areas -- common descent and the age of the earth. Behe and Denton are agreed on this and now Dembski has chimed in.
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/121/story_12183_1.html
Once we are agreed on these two points we can have a rational discussion.
Biology needs to be taught and Darwin's theory is as close as we come using scientific proof of how the earth and stars were created. It goes into better detail than the Bible about the possible origins of our speciesHow's that? :-D
ID isn't a watering down of either creationism or science. What it is I do not know. It isn't science because it rejects empiricism. It isn't religion because it rejects scripture.
I guess it's what Rush Limbaugh would call the moderate position. It doesn't want to offend anyone.
I guess it's what Rush Limbaugh would call the moderate position. It doesn't want to offend anyone.And as Rush sarcastically points out, it'll go down as another one of those "Great Moments in Moderate History."
I suppose that "atheists", unlike Hovind and the folks at AIG have some scruples.
"Are snowflakes ordered or random? Where did the order come from?"
In a frozen state, the "order" is a lower energy state (lower "free energy")- that's what makes it possible to occur in a what appears to be a random fashion. The apparent order is an inherent property of water and the physical laws of the universe.
Now, does anyone really want to conclude that life is an "inherent" property of matter and the physical laws of the universe? IMO, that is the only way for abiogensis to be feasible. I cannot accept that even the least complex forms of "life" can under any natural conditions or circumstances spontaneously arise from non-life. This would require that life is an inherit property of matter.
"but we at least recognize the possibility of extra-terrestrial life based on some other process."
Indeed - at least you are honest. And NASA is wasting a great deal of taxpayer monies in a vain search to find what isn't there.
Additionally, you might point out to the snowflake-orderedness-deniers that Entropy, S, is a measure of the thermodynamic disorder in a system, and that in differential terms:
When water turns into a snowflake at 0C, it releases the latent heat of fusion, which corresponds to a DECREASE in the heat "Q" in the water/snowflake system occuring at a fixed temperaure "T" = 0C. Hence, we may conclude that since T remains constant, and Q decreases in the water/snowflake system, "S" is also DECREASING. Since "S" is a measure of thermodynamic DISORDER, a decrease in entropy corresponds to an INCREASE in thermodynamic ORDER in the snowflake, compared to its state just prior to the phase change.
For those who are thermodynamically challenged, you can point out the equivalent view of entropy as being proportional to the number of postential microstates the system can be in. From this viewpoint, it is clear that the molecules of water in a vapor or even liguid state have many more potential configurations than the same molecules have in a snowlflake, the molecules being constrained by the flake's geometry and planarity. So, again, even in this non-thermodynamic interpretation of Entropy, the snowflake system has less disorder than a corresponding amount of water at the same temperature before the phase change takes place; hence the snowflake is more "ordered" than the water from which it was formed.
Nope. The ACLU is right were it has always been.
You might want to take a gut check about your soul mates.
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