Posted on 10/05/2005 3:53:39 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
HARRISBURG, Pa. - A philosophy professor and two science teachers were expected to testify Wednesday in a landmark trial over a school board's decision to include a reference to "intelligent design" in its biology curriculum.
Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, is being called as an expert witness on behalf of eight families who are trying to have intelligent design removed from the Dover Area School District's biology curriculum. The families contend that it effectively promotes the Bible's view of creation, violating the constitutional separation of church and state.
Forrest's testimony was expected to address what opponents allege is the religious nature of intelligent design, as well as the history and development of the concept, according to court papers filed by the plaintiffs before the trial.
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III was also expected to hear testimony from Bertha Spahr, chairman of Dover High School's science department, and biology teacher Jennifer Miller.
Under the policy approved by Dover's school board in October 2004, students must hear a brief statement about intelligent design before classes on evolution. It says Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact," has inexplicable "gaps," and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for more information.
Intelligent-design supporters argue that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force, and that natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.
The plaintiffs are represented by a team put together by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The school district is being defended by the Thomas More Law Center, a public-interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich., that says its mission is to defend the religious freedom of Christians.
The trial began Sept. 26 and is expected to last as long as five weeks.
And your computer will have Windows ME installed, and a dial-up AOL connection.
Suitable for a lapel pin! The Grand Master is pleased.We unworthy underlings can but do our best to please the Grand Master.
I think he was referring to his personal experience with homeschooling.
ROFL
Do you mind if we hot-link to it? Some websites complain about the traffic.It's on geocities and I don't know their exact policy on these things, but since I don't have anything but Darwin Central material there, there's no harm hotlinking. Keep a copy elsewhere if it breaks, or else let me know and I'll place it on my own server.
Much better. I'll use that one.
Then your opinion on that matter is worse than "largely speculative", it is entirely ignorant of the methods by which the age of the Earth has been determined by an overwhelming amount of evidence.
[ID is based on the assumption that complexity can only come from intelligence.]
ID concludes, not assumes, that such complexity can only come via intelligent design.
So you falsely assume, anyway. Anyone who has bothered to actually study the subject (which leaves out the IDers) is familiar with various natural processes which bring about the increase of complexity without the intervention of "intelligent design".
And this is where the faulty "conclusion of ID" falls flat on its face. It childishly reasons that "if something is complex, it must have been designed, since that is the only way [that I know of] that complexity can arise." But the this is simply the "argument from incredulity", a known fallacy -- there are *other* ways that complexity can and does arise. So the whole gradeschool argument for ID is transparently wrong, and flies in the face of what is already known.
So why do you want to teach this simplistic and fallacious crap in school as if it were science?
How about an address (you don't have to display it here) of a high res version suitable for various objects like pins an bumper stickers.
That sounds like some of Von Daniken's writing. There's a big rock in the jungle and since I can't figure out how it got there, it proves that an ancient astronaut put it there.
To bring down the evil house of materialistic science. To restore the glorious Dark Ages. To impose theocratic tyranny. To end, once and for all, the satanic perversion known as reason.
Any other questions?
This is an example of how nutty creationism gets, and how it often (however opposite to its motivating intent) leads to distortions of the Bible.
The Bible doesn't say a darn thing about whether or not animals died before the fall of man. The story is clearly about man becoming subject to death and decay. Yet some creationists impose this nonsense on the text because it fits in with the young earth view and flood geology.
And ironically the modern flood geology scheme, though associated with more successful popularizers like Henry Morris, was originally devised by Seventh-Day Adventist George McCready Price to bring science into conformity with the (purportedly, according to conservative Adventists) inerrant writings of the sect's prophetess Ellen G. White. Thus modern fundamentalists like yourself unknowingly read the dreams, visions and miscellaneous rants of White back into your Bibles.
You also implicitly posit a wholesale recreation of the world, or at least of living things, that the Bible says nothing about. For if there were indeed not death or decay before the fall of man then there would be no cell death either. And yet cell death is absolutely necessary to the functioning of all animals, and to their proper development. (When cells don't die as they should, we call that "cancer".)
Animals would have to work in such a completely and fundamentally different fashion that, whatever the superficial and macroscopic similarities, there's no warrant to even call them the same creatures. For instance a horse before the fall of man might have things that looked like hooves at the end of each leg, but they couldn't actually be hooves, because hooves, like fingernails, are composed of dead cells; and they couldn't grow in the way hooves do because they requires cell death too. But they'd have to grow in some way to replace wear from usage, unless you want to do away with friction too in which case the horse couldn't walk anyway. But they couldn't grow the way we understand growth, that is by adding new cells, because that means other cells would have to die. Again there would have to be some whole other system of biology (maybe not even based on cells) behind these non-death-experiencing, pre-fall creatures.
It's just stupid, and all the more so in that it is gratuitously imposed on the Bible (by supposed literalists) rather than read from it.
In truth I overstated my case (with respect to math being more solid than other sciences). Natural sciences are not comparable with Mathematical Analysis, but that is only really a sub-field of math, and not the most useful field for the other sciences. Much of math rests on shakier foundations, and Godel proved that the usefulness of axiomatic systems in representing the real world is finite.
I note that you didn't address the main thrust of my response at all.
The problem is that the same church where I was taught that Genesis and evolution did not conflict now teaches that it does.
ID theology and Biblical literalism has been preached widely in the last few decades, often by the large non-denominational "mega churches" like the one attended by our new Supreme Court nominee.
My theory is that they're using literalism and anti-evolution theology as a filter to bring in the more gullible into the congregation. Someone who can be persuaded to deny obvious things like the age of the earth, that has massive amounts of evidence from many disiplines, can be persuaded of anything. Tithe religiously, for instance.
These mega-churches are high energy places, and the pull of "belonging" to such a group of people gives a great deal of power to the preachers. I'm sure it's addictive.
The original is in Adobe Illustrator format, in other words it's a vector-based picture, so you tell me the format (and dimensions if you want a bitmap) and you'll have it. I'll just have to mess with Darwin's face a little first - this one is bitmapped, but I have one I vectorized somewhere.
ok then, give me a source.
again, questioning a single example does not invalidate the rest.
How many times have you asked that question and completely ignored the answers you were given?
Haven't you heard? That's the "ID method" (as opposed to "the scientific method").
In "the scientific method", one has to provisionally accept the theory which best fits the totality of the evidence, observations, and experimental results.
In "the ID method", one is free to completely ignore all evidence which contradicts the desired conclusion, and hand-wave it away as "speculative" (even though the evidence is what it is, and still exists despite being dishonestly labeled "speculative").
Welcome to the world of junk science. This is the sort of claptrap that these charlatans want to force into classrooms -- and pollute young minds with -- via court action.
I don't know how any good Christian can support this sort of extreme, calculated dishonesty. It completely baffles me. What's even more amazing is that they don't realize that this kind of transparent lie scares people *away* from Christianity.
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