Posted on 12/20/2005 7:54:38 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
Fox News alert a few minutes ago says the Dover School Board lost their bid to have Intelligent Design introduced into high school biology classes. The federal judge ruled that their case was based on the premise that Darwin's Theory of Evolution was incompatible with religion, and that this premise is false.
And extremely laudable when compared to page 1 of your manual which begins something like, In Activist Judges We Trust.
But, as by this theory, innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (Origin of Species, 1859).
Because paleontologists hadn't done much digging anywhere, and none in Africa, at the time?
That has since been rectified. Lots of fossils and transitionals now.
I expect that most science students still read this important work.
I mentioned earlier that an article concluded that new studies of primates and humans was a paradigm shift. This is an important term in Kuhn's work
It alludes to how major scientific theories change--sometimes dramatically such as the shift from Ptolemaic astronomy.
I get a rhetorical sense from evolution advocates that this theory is unassailable and must last forever. No theory in science is expected to last forever. It is a constant testing process. Evolution is losing its scientific edge by over reacting to challenges.
"Darwin Quote #2.6. [Re: "lack" of transitional fossils]"
Why did you not post the rest of the quote, where he explains why the fossil record is what it is?
"It will be more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record; and I will here only state that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed. The crust of the earth is a vast museum; but the natural connections have been imperfectly made, and only at long intervals of time."
He spent an entire chapter explaining the problems with the fossil record.
Dover isn't the sticker case is it? Wasn't that one in Georgia? I get so confused in my old age. I find the sticker case to be a very close case, and would have to struggle with it as a judge (my tentative view is to allow it), but packaging ID as science in a science class is not a close case. That is teaching leaps of faith as something objective, and that under long settled SCOTUS case law, that is conflating church and state, and those precedents should not and will not be eroded down to the point to allow the same.
That is exactly right and no discussion of evolution in Catholicism is complete without a discussion on the rejection of reductionism, materialism and exploding grapefruits.
Gee, are you "conflating ID with creationism?" ;0
[...Lady Hope story a myth...]
(Dr. James Moore) The most important aspect of the story,
however, is that it does not say that Charles either
renounced evolution or embraced Christianity. He merely is
said to have expressed concern over the fate of his
youthful speculations and to have spoken in favour of a
few people's attending a religious meeting. The alleged
recantation/conversion are embellishments that others have
either read into the story or made up for themselves.
Moore calls such doings 'holy fabrication'!
Then I'm in good company.
Very little difference between the two cases. Both involve only a disclaimer. No teaching of ID contemplated in the classroom. Cobb County will ruling will be overturned shortly I think. The three appellate judges were none too pleased with the ACLU and the trial judge. And that is an understatement.
Then, you admit it is a theory that lacks any proofs?
I hear some are even saying aliens brought life to planet earth - the way evolutionary theorists define science accomodates all their lies.
Excuse me, i'm not making up anything. My brother-inlaw graduated from Harvard with a degree in mathmatics and received his PH.D from the U. of Stuttgart. He was ranked one of the top 1000 Scientists in the world. Perhaps you could take some time and research him - his name is Dr. Pete Patton. He used to be the Director of the Super Computer Center at the U. of Minnesota, Vice-Provost at the U. of Pennsylvania and was quite successful in the corporate world. He has also published many books. After he retired from the corporate world as a Chief Scientist, he taught some classes at the St Thomas University. I have MANY other relatives I could name but i'll start with him. Oh, but I could just know about this guy and said he was related..and i'm sure you won't find any biography stating he is a creationist. He is a scientist and since he does'nt work in evolutionary philosophy, his view of creation has absolutely no impact on his ability to comprehend or practice "real science".
I never said otherwise.
Chimpanzees seem almost human, and scientists have maintained for decades that chimps are, in fact, 98.5 percent genetically identical to humans.Don't worry-- I am sure this is total fundamentalist nonsense.But the results of a new study call that figure into question, with a finding that there are actually large chunks of the human and chimp genomes that are vastly different.
Researchers at a company called Perlegen Sciences in Mountain View, California, used a powerful biological computer chip that can scan the entire genetic makeup of an organism, that is, its whole genome. The results, published in Monday's issue of Genome Research, show that chimps and humans are much more different than scientists previously thought.
No, you're just misunderstanding it. (It doesn't help that the article itself is poorly written, but that's a common problem for science reporting for the public.)
It also does not appear that you read to the end of the article, where it gets into the details and paints a picture different from the more sensationalistic (and misleading) opening paragraphs.
It specifically states that:
Because of the chimp's genetic similarity to humans, the small amount of DNA that differs between the two species promises to reveal important secrets about what makes humans human.So the Perlegen study *didn't* determine how different the genomes were -- for all they knew it could still have been 98.5% -- but the implications of the study were still that the amount of different was appropriately described as "a small amount".[...] The study didn't generate a new number expressing how similar or different chimpanzee DNA is from human DNA.
Nor is this contradicted by an earlier passage which mentions "large chunks of the human and chimp genomes that are vastly different" -- even the earlier "98.5%" studies found "large chunks" (on the order of hundreds of thousands of basepairs) which were "vastly different". What you're missing (and perhaps even the author of the Wired article is missing it too) is that even a *MILLION* basepair chunk of 100% difference is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the size of the total genome -- it would only contribute a 0.03% difference.
In any case, the "possibilities" hinted at by the article are obsolete, since it was written in 2003, and since then the total human and chimp genomes have been fully sequenced and compared.
The results (from an NIH article) are:
The first comprehensive comparison of the genetic blueprints of humans and chimpanzees shows our closest living relatives share perfect identity with 96 percent of our DNA sequence, an international research consortium reported today.That last part is fascinating -- despite what people might expect, and although rats and mice seem very "close" to each other, humans and chimps are TEN TIMES closer to each other, genetically, than rats are to mice. Furthermore, although people tend to think of the difference between different humans as nearly inconsequential (and it is), and the difference between chimps and man as enormous, the fact remains that the genetic difference between man and chimp is only ten times larger than the average genetic difference between two humans...[...] The consortium found that the chimp and human genomes are very similar and encode very similar proteins. The DNA sequence that can be directly compared between the two genomes is almost 99 percent identical. When DNA insertions and deletions are taken into account, humans and chimps still share 96 percent of their sequence.
[...]
To put this into perspective, the number of genetic differences between humans and chimps is approximately 60 times less than that seen between human and mouse and about 10 times less than between the mouse and rat. On the other hand, the number of genetic differences between a human and a chimp is about 10 times more than between any two humans.
In the long run, Catholics are bound by evidence, wherever it may lead. The church will interpret things in whatever way it must, but it is not going to to go against firmly established evidence.
What was the disclaimer in Dover? Was it put on a textbook, and that was it?
Well, I suppose I could base it on the appeals court in the 11th Circuit which looked askance on the same argument made by the ACLU and trial judge in Georgia. My money says that one is overturned because even the Clinton appointee was skeptical of the ACLU and the trail judges holding. The two conservative judges ripped the ACLU a new one.
But the case should never have gone that far. Dover is instructive because the lowly proletariat found the wherewithal to change the school board absent big brothers command. Exactly the right remedy for those who agree with you on the science. And exactly the right remedy for those that don't. Local voters controlling local issues absent federales in robes.
I mentioned earlier that an article concluded that new studies of primates and humans was a paradigm shift. This is an important term in Kuhn's work
It alludes to how major scientific theories change--sometimes dramatically such as the shift from Ptolemaic astronomy.
I get a rhetorical sense from evolution advocates that this theory is unassailable and must last forever. No theory in science is expected to last forever. It is a constant testing process. Evolution is losing its scientific edge by over reacting to challenges.
I don't know if they read it but they should.
The problem is, ID is not forcing a paradigm change. It has no science behind it, and is having no negative effect on evolution. If anything, evolution scientists are tightening up a bit on their methods, and that's a good thing.
The changes which may (or may not) occur within the broad theory of evolution will come as they always do in science--from careful research and documentation, the scientific method--not from the attacks from non-scientists, indeed the anti-scientists.
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