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.
From an essay on Piltdown Man at TalkOrigins (emphases my own):
This plausibility did not hold up. During the next two decades there were a number of finds of ancient hominids and near hominids, e.g. Dart's discovery of Australopithecus, the Peking man discoveries, and other Homo erectus and australopithecine finds. Piltdown man did not fit in with the new discoveries.
In July 1953 an international congress of paleontologists, under the auspices of the Wenner-Gren Foundation, was held in London. The world's fossil men were put up, admired and set down again. But, according to Dr. J.S. Weiner, Piltdown man got barely a mention. He did not fit in. He was a piece of the jig-saw puzzle; the right colour but the wrong shape. It was at the congress that the possibility of fraud dawned on Weiner. Once the possibility had raised it was easy to establish that the finds were a fraud.
The exposure of the Piltdown Man fraud is one of the many great successes of evolutionary theory and the self-correction mechanism of the scientific method in action. If only creationists would learn to dispose of methods and evidence that are determined to be fraudulent, they might make progress as well (but then again, this would inevitably result in their no longer being creationists...)
Oh, it's falsifiable, but it's not testable unless you can do what I say and show THERE IS NO NATURALISTIC UNGUIDED SCENARIO. Good luck on supporting your claim of that negative.
As you make clear, any laboratory demonstration in less than a human lifetime of what could have happened in truly unguided fashion over several hundred million years will be "proof of design" as you intend to spin it.
Your whole proposal is a stupid Catch-22 game which should fool only the people dumb enough to prefer superstition in the first place.
"And I thought the constitution forbid the GOVERNMENT from establishing religion. Judges seem to be free from this restriction, and rule all the time about what IS and ISN'T religion"
Exactly thank you for some form of rational thought here! Judgees/the Government do not establish religion and therefore that is why they have not allowed any fundamentalist group of any kind to insert it sidewind it if you will into PUBLIC SCHOOL Curriculum
I repeat PUBLIC SCHOOL CURRICULUM
that I pay for with my tax dollars
"I'd feel pretty upset if some judge said a symbol of MY religion was acceptable because it wasn't REALLY a religion."
Two things here.....Believing in Darwinian theory is not a religion or indication or symbol of one, not even of atheism as you surely will proport, ...and... if your faith or religion hinges on whether someone anyone says it is or is not a religion then you need to review your devotion to what you proportedly believe in.
"...and in Him all things hold together."
So scientists had to go looking for an explanation of why the nucleus of an atom doesn't fly apart and concluded that the "strong force" is responsible for it. The Bible addressed the issue way before scientists even thought of it. My question is "How did the ancients know that things needed to be held together?" IOW, what ever gave them the concept that everything needed to be held together? I don't believe that there was anything in their experience that would have led them to that concept or conclusion.
Scientists can deride the Bible all they want about it being inaccurate and not a science textbook as if that cuts into it's credibility; but when I see things like that along with the correlation between the Creation account and what science teaches about the beginnings of the universe, I don't think the Bible gets enough credit.
For the sake of the argument, what if it was? Which god or gods would it be evidence for? And why? And how does that bolster any such argument?
Mandating acceptance of a religious tract as an acceptable science textbook is establishment of religion.
Scientific study?
Why would a creationist want or need to study anything scientifically when he can simply fall back on the simplistic notion that an animal behaves the way it does because that's what God wanted?
And, of course, we know that animals never, ever changes their behavior to accomodate their enviroment, right?
And, naturally, we also know that the species's biology is never altered as a result of this accomodation, right?
Because if it did, it would mean that it is evolving into something it wasn't and as we all know from what you creationists say, evolution is an invalid theory.
According to you and your fellow creationists, animals have never evolved. Ever. They were created with their unique features intact, right? Fish created from nothingness with scales/fins and birds with feathers/beaks/wings, that's what you wrote.
Yes indeed. When it comes right down to it, that (believing) is largely what science is all about.
Wrong. Science is not about simple believing. Science involves taking that belief and testing it for validity which results in proving or disproving the postulate. Since creationism cannot be tested in the lab, it cannot be considered science.
600 years ago, everyone believed the world was flat and that the earth was the center of the universe and that all the planets and stars orbited the earth. That's what their religious leaders wanted them to believe and that's what they believed.
Was their belief scientifically sound? It was not because it was based upon their religious belief, under which, not coincidentally, is the same belief-system that modern-day creationists operate.
Science has evolved, but your belief-system has not. Like your counterparts from 600 years ago, you (generic, not specific) still believe that the earth is the center of the universe and that everything revolves around you.
They are not. Just as your ancestors were incorrect in their scientific assumptions, you are wrong about yours.
They were too arrogant to admit they were wrong when presented with scientific evidence that challenged their belief in how the universe operated (ask Galileo or DaVinci) just like you and your fellow creationists have too much pride to admit when you're wrong about evolution.
The problem isn't with the science or the evidence it presents. The problem is that your religious beliefs prevent you from acknowledging the truth about evolution.
"My question is "How did the ancients know that things needed to be held together?"
Can we say TIME TRAVELERS! or how about Sensient beings from other terrestrial planes??? arriving in firey chariots ?
"For the sake of the argument, what if it was? Which god or gods would it be evidence for? And why? And how does that bolster any such argument?"
Good point. :)
Beats me. The jump from ID ( the universe came into existance as a result of intelligent design) to the Creation account of the Bible is a long one. People who meltdown that the mere mention of ID is the teaching of a particular religion are stretching it more than a little bit. ID is not a foothold to get Christianity taught in schools as it does not address any particular diety; that's getting paranoid. While I don't really care if Christianity is taught in schools, I object to it being eliminated.
Have you even read the constitution?
When I was in high school one of the mandated books in my Literature class was Siddartha by Herman Hesse (which is a book that extolls the virtues of Buddhism). Nobody complained. Quite frankly if mandating a suggestion to read a certain book is an establishment of religion, then mandating the teaching of evolution could also be considered an establishment of religion as it contradicts the deeply held religious beliefs of some people.
But the fact is that neither of them is "an establishment of religion." Both may be considered as a tacit endorsement of a religious position, but no reasonable person could conclude that what the Dover School board did was in any way "an establishment of religion."
Read the history of the First Amendment and you will see what the founders intended by that clause. The fact is that the same Congress that passed the first amendment also passed a resolution and law mandating the teaching of the Bible using public funds in the Territories of the United States. That was not an establishment of religion then and this is not one now.
I am amazed at all the people on this board -- supposed conservatives -- who have bought into this idea of the constitution being a living document. It is not. It is a contract.
I'm sure that if a judge had found that the teaching of evolution violated some obscure clause in the Constitution, that you guys would be all over that decision like white on rice. Just because you won on this issue does not mean you actually won anything. This is a pyrric victory for any conservative who believes in evolution.
Hopefully because this decision is so overreaching, it will sound the death knell for the Lemon Test. In that sense it may yet be a victory for the principles of original intent.
I know that. Your materialistic world view cannot account for the metaphysical nature of reality. Objective and universal standards of reason simply cannot exist in your purely material world, but you act as if they do.
Cordially,
You're conflating Naturalism as an absolute philosophy and naturalism as a scientific techique.
Astrophysicists and cosmologists routinely speak about singularities, points in time and/or space in which the laws of nature appear not to have been in operation, at least not in any knowable or repeatable way. These folks would be fascinated to discover that they aren't doing science!!!
Stupidity aside, when a scientist who is willing to accept the possibility of singularities, or intelligent design, or divine creation, or even abrupt appearance encounters a situation which appears to fall into one of these categories, he is first going to make sure that this is what it appears to be -- SCIENTIFICALLY -- and then if it is, he will proceed to try to understand every other part of it or its consequences that are non-singularities.
So either you are ignorant or just obtuse, but it is perfectly possible for a rigorous naturalistic approach to science to coexist peacefully with the belief that there may be parts of Creation/Nature that are beyond the ability of science to describe.
It is if your presenting ideas in the biological sciences. However, ID would be perfectly acceptable in a religion class or as a Church study group.
Has your Church incorporated ID into it's sermons?
Creationists study God's creation to learn more about how God is doing things. As they progress they assign words to those processes, just as science has always done.
And, of course, we know that animals never, ever changes their behavior to accomodate their enviroment, right?
It would be a boring universe if God created one in which there were no such thing as change. The interrelation of matter according to predictable laws (which have yet to be fully explained by science, I might add) is another indication that the universe has been intelligently designed. It is no surprise that various specices demonstrate a variety of characteristics as they pass from generation to generation. In all of recorded human history, however, there have been limits to that change.
Since creationism cannot be tested in the lab, it cannot be considered science.
Yeah. It's fairly tough to lay hands on an "ism." But intelligent design? It is evident everywhere reason and senses are able to comprehend matter, and probably in some places science hasn't looked yet. Ultimately, no matter how much you wish otherwise, your whole reason and experience amounts to what you believe. Your belief is based on evidence, to be sure. But it is still belief.
In the Dover trial, Michael Behe said, under oath, that he thought the Designer was God. And based on his other public statements, it seems he meant the Christian God.
Exactly: no EDUCATED person believed the world was flat. Sadly, there were a great number of uneducated who did...
As far as destroying Fester's arguments - I find that's rather like playing "Whack-a-mole".
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.