Posted on 02/24/2003 1:25:18 PM PST by Remedy
More than 200 evolutionists have issued a statement aimed at discrediting advocates of intelligent design and belittling school board resolutions that question the validity of Darwinism.
The National Center for Science Education has issued a statement that backs evolution instruction in public schools and pokes fun at those who favor teaching the controversy surrounding Darwinian evolution. According to the statement, "it is scientifically inappropriate and pedagogically irresponsible" for creation science to be introduced into public school science textbooks. [See Earlier Article]
Forrest Turpen, executive director of Christian Educators Association International, says it is obvious the evolution-only advocates feel their ideology and livelihood are being threatened.
"There is a tremendous grouping of individuals whose life and whose thought patterns are based on only an evolutionary point of view," Turpen says, "so to allow criticism of that would be to criticize who they are and what they're about. That's one of the issues."
Turpen says the evolution-only advocates also feel their base of financial rewards is being threatened.
"There's a financial issue here, too," he says. "When you have that kind of an establishment based on those kinds of thought patterns, to show that there may be some scientific evidence -- and there is -- that would refute that, undermines their ability to control the science education and the financial end of it."
Turpen says although evolutionists claim they support a diversity of viewpoints in the classroom, they are quick to stifle any criticism of Darwinism. In Ohio recently, the State Board of Education voted to allow criticism of Darwinism in its tenth-grade science classes.
Are you claiming to have a model of the earth (and all its systems, animal, vegetable, and mineral) that takes into consideration all requisite variables and can predict the age of the earth from current levels of atmospheric helium and ocean salinity? Man, that's gotta be some model! A model like that outta be able to pinpoint the moment of the onset of global warming to what? the milli-second? When was it? When did the warming start? Al Gore is gonna be so pleased!
BTW, using the model, when you project back using current levels of helium as the starting point, do you get the same earth age as when you project back using salility? What else can one use current values for to project back and get the correct age of the earth? Do they all give the same date? Man, that's got to be thrilling! Oh, is it just a date, or do you get a time of day too? Sorry, just so many questions now I know about the model.
Well, partially. We don’t have the exact same DNA. But then again, an octopus and a cloud both are 98% water.
How do you feel about that?
Just fine!
Yup, do it in the closed circuit where no dissent from evolution is allowed that way your views will not be heard.
Yawn -- the standard creationist whine about why their crackpot "arguments" get booted from serious journals... "It's a conspiracy, I tell you!" Yeah, sure, sure...
Well, tell you what - the argument against evolution is out there and it is being heard.
And being laughed at.
Further, it is being discussed and taken seriously by scientists.
Name three who weren't already creationist cranks.
For example the bacterial flagellum has received numerous scientific articles and discussions, many attempting to challenge its irreducible complexity and all of them failing.
Horse manure, and you know it. I've read all the articles that you folks put forth as "attempts to challenge its irreducible complexity", and not a single one was actually attempting to do what you claim it was. They were just studying the flagellum, and the creationists waved copies of the articles around and yelled, "hey, that's complex, it must be irreducible!!". There was a classic example on a recent FR thread doing that exact dishonest thing. The scientific article in question did *NOTHING* more than measure how flagella lost "power" when the acidity of the surrounding liquid rose. That's ALL the study did. PERIOD. So what did the creationists a "Creation-Evolution Headlines" claim about the article? They said:
this article does nothing to explain how evolution could produce such a molecular machine. It doesn’t even broach the subject. On the contrary, it underscores the point that this is an irreducibly complex system.
Creationists have such a desperate hard-on for wanting to prove something "irreducibly complex" that they are irreducibly dishonest, and will jump on any minor irrelevant observation and wave it as "proof". As usual, they not only declare victory too soon, they declare it before they have bothered to actually make any real case.
Behe's book has been read by millions - including scientists. No one can deny that the argument has not been made and laid out for criticism.
Why yes it has -- and the criticism has been intense, for good reason. Behe makes a valid point (but one well known long before he made a career out of it) -- the existence of a system which could not have stepwise evolved through stages that were themselves "useful" structures would be a difficult thing for evolution to explain. This much is true.
But Behe, True Believer that he is, jumps the gun again and again by listing some interesting biological mechanisms and then simply declaring, in effect, "because I can't think of how this would have worked in more primitive forms, it *must* be irreducibly complex". The gap between premise and conclusion should be obvious to all.
Creationists, of course, don't mind it at all, and think that Behe's "argument from 'I don't see how'" is masterful logic because, well, they like the conclusion.
But that's hardly science. Or logic. Or very honest.
In order to actually *prove* something "irreducibly complex", one would have to do a *LOT* more work. At the very least, one would have to map out *EVERY* conceivable pathway for something to have arisen, *PROVE* that every pathway had been conceived and listed, and then *PROVE* that each and every pathway was absolutely ruled out. All of those steps are very hard, but the last is a killer, because there could always be more mechanisms by which something which doesn't "look" like it might work could actually turn out to work if you understood it better.
It has been laid out much more forcefully and much more publicly than if it had been published in a stupid science journal which people put unread on their bookshelves to make others think that they know what is going on in their field.
Uh huh...
Interestingly enough, the one who has the biggest problem "knowing what is going on in their field" is Behe himself, because in his book he shows astounding ignorance of PRE-EXISTING DISCOVERIES in the field he tries to "instruct". And in some cases, he seems to go beyond any possible honest ignorance and out into sheer dishonesty, such as when he quotes textbooks out of context.
Behe's false claims about Biochemistry textbooks
American Scientist review of Behe's book identify six major flaws
Behe, the Krebs Cycle, and Models of Origins of Complex Biochemical Structures
Behe's flawed claims about the blood clotting cycle
Yet more problems with Behe's blood clotting claims
Another review dismantling Behe's book
Flaws in Behe's claims about the complement system
Long bibliography of material about Behe and his theories
Now we know why Behe published his ideas in a book in the "popular" press instead of submitting *any* papers to the science journals -- they would have been bounced with annotations reading, "idea needs more work and scores of error corrections".
The points against evolution are out there, if evolutionists fail to refute them it is not because they have not heard them.
Evolutionists *do* refute them. If you can post a "point against evolution" that I haven't already seen and which has not already been refuted, I'll send you twenty bucks.
Is a coffee table alive?
Did it ever occur to you that there might be people who believe in God and in evolution?
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