Posted on 03/11/2003 3:01:59 PM PST by Remedy
A university professor said she was asked to resign for introducing elite students to flaws in Darwinian thought, and she now says academic freedom at her school is just a charade.
During a recent honors forum at Mississippi University for Women (MUW), Dr. Nancy Bryson gave a presentation titled "Critical Thinking on Evolution" -- which covered alternate views to evolution such as intelligent design. Bryson said that following the presentation, a senior professor of biology told her she was unqualified and not a professional biologist, and said her presentation was "religion masquerading as science."
The next day, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Vagn Hansen asked Bryson to resign from her position as head of the school's Division of Science and Mathematics.
"The academy is all about free thought and academic freedom. He hadn't even heard my talk," Bryson told American Family Radio News. "[W]ithout knowing anything about my talk, he makes that decision. I think it's just really an outrage."
Bryson believes she was punished for challenging evolutionary thought and said she hopes her dismissal will smooth the way for more campus debate on the theory of evolution. University counsel Perry Sansing said MUW will not comment on why Bryson was asked to resign because it is a personnel matter.
"The best reaction," Bryson says, "and the most encouraging reaction I have received has been from the students." She added that the students who have heard the talk, "They have been so enthusiastically supportive of me."
Bryson has contacted the American Family Association Center for Law and Policy and is considering taking legal action against the school.
The amazing thing is that there is so little evidence to trace birds to dinasaurs yet you buy into it without question or doubt. That is why I just don't think really see this as a scientific problem but more as a philosophy/religion problem. The alternative to evolution is quite simply an anethema. That was my biggest problem with just about all evolutionists, they simply follow the teaching like little drones, never question, never doubt, and never allow criticism. That is what this whole thread is about, the simple fact that a highly regard professor challenged the Holy Doctrine of evolution.
Regards,
Boiler Plate
The original question was "What reptile other than a bird has feathers". Thanks for the nice picture though.
Regards,
Boiler Plate
You got a scientific alternative to the Theory of Evolution in your pants? Whip it out and win a Nobel Prize! Come on, man, don't be shy!
Quite a hollow challenge since the TOE has not acheived Nobel status(nor can it unless it is in literature for its just-so stories).
I r a gud spelur.
Ahh yes, now we came to the true basis of evolution. "We don't believe there was a creator therefore it must have happened this way". Oh and by the way anyone who disagrees with us is a loser.
No my little friend that is not how science really works. You put forth a theory and then you must prove it. Then it gets to be fact upon which new theories are hypothesized and the process starts over. However since evolution is based upon things that can’t be proven then criticism of the opposition replaces experimentation and empirical data. Thanks for playing though.
Regards,
Boiler Plate
Sadly, the place you are getting your information from wishes you to remain ignorant.
Mt. St. Helens is an andesitic stratovolcano. And as such, the primary products of eruption are felsic tephras (pyroclasts), mud and pyroclastic flows, and debris flows. Typical Hawaiian-type lava flows are not associated with Mt. St. Helens because magma produced from the subduction of the Juan de Fuca plate is enriched in silica (it's actually a dacite - similar in composition to granite but with more silica), and therefore far more viscous.
During the last eruption of Mt. St. Helens, about 1 cubic-kilometer of ash was blown into the atmosphere. This ash ranged from sand-sized particles to dust-sized particles. Controls on the deposition of volcanic ash include wind direction and velocity, and localized clumping of smaller particles into larger clumps of particles, which then fall out of the ash cloud.
What many people do not understand is that the differential density separation of heavier particles from the ash cloud actually created fine, distinct layers in the deposited ash. However, these layers are not to be confused with seasonally deposited varves (which have distinct mineral composition differences), or the layers of sandstone and igneous rocks deposited in the Grand Canyon. Also, the deposited ash was loose and unconsolidated - that is, it had not turned into rock. Thus, any flooding event near Mt. St. Helens would result in the rapid removal of significant amounts of deposited ash.
If the Grand Canyon was produced by flooding events over a very short period of time, then we would still see vast canyons and gorges being carved out of the rock after each flooding event today...which we obviously do not.
Have you noticed how any evolutionary hypothesis is assumed correct until proven wrong but any creationist position is assumed wrong until proven right? Just another double standard brought to you by your local evolutionist.
Your explanation requires knowledge and thinking, two commodities in very short supply among creationoids. The hard-core YEC crowd will shrug off your post and just keep on going. Why think, when you've already got all the answers?
Why are you still, at this stage of the discussion, this late on this thread, spouting this garbage?
Are you really so afraid to read a book other than the Bible? Are you really so content to stay ignorant of how science works even after it has been posted and linked here time after time after time after time? Who do you think you are fooling with such a display of childish petulance?
The point is that it fails to address the problem with evolution which I mentioned a long time ago - that it does not lead to any useful applications. First of all the identification of the similarity between it and other viruses has not served to find a cure. Secondly, as pointed out several times to you, comparative anatomy is as old as Aristotle. Classifying of species has been done since Aristotle and the present system is essentially the one established by Linnaeus long before Darwin wrote the 'Origins'. So evolution cannot claim this as an application of its theory or as something which has benefited humanity.
Again I must repeat, it is totally astonishing, that evolution, supposedly a scientific theory, has had so little fruitfullness in applications and in helping humanity in any way. That you had to pick an obscure virus which maybe infects a few dozen people a year and for which there is no cure anyways, shows quite well the desperation of evolutionists in trying to find a practical use for their nonsensical, unscientific theory. And 150 years later not only does it not cure belly ache, but it has not led to a single useful application.
Ah, your willful ignorance is astounding!
First proof:
As pointed out to you numerous times, insults only seve to show that your position is totally untenable.
Species never stop evolving; new mutations are constantly entering the gene pool. However, in a stable environment the surviving genes will cluster around the optimum for that environment. Once the environment changes (or a group of individuals is isolated from the rest of the species and their environment changes) the new mutations that increase survival in that environment will survive, moving the species or new group genetically away from their parents.
Second proof:
Frogs are supposedly amongst the first terrestrial animals. They can be found all over in many environements. Supposedly evolution is driven by mutations (which you state above occur all the time) and necessity (survival of the fittest), especially as regards the need to adapt to a changing environment. Now, there can be no doubt that in the hundreds of millions of years since the first frog arose the environment has changed numerous times. We have seen new continents created in such time, ice ages come and go, droughts and periods of tremendous rainfall. Now since supposedly the arising of new species from frogs was due to necessity one needs to ask why did not frogs dissappear? Remember, survival of the fittest. Supposedly according to evolution new species arose through mutation because frogs were no longer viable as a result of environmental changes. Supposedly the changes take over the species that become unviable and destroy those who fail to change. So how come there still are so many frogs, unchanged from their original state? What happened to all these mutations constantly going on? After all, not just when reptiles arose, but when mammals supposedly arose, the environment has been changing - especially since frogs and other species being part of nature, new species create a new environment when they arise and create a struggle for life which is different than before they arose. So basically we are speaking of continuous environmental change since the hundreds of millions of years since frogs first arose. Yet, not only do we still have frogs, but - even according to evolutionists - they are still essentially unchanged from then (after all they try to claim that you can tell the descent of species by the CURRENT genome of a species). Clearly there is a lot of doubletalk being done by evolutionists and yourself.
Of course, you already know this. For the past two years we've been telling you this exact same thing. You, of course, choose to ignore us and argue against some fallacious strawman version of evolution that exists only in your mind.
Third proof:
You yourself admit in your post to the points I made about the basis of evolutionary theory on necessity and mutation, I am not drawing up any strawman. I am showing quite clearly that evolution is a self-contradictory theory which even then cannot account for the observed facts of nature.
Wow!! Another strawman argument.
No, the argument is that you cannot call all scientists evolutionists because evolution is not science which was the point of my post. It was you who made the strawman that all scientists are evolutionists. Kindly address my point instead of calling everything a strawman argument. Here it is again in case you care to address it:
They care about the truth and that is why they ignore evolution. Evolution has not led to any scientific achievements because evolution, as I have said many times is ANTI-SCIENCE. The central point of science is the discovery of causes and effects and materialist evolution denies it. It proposes random events as the engine of the transformation of species. This is totally unscientific, it is an attack on science which in order to expand human knowledge and human health and living standards needs to find the causes and effects of how our Universe functions. Randomness answers nothing and leads to no discoveries. In fact it opposes scientific inquiry and is a philosophical know-nothingism. That is why evolution has been popular with the masses and virtually ignored by scientists. It is pseudo-science for morons. With a few words such as 'survival of the fittest' and 'natural selection' it seeks to make idiots think they are knowledgeable.
They way andrewc has been gathering these numbers is the same way that evolutionists in numerous articles have been SELECTIVELY gathering numbers to support evolution - by using the blast program on particular genes of different species. So if this method is wrong then you must also state that the evidence put out by evolutionists is false.
This whole comparison of DNA sequences though is completely nonsensical if evolution is true. The comparisons are being made from PRESENT DAY DNA while the assumption is being made that the DNA of some species has not changed in hundreds of millions of years. Clearly, if species can go on for hundreds of millions of years without a single mutation evolution must be false. This is a clear example of evolutionist doubletalk and taking up two opposite sides of a problem.
My original point was that the post I addressed saying:
Some creationist arguments are very difficult to debunk or refute, others are not. The "evolution is a theory" argument is the most easily refuted because it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what a scientific theory is. It's like saying to a mathematican that a triangle has four points.
Is a purely semantic argument and in another reply to me you seemed to agree. The argument by those opposed to evolution when they say that evolution is only a theory is basically that it is not scientifically verified. Perhaps they should say that evolution is not a theory but a hypothesis and a false one at that. However, since your reply was by your own admission a semantic one, it does not address the point ml/nj was trying to bring out and which those opposed to evolution constantly make - the lack of scientific evidence supporting evolution. It is thus a sidestepping of the point and in a sense nit-picking.
Aside from the fact that it had feathers, we do not know what it was. While feathers are the distinguishing characteristic of modern birds, we cannot say that Archaeopteryx was a bird. We cannot even say whether it could fly or not. Modern birds have quite a few adaptations for flight such as totally different lungs from all other animals and very light bones. We have no evidence of such in Archaeopteryx. Further, to put Archaeopteryx in the line of descent of birds is pretty desperate of evolutionists considering that while we have found many examples of Archaeopteryx, we have not found any examples of anything which could be considered its predecessor, nor anything like it for some 50 million years afterwards. So it is no proof of evolution at all.
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