Posted on 09/22/2006 2:09:33 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Free Republic is currently running a poll on this subject:
Do you think creationism or intelligent design should be taught in science classes in secondary public schools as a competing scientific theory to evolution?You can find the poll at the bottom of your "self search" page, also titled "My Comments," where you go to look for posts you've received.
I don't know what effect -- if any -- the poll will have on the future of this website's science threads. But it's certainly worth while to know the general attitude of the people who frequent this website.
Science isn't a democracy, and the value of scientific theories isn't something that's voted upon. The outcome of this poll won't have any scientific importance. But the poll is important because this is a political website. How we decide to educate our children is a very important issue. It's also important whether the political parties decide to take a position on this. (I don't think they should, but it may be happening anyway.)
If you have an opinion on this subject, go ahead and vote.
I'm well aware of your priorities.
Thanks for paying attention! LOL.
Threads always get worse.
Mine seem to. It's such a puzzlement.
IOW you can't support your assertions.
Standard CR/Ider fare.
I apologize -- once again the lack of a "cc:" function made a post a little askew.
BB was using quotes we couldn't find. Not you.
I'll give you one "Get out of Logical Fallacy Free" card. I'd suggest you hold it for a good one ;)
Yeah, that's why I got into science: the dancing girls.
I am not arguing origins. I am arguing that the study of the history of science is interesting but no longer germain to the scientific process.
There are wonderful people thinking and publishing Great Thoughts that certainly provide new perspectives. But they are external to the Scientific Process (until someone finds a way to actually apply them to the rigoroush standards of science).
And you are so nice, I feel badly that I still would like to see the quotes from Darwin.
But I would.
Why do the science women NEVER look like the "scientists" (or lawyers or barmaids or baliffs) on CSI or L&O?
There are a few cuties hidden behind horn-rims (and not as cute as the fashion models who show up on TV as Genetic Engineers), but lets face it...
OTOH, I am in the sciences (sort of) and I don't exactly raise the bar either (can you limbo?)
;)
TEACH THE CONTROVERSY!
You will have to do better than that.
You're correct that science began "exclusively within the Western civilizational orbit." However, the Greeks -- Euclid, Aristotle, Archimedes, Eratosthenes, etc. -- who were undoubtedly the originators of what we call science, were neither Jewish nor Christian. The West didn't become Christian until the early 300s (AD). Western Civilization was flourishing for at least six centuries, probably seven centuries or more, when the prevailing religion was worship of the Olympian gods. Paganism.
But poor ol' Zeus just can't get any respect these days.
Why did you believe that the phrase "Liars for Christ" was directed at "Christianity, in general"? What evidence do you have that Liberal Classic intended to reference all Christians with that phrase?
You know very well that not everything has yet been discovered. In fact, some ideas of truly profound importance, for example "dark energy", are, at present merely hypotheses folks have come up with to explain some observations in mathematics, physics and astronomy. But, alas, we do not yet know for certain that "dark energy" really exists.
That is to say, we are IGNORANT in the most extreme degree concerning this item which we cannot measure, observe or manipulate.
You would keep "dark energy" out of the classroom.
So, here's a better idea ~ why don't we get the government out of the classroom ~ then, you can keep speculative science, as well as religion, out of your classrooms, and I will ordain a new order of enlightenment to take place in my classrooms.
And everybody will be happy.
That's ridiculous ~ they need to know how tunneling diodes work for one thing, or they'll be lost in the next stage of desktop computer development (due in 2007).
Take it up with Yockey:
All speculation on the origin of life on Earth by chance cannot survive the first criterion of life: proteins are left-handed, sugars in DNA and RNA are right-handed. Omne vivum ex vivo [which I translated as "life comes only from life" -- this being my translation from Yockey's book; and so I put it in quotes]....Of Darwin's view of the matter, Yockey writes: "[Darwin] believed that life appeared by some wholly unknown process, and therefore [its origin] is undecideable."
Yockey writes: "Niels Bohr (1933) proposed that life is consistent with but undecideable or unknowable by human reasoning from physics or chemistry.... Darwin did not believe that life emerged in a 'warm little pond.' Darwin believed that the origin of life is unknowable or undecideable."
Yockey devotes most of chapter 8 of his book Information Theory, Evolution, and the Origin of Life to show how Darwin did not hold with Haeckel's Urschlein of a prebiotic Earth, "where chemical evolution and its putative consequence, life, arose spontaneously in flagrante delicto from this non-living matter...."
As Darwin wrote,
I have long regretted that I truckled to public opinion, and used the Pentateuchal ... term of creation, by which I merely meant "appeared" by some wholly unknown process. It is mere rubbish thinking at present of the origin of life; one might as well think of the origin of matter.... [Darwin, 1898, Yockey's emphasis]Darwin essentially takes the "origin" or "essence" of life for granted. He is saying his scientific theory is independent of it; which is a very good thing, because it is "undecideable" or "unknowable" anyway....It is no valid objection that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life. Who can explain what is the essence of the attraction of gravity? No one now objects to following out the results consequent on this unknown element of attraction.... [Origin of Species; Yockey does not give the page reference, but does add the italics.]
Neils Bohr gets the last word here [from his "Light and Life" lecture of 1933]:
The recognition of the essential importance of fundamentally atomistic features in the function of living organisms is by no means sufficient, however, for a comprehensive explanation of biological phenomena, before we can reach an understanding of life on the basis of physical experience. Thus, we should doubtness kill an animal if we tried to carry the investigation of its organs so far that we could describe the role played by single atoms in vital functions. In every experiment on living organisms, there must remain an uncertainty as regards the physical conditions to which they are subjected, and the idea suggests itself that the minimal freedom we must allow the organism in this respect is just large enough to permit it, so to say, to hide its ultimate secrets from us.The most "ultimate" secret being its life "principle" (for lack of a better word) -- which cannot under any experimental conditions be revealed to direct observation, for the reasons Bohr gives in the immediately above (i.e., if you go looking, sooner or later you kill the specimen; and the dead cannot speak of the living).
So, life being something that is not directly investigatable, arising from that which is unknowable, our default position must seem to be: Omne vivum ex vivo.
Darwin didn't seem to have a problem with this; nor Bohr, nor Yockey.
Thanks for your kind inquiries, dears!
Because your command of the English language is insufficient for you and I to communicate in it, and that's not my fault.
You did a knee-jerk reaction so typical of Liberals when you came across my statement (run to the authorities to have the offending words stamped out) that I find it difficult to believe that you even attempt to follow any of the threads at FR.
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