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.
"I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme - a possible framework for testable theories."
As you know he has recanted this statement saying that evolution can be tested, but fails to provide a suitable test other than predictions. The question is why did he recant? Was it for pure scientific reasons? However he lumps TOE in with historical sciences such as literature. What he does not do is release TOE from providing predictions. As that is the only way to test historical sciences.
So again the ball is in your court. As I have asked before, what predictions has TOE provided? And as far as falsification of TOE goes, please read Henry Gees, 'Deep Time: Cladistics, the Revolution in Evolution'
Warmest Regards,
Boiler Plate
Linear boys. Your science has closed the door on your philosophical potential.
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Emerald irises, I like that.
A very good question! It goes very well with the one about helping humanity. It is the ability to make predictions, to determine cause and effect that makes science useful and respected. Aside from such nonsense as 'we will find more fossils' which is not really prediction, evolution instead of predicting scientific advancements has opposed them. The reason for this is quite simple, evolution is an ideology, not a science.
That may be true, however, neither has anyone seen any species transform itself into a new species. So what we are left with is what evidence can each side bring to account for new species? All that evolutionists can bring to the table is a bunch of bones proving that there have been new species arising from time to time. The fossil evidence is at most an even score for each side with the Cambrian explosion and the tremendous gaps in the record favoring those who deny evolution. So that brings us to the mechanism for these changes and evolution is completely lost in that department. The specified complexity to be found in all organisms cannot be accounted for by random, stochastic menchanisms in any credible manner.
He was a formidable Biblical scholar, was fluent in the ancient languages, and had extensive knowledge of ancient history. He believed that each person should read the Bible, and through that reading, establish for himself an understanding of the universal truth it contains.
Try it you might like it!
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No, I addressed the main point you made that there are numerous ways to tell a mammal. There are not, and I addressed that the only one, the three earbones, is not a necessary characteristic for an animal having mammary glands. It is a statistical one only and such statistical ones such as the statement still made by a museum that all mammals have live birth shows that such statistical characteristics are not evidence as the platypus showed. Further, as I pointed out, since it is not a necessary characteristic and since evolution supposedly works in a gradual manner, it cannot be said that any non-extant species had mammary glands or how such an function ever developed in a gradual evolutionary manner.
Oh, and one more thing, they are called mammals because they have mammary glands, not because of their bone structure.
It is not a doctored quote, the word evolution at the end does not belong, a mistake in cutting and pasting. And yes, not only did Darwin write one more sentence than the above, he wrote several entire books. I guess I should post them all?
The quote is indeed Darwin's definition of evolution and what the discussion has been about for 150 years. That evolutionists are so dishonest as not to acknowledge that his quote is indeed the definition of evolution shows quite well the accuracy of my statement - that evolutionists do not want to state their theory so they can dishonestly change it according to the situation.
That is a good statement of why old species are still around, however it contradicts the basic postulate of evolution that species transform themselves into new species out of necessity, and that those who do not change, die. If necessity was the causal factor for evolution, then there should be no 'old' species around, they should have been long ago destroyed for failing to keep up.
Back to your point about frogs not changing. Individual speices of frogs, and there are oodles, are widely varied and have changed drastically since the first frog-like ancestor species evolved.
Regardless, the example I gave has not changed in 200 million years. It has survived through numerous environmental changes throught that time - as well as it having stopped mutating (as have many other species such as the shark, the coelacanth, etc.).
Further, evolutionists constantly compare modern species with other modern species to support evolution. However, according to evolution itself all species are descendants of whatever the first life was (supposedly some 4 billion or so years ago) so therefore all present species are equally far apart in time to that first supposed species and it is a complete contradiction and doubletalk for evolutionists to deny that any species has stopped changing and mutating while others have continued to do so when making such comparisons.
A very bad excuse. My point in support of what andrewc was showing does not require reading the entire thread:
the central point of his argument [andrewc's]- that the number of mutations between species does not agree with the evolutionary 'tree of life'. In fact, [that the gene in question may not be essential] it makes his case stronger because evolutionists do not have the excuse of saying that it would destroy functioning to change the gene and thus mutations are restricted in such a gene. In fact, evolutionists often claim that the best places to find mutations is where there is no function (or no important function) for the genes involved. So I really do not see how this (if your assertion above is correct) in any way contradicts andrew's point.
Most writers deserve encouragement - it's hard work. Damn few of them earn the bucks of a Clancy, King, or Grisham and even less deserve them!
I've had a couple of would-be writers working for me just in the last few years - one finally got published (Christian poetry) and she got to make the rounds of the local Barnes and Nobles, Books-a-Million, etc. signing a few copies and meeting people. It was a personal success if not a real financial boon. The other published on the internet writing stuff she probably hoped her mother never got to read (arg!).
We seem to be going in circles here. You guys are promoting TOE rember. Why is it you keep coming back to me to falsify or disprove what you are promoting?
Regards,
Boiler Plate
Oh, and one more thing, they are called mammals because they have mammary glands, not because of their bone structure.
It might not be a "necessary" characteristic if one was to design a mammal from scratch, but in the real world the two are invariably, with no exceptions, found together. Mammals could just as easily have been called "animals with three inner ear-bones" or "animals with a single-boned jaw". Those characteristics are just as specific to mammals as mammary glands. Mammary glands are just a little more obvious, that's all. They are no more characteristic of the mammalian group than the earbones or the jaw.
It is a statistical one only and such statistical ones such as the statement still made by a museum that all mammals have live birth shows that such statistical characteristics are not evidence as the platypus showed. Further, as I pointed out, since it is not a necessary characteristic and since evolution supposedly works in a gradual manner, it cannot be said that any non-extant species had mammary glands or how such an function ever developed in a gradual evolutionary manner.
When it comes to extinct species, there are no mathematical proofs. You can use the evidence available to support your conclusion. The bones say they're mammals. There is nothing in the bones that goes against this hypothesis, so it stands. Assuming that evolution explains how the various groups of mammals came to exist, then lactation arose before the three modern groups diverged. And even if I didn't find evolution convincing and believed that God actively created each individual species over hundreds of millions of years, I would still be persuaded by the skeletons that these animals were mammals. The alternative is that some other, unknown, non-mammalian group may have just happened to have the exact same types of skeletons. The evidence says mammal and there is absolutely nothing to suggest that they were anything else, evolution or no evolution.
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