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.
Gish is a charlatan. Here, he has simply scanned the literature for every source which argues for an avian interpretation for anything at all about Archaeopteryx, ignoring everything else. When Bellesiles was caught doing that for the gun-grabber crowd, he got fired. Then again, he was in a real academic setting.
The characteristics which Gish says establish Archaeopteryx as a bird are largely wrong. Archaeopteryx did NOT have perching feet (neither do many modern birds), and its hallux was not as well-developed as those of modern birds. The flight feathers are virtually identical to modern birds, but no downy under-feathers have ever been found on an Archaeopteryx skeleton. And, while Archaeopteryx did possess the furcula and flight feathers of modern flying birds, it did not have the large breastbone keel or the fused arm joints that are such a necessary part of flight, and it is questionable whether Archaeopteryx was capable of powered flight.If the creationists are to argue that Archaeopteryx is really just a bird, and not a transitional between therapods and birds, they must explain all of the obviously reptilian characteristics which appear in the skeleton. Some of the reptilian characteristics found in Archaeopteryx are also found in primitive extinct birds such as Hesperornis and Icthyornis; other reptilian characteristics of the Archaeopteryx skeleton are not found in any other species of bird, living or extinct. Archaeopteryx had, for example, a full set of socketed teeth, which were typical of those found in therapod dinosaurs. While the primitive Hesperornis also possessed socketed teeth, they are no longer present in any modern bird, and according to paleontologists, these reptilian teeth were lost by the ancient birds as the avian bill began to develop. The creationists, however, are at a loss to explain why, if birds did not descend from reptiles, these primitive birds had typical reptilian teeth which later disappeared. Henry Morris, unable to give any convincing scientific explanation for this, instead invokes the Deity:
"Most birds don't have teeth, but there is no reason why a Creator could not have created some birds with teeth . . . For some reason, those that were created with teeth have since become extinct." (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 1974, p. 85)Gish, on the other hand, attempts to explain the reptilian characteristics of Archaeopteryx by simply denying that any exist:"Research on various anatomical features of Archaeopteryx in the last ten years or so, however, has shown, in every case, that the characteristic in question is bird-like, not reptile-like . . . When the cranium of the London specimen was removed and studied, it was shown to be birdlike, not reptilelike." (Gish, "As a Transitional Form, Archaeopteryx Won't Fly", ICR Impact, September 1989)As we have already seen, this is simply not true--the skeletons are so reptilian in character that two of them were actually mis-identified as reptiles for several decades, and study of the cranial structure has shown it to be much more reptilian than avian.
Actually, if I'd been cutting a notch in my table every time one of them did this, my computer would be sitting on a pile of chips today.
Don't forget, "We call it 'ID,' not 'creation.' We insist that it's not about religion. The Lord will forgive."
The offspring of pole-vaulters should be sprouting feathers any time now.
Where did you come from? (Your profile is a piece of work.)
We should trust you to be a judge of anothers understanding of science?
ML/NJ
You have to be careful comparing sequences, particularly fairly distantly related ones. BLAST is generally used for searching for related sequences; other methods are generally used for doing quantitative comparisons.
I pulled up three sequences; Ciona ADH3, Branchistoma floridae (a cephalohordate) ADH3, and Danio (zebrafish) ADH (number not specified) Here is the N terminus amino acid sequence:
C -GKVINCSAAVAWG...P...KKP.....-..-LS.IE....K..I..QVA.....PP.....K.....A.....HEV...RIK..VMAT.GVC.HTDAFTLSGEDP.....EAAFP.....VILGHEG. B AGKPISCRAAVAWE...A...KKP.....-..-LV.IE....T..I..EVA.....PP.....K.....A.....HEV...RIK..VLAT.GVC.HTDAYTLSGADS.....EGKFP.....VVLGHEG. D AGKVIKCRAAVAWE...P...KAP.....-..-LM.ME....E..I..EVA.....PP.....Q.....E.....GEI...RIK..VIAT.GLC.HTDLYHLVDGDK.....-RGFP.....VVLGHES.Without weighting particular kinds of substitutions, I get 16 mismatches between Ciona and Branchiostoma, 23 mismatches between Ciona and Danio, and 27 mismatches between Branchiostoma and Danio. Of course, you'd really want to do this over the whole genome, not one end of one protein; I think the pros weight some mismatches more heavily than others; and this is a really tough example, because probably all three lines diverged at nearly the same time a long time ago.
I am impressed, though. There are damn few non-specialists who would go look at the raw data as you have.
However, no XXY male should automatically assume he is infertile without further testing. In a very small number of cases, XXY males have been able to father children.Actually, no. I missed this. But looking at it now I see that the next paragraph discusses XXY/XY males which I guess means guys who have a mixture of normal cells and abnormal cells. So I wonder if all of the XXY folks or at least those who have fathered children have some small number of normal cells.
The questions of importance for this discussion though, are: was there anything remarkable about the structure of the mothers' cells; and what was the genetic makeup of the cells of the children. And don't tell me to go do my own research. You cite this XXY stuff as being relevant to the discussion so I would assume you have some knowledge beyond what you heard in a bar last week, and can pass it on.
As for post #327, I do not understand how it addresses either of the questions I raised with the professor. Perhaps you could explain.
ML/NJ
</sarcasm>
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