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.
What is the threshold number of avian dinos and reptilian proto-birds before BP accepts evolution? How many are you aware of, now? Are you sure that there aren't already as many as you might demand? Is anyone supposed to believe that your problem is with some numerical preponderance of evidence?
I am totally amazed at how readily you accept these explanations without question.
I am totally amazed at how you reject all evidence for evolution without having a shred that anything except evolution has happened, or even a defensible theory of your own.
Vade, all science is open for debate.
How about your PV = nRT example? Is that negotiable if my religion says PV = n/T*pi? How about the phlogiston theory of combustion? How about Malcom Bowden's wonderful Geocentricity theories? You have to like that one, right? Literal Genesis and thus "real" science!
The fact is that science makes progress by discarding wrong ideas. It converges upon an increasingly accurate description of nature. Your movement bailed from the ride along about 1859 so you don't have anything very workable to offer.
Why don't you follow your own advice.
Gee, show me where I was wrong first. BWAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHA!
Nice to know people are still reading this tired old thread.
Is evolution a theory or is it a fact?
Hummm, I would have guessed 1459. But then again, I am open to new ideas.
Can you count? How times have I post "the Theory of Evolution" on this thread and how many times have I post "the fact of evolution"?
I take that as "evolution is a theory". Now either dig up Steve Gould and argue with him or argue with Talk-origins.
Evolution is a Fact and a Theory
Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered. Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms. Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution. - Stephen J. Gould, " Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981 |
Brilliantly done. The "Ideal Gas Law" only works with Ideal gases. As there are none, one must use a set of tables, that can be easily found in the back of a Thermodynamics book. Why are there no ideal gases? Because the real world is much more complex than it seems. While the Theory of Evolution seems to work nicely in a hypothetiacl sense, the world is much more complex than the simple straight line extrapolations evolutionists like project from their misunderstood observations and incomplete and failed experiments. In pariticular the fruit fly mutations and Miller-Urey.
So much for science.
Regards,
Boiler Plate.
Well, that explains your (non-existent) education background to us all.
Come on, we're all waiting. Tell us about any "scientific theory" that has been magically transformed into a "scientific fact". Tell us how the Theory of Evolution is somehow not a scientific theory.
Your turn, support your BS assertions. And how many times are you going to make us post this until you admit you were wrong?
I did. And you haven't. So grow up.
A law can be wrong. Physicist likes to cite Ampere's law as another example. He could have used Newton's Second as easily, as F = ma goes seriously wrong at observed velocities near that of light.
A law is not a theory, nor does a theory become a law, nor do lawyers make very good scientists.
Oh, such a clever riposte.
Direct, to the point, unambiguous, and absolutely correct. What more would anyone want?
I'm intrigued. Could you derive that?
Is your real name Saddam? You seem to be as delusional.
The fossil record should be almost nothing but transitions. What part of that statement do you not understand? In order for the positive transitions to occur there should a overwhelming abundance of negative mutations. Do you disagree with that?
Regards,
Boiler Plate
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