Posted on 10/17/2008 7:59:18 AM PDT by Soliton
Three antievolutionists have been appointed to a six-member committee to review the draft set of Texas state science standards, and defenders of the integrity of science education in the Lone Star state are livid. "The committee was chosen by 12 of the 15 members of the board of education, with each panel member receiving the support of two board members," as the Dallas Morning News (October 16, 2008) explains. Six members of the board "aligned with social conservative groups" chose Stephen C. Meyer, the director of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, Ralph Seelke, a biology professor at the University of Wiconsin, Superior, and Charles Garner, a chemistry professor at Baylor University.
Meyer, Seelke, and Garner are all signatories of the Discovery Institute-sponsored "Dissent from Darwinism" statement. Meyer and Seelke are also coauthors of Explore Evolution: The Arguments For and Against Neo-Darwinism (Hill House, 2008), which, like Of Pandas and People, is a supplementary textbook that is intended to instill scientifically unwarranted doubts about evolution. A recent review by biologist John Timmer summarized, "But the book doesn't only promote stupidity, it demands it. In every way except its use of the actual term, this is a creationist book." Garner reportedly told the Houston Press (December 14, 2000) that he "criticizes evolutionary theory in class."
Meyer and Seelke also testified in the 2005 "kangaroo court" hearings held by three antievolutionist members of the Kansas state board of education, in which a parade of antievolutionist witnesses expressed their support for the so-called minority report version of the state science standards (written with the aid of a local "intelligent design" organization), complained of repression by a dogmatic evolutionary establishment, and claimed to have detected atheism lurking "between the lines" of the standards..
(Excerpt) Read more at ncseweb.org ...
I see you've recovered from the onslaught of accusations of "Inquisition!" sufficiently to handle both sides of the conversation now.
Riiiiiight! LOL
The endless theocracy and burning at the stake nonsense wasn't MY insecurity, but nice try!
Need anything else?
Sure...so you agree...evolution IS ID, WHO KNEW?
Form follows function, but they are not the same thing.
You must be off work today. I believe bringing unfinished arguements from one thread into another is considered "bad form".
I have yet to see the theory of evolution approached honestly by creationists.
Coyoteman, have you ever in your life seen the theory of evolution “approached honestly” by NON-creation scientists?
peer review articles...NOT chat rooms or blogs, NOT dogma...well you know the drill, the very same standards you just held ID to.
I keep hearing things like it’s “falsifiable” and peer review articles, and so on, so I’d like to see such “evidence”.
I’d particularly be interested in seeing something more recent from again, a NON-creationist scientist.
Something you know, a bit more shall we say “critical” of evolution and not so warm and fuzzy; you know, exactly as YOU demand of ID theory.
Chicken?
I doubt it.
If you really wanted to see the evidence you would be reading the journals I cited upthread instead of hanging out in internet chat rooms.
No speciation. Fascinating.
You've said nothing.
parrot?
And this is just one issue of one journal. There are thousands of journals.
You want data? That's where you should be looking, not spending your time denying the information--about which you have no clue--on internet chat rooms.
peer review articles...NOT chat rooms or blogs, NOT dogma...well you know the drill, the very same standards you just held ID to.
I keep hearing things like it’s “falsifiable” and peer review articles, and so on, so I’d like to see such “evidence”.
I’d particularly be interested in seeing something more recent from again, a NON-creationist scientist.
Something you know, a bit more shall we say “critical” of evolution and not so warm and fuzzy; you know, exactly as YOU demand of ID theory.
You bring up a good point.
One of the criticisms leveled against creation/ID for it not being a valid scientific theory is that nobody provides a test or avenue for falsifiability for those theories. They contend that it's the responsibility of the person purporting the theory to determine the criteria or test that would falsify their theory.
So, evos, what exactly would it take to falsify the ToE?
Bring scientific evidence, not religious belief.
check
Follow the scientific method, not religious apologetics.
check
Publish in peer reviewed scientific journals, not in internet chat rooms.
check
And bring something better than that steaming pile that creationists have been parroting for so long that the claims have been numbered for easier reference: Index to Creationist Claims.
check
Done...MIT, Johns Hopkins, Princeton trained scientists.
Even your side admitted this particular chemist had nothing to say that was religious, and said nothing UN-scientific in anyway when he pointed out it all began first with chemicals.
And no chemicals formed on their own to provide or perform complex functions OUTSIDE of a lab, and not without somehow being tweaked by an outside influence.
*********************************************************
Edward Peltzer, University of California, San Diego (Scripps Institute)
As a chemist, the most fascinating issue for me revolves around the origin of life. Before life began, there was no biology, only chemistry – and chemistry is the same for all time. What works (or not) today, worked (or not) back in the beginning. So, our ideas about what happened on Earth prior to the emergence of life are eminently testable in the lab. And what we have seen thus far when the reactions are left unguided as they would be in the natural world is not much. Indeed, the decomposition reactions and competing reactions out distance the synthetic reactions by far. It is only when an intelligent agent (such as a scientist or graduate student) intervenes and “tweaks” the reactions conditions “just right” do we see any progress at all, and even then it is still quite limited and very far from where we need to get. Thus, it is the very chemistry that speaks of a need for something more than just time and chance. And whether that be simply a highly specified set of initial conditions (fine-tuning) or some form of continual guidance until life ultimately emerges is still unknown. But what we do know is the random chemical reactions are both woefully insufficient and are often working against the pathways needed to succeed. For these reasons I have serious doubts about whether the current Darwinian paradigm will ever make additional progress in this area.
Edward Peltzer
Ph.D. Oceanography, University of California, San Diego (Scripps Institute)
Associate Editor, Marine Chemistry
I doubt it.
You doubt that I would like to see it, or doubt that I've heard these things? Trust me, I VERY much would like to see you put your money where your mouth is for once!
If you really wanted to see the evidence you would be reading the journals I cited upthread instead of hanging out in internet chat rooms.
You misunderstand...NOT softballs, not lock-step dogma...I want to see you just one time show us how you claim it's falsifiable and peer reviewed and critically examined by ANY scientist outside the scientists soviet style evo-cultists label "religious kooks"!
THOSE scientists.
Otherwise, next time you can just say "uncle".
That would be sufficient.
A fossilized human skeleton, in that same undisturbed starta as fossils that are supposed to pre-date it ought to throw a monkey wrench into the works.
Where are the false beliefs in Science?
That defined nothing.
So you seriously think articles about:
“chimps scavenging in Ngogo”
or
“past and present vegetation ecology of Tanzania”,
somehow “critically” challenge evolution?
Ok, I rest my case.
(Sheesh metmom, our public failed schools are in such disarray as to be unbelievable if people really believe this nonsense! Without even reading them and just looking at the titles, I’m hard pressed to think some of these even address evolution at all! NO WONDER people are beginning to question it as theory and pointing out it’s not indeed fact!)
If you wanted a definition of speciation you should have asked for one.
You asked for a definition of evolution.
Not all evolution leads to speciation.
You don't even know enough about the subject to ask the right questions.
Your statement of "evolution" didn't even mention speciation.
Not all evolution leads to speciation
So much for Darwin's On The Origin of Species. Your empty "explanation" of the theory of evolution doesn't say anything more that Mendal did. In fact, it offers nothing more than any animal breeder or farmer practiced millenia before.
Nothing about the origins of life, nothing about species, nothing about survival as a genetic filter...
Just empty noise.
Mendel didn't say anything about selection. Perhaps your thinking of Darwin? Darwin spoke much about animal breeders (human selection) as a model for natural selection; so yes, it is entirely the same concept.
Evolution also has nothing to do with the origins of life. That is abiogenesis, an entirely different subject.
No matter how life came about, once here, it's evolution through natural selection of genetic variation is inevitable.
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