Posted on 05/05/2004 11:10:33 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
SEATTLE, MAY 3 – Recent California voters overwhelmingly support teaching the scientific evidence both for and against Darwin’s theory of evolution, according to two new surveys conducted by Arnold Steinberg & Associates. The surveys address the issue of how best to teach evolution, which increasingly is under deliberation by state and local school districts in California and around the nation.
The first survey was a random sample of 551 California voters living in a household in which at least one voter voted in the November 2002 general election and the October 2003 special election for governor. When asked: “Which statement is closest to your view about what biology teachers in public schools should teach about Darwin’s theory of evolution,” 73.5 percent replied, “Teach the scientific evidence for and against it,” while only 16.5 percent answered, “Teach only the scientific evidence for it.” (7.9 percent were either “Unsure” or gave another response.)
The second survey was a random sample of 605 California voters living in a household in which the first voter in the household was under 50, and in which at least one voter voted in the November 2002 general election and the October 2003 special election for governor. When asked: “Which statement is closest to your view about what biology teachers in public schools should teach about Darwin’s theory of evolution,” 79.3 percent replied, “Teach the scientific evidence for and against it,” while only 14.7 percent answered, “Teach only the scientific evidence for it.” (6 percent were either “Unsure” or gave another response.)
“Although recent voters in California as a whole overwhelmingly favor teaching both sides of the scientific evidence about evolution, those under 50 are even more supportive of this approach,” said Bruce Chapman, president of Discovery Institute. “These California survey results are similar to those of states like Ohio and Texas, as well as a national survey undertaken in 2001. The preferences of the majority of Californians are also in line with the recommendations of Congress in the report of the No Child Left Behind Act regarding teaching biological evolution and a recent policy letter from the U.S. Department of Education that expressed support for Academic freedom and scientific inquiry on such matters such as these.”
The margin of error for each survey was +/- 4 percent. Both surveys were conducted by Arnold Steinberg & Associates, a California-based polling firm, and released by Discovery Institute, a national public policy organization headquartered in Seattle, Wa. whose Center for Science and Culture has issued a statement from 300 scientists who are skeptical of the central claim of neo-Darwinian evolution.
“The only way the Darwin-only lobby can spin these kind of survey results,” added Chapman, “is to claim that the public is just ignorant. But that view is untenable in light of the more than 300 scientists who have publicly expressed their dissent from Darwinism, to say nothing of the many scientific articles that have been published critiquing the theory.”
This is an approximation to inflinity only in the mind of someone totally ignorant of statistical mechanics. As I've written previiously, in a two ounce crystal of rocksalt, there are 2^(6.022*10^23) possible ways to arrange the sodium and chloride ions. However, the ions only crystallize in one way (exactly alternating ions in three dimensions). The odds against this happening are hugely greater than the odds against getting one of the millions of functional hemoglobin sequences. Yet it happens every time.
The second red herring is this:The likelihood of this specific sequence occurring by chance is clearly absurd.
No one claims it happened by chance. It evolved from a simpler, monomeric globin protein, which evolved from a still simpler protein, etc.
I personally don't have the guts to gamble my eternity that the Bible might be wrong.
Yet he's bet the Bhagavad Gita, Koran and Diamond Sutra are wrong.
You do, do you? Then show us where an evo called Fritz Schaefer a crank.
Steven Weinberg was educated at Cornell, Copenhagen, and Princeton, and taught at Columbia, Berkeley, M.I.T., and Harvard, where from 1973 to 1982 he was Higgins Professor of Physics. In 1982 he moved to The University of Texas at Austin and founded its Theory Group. At Texas he holds the Josey Regental Chair of Science and is a member of the Physics and Astronomy Departments.
His research has spanned a broad range of topics in quantum field theory, elementary particle physics, and cosmology, and has been honored with numerous awards, including the Nobel Prize in Physics, the National Medal of Science, the Heinemann Prize in Mathematical Physics, the Cresson Medal of the Franklin Institute, the Madison Medal of Princeton University, and the Oppenheimer Prize.
He also holds honorary doctoral degrees from a dozen universities. He is a member of the National Academy of Science, the Royal Society of London, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Astronomical Union, and the American Philosophical Society.
In addition to the well-known treatise, Gravitation and Cosmology, he has written several books for general readers, including the prize-winning The First Three Minutes (now translated into 22 foreign languages), The Discovery of Subatomic Particles, and most recently Dreams of a Final Theory. He has written a textbook The Quantum Theory of Fields, Vol. I. and Vol. II.
On a side note, have you seen the latest research on ultra-conserved non-coding DNA?
"These ultra-conserved elements are long, they evolved rather rapidly, and they are now evolutionarily frozen. We don't know of a biomolecular mechanism that would explain them," Haussler said.
My bad. It was Gentry, not Schaefer.
No I hadn't. Thanks for the link; I love mysteries. But it's still a forlorn, God-in-the-gaps type hope that this means anything other than that there's an unknown role for the sequences. The association with coding and regulatory elements suggests some sort of yet-undiscovered regulatory function.
If you don't understand anything, then everything is a miracle.
Theory of evolution.
Law of gravity.
Hmmm. . .evolution is not a law. Apparently, it's not such an established fact after all.
You are aware that scientific laws are no more "established facts" than scientific theories, aren't you? That is to say in science a theory doesn't "graduate" to become a "law" when the evidence becomes persuasive.
In science, "laws" are descriptive and "theories" are explanatory. A "law" nothing more than a statement of some empirically observed relationship (hence it is descriptive in nature), while a "theory" is explanatory, in that it is a conceptual framework explaining the mechanics behind a range of related phenomona.
BOTH are held tentatively, pending the potential discovery of refuting evidence.
Bio
Chuck's plans to pursue a doctorate in electrical engineering at Stanford University were interrupted when he received a Congressional appointment to the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. Graduating with honors, He took his commission in the Air Force, and joined the Missile Program and eventually became Branch Chief of the Department of Guided Missiles. Chuck made the transition from the military to the private sector when he became a systems engineer with TRW, a large aerospace firm. He then went on to serve as a senior analyst with a non-profit think tank where he conducted projects for the intelligence community and the Department of Defense. During that time, Chuck earned a master's degree in engineering at UCLA, supplementing previous graduate work in applied mathematics, advanced statistics and information sciences.
He also worked for the Ford Motor Company where he established the first international industrial computer network. He has served as a consultant to the Board of Directors of Rockwell International for corporate acquisitions and has also participated in over 100 business ventures as a principal, strategic advisor, or turnaround specialist. During the past 30 years, Chuck has also served on the Board of Directors of over a dozen public companies, and was Chairman and CEO of six of them. You are leaving out a qualifier.
No one claims it happened by chance. It Miraculously evolved from a simpler, monomeric globin protein, which Miraculously evolved from a still simpler protein,(emphasis added)
You need to show exhaustive evidence that this occurs all the time, in many different scenarios, before we swallow that.
No one claims it happened by chance. It Miraculously evolved from a simpler, monomeric globin protein, which Miraculously evolved from a still simpler protein,(emphasis added)
Words added. Altering a direct quotation is pretty damn low, bondserv.
Chuck earned a master's degree in engineering at UCLA, supplementing previous graduate work in applied mathematics, advanced statistics and information sciences.
Words added. Altering a direct quotation is pretty damn low, bondserv.
Easy Big Guy. I noted that I had added the emphasized text.
Re: yor question; the homologies between monomeric globins like myoglobin and oligomeric hemoglobins are well established. We don't know what the ultimate ancestry of the globin gene is (it's likely older than a billion years) but we can construct perfectly good phylogenies for the multicellular organism globins. If you accept a phylogenetic tree as evidence for evolution, and we do, then there are no miracles necessary to evolve hemoglobin from monomeric proteins. Where the ancestral globin gene came from is still a mystery.
Some refs.
http://allserv.rug.ac.be/~jvfleter/globins/globins.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8587498&dopt=Abstract
http://www.aw-bc.com/mathews/ch07/fi7p23.htm
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.