Posted on 08/10/2004 3:57:16 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A 5-5 deadlock on the State Board of Education has been broken with the election of two conservatives Tuesday who do not have opposition in the November election.
The board previously was controlled by conservative members who decided that creationism should be taught with evolution in the science classes of the state's schools. That was reversed when moderates were elected. The board member from Kansas City, Kan., was not up for re-election this year. One conservative who was elected Tuesday to the board was an incumbent.
A new conservative board member from Clay Center, Kan., has been quoted by newspapers as saying she supports creationism being taught in science classes, along with the theory of evolution. The state board sets the science standards for schools, setting out what should be taught at different levels.
The past debates focused on whether religious ideas should be included in science classes, or should be reserved for religion or social science classes.
While we can't predict the future, we can say, from past experience, that the evolution controversy will intensify on the state board after the new members are sworn in. Kansas, by teaching religion in public school science classes, will almost certainly receive negative international attention again.
For mixing religion, politics and education, the State Board of Education is now on the endangered list, and it will probably go the way of the dinosaur. Very likely, some in the Kansas Legislature will not deem it fit for survival.
So a roulette wheel is not random, it's a response to the croupier's spin?
The roulette wheel is not random. The spin is not random. The final resting place of the ball is thought to be random. The payoff is not random.
I'm not following. Are you suggesting that differing respiratory systems in bats and birds are the result of radically differing feeding habits? Bats are not "only after bugs" when they feed. The spear-nosed bat, as just one example, is omnivorous, dining on everthing from fruit to rodents to other bats. And there are quite a few nocturnal birds that utilize the same resources. The feeding habits of aves and mammalia don't seem to warrant such an inference.
And your last point, that bats use respiratory muscles during echolocation and therefore require different respiratory systems than birds, is, well, cart before the horse.
That's a sophomore physics major's argument. By that logic, mutations aren't random either; they're the deterministic result of the evolution of the equations of motion of the system.
A system with sufficiently complex dynamics, which over a narrow range of initial conditions gives a full set of outcomes such that there is no feasible way to predict such outcomes, is effectively random. Now can we move on?
That is your argument or a Darwinian argument, not mine. The mutations in the flax are not random. They have a direct cause as does the flipping of the switch by the bacteria. They don't occur on a day to day basis "just because". The random mutations of Darwinian theory are random with no "cause". They may hurt or help.
Not at all. They're a result of exposure to ionizing radiation, or mutagens, or other physical or chemical causes. What, you think chemical changes just 'happen'?
Gee, no kidding? That is why I put the quotes around "cause". That is the background. The additional mutations acquired by the flax are not those due to external and/or typical causes which are handled by the error-correcting mechanisms within the organism.
Uh, let's see. Could it be because the "scientist" is not forced to pay taxes for what is taught in church? However, even when I sent my kids to a private Christian school (in which they learned far more than they ever did during their later years in public school), I still had to pay taxes to send other kids to school? So why does my opinion/vote not matter when it comes to what is being taught in "science" class in a government school? Do I not support government with the huge amount of money they take from me?
I believe you might have misunderstood some of things I implied which is probably due to my ‘attempt’ at humor and irony. I have no reason to believe that you are anything but a man of professional integrity. I may not agree with everything you say, but you are not reluctant to actually state your beliefs and ideas on this forum which is something IMHO that is very respectable.
That being said, I am not going to weasel out of an apology because I do owe you one. “I am sorry”. I used you to point out an ironic stance taken by ‘others’. In other words, what would happen if a professor came on this forum and expressed your opposing point of view and stated it at least as eloquently? IMO the people who now applaud your post would be ripping apart ‘his’ post and stating he is not qualified based on ‘his beliefs’. We have seen this done to ‘other’ scientists and doctors. Heck, I don’t know if you missed this or not but ‘apparently’ Kathy Martin, who this post is about, is an idiot?
I think it is great that you help others regardless if they are Christian or not. As I stated, ‘I don’t have a problem with you teaching and would not try to stop you from teaching because you are an agnostic naturalist’. …and… ‘I would support you if you had a problem with science only allowing teleological explanations for life and the universe’.
Again, my problem is not with you and I actually enjoy discussing with you and reading your posts. That being said, again, my problem is with ‘science as a whole’ only allowing for agnostic non-teleological naturalism to be taught regardless of what ‘design’ is found because it only allows for you prophesy and faith to be fulfilled. (science will replace all teleology, religion, and become religion)
I am sorry. My intent was not to criticize ‘you’ and my humor (or lack of) was misplaced.
When I taught 'The Chemical Basis of Evolution' last fall, we most certainly discussed origins, and we looked at panspermia and other extraterrestrial origins for life. We did not consider non-naturalistic origins, for sure, but I emphasized that all theories of the origin of life are extremely speculative at the moment.
Let me explain why I find this interesting. What if Behe, who is an evolutionist, wrote ‘Darwin’s Black Box’ to support panspermia and was not associated with ID - meaning ID arguments excluded and replaced in support of panspermia?
What if Dembski’s book was ‘The E.T. Inference’ also in support of panspermia?
How would they be received differently by the scientific community and people on this forum and why?
You don't know what the causes are. At least, if you do, you better tip off the authors of the paper you just cited. .
You might as well say someone with Xeroderma pigmentosa doesn't experience random mutations, because he/she has a permanent defect in a DNA repair enzyme, which is a cause of those mutations. That defect is neither external nor typical.
A "just the flax, ma'am" placemarker.
Because, Dennis, it's probable that you are not qualified to determine what is science and what is not. Much like your input on tax-funded military projects is also probably unqualified.
Now, if you feel that you are qualified, and believe science should teach things other than science, or at least include religion, vote for a school board and laws that will change the system. Take a look at Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries. That's what they do already.
I know they are not day to day mutations.
How do you get "doesn't experience random mutations" from an implied "has cause of a specific mutation"?
What if Dembski’s book was ‘The E.T. Inference’ also in support of panspermia?
First of all, I didn't miss the humor there :-)
Panspermia doesn't require a designer; it simply puts the origin of life elsewhere. (Directed panspermia is another thing entirely). Panspermia wasn't met particularly kindly by the scientific community. I think, because Crick and Orgel suggested it, it was not greeted with the mixture of 9 parts neglect and one part derision that fringe ideas usually are met with, but a lot of people don't take it seriously. Even so, it does make testable predictions - for example, I've seen ingenious experiments where people fired bacterial spores at high velocity into the air to see if they'd survive, cooked them inside rocks to simulate meteorites, etc.. Personally, I'm extremely skeptical.
Contrast that with design - most scientists don't agree that there is something inherent in design that makes it detectable (barring something like a long, encoded message) , and certainly we have no working algorithm that distinguishes reliably between design and spontaneous order. And design necessitates a designer. I wrote a long time ago that if the human genome is designed, the designer must have been drunk at the time. I was accused of offending the beliefs of Christians. You can't have it both ways.
I would say, that if Dembski comes up with a computer program that allows me to distinguish a designed gene from a gene constructed by some sort of random mutation/natural selection method, then ID will be scientific. We can then crank that baby through all the genomes. But it doesn't exist, and I'm skeptical it could exist, so I'm not holding my breath.
The scientific community is also skeptical because we know Dembski's motives -he's never tried to hide them; and we know the motives of many of the people who are pushing to get ID into schools. After all, by and large this is the same group that put Scopes on trial.
I don't see where a bat and an unladen swallow about the same size have much different energy or oxygen uptake requirements. Both weigh a few ounces, have very light bones, and can be seen in rapidly darting flight at twilight pursuing mosquitoes. From a distance, with precise details of head and wing unresolved, they can be hard to tell apart.
It is only the model of common descent, and not at all common functionality, which tells me for sure that the bat will have lungs more like the running-machine pronghorn than like the flying-machine swallow. Heck, it will have lungs far more like the waddling-machine groundhog than like the swallow.
It's a mammal, descended from early arborial insectivores which may or may not have been shrews. (We don't have a great fossil record on small-boned animals who didn't live in swamps.)
Since it's only after bugs, it's system may not need to be as robust as say, an eagle, but it definitely still needs to be effective enough to allow it to hunt effectively (which it does quite nicely). It's respiratory requirements are quite different than birds as well (therefore requiring a different design), in that it uses respiratory muscles to power the production of biosonar vocalisations.
As usual, you address the inconvenient points by not seeing them. Yes, there are minor and subtle adaptations for sonar generation. It comes with time in the niche. Everything I said above is still true: the bat's lungs fit a phylogenetic tree but there simply is no corresponding functional tree.
"Creation Science," that glaring oxymoron, is about finding ways (stupid lawyer tricks) to obscure data points so as to not have to connect them. Finding ways not to see. This is not helpful.
"Festival of Placemarkers" placemarker
Register at ARN.org and ask him; he's been hanging out on the threads quite a bit lately. :)
Precise details of tail are even more of a clue, of course. Bats are tailless and never carry coconuts.
Just what I need; someone else to argue with.
In the strong version of panspermia, Darwinian evolution can produce variation that results from one or two point mutations, and can, by natural selection, lead to adaptation, or microevolution. But this is not the same as macroevolutionary progress requiring whole new genes that differ from known predecessors by dozens to hundreds of essential nucleotides. In strong panspermia, those new genes must be supplied from elsewhere.…In its strongest version, panspermia holds that intelligent life can only descend from prior intelligent life. Logically, therefore, intelligent life must have always existed, and what we have called “evolutionary progress” would actually be the local development of pre-existing, highly evolved life. This theory is fully scientific; there is nothing supernatural about it. I am attempting to name it Cosmic Ancestry. It responds to the informed criticism that Darwinism does not account for evolutionary progress.
Furthermore, Cosmic Ancestry does not extend science beyond its proper realm. Science can never answer some questions, like “Why is there anything at all?” According to Cosmic Ancestry, “Why is there intelligent life?” is another question that science cannot answer. Intelligent life appears to have always existed. Until evolutionary progress in a closed system is demonstrated, that’s as far as science can pursue the matter. Meanwhile, creationists are free to call intelligent life a miracle. Dissolving the disagreement between science and religion, we can turn to new questions. For example,
• Under what circumstances, if any, is evolutionary progress in a closed system possible?
• How could the big bang theory accommodate life from the eternal past?
• How does intelligent life arrive and develop?
Some of this sounds familiar, eh? BTW, Do you know of any peer reviewed papers on panspermia?
I see the use of panspermia often when abiogenesis problems are put forward.
The scientific community is also skeptical because we know Dembski's motives -he's never tried to hide them; and we know the motives of many of the people who are pushing to get ID into schools. (last part edited and/or ignored)
This is more of a thought experiment in the sense that you need to imagine the motives of both authors to be only for 'good old purely natural science' via panspermia. Anyway, I think you know what I’m going with this by asking ‘How would they be received differently by the scientific community and people on this forum and why?’
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