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Evolution's 'Dictatorship' -- Student Struggles to Get Opposite Viewpoint Heard
AgapePress ^ | 16 August 2004 | Ed Vitagliano

Posted on 08/16/2004 9:40:47 AM PDT by PatrickHenry

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To: Willie Green
First of all, you have no evidence that the churches in the are would not have welcomed such a lecture.

Secondly, it is impractical to ask a bunch of students, many of whom probably don't have cars, to travel away from the school to another facility for an after-school event. By holding the event on campus many people who by their own free will wanted to attend were likely able to do so, when they would not have been were it held somewhere else.

And finally, you're simply diverting the issue to keep from addressing the central point: if a school opens its facilities for after-school use by student-organized meetings, it cannot discriminate based on the content of those meetings. So if they let an atheist organization meet, or a Republican organization meet, the must also permit a Christian group to meet as well.

41 posted on 08/16/2004 10:48:38 AM PDT by mcg1969
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To: tallhappy
How does anything support intelligent design? As far as the argument goes this relates to it.

How so, Mr. Grumpy? Does every article ever published "relate" to ID?

The original post seemed to set up a strawman.

So you claimed. But which you have yet to demonstrate.

42 posted on 08/16/2004 10:49:20 AM PDT by balrog666 (A public service post.)
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To: BipolarBob
School is there to teach you HOW to think, not WHAT to think.

OTOH, school is not there to posit every crackpot idea. There is not enough time to teach the basics as is.

43 posted on 08/16/2004 10:50:37 AM PDT by RadioAstronomer
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To: Right Wing Professor
The Trends series is nice and well done -- on just about any topic.

Behe has published on Histone structure in J. Mol. Bio. and other journals.

The point being that therefore "ID" is true or proven? No.

The point being the type of weird denials and smears that go on here by the anti-Creationists are like the dem and lib tactics.

As an aside I wasn't able to read his book. It was too dull.

44 posted on 08/16/2004 10:51:43 AM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: RadioAstronomer

And they are not. This was an after-school meeting organized by a student group.


45 posted on 08/16/2004 10:51:46 AM PDT by mcg1969
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What is Intelligent Design? (Compliments of ARN.Org)

Design theory—also called design or the design argument—is the view that nature shows tangible signs of having been designed by a preexisting intelligence. It has been around, in one form or another, since the time of ancient Greece. The most famous version of the design argument can be found in the work of theologian William Paley, who in 1802 proposed his "watchmaker" thesis. His reasoning went like this:

In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there for ever. ... But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think the answer which I had before given [would be sufficient].[1]

To the contrary, the fine coordination of all its parts would force us to conclude that:

… the watch must have had a maker: that there must have existed, at some time, and at some place or other, an artificer or artificers, who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. [2]

Paley argued that we can draw the same conclusion about many natural objects, such as the eye. Just as a watch’s parts are all perfectly adapted for the purpose of telling time, the parts of an eye are all perfectly adapted for the purpose of seeing. In each case, Paley argued, we discern the marks of an intelligent designer.

Although Paley’s basic notion was sound, and influenced thinkers for decades, Paley never provided a rigorous standard for detecting design in nature. Detecting design depended on such vague standards as being able to discern an object’s "purpose." Moreover, Paley and other "natural theologians" tried to reason from the facts of nature to the existence of a wise and benevolent God.

All of these things made design an easy target for Charles Darwin when he proposed his theory of evolution. Whereas Paley saw a finely-balanced world attesting to a kind and just God, Darwin pointed to nature’s imperfections and brutishness. Although Darwin had once been an admirer of Paley, Darwin’s own observations and experiences—especially the cruel, lingering death of his 9-year-old daughter Annie in 1850—destroyed whatever belief he had in a just and moral universe.

Following the triumph of Darwin’s theory, design theory was all but banished from biology. Since the 1980s, however, advances in biology have convinced a new generation of scholars that Darwin’s theory was inadequate to account for the sheer complexity of living things. These scholars—chemists, biologists, mathematicians and philosophers of science—began to reconsider design theory. They formulated a new view of design that avoids the pitfalls of previous versions.

Called intelligent design (ID), to distinguish it from earlier versions of design theory (as well as from the naturalistic use of the term design), this new approach is more modest than its predecessors. Rather than trying to infer God’s existence or character from the natural world, it simply claims "that intelligent causes are necessary to explain the complex, information-rich structures of biology and that these causes are empirically detectable." [3]

More info:

Frequently Asked Questions about Intelligent Design

46 posted on 08/16/2004 10:52:00 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
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To: balrog666
I'm grumpy when I read moronic posts and comments, yes.

But unlike you and your fellow believers here I don;t go through life grumpy.

47 posted on 08/16/2004 10:53:17 AM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: PatrickHenry

Exactly. You said it far more elegantly than I.


48 posted on 08/16/2004 10:53:59 AM PDT by horatio
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To: PatrickHenry

He should have made up a claim that Behe was a "male lesbian". Then the school would have fallen all over themselves to assist in bringing him to school.


49 posted on 08/16/2004 10:56:34 AM PDT by ikka
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To: PatrickHenry
So why can't I get the school to support my proposed series of lectures on astrology, flat-earth "theory," and demon-possession? Why do we have all this academic tyranny?

If the school allows the use of school facilities after school hours for extracurricular student groups, then it cannot discriminate between them based on content. If they let a student Republican group meet, they must let a student Christian group meet. In this after-school context, religious discrimination is not permitted.

50 posted on 08/16/2004 10:56:36 AM PDT by mcg1969
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To: horatio
Evolution is as close to scientific fact as it comes. Debate the particulars, but one cannot change the facts.

This statement is BS. I can take hydrogen, add oxygen and burn it off to get water. Burning hydrogen will ALWAYS produce water, no ifs and or buts. Evolution cannot be so duplicated in the lab.

51 posted on 08/16/2004 10:58:40 AM PDT by ikka
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To: horatio
Evolution is as close to scientific fact as it comes.

How happy I am that my particular branch of scientific insterest, astronomy, is not home to the closed-minded morons that inhabit the biological sciences.

Evolution is a house of cards.

52 posted on 08/16/2004 10:59:06 AM PDT by hopespringseternal
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To: hopespringseternal
Evolution is a house of cards.

A house of cards that will never fall, due to it's ability to reinvent itself and evolve with every new discovery.

53 posted on 08/16/2004 11:02:03 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
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To: hopespringseternal

Riiiight.

All scientists are close-minded.

Riiiight.


54 posted on 08/16/2004 11:02:29 AM PDT by horatio
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To: hopespringseternal

How do you reconcile your beliefs with the overwhelming belief in the Big Bang amongst astronomers?

Astronomy provides proof that the universe isn't a few mere thousands of years old.


55 posted on 08/16/2004 11:03:58 AM PDT by horatio
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To: PatrickHenry
So, was this intelligent design done by the G-d of the Jews, the Lord of the Christians, the Allah of the Sunnis, the Allah of the Shi'ites, or maybe Buddah?

So many forget that Darwin was a Creationist!

His book, "The Origin of Species", only describes how species CHANGE SLIGHTLY over time! Darwin himself NEVER believed that life originated via evolution.

Besides, it is my personal conviction that the creation of light, space, time, matter, and the laws of physics and chemistry itself is a miracle that far surpasses the assembly of a living creature.
56 posted on 08/16/2004 11:04:02 AM PDT by RonHolzwarth
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To: mcg1969
Secondly, it is impractical to ask a bunch of students, many of whom probably don't have cars, to travel away from the school to another facility for an after-school event.

If the church isn't within convenient walking distance of the school, I'm certain the school has a bus that transports sudents to the neighborhood where the church is located. And arrengements can be made among the parents to pick 'em up afterwards. If that is too "inconvenient", than I doubt that the parents have much interest in their child's religious training anyway.

57 posted on 08/16/2004 11:06:05 AM PDT by Willie Green (Go Alan Go!!!)
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To: RonHolzwarth
So, was this intelligent design done by the G-d of the Jews, the Lord of the Christians, the Allah of the Sunnis, the Allah of the Shi'ites, or maybe Buddah?

Howdy! I don't think ID cares who the designer *was*. Check out my ID FAQ on post #46.

58 posted on 08/16/2004 11:06:37 AM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo
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To: horatio
Exactly. You said it far more elegantly than I.

No. It is very intellectually dishonest.

Behe is a professor of biology or biochemistry. There is no analogy such as was made. It is dishonest.

59 posted on 08/16/2004 11:07:13 AM PDT by tallhappy (Juntos Podemos!)
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To: horatio

Let's see. Hopespringseternal says that "closed-minded morons that inhabit the biological sciences."

You somehow extrapolate this to "all scientists are close-minded."

Your logical ability astounds me.


60 posted on 08/16/2004 11:07:37 AM PDT by mcg1969
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