Posted on 08/16/2004 9:40:47 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Samuel Chen was a high school sophomore who believed in freedom of speech and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge. He thought his public high school did, too, but when it came to the subject of evolution -- well, now he's not so sure.
In October 2002, Chen began working to get Dr. Michael Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, to give a lecture at Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
Chen, who was co-chair of a student group that tries to stress the importance of objectivity on controversial issues, knew that Behe would be perfect, since the group was examining evolution as a topic. The author of Darwin's Black Box, a critique of the foundational underpinnings of evolution, Behe had presented his work and debated the subject in universities in the U.S. and England.
Behe agreed to come in February 2004 and give an after-school lecture entitled, "Evolution: Truth or Myth?" As the school year drew to a close in 2003, Chen had all the preliminaries nailed down: he had secured Behe's commitment, received approval from school officials, and reserved the school auditorium.
Then he found out just how entrenched Darwinist orthodoxy was in the science department at Emmaus. By the following August, Chen had entered into a six-month battle to preserve the Behe lecture.
As the struggle unfolded, it became obvious that those who opposed Behe coming to Emmaus didn't seem to care about his credentials. In addition to publishing over 35 articles in refereed biochemical journals, Darwin's Black Box was internationally reviewed in over 100 publications and named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Instead, it was Behe's rejection of Darwinism -- in favor of what is called "intelligent design" -- that drove opposition. According to the Discovery Institute, of which Behe is a fellow, this theory holds "that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
The head of the science department, John Hnatow, sent a statement to every faculty member in the school stressing that Emmaus held to the official policy of the National Science Teachers Association. That policy states: "There is no longer a debate among scientists about whether evolution has taken place."
It appeared there would be no debate at Emmaus, either. Some of the science teachers would not even allow Chen to address their classes and explain to students what Behe's lecture would be about.
Chen said various tactics were apparently used to undercut the event, including an attempt to cancel the lecture and fold the student organization without the knowledge of Chen and other members; requiring that the necessary funds for the lecture be raised much faster than for other student events; and moving the lecture from the auditorium to the school cafeteria.
One science teacher in particular, Carl Smartschan, seemed particularly riled about the upcoming lecture. Smartschan took it upon himself to talk to every teacher in the science department, insisting that intelligent design was "unscientific" and "scary stuff." He asked the principal to cancel the lecture, and then, when the principal refused, asked the faculty advisor for the student group to halt the lecture. Smartschan even approached Chen and demanded that the student organization pay to have an evolutionist come to lecture later in the year.
Smartschan's campaign to get the Behe lecture canceled was surprising to Chen because the event was scheduled after school, and not during class time, and was sponsored by a student group, not the school itself. Nevertheless, Chen persevered. The lecture was a success, attracting more than 500 people.
In the process, however, Chen's struggle took its toll. His health deteriorated over the course of the controversy, to the point where he collapsed three times in one month, including once at school. "My health has been totally junked," he told AFA Journal.
Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney and senior policy advisor for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, is advising Chen on his options for the coming year. Fahling said, "Schools are not allowed to interfere with viewpoints with which they disagree, and schools cannot disrupt the right of the students to participate in the academic and intellectual life."
Despite the hardship, Chen said he would do it all over again because the issue is so important. "I feel that there's a dictatorship on academic freedom in our public schools now," he said, adding, "I refer to evolution education as a tyranny .... You can't challenge it in our schools. Kids have been thrown out of class for challenging it."
That tyranny can be intimidating to students. "Some of the students who support me are afraid to speak out, especially because they saw how the science department reacted," Chen said. "They have a fear of speaking out against it in their classes."
On the other hand, he added that some students "are now questioning evolution, some for the first time."
That may be the first step in the overthrow of Darwin's dictatorship.
Eeeeeeexcellent!
I already told ya!
During Basic and AIT at Fort Sill, my drillsars made the mistake of telling one of the troops to 'get a hold of themselves'.
So my brother, standing in the latrine, dances past the doorway while having a deathgrip on his own shirt yelling, "I can't stop TOUCHING me!"
The drillsars were so amused that they stopped yelling at us for the next 15 minutes.
The guy is a idiot, and I use the term advisedly. You can't etymologize away a scientific definition. BTW, q is always lower case when it refers to heat.
From 'Thermodynamics and Chenmistry', by Devoe
An adiabatic process is one in which no heat is transferred...'
From 'Thermodynamics', by Pitzer
...'the expansion may be carried out in such a manner that no heat enters or leaves the system. We then say that the process is adiabatic'
From 'Chemical Thermodynamics', by Rock
...'an adiabatic process is one for which dq=0'
From 'Chemical and Process Thermodynamics', by Kyle
'When a process occurs in either an open or closed system without the exchange of heat with the surroundings, both the process and the system are termed adiabatic'
And, especially for etymology-boy, the word 'adiabatic' comes from the Greek 'adiabatos', which means 'impermeable to heat'.
Perhaps its time to rename the "theory" then...
NVID (not-very intelligent design)
What "problems with molecular phylogenies"? Molecular phylogenies overwhelmingly provide evidence for evolution. The few discrepancies or "noise" in the data do not falsify evolution, since their causes are understood, regardless of what the creationists try to imply about it.
Here's a good discussion at ARN that you might find interesting: Common Descent FAQ Discussion The last post by MG sums it up nicely.
Yes indeed, it "sums up nicely" the creationists' ability to ignore all of what was said earlier in the discussion and dogmatically repeat his assertions which have already been shot down earlier in the discussion.
Several posters in that discussion (notably niicholas and Reggie) do a more than adequate job of shooting down the creationist claims and showing how the creationists were dishonestly quoting out of context in order to disingenuously exaggerate the amount and significance of the known limits of phylogeny reconstruction via molecular analysis.
Then at the very end Mike Gene pops in and posts an empty "ditto!" post in response to an earlier creationist post which had already been demolished, while blithely ignoring all of the rebuttals which had been posted, pretending that they didn't exit. I wouldn't have thought he could have fooled anyone with that stunt, but it appears he fooled you.
Additional rebuttals to the same creationist claims can be found at:
http://www.ncseweb.org/icons/icon2tol.htmlThat second one, you'll note, is from talkorigins.org itself, and specifically addresses the alleged "problems with molecular phylogenies" which you falsely claim talkorigins.org "omits".and:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/iconob.html#molecular-phylogeny
Why is it that every time I look into a creationist accusation against talkorigins.org, I inevitably find that it's the creationists who are misrepresenting?
Also, this site: http://www.trueorigins.org/ is full of articles exposing talkorigins' bias, inconsistencies, and errors.
No it isn't. But feel free to put your claim to the test by providing one or two of what you think are its best examples of such, so that we can look at them in detail and see if TrueOrigins -- or you -- have a real grasp of the subject and are being honest about their claims. Be sure to explain in your own words what the thrust of the article is, and why you feel it's a valid example.
'ere's nuttin' wrong wit a bloke touching 'imself, is 'ere?
(George Michael is dragged off of thread by undercover members of FR's vice squad.)
(Steaming.)
Oh! Now it's on b***! You best be prepared to throw down, 'cause Behe's strappin' like a loked out thug.
(Puts up fists. Asks 'RightWingNilla' to "Bring it on!")
And second; he says 'So if Q = 0, then we have no thermodynamic system to begin with.', but then later quotes a source thusly
'Adiabatic walls permit you to measure work by prohibiting heat flow. IOW, we really are talking about an isolated system that cannot change energy or matter with anything else.", which directly contradicts his first assertion.
BWAHAHA! And most of those restaurants are giving the food away free of charge.
*wincing*
Why oh why does my memory have to pop up like that...
I never said hundreds of billions of years, you pulled that one out of thin air. I said hundreds, and thousands and Billions of years, each separate.
Let's take that silly dice game that some creationist tried to fix. Instead of 1 die, we will use 2 million dice, the first roll will be 6, the amount of dice that roll a 6 are our surviviors, and are allowed to procreate, let's say that it was 1 of 10 rolled 6, so, 200,000 surivive and are allowed to procreate, now we don't now have just 400,000, we have close to probably 4 million, because bacteria grow quickly, then we roll again, this time we look for 4's, 1 of 10 should do again, whoops, climatic change, now we roll again without letting them procreate, so now we have 400,000, minus 1 of 10 again, and we get 40,000.
Man almost wiped them out that time, but these creatures are strong now, and procreate better then their predasessors.....
Etc etc ad nauseum, you creationists think that theres just one dice, there are MILLIONS, not only that, the dice are loaded, and they procreate their loads to the new dice, so they are much more likely to bring up a number then they were before, and the 1 of 10 was extreme.
Luck in turn with natural selection, and when there are millions of combinations being tried at once, one is bound to come up a winner, and we are not talking millions either, we are talking trillions.......
It was bound to happen, it couldn't help itself, believe it or not, it is the 2nd law that actually causes it, because disorganized material when energized will tend to go to an organized state, just look at Ice, or steam, or myriads of other chemical combinations, when heated or frozen, the molecular structure goes to organize or disorganize.
This a layman thing here, I know a few of the people here could explain it much better.
You know, in my glove compartment.
What?!
It's not supposed to be there?
Now you tell me!
The second law says that heat flows spontaneously from hot things to cold things and not the other way around.
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