Posted on 01/22/2005 7:38:12 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A movement to drag the teaching of science in the United States back into the Dark Ages continues to gain momentum. So far, it's a handful of judges -- "activist judges" in the view of their critics -- who are preventing the spread of Saudi-style religious dogma into more and more of America's public-school classrooms.
The ruling this month in Georgia by Federal District Judge Clarence Cooper ordering the Cobb County School Board to remove stickers it had inserted in biology textbooks questioning Darwin's theory of evolution is being appealed by the suburban Atlanta district. Similar legal battles pitting evolution against biblical creationism are erupting across the country. Judges are conscientiously observing the constitutionally required separation of church and state, and specifically a 1987 Supreme Court ruling forbidding the teaching of creationism, a religious belief, in public schools. But seekers of scientific truth have to be unnerved by a November 2004 CBS News poll in which nearly two-thirds of Americans favored teaching creationism, the notion that God created heaven and earth in six days, alongside evolution in schools.
If this style of "science" ever took hold in U.S. schools, it is safe to say that as a nation we could well be headed for Third World status, along with everything that dire label implies. Much of the Arab world is stuck in a miasma of imam-enforced repression and non-thought. Could it happen here? Our Constitution protects creativity and dissent, but no civilization has lasted forever, and our current national leaders seem happy with the present trends.
It is the creationists, of course, who forecast doom if U.S. schools follow a secularist path. Science, however, by its nature, relies on evidence, and all the fossil and other evidence points toward an evolved human species over millions of years on a planet tens of millions of years old [ooops!] in a universe over two billion years in existence [ooops again!].
Some creationists are promoting an idea they call "intelligent design" as an alternative to Darwinism, eliminating the randomness and survival-of-the-fittest of Darwinian thought. But, again, no evidence exists to support any theory of evolution except Charles Darwin's. Science classes can only teach the scientific method or they become meaningless.
Many creationists say that teaching Darwin is tantamount to teaching atheism, but most science teachers, believers as well as non-believers, scoff at that. The Rev. Warren Eschbach, a professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pa., believes that "science is figuring out what God has already done" and the book of Genesis was never "meant to be a science textbook for the 21st century." Rev. Eschbach is the father of Robert Eschbach, one of the science teachers in Dover, Pa., who refused to teach a school-board-mandated statement to biology students criticizing the theory of evolution and promoting intelligent design. Last week, the school district gathered students together and the statement was read to them by an assistant superintendent.
Similar pro-creationist initiatives are underway in Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina. And a newly elected creationist majority on the state board of education in Kansas plans to rewrite the entire state's science curriculum this spring. This means the state's public-school science teachers will have to choose between being scientists or ayatollahs -- or perhaps abandoning their students and fleeing Kansas, like academic truth-seekers in China in the 1980s or Tehran today.
That's hardly what your home page indicates.
I think you are mis-interpreting the word "interest", which is a somewhat overloaded word in english. What Alacarte means in context is that he doesn't have a vested interest in ToE that would prevent him from dropping it tomorrow if significant contradictory data were presented.
I can buy that.
Points are also used to represent the foci of ellipses. Are you saying the earth is an ellipse?
Isaiah 11:12
12 And he shall set up an ensign for the nations, and shall assemble the outcasts of Israel, and gather together the dispersed of Judah from the FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH. (KJV)
Revelation 7:1
1 And after these things I saw four angels standing on FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. (KJV)
Please provide a source for your claim.
As I don't post under the name of "Southack," I take pride in demonstrating that when I didn't know something or I mess something up, I will freely acknowledge. Oddly enough, to stay in the right, you have to be capable of being wrong. Otherwise, as you for one should probably know by now, you marry your mistakes forever.
You do owe me an apology, however. Prior to learning that bacteria really do have recessive traits, you were quite vicious.
Alas, the characterization remains spot on and you are indeed doing the Dance of the Superdumb Larry. In the words of Dan Day, "Try to keep up, son." I will review for you.
A problem cited for your "There is nothing new (genetically) under the sun" thesis is the demonstrable ability of even an initially monoclonal (descended from a single cell) colony of bacteria to gradually evolve a resistance to virtually any chemical which would initially wipe out 100 percent of any batch exposed to it.
Your still-laughable dodge is that the seemingly evolved trait lay recessive in the original cell. In support of this, you Tah-dah!-ed out an instance in which which a resistance trait is controlled by two copies of a gene, allowing the sort of competition for expression which creates dominance/recession.
I hope that brings you back to where we are. Now I want to point out to you that your dodge remains laughable.
But let's clarify your story. You need for every trait that ever has or will be "shown to evolve" to be controlled by multiple genes.
1) Are you claiming that bacteria have eukaryote-style gene pairs for all traits? (Hint: Don't go there.)
2) Are you claiming that no single-gene trait can mutate?
3) Are you claiming that no single-gene trait can have favorable mutations in a given situation?
Dance on, Larry, and I'll check back in a bit.
Or for 1^720 years, whichever comes first.
You found an oddball use of the word recessive. Good for you. Do you deny that a mutation is required to enable it in a bacterium?
You are mixing two entirely different concepts of recessive and trying to claim that mutation is not the enabling event.
I'm afraid I don't understand. Are you saying that the paradox I pointed out is gibberish? If so, please explain (in plain English) how it is.
That makes two of us. Maybe you can try and explain again your comments. The paradox of the anti-IDers, is that they have to use ID tools to prove their point.
False premis. Most believers in evolution belive in God (your "Intelligent Designer") including half of Chrisendom.
Of course, by using such tools, they also invalidate their anti-ID premise, but what the heck...
This made no sense to me.
Don't twist the argument. ID is NOT arguable since it cannot be proved or disproved. What is being discussed is putting religion and faith into science courses.
In addition, you are ignoring my argument against your straw-man. Most proponents of Evolution BELIEVE in God. We therefore believe in an intelligent designer.
Maybe it's a simple Catch-22 game.
Something seems to be observable in the fossil record or in the wild. Transitional progressions of fossils, or ring species. Molecular hierarchies of relatedness, analyzed post-facto from what is out there. "Not reproducible in the laboratory and thus NOT SCIENCE!" you scream, brandishing a crucifix Van Helsing-style at the evidence.
Something IS observable in the laboratory. "Evidence for Design!" you cackle maniacally.
"You found an oddball use of the word recessive. ..."
I rather see it as a nifty new perspective on recessiveness.
The expression of a gene can be blocked by a number of things.
For critters with chromosomes in pairs there are a number of examples:
One is the presence elsewhere of a different gene that blocks it. Say, for instance, chromosome A has a dominant gene for purple polka dots (call it ppd).
Chromosome C might have a gene where the dominant form turns the ppd into white polka dots (wpd).
And chromosome Z might have a gene that undoes the effect of chromosome C
But, back to Chromosome A. At the same location as the ppd gene there can be, instead, a gene recessive to it producing green polka dots (gpd).
Now it gets to be fun.
There can be a gene recessive to gpd that produces yellow polka dots. But there can also be a gene dominant to the ppd one that produces no polka dots (npd)
These variations at one location are called alleles.
Probably every variant you can think of, plus some.
What this shows is simply that the same effects can occur if all the genes are strung along a single chromosome on a critter which has only one. Not oddball, it fits in perfectly.
And you are absolutely correct: it takes mutations to get the variants.
If it not arguable, then why are you arguing it? I'm merely pointing out an interesting logical paradox. In order to get rid of the paradox, the anti-IDers only have to prove their case by getting rid of all ID tools (that is, if they don't want to accept ID). Otherwise, what you have done is already put faith and religion into the classroom - the faith of the anti-IDers.
But what does Southack cite this literature to prove? That there in fact are no mutations. All alleles are "original."
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