Posted on 02/17/2005 5:30:03 PM PST by Happy2BMe
| News Alert: On January 13, a federal judge in Georgia ruled that stickers placed in textbooks of an Atlanta area school district saying “Evolution is a theory, not a fact” are unconstitutional! ( View sticker.) According to this judge, such criticisms of evolution are an endorsement of religion. The judge’s action is the latest example of the nationwide effort to ban any critical analysis of the theory of evolution and insist that evolution be taught as the only option! The Action:
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AM, can you remove 341 from this thread? It's pure confusion.
I don't see anywhere I have insulted you.
Unless you mean by insult that I don't think your definitions are the ones accepted by science.
Webster's is not a science authority. You cannot take their definition of evolution or theory and be sure it is what science defines.
The definitions I have posted are the correct scientific ones.
In any event, the whole problem with the literalist creationists vs. scientists debate is they are talking past each other. As long as the literalists insist on placing origin of life in the debate against evolution, there never can be a good faith debate of the real issues. (ID has as its underpinning the same literalist stance as creationism in general)
To give you an idea of the frustration of scientists with the bad faith of creationists, how would you like it if scientists repeatedly said that the reason the creationist position is evil is because your definition of the Bible is wrong. Whenever you debate, scientists would say your position is wrong because you did not include books that should be in the Bible, like the Iliad or some other secular book. You would get quite frustrated.
Then we would make up a whole group of nonsensical but logical sounding sophistries to show how science proves that this is true. "The Iliad shows that the flood never happened, because it took place about the same time as the flood, but there was no report of the flood in it."
So until creationists engage in an honest debate, instead of the trumped up one the conmen at AIG and ICR have fabricated, there will never be resolution.
Since I have given reasons why the theology of the creationists is seriously flawed and given the truth of the science position, it is reasonable to expect some movement toward acceptance of at least something I have said. But so far, I have not noticed any tendency of any creationist to move from the position they hold, despite the absence of any scientific evidence for their position.
As far as the theological position of creationists, I think it is weaker than the science. They don't accept the science and twist it to a great extent, but they twist the Bible even more. They do this my picking and choosing what they will say is literal and what is not. However, they choose passages to take literally that are clearly impossible to defend.
This translates to having to indoctrinate people in their churches into ridiculous convolutions of interpretation to continue to stay with their friends at church. Asking modern intelligent well-educated people to say that millions of animals were saved on a wooden boat or that woman was made from the rib of a man, but all animals were made male and female is ridiculous. Add to that the passage in Genesis 1 that says God made them male AND female at one time and you get to the point where you are insisting on cognitive dissonance to stay in the church.
I think this sort of brainwashing is at best harmful at worst evil.
Your 234 is just evolutionists willing to change the long-accepted terms and ideas of science in an effort to cram macroevolution down our throat.
You are indeed appealing to the actions of the Evil Dumb Conspiracy to explain why scientists are correcting you on your misuse of scientific terms. Your evidence is that you quoted a science book in one place and a dictionary in another, so you must be right and it follows that the people disagreeing with you on this thread must be Evil Dumb Conspirators lying about you being right.
No, no, no, no. And yes, you're being a jerk.
I looked at your post queue for where o where you quoted a science text lately. This would seem to be it.
You (sneeringly)' "Really Why don't you use the Law of Gravity, as you know it, to explain how gravity works."Yes, the preceding contains an English sentence that corresponds roughly to the mathematical formula for gravitational force between two bodies. It might even be from old Sir Isaac's Principia, never mind what science text it was in.Me (with a bow to Sir Issac Newton) "Every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force directed on the line of the centers of the two objects that is proportional to the product of their masses and the square of the distance between the two objects"
It is a statement of what is going on, not of how. It is a statement of lawfulness. It is the Law of Gravity, not the Theory of Gravity. There is no word in it of "how," or even "how fast."
How does Mass A know Mass B is out there? Newton just flat doesn't say. It experiences a force.
Einstein says that the felt force is really the curvature of space, as reflected in the deflection of starlight passing in the neighborhood of the Sun. A thing falling under gravity--a meteor entering Earth's atmosphere for instance--is still in its own reference frame moving freely through space, but the space is curved toward an object in its environment so its track through that space appears to a distant observer to curve. The falling object experiences no force, "free fall" and "zero gravity" being equivalent, until the atmosphere gets thick and the fall is not so free.
Would-be quantum theories of gravity say that Einstein is basically right, but what happens is that massive objects exchange virtual gravitons (at the speed of light) with surrounding space. These invisible particles carry the force to the space itself. When massive objects move the space around them deforms to carry the gravitational field along with the object. This would seem to neatly tie it all together, Einstein, Newton, the whole ball of wax.
The only problem is that there are several candidate theories that claim to do this; there is just now no objective test to discriminate among them; none of them require fewer than IIRC eleven spatial dimensions ...
So three hundred years plus after Newton's Law (not Theory), we still don't have a single rock-solid theory of gravity.
What you did with the dictionary is irrelevant.
I will quote from Webster's New Collegiate dictionary (1981). Def. 6 for law states "a statement of an order or relation of phenomena that so far as is known is invariable under certain conditions".The definition of law is right. Science uses the definition of theory given in Def 4, not 5 b.Def 4 for Theory says" a plausable or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena". 5 b calls it "an unproved assumption"
You have been pig-headedly wrong, and accused your correctors of lying for the Evil Dumb Conspiracy. That's the cheap conspiracy theorist cop-out and it don't fly.
Stop playing the victim and pull your head out.
...oh, wait. They're not.
Defensive much? I never implied Lemon had been overturned... just that it should be. But since you bring it up... a majority of the justices do want to get rid of or modify the Lemon test... See, for example:
Funny how a "majority" want to overturn or modify it, yet it still stands today. Wonder how that is.
Funni-er how you chose to put the word majority in quotes. Six of nine is a majority, is it not?
There's really not much to wonder about. The court has historically been reluctant to overturn precedent. Wanna' know why? Read Casey. Specifically, read section III C. Simply put, they want to maintain the illusion. The supremes don't believe they could retain the power of judicial review if they overturned precedent just because it happened to be wrong.
No,no, you have been a gentleman throughout. That complaint was not aimed at you at all.
Tell me, does a Hypothesis ever become a Theory?
I think you have missed my point again, though it may be due to that after dinner wine you referenced in an earlier post. The Law of Gravity explains WHAT GRAVITY DOES. We are sure enough about that to give it the status of law. That is only a subset of the THEORY of GRAVITY. That explains HOW it does it. We are not quite so sure of that yet, so it is still a Theory. Once we get as sure of HOW it works as we are of what it does, it can be accepted as a law.
This may take centuries. The geocentric model of the solar system was confirmed by every observation for 1400 years and was still wrong. The heliocentric model explained the same observations better.
One reason I think many feel that a Theory NEVER (dangerous word) becomes a law is that science has only been formalized in the last few centuries. The stuff we were sure of at the time of formalization became laws. The process of general acceptance can take centuries, so it is not surprising that scienctists of today can life a lifetime without ever seeing a theory become accepted as a law. Some theories just by there nature are almost imossible to verify to the degree required. I would say that evolution is one of them, since it deals with things that happened in the past. That does not mean it is false, just difficult to be certain of as the correct explanation.
If you guys had said, "Sure we are a theory and not a law, but that is just because of the nature of this subject." then I would have to agree. Instead you seem to be saying that a theory can be just as certain as a law, and never can become a law. I can't accept that postion.
I am also not sure you understand my point on the definitions. I am not much refering to 5b, my point is that def 4, the one you agree with, fits with what I was saying about a theory "graduating" and becoming a law. Here it is again...
Def. 6 for law states "a statement of an order or relation of phenomena that so far as is known is invariable under certain conditions".
Def 4 for Theory says" a plausable or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena".
It is the difference for an offered explanation- one that is "plausible" presumably because it was confirmed by experiment and thus "graduated" from a hypothesis- and a flat statement that under certain conditions is always right.
Theory- offered plausible principle for phenomena
Law- relation for phenomena that is invariably correct, under given conditions.
You're making up your own version of this stuff now. You're wrong. Why can't a creationist be a man?
Newton's law didn't have to be right to be a law. It is a law by being a mathematical statement of dependencies. IIRC, Coulomb's Law is violated by capacitors. F = ma is wrong for observers outside of the reference frame of the "m," especially at relative "v" near "c."
A law is a law and a theory is a theory and a theory will always be a theory. Now please just grow up.
What? Newton's law didn't have to be right to be a law? I appeal to the lurkers on this thread to see for themselves who "is making stuff up". It isn't me. I am applying the commonly accepted historic definitions. It is you guys who need to change definitions in order to bludgeon people into accepting macroevolution as "fact" when it has not met the historical and evidentiary tests.
As for the "exceptions" to laws, note that the definition for law says they are invariable "under certain conditions". The conditions in a capacitor are different enough to be outside the scope of the law, they do not invalidate it. Same with the quantum stuff and gravity.
Newton's Laws of gravity had no conditons for a couple hundred years. They were considered to be part of God's design.
I still consider them such. In Newton's day we had no power to look into those regions where they did not apply (the very small, black holes, etc.) They are still invariably true for everyday conditions. We have only had the power to test General Relativity and the Einstein's THeory of Gravity for a single generation. Who is to say that they won't be confirmed beyond doubt in a 1,000 years?
Newton's Laws of gravity explain what the gravitational relationship between any two bodies will be. The law of abiogenisis explains (without equations, just like evolution) where life comes from (prior life). I know that one is not a favorite of some these days, but it remains "invariably true under a certain set of conditions". The laws of thermodynamics are explanatory. I am not quite getting why you think laws are not explanatory. Websters Dictionary says otherwise.
My dictionary says a scientific law is a statement describing an invariable relationship between phenomena.
I do not see the word explanation anywhere in the definition.
Rejecting any idea that is well stated, logical and backed by evidence becasue it conflicts with ones pre concieved political ideology is anti-intelectual. Left or right is irrelevant. Refusing to using the brain that God gave us is more than Luddite, it's blasphemy.
That phrase notwithstanding, The entire Bill of Rights, from stem to stern, and by intention, is overwhelmingly about individual human rights, not the mechanics of governments at any level. Why don't you try this reasoning out on some other parts of the Bill of Rights, and see if it makes sense to you? How about this: The US congress can't curtail your freedom of speech, but any local municipality may, in any way it sees fit?
More to the point, try this: the us gov may not hold you in bondage slavery as property, without due process, but any state may, at it's own discretion?
Lest any doubt about this be entertained, the founders reiterated this point twice, in the 9th and 10th amendments, and, by my lights, so did the victors of the civil war, in my opinion, in 3 amendments that are entirely redundant to the 9th and 10th. If the 9th and 10th are to be understood in the context of the founder's frequently expressed desires.
1-Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
9-The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
10-The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
13-Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
For reference, I have posted the ammendments you mentioned.
You said: "How about this: The US congress can't curtail your freedom of speech, but any local municipality may, in any way it sees fit? "
"More to the point, try this: the us gov may not hold you in bondage slavery as property, without due process, but any state may, at it's own discretion? "
I see your point, but I don't think the wording allows your conclusions. In 1, the Congress is prohibited from passing a law restricting speech and religion and from establishing religion, which can only apply at the Federal level.
13 abolishes slavery specifically throughout the United States. This is a big difference from one.
9 & 10 grant to the people and the states rights not enumerated, which in the case of 1 would include the right of the people to establish a religion or the states. They also grant to the people the right of free speech, as an inalienable right. They don't prohibit the States from passing a law establishing religion, but they might say that the people retain that right over the States.
In other words, the Constitution restricts the federal government, but certainly not the people. It was intended to protect us from the government, not make us subservient to it. Thus, the interpretation of law by the federal courts have violated the Constitution they are supposed to uphold.
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