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Evolution puts state in spotlight [Kansas]
The Lawrence Journal-World ^ | 22 April 2005 | Scott Rothschild

Posted on 04/22/2005 4:21:47 AM PDT by PatrickHenry

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To: PatrickHenry
No mention of creationism, but from what you posted, creationism is less popular than psychic healing and ESP.

Looks like they didn't ask the really big question:

"Wanna slurpee?"


141 posted on 04/24/2005 1:22:18 PM PDT by dread78645 (Sarcasm tags are for wusses.)
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To: PatrickHenry; Alamo-Girl; cornelis
"They're very pretty. But can they fight?"

If they're "fighting" under the banner of the truth of reality, I imagine they would prove decisive on the "battlefield of ideas." Time is "the mother of truth"... in our 4D world, of course. Stay tuned, dear Patrick! :^)

142 posted on 04/24/2005 1:33:07 PM PDT by betty boop (If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking. -- Gen. George S. Patton)
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To: Ronzo
If your only reason for being a conservative is for fiscal policy, then go off and join the Democrats. Their fiscal policy is more truly conservative than even the Republicans!

Thanks for the laugh.

143 posted on 04/24/2005 1:44:04 PM PDT by Liberal Classic (No better friend, no worse enemy. Semper Fi.)
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To: Thatcherite; bondserv
Simon Conway Morris is a good example of a promient Christian biologist. (He's an expert on the Burgess Shale and Cambrian ëxplosion")
144 posted on 04/24/2005 3:01:38 PM PDT by Virginia-American
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To: dread78645
So the Creationist "backbone of the conservative movement" is: African-American female, without a high-school diploma, earning less than $20,000 a year.

All a Republican candidate needs to do is promote his support of Creationism and he'll be in like Flynn.

145 posted on 04/24/2005 3:28:10 PM PDT by Oztrich Boy (What ever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called. - J S Mill)
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To: Oztrich Boy; Alamo-Girl; marron; cornelis; PatrickHenry; js1138
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, no matter what name it is called. -- John Stuart Mill

Yep, Mill said that. And I gather this is the context in which you are evaluating the question of whether "Right-wing conservatives are hijacking the Republican Party," in ways (I imagine) directly analogous to the hijacking of Islam by Wahabbist terrorists.

Mill is a philosopher closely associated with utilitarian thought. And yet Mill doggedly adhered to the idea of the sovereignty of the individual; and drew from that insight the idea of a universal, common humanity that was somehow "sacred" in some way, yet a part of Nature -- such that man -- considered from either the individual or social standpoints -- could never justly ever serve as mere grist for utilitarian machines. If you catch my drift....

As for me, "a pox on political parties!!!" As for you: know thy sources, dude!

Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, Oztrich Boy.

146 posted on 04/24/2005 4:25:19 PM PDT by betty boop (If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking. -- Gen. George S. Patton)
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To: general_re
Enjoy the Hillary presidency.

I didn't know that Hillary was a creationist...maybe she believes that Bill and herself created the universe...

147 posted on 04/24/2005 8:28:24 PM PDT by Ronzo
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To: Ronzo

LOL. I doubt she is, but the point is that "backbone" or no, creationists aren't enough, by themselves, to carry the day, electorally speaking.


148 posted on 04/24/2005 8:31:35 PM PDT by general_re ("Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith, but in doubt." - Reinhold Niebuhr)
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To: general_re
LOL. I doubt she is, but the point is that "backbone" or no, creationists aren't enough, by themselves, to carry the day, electorally speaking.

No, of course not. But conservative evolutionists alone can't carry the day, electorally speaking, either. For better or worst, we need each other.

Can't we all just get along? (Don't answer that!)

149 posted on 04/24/2005 8:42:36 PM PDT by Ronzo
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To: Ronzo
Can't we all just get along?

Dum spiro, spero.

;)

150 posted on 04/24/2005 8:51:45 PM PDT by general_re ("Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith, but in doubt." - Reinhold Niebuhr)
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To: Ronzo
Thank you so much for the beautiful, insightful essay!

It's really pointless to complain about how the debate over evolution has become political and religious; it always has been! I think it better to argue the merits of it's political and religious implications, and stop pretending like there aren't any!

Indeed.

151 posted on 04/24/2005 10:00:17 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: betty boop
Thank you so much for your engaging essay! And thank you for the excerpt from Grandpierre!

IMHO, of all the concepts of infinity - timelessness is the most difficult to embrace. I suspect this may be due to the "arrow of time" we mortals sense as present becomes past, we age, clocks tick, physical entropy sets in, cause seems to have effect and so on.

And yet none of these are applicable in timelessness. Jeepers, they aren't even applicable with a second temporal dimension.

152 posted on 04/24/2005 10:06:21 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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To: PatrickHenry

I think the big problem is that, as usual, the media is lying about the facts of the case:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i1/scopes.asp


153 posted on 04/25/2005 6:07:59 AM PDT by johnnyb_61820
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To: johnnyb_61820
From that website:
William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925)
Bryan was a famous politician and orator, who unsuccessfully stood three times as the Democratic candidate for the USA Presidency. He became Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, where he tried his best to keep the USA out of the First World War. A great Populist leader, he was known as the Great Commoner. He was influential in the eventual adoption of such reforms as popular election of senators, income tax, creation of a Department of Labor, Prohibition and women’s suffrage.
Quite a guy. I've got no problem with women's suffrage, but as for the rest of it, Bryan seems like the worst American of his generation.
154 posted on 04/25/2005 7:19:26 AM PDT by PatrickHenry (<-- Click on my name. The List-O-Links for evolution threads is at my freeper homepage.)
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To: js1138
Americans are abandoning science and engineering, just as the Muslims did centuries ago, and for the same reason.

Correct. The result should be essentially similar.

155 posted on 04/25/2005 8:13:57 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: betty boop
But no genuine theist...

The "No True Scotsman" argument doesn't hold water even in this guise. Unless, of course, you are defining theism to be anti-science (which is what most anti-conservative scientists believe.)

156 posted on 04/25/2005 8:19:40 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: betty boop
He's entitled to whatever religious opinions he likes, be they "obnoxious" or otherwise. But if he stuffs them into his science, then we have to recognize that he's not doing science; he's doing theology under cover of science.

That's exactly what all the creationist and ID proponents do. However, they compound their felony by failing to do any observation or experimentation.

157 posted on 04/25/2005 8:30:07 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch is der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: PatrickHenry

Stop the suffraging.


158 posted on 04/25/2005 8:34:42 PM PDT by Dinsdale
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To: Doctor Stochastic; Alamo-Girl; marron; js1138; PatrickHenry; Ronzo; Dataman; Tribune7
That's exactly what all the creationist and ID proponents do. However, they compound their felony by failing to do any observation or experimentation.

Hello Doc! You wrote the above in response to my claim that some scientists have theological commitments that are undisclosed in their work. Certainly creationists cannot be held guilty of such non-disclosure. And it seems to me that ID at the present time is more cosmological in its focus than strictly scientific. That is, ID has yet to produce a comprehensive, detailed theory that is testable by means of present methods.

As I've mentioned before, it seems to me that ID is more a catalog of unanswered problems than an elaboration of a comprehensive theory directly leading to experiments. However, I don't think it's fair to say that ID makes no observations. Indeed, observation is what is driving ID in the first place. Primarily what has been observed is the insufficiency of the materialist explanation.

For all its cosmological character, however, my sense (FWIW) is that ID is correct to note that matter requires information in order to produce the world that we observe all around us, and that information is not an epiphenomenon of matter nor of the physical-chemical laws nor is it a product of 4D space-time. One supposes that the reverse is more likely to be true. This is a cosmological statement, not a scientific one.

Yet all science involves cosmological premises of some type, for the simple reason that cosmological premises necessarily lay at the root of all human thinking. When the metaphysical naturalist tells you that all there is, is matter in its motions (contingent on physical laws), that is a cosmological statement, having obvious theological implications. It is fundamentally a statement of faith, for it seems impossible to falsify/validate. And I would say, well, that's just fine -- except for the simple fact that the statement seems hopelessly reductive -- that is to say, insufficient to take into account all the real phenomena that we observe.

ID, it seems to me, seeks to open up the conceptual space in which science is done by not restricting inquiry to only the material, physical features of the universe. Laws aren't physical or material, for openers; yet materialists need them all the same, otherwise their science would be impossible. This to me is a case of fundamental inconsistency, even self-contradiction in the materialist view. It is a tacit admission of the very thing that materialism most strenuously denies -- i.e., the real existence of non-physical entities in the Universe.

I understand that some will say ID cannot be science because it seeks to investigate non-physical components of nature (such as laws and their origin). But that's only true if the purpose of science is limited to the exploration/explanation of the physical. My understanding, however, is that the purpose of science is to tell us about the nature of reality, of the Universe.

My conjecture is that the Universe is more than just its material component, more than its physical "expression." You give every indication that you disagree with me about this. And yet I would say that Doctor Stochastic is more than his material component. Indeed, the most important part of Doc isn't the matter that composes his physical body.

But then, our thinking follows from our seeing. And since neither of us can "see" for the other, I imagine we will continue to have interesting debates.

Thanks so much for writing, Doc!

159 posted on 04/26/2005 7:51:07 AM PDT by betty boop (If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking. -- Gen. George S. Patton)
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To: betty boop
As I've mentioned before, it seems to me that ID is more a catalog of unanswered problems than an elaboration of a comprehensive theory directly leading to experiments.

I think that's what some of have been saying for quite a while.

Primarily what has been observed is the insufficiency of the materialist explanation.

Science doesn't have all the answers, true.

ID is correct to note that matter requires information in order to produce the world that we observe all around us, and that information is not an epiphenomenon of matter nor of the physical-chemical laws nor is it a product of 4D space-time.

This is a baseless assertion, and almost certainly false. Let's just say that every time it has been put to the test it has failed. Perhaps you could cite an example to the contrary.

And I would say, well, that's just fine -- except for the simple fact that the statement seems hopelessly reductive -- that is to say, insufficient to take into account all the real phenomena that we observe.

Like representative democracy, science is worse than anything except the alternatives.

160 posted on 04/26/2005 8:26:24 AM PDT by js1138 (e unum pluribus)
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