Posted on 05/09/2005 11:35:25 PM PDT by Crackingham
While Kansas State Board of Education members spent three days soaking up from critics of evolution about how the theory should be taught in public schools, many scientists refused to participate in the board's public hearings. But evolution's defenders were hardly silent last week, nor are they likely to be Thursday, when the hearings are set to conclude. They have offered public rebuttals after each day's testimony. Their tactics led the intelligent design advocates -- hoping to expose Kansas students to more criticism of evolution -- to accuse them of ducking the debate over the theory. But Kansas scientists who defend evolution said the hearings were rigged against the theory. They also said they don't see the need to cram their arguments into a few days of testimony, like out-of-state witnesses called by intelligent design advocates.
"They're in, they do their schtick, and they're out," said Keith Miller, a Kansas State University geologist. "I'm going to be here, and I'm not going to be quiet. We'll have the rest of our lives to make our points."
The scientists' boycott, led by the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Kansas Citizens for Science, frustrated board members who viewed their hearings as an educational forum.
"I am profoundly disappointed that they've chosen to present their case in the shadows," said board member Connie Morris, of St. Francis. "I would have enjoyed hearing what they have to say in a professional, ethical manner."
Intelligent design advocates challenge evolutionary theory that natural chemical processes can create life, that all life on Earth had a common origin and that man and apes had a common ancestor. Intelligent design says some features of the natural world are best explained by an intelligent cause because they are well ordered and complex. The science groups' leaders said Morris and the other two members of the board subcommittee presiding at the hearings already have decided to support language backed by intelligent design advocates. All three are part of a conservative board majority receptive to criticism of evolution. The entire board plans to consider changes this summer in standards that determine how students will be tested statewide in science.
Alan Leshner, AAAS chief executive officer, dismissed the hearings as "political theater."
"There is no cause for debate, so why are they having them?" he said. "They're trying to imply that evolution is a controversial concept in science, and that's absolutely not true."
What, for exsample, [sic] is the logical difference between infinite and uncountable?
And right back atcha.
To answer your question, it's the difference between aleph-null and aleph-one. But I didn't want to get into symbolism.
I suppose this is, in some way or another, not technically false, but what does it mean?
Exactly my point.
So perhaps Amishdude was saying in rather an erudite way that women are irrational? And maybe the rest of his jokes in that post are just too clever for me.
"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
Actually, transcendental. Irrational is not nearly specific enough.
And maybe the rest of his jokes in that post are just too clever for me.
I'll go with that.
Which knows little or nothing about the actual theory.
Well and good in number theory, but that wasn't the context. My main point is that the whole paragraph was a meaningless jumble of plattitude-like verbiage.
I think it may be related to his claim that biology is not a science and medicine is worthless.
This is the kind of Taliban logic that really scares me, just in case anyone asks again what I am scared of.
Plant this seed in the mainstream media, and the Republicans will get about 12 votes in the next election.
I am not a fan.
See Russell's theory of types for various failures of closure of discrete formal systems, Then see Godel's proof in response to Russell, for starters. See also the proof of the four-color theorem that was wrong, but held up for several hundred years. See the developments of Aristotalian syllogistic forms that were wrong, but were accepted for 1000 years. See also the proof in Principia Mathematica that was wrong, but wasn't noticed for 60 years. Then you can explain whether or not a proof generated by a computer, which no human has been able to verify, is a proof, or not.
Your statement is vastly incorrect. There is way more math, pure or otherwise, than there is proof. And a proof exists that this discrepency cannot be cured.
The ones trod by researchers.
#####Which knows little or nothing about the actual theory.#####
Maybe they just don't buy it.
Tell ya what, submit a paper to a math journal with no proofs. Claim that there is "way more math, pure or otherwise, than there is proof" and try not to be offended by what they send back.
Maybe they just don't know it. From the posts of the anti-Es on this forum, it's obvious most, if not all, are laboring under some cartoon version of evolution picked up from one or more anti-E sites. When asked what the Theory of Evolution actually says or covers, the answers range from the ridiculous to the totally outrageous.
...you mean, like, when people with absolute religeous convictions take physical and political action? Like bombing abortion clinics, or tall buildings in New York? Or getting school boards to enforce their religeous convictions on science classrooms, despite the objections of scientists?
Not "terrorists" technically, but Islamic fundamentalists certainly.
Kansas taxpayers are footing the bill to bring the Istanbul resident [Mustafa Akyol] to Topeka as one of 23 witnesses scheduled to testify this week before a subcommittee of the Kansas State School Board in its unorthodox "trial" over science teaching standards. (Fortunately, Akyol happens to be in Washington, D.C., on other business, so Kansans are paying only to bring him across the country, not all the way from Turkey.)-- pitch.com - What a triumphant journey awaits Mustafa Akyol.
Born in 1972, Akyol has a master's degree in history and writes a column for a newspaper in Istanbul. He also has identified himself as a spokesman for the murky Bilim Arastirma Vakfi, a group with an innocuous-sounding name -- it means "Science Research Foundation" -- but a nasty reputation.
Said to have started as a religious cult that preyed on wealthy members of Turkish society, the Bilim Arastirma Vakfi has appeared in lurid media tales about sex rings, a blackmail prosecution and speculation about its charismatic leader, a man named Adnan Oktar. But if BAV's notoriety has been burnished by a sensationalist Turkish media, the secretive group has earned its reputation as a prodigious publisher of inexpensive ideological paperbacks. BAV has put out hundreds of titles written by "Harun Yahya" (a pseudonym) on various topics, but most of them are Islamic-based attacks on the theory of evolution.
...
"It's hopeless here," Sayin says. "I've been fighting with these guys for six years, and it's come to nothing." As a result of the BAV campaign and other efforts to denounce evolution, he adds, most members of Turkey's parliament today not only discount evolution but consider it a hoax. "Now creationism is in [high school] biology books," Sayin says. "Evolution is presented [by BAV] as a conspiracy of the Jewish and American imperialists to promote new world order and fascist motives ... and the majority of the people believe it."
The secret to BAV's success is the huge popularity of the Harun Yahya books, says a professor closer to home, Truman State University physicist Taner Edis, who was born in Turkey. "They're fairly lavishly produced, on good-quality paper with full-color illustrations all over the place," he says. "They're trying to compete with any sort of science publication you can find in the Western world. And in a place like Turkey, Yahya books look considerably better-published than most scientific publications."
The books are slick, but BAV has had plenty of help. Sayin says that creationism in Turkey got key support in the 1980s and 1990s from American creationist organizations, and Edis points out that BAV's Yahya books resemble the same sorts of works put out by California's Institute for Creation Research. Except in Yahya's books, it's Allah that's doing the creating.
...
Harris included Akyol on a list of witnesses whom he wanted brought in to testify on behalf of intelligent design in this week's hearings.
[UMKC Professor William] HarrisHarris says he hasn't heard of BAV. Told of the group's harassment of bioligists in Turkey and evolution's defeat there, he replies, "Great! Congratulations! I mean, that is the point, once people start to see science more objectively."
Thankfully, our own Henry Fords, Thomas Edisons, Jonas Salks, and many Nobel Prize winning scientists receieved their education prior to the Scopes Trial.
True in the case of my wife at least.
"And maybe the rest of his jokes in that post are just too clever for me."
I'll go with that.
Damn, I walked into that one.
Perhaps that's true. But I just don't remember any scientist saying "here's the evidence of evolution, and it proves that God doesn't exist".
I think you're projecting "atheism" onto evolution. Any honest scientist cannot make any claim about the existence of God, one way or the other. Evolution, or no.
All of them?
Two things: If someone wants the answer to a question that can't be answered by using the scientific method, should that question be part of science? (I say "no").
Do you have a quotation from a modern scientist claiming anything to know more than Augustine suggests?
Also, there is a little switch here in the argument I see on all these evolution pings. ID does not necessarily equal creationism. That is something put forward by the keepers of the evolution dogma in an effort to dismiss any challenge.
Let's leave out the differences between ID and creationism. Which one has proposed a theory that can be tested by science? Neither has, insofar as anyone knows. That's why "keepers of the evolution dogma" object. It has nothing to do with dogmatism and everything to do with what can be accomplished through science.
If you like, here is a simple scenario. Next Wednesday the Vulcans land because the last time they were here they left their DNA test tube by mistake and now the whole planet is overrun with life.
That would disprove evolution how?
Now, a little less silly, seeding life by purpose or accident by exploring species doesn't involve "God", or "god" as the atheists like to say. But could that explain the origin of complex species? No? What about the thought that bacteria survived on our missions to Mars and that they might survive there?
This, like your last paragraph appears to be about abiogenesis, not evolution, and therefore has nothing to do with the issue at hand. As to speciation, that's what the Theory of Evolution addresses. The Mars question is off-topic.
But let's go back, the only questions not being allowed to be asked are by evolutionists.
? If I understand this, my answer to it is in the first paragraph of this post ... but I'm not sure I understand it.
As for your final silly paragraph it shows only your lack of knowledge about religion. I would say I am a strong creationist and Catholic. Yet I do believe the world is round. I do believe in evolution (It is hard not to. I had a sheltie growing up, then a bassett hound, now an English Mastff. All three are examples of the evolution of a species. By intelligent design of course:). People that believe are not superstitious ignorant people.
There are creationists and there are creationists. Belief in he Theory of Evolution is not against Catholic doctrine, according to Pope John Paul II. (The Pope included a qualification about only man being a "spiritual being," but that was it). On this board, I believe Junior is a Catholic, and he is an evolutionist. The believer/atheist formulation is a false dichotomy.
We just couple wisdom with knowledge. Did you know the person who discovered the big bang was a Jesuit priest?
That may be true, but it has nothing whatever to do with big bang theory. (I went to a University run by the CSC. They had a saying: The Jebbies giveth and the Jebbies taketh away. It's the "giveth" you have to look out for.
I just threw that in for grins.
There is nothing whatever funny about Jesuits. Especially when they are joking.
No, Heaven isn't around the rings of Saturn any more than hell is just below the mantle. Read Chronic Losers posts on this thread. He has the most articulate analysis I have read on these threads. When I have more time I am going to print this off. His posts might help you. Finally, for all of you out of staters that think we all live on farms.....well, I do but that isn't the point, Johnson County in Eastern Kansas has roughly the same population as the entire state of Vermont. Just in one county! So there.
My wife grew up in Johnson County, Kansas. She remembers fielding questions about keeping guns under the altar. She's harder-headed than I am.
Ouch!
While these people certainly believed in God, where in any of their SCIENTIFIC work do they invoke God as an integral part of that work? AFAIK, they all formulated their scientific work much the same way as modern scientists do, namely natural explanations for natural phenomena. Curie didn't say that God caused the radiation, but rather looked for and found a new element that was causing it. Kepler didn't say that God caused the planets to move according to His will, but rather that they moved according to certain regular laws of planetary motion. Faraday didn't say that the magnetic force was provided by God, but rather was produced by a changing electrical field. Carver's work in biology similarly did not make reference to God.
Uh, anybody can mis-interpret a biology experiment.
Appel and Haken's proof of 4-color was not wrong, just unverifiable.
I see. You know it can't be wrong, but you can't verify it. Very amusing.
Tell ya what, submit a paper to a math journal with no proofs. Claim that there is "way more math, pure or otherwise, than there is proof" and try not to be offended by what they send back.
Tell ya what, here's a simple set of arithmetic identities, all valid in finite math, and an equivalent set could easily be part of a useful program. tell me what c resolves to and provide the proof of your answer.
a = b + 1 b = a - 1 c = b + 1I see you acknowledge that math exists that hasn't got a proof associated with it. Deal with Godel's theorem before you start chewing that foot in your mouth.
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