Posted on 08/20/2005 5:45:53 PM PDT by Nicholas Conradin
By SEATTLE - When President Bush plunged into the debate over the teaching of evolution this month, saying, "both sides ought to be properly taught," he seemed to be reading from the playbook of the Discovery Institute, the conservative think tank here that is at the helm of this newly volatile frontier in the nation's culture wars.
After toiling in obscurity for nearly a decade, the institute's Center for Science and Culture has emerged in recent months as the ideological and strategic backbone behind the eruption of skirmishes over science in school districts and state capitals across the country. Pushing a "teach the controversy" approach to evolution, the institute has in many ways transformed the debate into an issue of academic freedom rather than a confrontation between biology and religion.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
You can't find them in your living room means they aren't here? Does an ant know when you are watching its anthill? How is this a scientific demonstration of anything? Pretty ludicrous for you to be claiming you stand on firm scientific grounds regarding ID, based on the proud claim that you can't prove there wasn't intervention, whereas you reject the most obvious explanation for intervention, based on the exact same argument.
As you've just demonstrated, ID is a joke, not a science.
Yeah, it's just you. As long as the fiction that Atheism is not a religion is maintained, you can proselytize it till the cows come home without running afoul of today's PC distortion of the First Amendment.
I asked for evidence, you offered none. It is plainly an overwrought fantasy that masses of teachers taught athiesm, at any time, anywhere. Teaching evolutionary theory does not qualify, your unsupported opinion to the contrary notwithstanding.
"You can't find them in your living room means they aren't here?"
No, if the people who have spent man-centuries and huge sums of money looking for them can't find them, they why posit that they are here?
"Pretty ludicrous for you to be claiming you stand on firm scientific grounds regarding ID"
I think you've lost track of the argument. Better go back and read the thread again. The only thing I've said about science and ID is that ID doesn't reject any part of science.
"based on the proud claim that you can't prove there wasn't intervention, whereas you reject the most obvious explanation for intervention, based on the exact same argument."
You're just whirling off into fantasy now, attributing to me things I haven't said.
"As you've just demonstrated, ID is a joke, not a science."
What has been demonstrated is that you are willing to use straw man arguments.
Cut your elitist crap. If you are too "educated" to comprehend the problem that a lack of fossil evidence creates for the evolutionary theory, then you are simply a highly educated fool.
Please explain to me and the rest of the uneducated fools who inhabit this country why fossil evidence exists at both the beginning of, and the end of the evolutionary chain, yet "NOTHING" exists in the middle. You can't explain it. As the top scientists of our times have also failed to do so. Keep drinking that koolaid sport...
"I asked for evidence, you offered none."
I don't propose to spend my day doing your homework for you, that's true. Besides, anyone who considers "mainstream newspapers" as sources of "evidence" is obviously not persuadable.
"It is plainly an overwrought fantasy that masses of teachers taught athiesm, at any time, anywhere."
Masses? Still with the straw men. It's a fact that many do, and quibbling over the difference between "masses" and "many" would be as useless as it would be foolish.
"Teaching evolutionary theory does not qualify, your unsupported opinion to the contrary notwithstanding."
When one considers that I have explicitly stated just the opposite on this very thread, one has to wonder what motivates you to attribute such an "opinion" to me.
Well no, not really. If you are just going to randomly fulminate instead of answering my questions, I'd just as soon you kept to your charming self.
Honestly, I am not interested in such an engagement....High School math bores me even more than you do.....
ah yes. The mystery argument. As long as you don't explain it, who the heck can refute it? Foolproof, really.
Why should I give a rat's behind about your extremely silly contention that because a number is irrational, it is undefined? What in thunder does this have to do with ID? Your disdaneful arrogance is only exceeded by your incompetence to defend an absurdly irrelevant arguement. Feel free to hike your heiny elsewhere, I can get all I need of this kind of rhetoric when my niece throws a tantrum.
"What does this mean?"
It means that I think you were very fortunate to have attended such a school. I wish I had, and I wish I could have done the same for my kids.
"Incidentally, I don't know if the biology teacher was proselytizing atheism in the public school I went to because I thought she was an idiot and I "forgot" to take her class."
No data to record. Okay.
If you are too "educated" to comprehend the problem that a lack of fossil evidence creates for the evolutionary theory,EASY spunky; we've only just BEGUN to scratch the surface of this issue with living fossil records (DNA analysis in living cratures) ...
fossil evidence exists of evolution in chains containing hundreds of intermediate fossils. Of course the more elements in the chain of fossils, the more "gaps" there are, giving you something to gripe about.
Yet nevertheless the more fossils turn up, the more they support evolution.
One of the primary ways that evolution would be falsifiable is if the fossil record were incoherent, jumping around from species to species with apparent irregularity. But that isn't what is found.
Should the discovery institute really desire to do science, then demonstrating the randomness of species would be a way to falsify evolution. Yet they don't even bring up the subject.
Not "many", "Many, many". Is the correct quote. Masses is close enough, and this is a feeble defense. Find me three cases of the teaching of athiesm in public schools, that produced evidence outside the domain of homeschool creationist rumor mills. You are defending a pile of cow manure, and I think you know it--that's why you're haughtily above all this nonsense about verifiable evidence I keep asking you for.
"The issue of the accelerating expansion of the universe is certainly a marvel. Indeed, the "scientific" explanations are exclusively in the realm of pure speculation. Most practicing scientists understand this without the explicit and rather pedantic qualifications. However, I don't see how it supports the ID viewpoint at all. It is just one more marvel of the universe like quantum mechanics and relativity."
As I understand it, and maybe I don't (I am simply "a layman" but I am also holding Tippler and Barrow's "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" in my hand - written before the Accelerating Expansion revelation, by the way, but still absolutely relevant - even more so now, I think) what it does is discount the infinite series of very slightly different universes (until they repeat - yes, even infinities repeat apparently - see Rudy Rucker's "Infinity and the Mind"), where chance would find one just like this one that would eventually support life. No need for God in such a case and a refutation of an Intelligently Designed universe. (The absolutley meaningless existence of Nietche's Eternal Return - as cited by Tippler and Barrow a number of times - that's why I brought it up.) The fact that we have discovered that it won't collapse back means that this universe is much, much more special (unique) than previously thought. And that would mean that its special characteristics that support life look near infinitely improbable (1 in 10^123 is just one example - multiply that against the other chance events and the number gets even more improbable) to have happened by chance (but still not impossible).
So, yes, "the only universe that we could possible observe is the one that we do observe." But if this is the only one, which, apparently, looks more and more likely, then there are no probabilities to cancel out anything and it looks like somebody or something or some group of somebodies (or whatever) desgned it, doesn't it?
At least as I understand it.
Gee thanks... "Spell Check" is your friend....
ID proponents reject the science of of evolution. They don't claim such a thing in public, but any honest evaluation of the supporters of ID demonstrate that they are creationists seeking a PC method to argue against evolution. Since they've failed via any scientific argument to damage evolution.
There is no lack of fossil evidence. There is only a lack on the part of creationists to understand why the evidence is compelling. I know this is a little hard to comprehend, but science does not operate on evidence in whatever manner some zealous non-scientists with an ax to grind insist on.
Please explain to me and the rest of the uneducated fools who inhabit this country why fossil evidence exists at both the beginning of, and the end of the evolutionary chain,
There is no "evolutionary chain"--it is a voraciously trimmed bush, and you only get to see a few leaves of that bush alive at any given moment, or ever. Thinking it is a chain is what leads to many of the dunderheaded arguments, such as this one, that creationists try to make, despite being warned not to by their cheerleader, the Discover Institute itself.
yet "NOTHING" exists in the middle. You can't explain it. As the top scientists of our times have also failed to do so. Keep drinking that koolaid sport...
Loud, rude, willfully ignorant twaddle, is still ignorant twaddle.
Eureka! You have actual hard information supporting missing fossil links? Please post me some links to these "missing" fossil links so that I can "humbly" eat a healthy portion of crow!
The term "missing link" has about as much meaning as "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer" for the democrats. It's got lots of emotion, but it's just hot air.
The smoking gun proof that humans have a common ancestor with primates are the endogenous retro virus segments shared in human and primate DNA.
I'm sure someone has posted some information on this by now. But basically it demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that primates and humans have a common ancestor (one single *individual* ancestor) that got a virus one day and passed the "fossilized" viral DNA down to both primates and humans.
I'm sure there are those on this thread that will dispute this. The OJ jury didn't get it either.
"ID proponents reject the science of of evolution."
I would argue that anyone who does is flying under false colors. You can't even have ID without evolution.
"but any honest evaluation of the supporters of ID demonstrate that they are creationists seeking a PC method to argue against evolution."
I don't deny that there may be such people, but to dismiss ID on those grounds is analogous to dismissing conservatism on the grounds that some conservatives might be racists.
"Since they've failed via any scientific argument to damage evolution."
There's no reason for an ID proponent even to wish to damage evolution. There's no point of dispute, until you get to the conclusion, which I think most people here agree is not scientific, that "all this proves there is no God."
And the exact same thing can be said for scientific evidence of God's creation of life. So much for ID as a science. I'm glad we agree.
Yeah, right.
You have actual hard information supporting missing fossil links?
It's all over the place. I'm sure PatrickHenry has linked his stuff all over this thread by now. Look it up yourself. I'm not going to waste my time because you're going to reject anything I give you anyway. Why would I bother with you?
so that I can "humbly" eat a healthy portion of crow!
You think I'm stupid enough to believe you, or what?
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