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 ...
Check the series of posts "professor"... You were the first to be "loud rude and willfully ignorant" in our exchange of views. That is also fact, but why should "fact" matter at this point in the debate eh?
"this is a feeble defense."
It's not a "defense;" it's an observation that you have tripped off the line and are accusing me of holding positions I've never advocated.
"Find me three cases of the teaching of athiesm in public schools, that produced evidence outside the domain of homeschool creationist rumor mills."
I'm busy, and I'm not very charitably disposed toward you right now. I don't like it when people accuse me of saying things I haven't said. Find them yourself.
"that's why you're haughtily above all this nonsense about verifiable evidence I keep asking you for."
No, that's just how I react to being spoken to as you are speaking to me. I've seen numerous reports down the years, and frankly find it unlikely that you haven't seen them too. I think you're just banking on the possibilities that I will be unwilling to waste time searching for them, or better yet that I will search and not find them--either case allowing you to continue to deny that they existed, which means calling me a liar. I don't like that, so I think I'll just get my work done and leave you to stew in your own juices for now.
Well then you're talking about the vast vast majority of "IDers" out there. Look up the Kansas State School board sometime.
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.
May be such people? Come on. When IDers start promoting the idea that evolution occured, but that some intelligence directed it, let me know. IDers uniformly side step acknowledging evolution, a sure sign they're closet creationists who believe they're savvy enough to fool people.
There's no reason for an ID proponent even to wish to damage evolution.
That's all they spend their time doing.
You haven't been around these threads long, have you?
Gee thanks... "Spell Check" is your friend....Not mnie; you have no idea hwo many tiems this padt weak I haad to infomr any oen fo the sevearl MS Offiec pordcuts to INGORE a temr in severl papres/presntatoins I was 'wroking up' (technical jargon) for a salse meetign nxet weke...
So why don't you? I am all eyes and ears here. I truly want to know...
"When IDers start promoting the idea that evolution occured, but that some intelligence directed it, let me know."
That is the fundamental premise of ID; its sine qua non. A person who does not acccept that is not, by definition, a proponent of ID.
"You haven't been around these threads long, have you?"
I've been around them long enough to see bad behavior on both sides of the issue.
It seems to me that a person to whom rationality and the scientific method were important would make an effort to distinguish between people who actually support ID, which means supporting the premise that "evolution occured, but that some intelligence directed it," and creationists.
As a proponent of the premise that "evolution occured, but that some intelligence directed it," that seems to me an important distinction.
Not mnie; you have no idea hwo many tiems this padt weak I haad to infomr any oen fo the sevearl MS Offiec pordcuts to INGORE a temr in severl papres/presntatoins I was 'wroking up' (technical jargon) for a salse meetign nxet weke..."
Yuo cen edd tham two yaur spill chick dacteoniry sew thet thay dun't shew es irrors. Yuo cen ivin meke a spiciel dacteoniry jest fer yuor tuchnekal pepars.
Fine... then don't bother posting your opinions to me anymore. I don't need to waste my time either...
It's redundant and wastes JimRob's bandwidth.
I truly want to know...
Great. Then look up PatrickHenry's home page. If you don't proceed now and do so, then you're a liar.
I'm taking bets on the side that you are.
Yuo cen edd tham two yaur spill chick dacteoniry sew thet thay dun't shew es irrors. Yuo cen ivin meke a spiciel dacteoniry jest fer yuor tuchnekal pepars.I ddi. Aftre ti wsa lla sadi adn dnoe.
Btu, I muts also cnofess that I wsa doign 'ditsractde potsing' since I'm wathcing "She Speis" on VT ... I lkei talllllllllll blondses yuo ese.
Having a senior fellow does not equate to funded by the Moonies unless you have another article that says it is funded by them. Actually, the Institute is probably funded by a lot of different organizations and individuals.
Nobel Prize winner Charles Townes on evolution, intelligent design, and the meaning of life:
"I think it's very unfortunate that this kind of discussion has come up. People are misusing the term intelligent design to think that everything is frozen by that one act of creation and that there's no evolution, no changes. It's totally illogical in my view. Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it's remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren't just the way they are, we couldn't be here at all. The sun couldn't be there, the laws of gravity and nuclear laws and magnetic theory, quantum mechanics, and so on have to be just the way they are for us to be here.
"Some scientists argue that "well, there's an enormous number of universes and each one is a little different. This one just happened to turn out right." Well, that's a postulate, and it's a pretty fantastic postulate — it assumes there really are an enormous number of universes and that the laws could be different for each of them. The other possibility is that ours was planned, and that's why it has come out so specially. Now, that design could include evolution perfectly well. It's very clear that there is evolution, and it's important. Evolution is here, and intelligent design is here, and they're both consistent."
Read more:
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2005/06/17_townes.shtml
Well, that's creative. Your stand that you don't support ID in some particular manner I've assumed you did, is unrelated to your claim about "many, many" athiests teaching athiesm in school--which you quite clearly did, in fact make. This is a cute, but shallow, bait&switch exercise.
No, that's just how I react to being spoken to as you are speaking to me.
Oh, whereas, accusing "many, many" science teachers of teaching athiesm on the public dime is perfectly acceptable, polite company behavior.
I've seen numerous reports down the years, and frankly find it unlikely that you haven't seen them too. I think you're just banking on the possibilities that I will be unwilling to waste time searching for them, or better yet that I will search and not find them--either case allowing you to continue to deny that they existed, which means calling me a liar.
I take you to be rash and stubborn in defense of a poor argument you should have abandoned.
Truth is an adequate defense against charges of slander: this was transparent nonsense to begin with, and it is transparent nonsense now. Anybody explicitly teaching athiesm in public school in a science class or otherwise, would be dismissed out of hand, and for cause, just about anywhere in the United States--your e-friends in their creationist home-school chat rooms were either passing on overblown urban legends, or were, as I suspect, conjoining at the hip the teaching of evolutionary theory with the teaching of athiesm--an assumption Darwin himself was careful to abjure.
Genuine IDers, as opposed to closet creationists are as rare as hens teeth. The logical assumption is that anyone claiming support for "ID", is actually a Biblical creationist. Even if they claim otherwise.
As a proponent of the premise that "evolution occurred, but that some intelligence directed it," that seems to me an important distinction.
Then your gripe should be with creationists who have stolen the disguise of ID. I'll watch to see whether you spend your time correcting them from here on out.
And just who the hell do you think you are anyway?! If you have some information to post that would help me change my mind concerning any side of any issue brought up on these forums, the onus is on you to post it. Your pompous and presumptuous attitude will never "bully" me into investigating your side of any debate!
Blushing testimonal is not the same thing as science. The question is interesting, but it ain't science. Patently. If it were, you would have pointed me to the potentially disconfirming experiment I previously asked you for. Obviously, there cannot be such a thing, because you are proposing a question outside the domain of material evidence, which is all science is allowed to work with.
This seems to be the basis of this guy's philosophy. He just can't imagine how things might be otherwise.
But I can make the same comparison that if WWII had turned out differently for my dad, then I wouldn't be here either. Where would my consciousness be? Would I be in heaven? Would I be someone else?
There is no answer to those questions, so they're worthless on their face. As is this guy's question about "the laws of physics" being just so.
It's emotional gobbledygook and worthless to base science upon.
As I said, you'd reject anything I said. Your irritation that I didn't service your demand for a link provided you the excuse this time. But you would have found another.
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