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 ...
It's time for a stunning prediction. The "no fossil record/transitional forms" dialogue has this sequence.
But wait a minute! Wasn't fossil series evidence relevant when it was supposedly missing? There's only one other possibility, and that's the chirping of crickets into the night.
- Tap-Dancing Science-Denier declares that the fossil record lacks instances of things changing in an orderly series from some Thing A to Thing Z. As this kind of evidence is to be expected, the lack of it must weigh against evolution having happened. By the very statement of this objection we are invited to believe the Tap-Dancing Science-Denier would accept such evidence IF ONLY IT EXISTED but the thing is it doesn't exist.
- Someone who disagrees demonstrates many instances well known in the literature of fossil series intermediate in form and time between some Thing A and some Thing Z.
- The Tap-Dancer then declares fossil series evidence to be irrelevant. How do we know ... various things? The dates of the fossils? Whether fossil A lies exactly on the ancestral line of fossil B?
Well then they should teach the evidence which means teaching design.
Whatever makes you think evolution has stopped???
It hasn't stopped. It's just a very slow process compared to a human life time scale. Some documented examples of evolution are the changes in the coloration of moths in London due to the soot deposited on trees beginning in the 19th century and then with the removal of soot due to environmental laws after the mid 20th century. Another example is the buildup of resistance to antibiotics by bacteria since the introduction of antibiotics to medicine in the 1930's and 40's.
Anyway, why is bigger better for ants? If anything evolution has made insects and arachnids smaller than their marine living ancestors. This probably has to do with the fact that they have exoskeletons that that have to support their whole weight on land, while the buoyancy of water allows arthropods living in acquatic environments to grow bigger. Flying insects are especially constrained from getting much larger.
Why do you lie about the teaching of evolution?
I always thought it would be great to be a postmodern academic - no intellectual rigor whatsoever, nothing you say is held to standard, and you can reject the reality of science because it "feels" like a "western cultural myth". It must be kind of like being a creationist. You can FEEL that something is wrong, and so it is. I see the appeal. Sort of.
If bigger is better, why are dinosaurs extinct?
Timmy
Don't waste your time. The Darwinists aren't interested in the facts. If they were, they would not [could not] be Darwinists.
ID willl prevail. But first a new generation has to replace the current one in the scientific establishment who have their minds welded tightly shut on their outmoded theory and have a vested interest, both emotionally and career-wise, in promoting Darwin's myth.
Why did you drop out of high school?
Insects can't get much bigger. They breathe through their exoskeletons, and the larger they get, the grater their interior volume becomes compared to their surface area. The giant insects in those old monster movies are impossible.
Ahhh. Timmy. Sorry I don't remember you, but you all look so alike. I'll give you credit, however. You have so far danced away in a manner that falsifies my prediction. (See my previous post.)
But, tell me? If there is no fossil record, why do I have those links which bore you so? And if my links bore you, what do Ichneumon's do?
Let us use our own words, rather than constantly link to the rants of others.
In my own words, what you said isn't true, as shown in the links.
What would falsify Darwinism?
Has no one ever said, "A Precambrian rabbit?"
Note that her answer doesn't even make sense as it would, perhaps, prove creation, but would do nothing to falsify Darwinism.
Her answer is not very good. Evolution is the tight hypothesis. There is a predicted tree of life. All kinds of life forms would violate the scenario and are not predicted. I mentioned this in the link you're too bored to read. A non-reptilian intermediate between amphibians and birds. A non-land-animal intermediate between fish and whales. You can imagine all kinds of things "off the tree" but you can't find any.
That's a fulfilled prediction. We have probably 100 times the fossil record Darwin had. He predicted that all future finds would further outline the tree of life traceable in his day. That's pretty good, but creationists never seem to give the man credit. Creationists scoffed then about the gaps. Oddly, they still do that although we've probably put at least one or two specimens in every gap Darwin had and no doubt a lot more in most cases.
What would falsify "You can't make me see-ism?"
Evolutionists have never observed their mechanism actually do very much. Of course that's because it takes bazillions of years to see it do much. Since I don't have bazillions of years to test it, it can't be falsified. Small little fact, but pretty significant to some of us.
I bet none of the creationists can name any breakthroughs in biology based on "creation science", while there have been innumerable breakthroughs based on the paradigm of Darwinian evolution.
And we now have mitochondrial DNA... a completely independent line of evidence that Darwin couldn't have imagined.
The Earth is not the center of the universe, the universe is most likely at least 14 billion years old, and life evolved on Earth... and transistors work (i.e. quantum mechanics is a valid theory). But people will waste their time bashing a science they don't understand, and chase after fantasy..
There is a reason so many very intelligent people don't believe in evolution. It's that the evidence is so weak. Period. You and VadeRetro and others like to flatter yourselves and think of those who disagree with you as idiots. In this, you are no better than Hillary Clinton or Charles Shumer. Wouldn't we all enjoy this discussions more if we had a little respect for one another? But, like expecting reason from Cindy Sheehan, that is too much to hope for from the pro-evos on this board.
BTW, Dawkins "proves" evolution by saying, "Suppose you had . . ." I s'pose Kipling would qualify as a great evolutionist if that is what's acceptable.
Yep. Not even "Pot ... kettle ... black" but pure projection.
Nice, vivid imagery, BTW!
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