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Challenged by Creationists, Museums Answer Back
The New York Times ^ | 9/20/2005 | CORNELIA DEAN

Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor

ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.

They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.

After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."

That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; US: Colorado; US: Nebraska; US: New York; US: North Carolina
KEYWORDS: creationuts; crevolist; crevorepublic; enoughalready; evobots; evonuts; museum
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To: Question_Assumptions
At it's core, it suggests that evidence for non-natural biological features should be searched for.

Tell me how this is done? What would they look like? Dembski tried to define this mathematically and failed. Do you have something better?

1,061 posted on 09/22/2005 5:47:23 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: Question_Assumptions
...you can simply think of ID as a structured approach to disproving natural selection and evolution as the sole processes governing the development of life on Earth.

How is it structured?

The ongoing goal of science is to find natural causes. When an unexplained phenomenon comes into view, that's an opportunity for research. The idea that science should simply throw up its hands and say that some problem is beyond solution is so ludicrous as to be beyond parody. The very idea of declaring a problem beyond solution is beyond parody.

You are asking science to put on blinders.

1,062 posted on 09/22/2005 6:15:11 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: js1138
The ongoing goal of science is to find natural causes.

That's basically a tautology, given that ID immediately gets labeled as invoking "supernatural" causes, despite the fact that ID proponents don't use that word.

1,063 posted on 09/22/2005 6:51:33 PM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: inquest
Occam's razor is not a law of science, it is a vexingly subjective rule of thumb, and not all that reliable even at that.

It's what enabled us to reject the geocentric model in favor of the heliocentric.

I do not recall the deployment of Occam's Razor by Kepler or Galileo, and I do not see anything spectacularly simpler about a universe full of bodies buzzing every which way toward their own private particular Newtonian destiny, over a nice clean, cozy universe of enclosing spheres with a single shared center point, just because you've removed a term or two from a complex description of orbital mechanics.

Personally, I think some form of ID, or at least panspermia, is the best way out of several mutational clock dilemmas that presently puzzle us....which isn't sufficient to make it a science of any significant note.

It's sufficient to make it an hypothesis, at the least.

As is the case with crystal healing, astrology, and pastararianism.

1,064 posted on 09/22/2005 11:14:18 PM PDT by donh (A is </a>)
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To: donh

Pastararianism--a schism of Pastafarianism that substitutes
pasteurized milk for tomato sauce.


1,065 posted on 09/23/2005 3:59:18 AM PDT by donh (A is </a>)
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To: CarolinaGuitarman
... at least a decent transcript?

You wouldn't believe if you read it.

1,066 posted on 09/23/2005 6:38:03 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Dimensio
You can't see the very obvious differences that make the two situations totally incomparable? Do I really need to explain why the analogy is completely bogus and not applicable?

To be able to CHOOSE between a group of given items is a BASIC human function.

How hard it must be for you, entering a restaurant that serves more than one item, and getting something to eat.

1,067 posted on 09/23/2005 6:41:18 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Elsie

"You wouldn't believe if you read it."

And why SHOULD I believe it if you produced it? Would you believe me if I gave you a transcript I claimed to be from God? What would be the criteria to judge it?


1,068 posted on 09/23/2005 6:42:48 AM PDT by CarolinaGuitarman ("There is a grandeur in this view of life...")
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To: Dimensio
How many still know the ASCII code for it?

You have invoked the hidden name of our Maximus Noodlieness.

For this transgression, You 'R banished to inner lightness, reserved for hand assemblers and former OSI owners.

1,069 posted on 09/23/2005 6:43:52 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: js1138
As is the set of people who know the difference between LF and CRLF, and when this distinction is important.

Only when you want to talk over things that have already been said....

1,070 posted on 09/23/2005 6:44:57 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: MineralMan

;^)


1,071 posted on 09/23/2005 6:47:25 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Elsie

YEA!!!!!

1100!


(I gotta START earlier if I want to win!)

1,072 posted on 09/23/2005 6:51:52 AM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)
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To: Elsie
Only when you want to talk over things that have already been said....

You are not among those who know.

1,073 posted on 09/23/2005 7:02:19 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: js1138
I think we've hit a point where we are going around in circles here. My responses to some of the recent replies will be the same as they were earlier in the thread. I still don't find the arguments against ID particularly compelling and arguments are simply being recycled. I don't really have any desire to just keep saying the same things back and forth over and over again. So I'll basically leave you guys with the last word and let the lurkers sort it out. I've said what I want to say.
1,074 posted on 09/23/2005 8:27:40 AM PDT by Question_Assumptions
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To: Question_Assumptions

There really doesn't need to be an argument against ID until ID has made an argument for itself.

When you come up with the test for non-natural design, and it passes peer review, you will be in business.


1,075 posted on 09/23/2005 8:30:45 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: Elsie
To be able to CHOOSE between a group of given items is a BASIC human function.

How hard it must be for you, entering a restaurant that serves more than one item, and getting something to eat.


I'm not stupid enough to fall for this. There is a clear and distinct difference between "choosing" one of a number of political candidates and "choosing" a deity to assume exists. If you can't grasp that there is a difference between deciding who amongst a collective of existant entities would best be suited for a particular job and deciding which possibly existing entity our of a collection of possibly existing entities to merely consider in terms of existence, then you lack fundamental reasoning skills and I have to wonder how you even turn on a computer.
1,076 posted on 09/23/2005 9:25:31 AM PDT by Dimensio (http://angryflower.com/bobsqu.gif <-- required reading before you use your next apostrophe!)
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To: donh
I do not recall the deployment of Occam's Razor by Kepler or Galileo

Kepler may not have used the term, but he most certainly believed that the simplicity of his model made it superior. He said that that all the complex motions of the planets in the sky could be attributed to, in his words, "a single magnetic force". And then it was Newton's use of the same tool (again, whether or not he made specific reference to the name of it) led him to conclude that this "magnetic" force is the same force that caused that apple to fall off his tree in his orchard.

I do not see anything spectacularly simpler about a universe full of bodies buzzing every which way toward their own private particular Newtonian destiny, over a nice clean, cozy universe of enclosing spheres with a single shared center point, just because you've removed a term or two from a complex description of orbital mechanics.

It's not the simplicity of results that Occam's razor favors, but the simplicity of explanations for complex results. That's what makes Kepler's model infinitely superior to Ptolemy's.

[[Personally, I think some form of ID, or at least panspermia, is the best way out of several mutational clock dilemmas that presently puzzle us....which isn't sufficient to make it a science of any significant note.]]

[It's sufficient to make it an hypothesis, at the least.]

As is the case with crystal healing, astrology, and pastararianism.

You said that ID is a good way out of some dilemmas posed by current science. How is astrology a good way out of any dilemmas posed by science?

1,077 posted on 09/23/2005 9:36:06 AM PDT by inquest (FTAA delenda est)
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To: Question_Assumptions; js1138
[js1138:]When Newton proposed his formulas for gravity, he could demonstrate that all data collected to date conformed. But the successful prediction of the return of Halley's comet, based on Newtons Laws, was considered the crowning confirmation. A similar kind of successful prediction confirmed Einstein's general relativity.

[Question_Assumptions:] This is an interesting pair of examples, because I think it corresponds pretty well to a possible relationship between evolution and ID. In many ways, Newton was correct but ultimately Newtonian physics is incomplete and cannot explain some very important phsyical pheonomena. That means that the average person can generate plenty of evidence to confirm Newton's theories and may never run into those places where Newtonian physics fails to properly explain the universe. Similarly, evolution may be the "Newtonian Physics" of biology, largely correct and incredibly useful but lacking in a few normally hidden but deeply meaningful ways.

Great analogy, Q.A.

I am usually on the Evolution side in these debates, because of the mountain of evidence supporting the propositions of (1) common descent of all life from a single ancestor, and (2) mutation acted upon by selection as the mechanism for speciation. And nothing in the TOE in any way conflicts with my (Jewish) faith. But your argument is an intersting one. I am not sure that we will ever find such evidence for ID-- I believe that God created us, but strongly suspect that His interactions with the world He made left few fingerprints that will be recognizable to us as such. But that doesn't mean that no one should look.

At this stage, I still think ID is more philosophy than science-- the ID'ers have yet to come up with a truly scientific way of looking for evidence of design. But that does not mean that they will not someday be able to come up with one. (I speak here of honest ID'ers, as opposed to Young Earth Creationists who have latched on to the label "ID" to try to smuggle Christianity into a biology class.)

1,078 posted on 09/23/2005 10:13:54 AM PDT by Lurking Libertarian (Non sub homine, sed sub Deo et lege)
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To: js1138
I find it interesting that when creationists want to imply that an idea is worthless trash, they call it religion, and when ID advocates want their ideas to appear respectable, they call them science.

Great point! They're outright admitting that science is completely credible, even while claiming the opposite.

1,079 posted on 09/23/2005 10:27:50 AM PDT by exDemMom (Now that I've finally accepted that I'm living a bad hair life, I'm more at peace with the world.)
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To: Lurking Libertarian
Great analogy, Q.A.

Except that it doesn't support ID.

ID is the biological equivalent of the Bible Code. It will find patterns for the simple reason that the kind of pattern it searches for can be found even in random data streams.

ID talks about specified complexity. Fine. Let ID follow the rules of science and specify what it expects to find before it finds it. That's the rule that science has to live by. You want to test for ID? tell me what you you expect to find before you find it. That's the rule natural selection has lived by for 150 years.

1,080 posted on 09/23/2005 10:45:28 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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