You should see what I got in my garage:
Posted on 09/27/2005 9:10:31 AM PDT by Crackingham
Dover Area School District's federal trial began yesterday in Harrisburg with talk ranging from divine intervention and the Boston Red Sox to aliens and bacterial flagellum. After about 10 months of waiting, the court case against the district and its board opened in Middle District Judge John E. Jones III's courtroom with statements from lawyers and several hours of expert testimony from biologist and Brown University professor Kenneth Miller.
On one side of the aisle, several plaintiffs packed themselves in wooden benches behind a row of attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, Pepper Hamilton LLC and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. On the other side of the aisle, nine school board members, only three of whom were on the board when it voted 6-3 to include a statement on intelligent design in biology classes, piled in behind lawyers from the Thomas More Law Center. Assistant superintendent Michael Baksa and superintendent Richard Nilsen shared a bench with Michael Behe, a Lehigh University professor expected to take the stand in defense of intelligent design.
SNIP
Miller, whose resume is several pages long and includes a stint as a professor at Harvard University, was the first witness called for the parents. Miller co-wrote the Prentice Hall textbook "Biology" with professor Joe Levine. The book is used by 35 percent of the high school students in the United States, Miller said. His were some of the thousands of biology books in which school officials in Cobb County, Ga., ordered stickers to be placed, warning that evolution is only a theory, "not a fact." Miller also testified in a lawsuit filed by Cobb County parents, and a judge later ordered that the stickers be removed.
Yesterday, the scientist's testimony was at times dominated by scientific terminology, though he jokingly told ACLU attorney Witold Walczak he would do his best to explain things in the layman's terms he uses with his mother.
Miller said intelligent design supporters think an intelligent designer must have been involved in the creation of life because science can't yet prove how everything evolved. He said the intelligent design idea that birds were created with beaks, feathers and wings and fish were born with fins is a creationist argument.
Intelligent design supporters often cite "irreducible complexity" in their research, he said. "Irreducible complexity" means that a living thing can't be reduced by any part or it won't work at all. So those living things could not have evolved in the way Darwin suggested; they had to be created with all of their existing parts, Miller said.
Intelligent design proponents often cite the bacterial flagellum, a bacterium with a tail that propels it, Miller said. Behe and his colleagues claim bacterial flagellum had to be created with all of its parts because it couldn't function if any of them were taken away, Miller testified. But scientists have proved that the bacterial flagellum can be reduced to a smaller being, a little organism that operates in a manner similar to a syringe, Miller said.
One of the biggest problems with the scientific viability of intelligent design is there is no way to experiment with the presence of a supernatural being because science only deals with the natural world and theories that are testable, Miller said.
Some people might suspect divine intervention last year when the Boston Red Sox came back to win the World Series after losing three games in a row to the New York Yankees in the playoffs. It may have been, but that's not science, he said. And intelligent design proponents haven't named the "intelligent being" behind their supposition, Miller said. They have suggested, among other things, that it could be aliens, he said. He said there is no evidence to prove intelligent design, so its proponents just try to poke holes in the theory of evolution.
If there was an "intelligence" that created us, then we were "created", and therefore ID is creationism.
The exact deity, or being, or it, or its anthropomorphic nature is irrelevant.
Designers create.
That ID *is* creationism is at the heart of the matter. Because if the ID hypothesis were to be true, then there can be a scientific claim that someone's God is indeed fact, which effects the First Amendment establishment clause.
Although, if ID actually did have evidence to support it, then genuine scientists would be clamoring to the bandwagon. What scientist wouldn't love to get the Nobel for discovering God? The scientist to do that would be more famous than Einstein.
Ummm ... nice cat.
We have two cats and a dog. I swear they tell jokes about me to each other because I catch them laughing at me all the time. I've told the dog to go get my cat a couple of times - which she did. The cat doesn't come to me unless I have treats in my hand.
They are all much brighter than I am.
Yes. I am not a CR.
The only way the perfect "christian world order" on earth will happen is when Christ returns. The sooner the better.
Until then...I'm stuck talking to you. Talk about "hell" on earth. ;)
something fishy about that last post.
You should see what I got in my garage:
oh, no... what have I started?
Here in Nebraska, we call it heck.
I turned, and eyed the window where I could make out Goldilocks at the table, eating from the middle bowl ... that damned middle bowl, not too small, not too large. Just right. Just. So. Damned. Right. Silently, I started calculating the effect a pane of glass would have on the trajectory of a rock thrown from a driveway.
And you know this how?
It has been shown that evolution has taken, and is indeed taking, place. Why is it offensive to you that many believe God used this evolutionary mechanism to create life and the universe as we know it today?
Scientists have the advantage here. Because every intelligent person has to consider the proofs of evolution as they have been so far "evolved." But of course, scientists are not required to believe in an Intelligent Designer as they attempt to unravel Evolution and develop answers to the many questions it poses.
I don't get where the 'beef' is. How does it harm "Science" if some people choose to believe Evolution is a tool of the Creator in whom we believe? Evolution exists. Intelligent Design is one theory on WHY it exists.
I think those who fight Intelligent Design are belligerent because they think, like you apparently, it is a way to counter Biblical Creationism. Strict Creationists are opposed to admitting the existence of evolution as a life form developmental mechanism. Period.
By fighting Intelligent Design, which does nothing but enhance your position, you are making common cause, in a very weird way, with anti-scientific forces. You want every one to believe there is no God. They want everyone to believe there is a God, but no evolution.
But if you put it in an educational setting, one would certainly want young people to know their science. Many of us would like them to know, or at least be able to speculate, to what end science, and indeed all human knowledge exists.
Creationists and Atheistic Scientists are polar opposites. The young learn nothing from your fight. You think, and with some reason, that God does not belong in the public market place of ideas. But of course, itiseminently fair to teach that some people
Is it true that the "N" on the Nebraska football team's helmet stands for "Nolledge"?
And, strange to tell, among that Earthen Lot
Some could articulate, while others not:
And suddenly one more impatient cried---
"Who *is* the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?"
--Omar
He's just trying to get you mad. I've been watching creationists for over 50 years; this is one of their more common traits. Those with no sense of morals project their lack onto others.
You're funny!
As my vision narrowed down to the window and the bronze halo of hair wreathing her head, my mind kept wandering to those bears. I'd seen her talking to them -- especially the little one. I'd once caught a glimpse of him hanging around down on the corner, eyeing the house but quickly trotting away when I approached. Something was going on. Something I just couldn't put my finger on...
Bulwer-Lytton was the better writer, even on dark and stormy nights.
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