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.
" And that was the entire response."
I am sure that was the best response they could have given. Let's not pile on. :)
This thread started at noon today and you haven't got over 1000 posts yet? You all takin' the night off ???
Oh, so the Greek story where the survivors tossed rocks over their shoulders and people sprang up is divinely inspired?
You should note that most civilizations sprang up at the mouths of, or along the banks of rivers. Flooding was a natural occurance. Of course, your predispositions will prevent you from seeing the obvious, but maybe the average lurker will understand what I'm getting at.
I know. However, as the unofficial historian of the Freeper Crevo Wars I must remain somewhat objective in recording the casualties and battlefields. I can be as partisan as I like in the fighting, but for historical purposes I must remain neutral.
Rocks? There are no rocks in my Greek story. Do you have a reference?
Before the beginning of the universe, there was nothing in existence until Chaos came into being. Who or what was Chaos was, the Greeks not really made clear. The Greeks usually associated Chaos as a male entity. Chaos could be personification of the abyss or void, a formless confusion.
Out of the void, came Nyx ("Night") and Erebus ("Darkness"). Also from Chaos--Eros ("Love"), Gaea ("Earth") and Tartarus came into being. It was Eros that made it possible for propagation between two beings – to produce offspring.
By her brother Erebus, Nyx became mother of Aether ("Upper Air") and Hemera ("Day"). This was the first sexual union. By herself, Nyx became mother of several abstract personifications: Thanatos ("Death"), Moros ("Doom"), Hypnos ("Sleep"), the Fates or Moerae and Nemesis.
Gaea, by herself, bore Uranus (Sky), Ourea (Mountains) and Pontus (Sea).
Gaea mated with her son Pontus and she became mother of two ancient sea-gods, Nereus and Phorcys, as well as Thaumas, Eurybia, and the sea monster Ceto.
Gaea married her other son, Uranus, and he became ruler of the universe. Gaea became the mother of the Titans, Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handed) and Cyclops ("Wheel-eyed"). The birth of their children resulted in a war by the gods that lasted for generation.
Uranus became ruler of the universe after marrying his mother, Gaea. Uranus was the father of the three giant creatures with hundred hands and fifty heads, Briareus, Cottus and Gyges. These giants were known as the Hecatoncheires (Hundred-Handed). They were monstrous in size and strength. They were so ugly that Uranus hid them within their mother's body. Uranus probably did the same to his other three offspring known as the Cyclops. The Cyclopes were also giants, with a single eye in their foreheads. The three Cyclopes were named Arges, Brontes and Steropes. Imprisoning the six gigantic creatures within her body caused Gaea a great deal of pain.
The Titans were also his offspring, but they were smaller in size and fairer in looks. Unlike their ugly brethren they weren't imprisoned. Gaea was furious at the treatment of her earlier sons, so she appealed to her son, Cronus, youngest of the Titans, to overthrow her husband and his father.
At night, when Uranus was about to lay with his mother-wife (Gaea), Cronus castrated his father with an adamantine sickle and threw his father's genitals into the sea, near the island of Cythera. The Giants, Erinyes (Furies) and Meliae were born from the blood that fell on the ground, thereby impregnating her (Gaea). The Olympians would later fight the Giants, aided by the hero Heracles.
In the sea, the water began foaming around the severed genitals of Uranus. This foams drifted across vast distant of sea, before it reached the isle of Cyprus. From the foaming sea, Aphrodite, goddess of love, divinely beautiful and naked, sprang into being, already as fully grown young woman.
Waiting on the shore of Cyprus, Eros (Love) and Himerus (Desire) waited to greet her. The other gods paid honour to her. Aphrodite would later become the member of the Olympians, even though she was technically not an Olympian.
The Greek Flood story, not the creation story. There were two survivors. To repopulate the Earth they were directed to toss rocks over their shoulders. Wherever the rocks landed a person sprang up. Because the guy was stronger, the rocks he tossed were bigger, and a man sprang up wherever they landed. The female's rocks were smaller, and women sprang up where they landed.
Yeah, but chaos cannot come from Nothing; the Prime Mover is responsible for the chaos.
Its late and I haven't shaved. Will consider this later...
Are you new to this debate? I don't remember seeing your name before. You know you will get nowhere with that line of reasoning because "evolution is different". The way it's talked about by evolutionists makes it sound as if there is some kind of controlling force operating to guide evolution. Never mind about details like natural disasters NEVER resulting in an increase in order or that something like a Ferrari engine not being able to just show up someday after billions of years of chance. I fail to see where they can back up why evolution is not subject to the natural laws that everything else is. Good luck but you won't get anywhere.
Because every child should grow up wondering whether their parents would sacrifice them if God told them to. Small wonder I didn't end up religious.
Why would there be hundreds of stories all over the world if only one family survived?
Darwin Central demands that all data be collected.
On behalf of the Grand Master, I am,
PatrickHenry
Massive boredom. (God went on strike for a while)
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