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 progressivism IS socialism, they'd call themselves "socialists". But they don't, so it must not be.
It is? What's next, will they tell us that Richard Simmons is gay?
And yet DaveLoneRanger and Dark Knight remain unbanned and unmolested. TANJ.
I wish SOMEBODY would clarify "intelligent design".
If intelligent design means that a Divine Creator put in effect the laws of evolution and biology and somehow directed the evolutionary process to produce an ultimate product, man, I can accept it. As a matter of fact, that is what I believe.
If intelligent design on the other hand implies what this fellow is stating, I can't.
Evolution is a biological term and only applies to living things.
You're kidding, right? Richard Simmons?
"So how did the Universe and all its predictability evolve? Inquiring minds want to know that first."
That's a completely different issue, and is studied by folks called Cosmologists. The Theory of Evolution deals only with speciation and the causes of speciation. Cosmology is another scientific discipline. Not related in any way.
Actually, it's ID apologists who've been pushing the party line that only YEC'ers are true creationists. It's the only way that ID'ers can hope to extricate themselves from the claim that they want to teach religion in science classes.
BTW, this is also why the Discovery Institute has stopped trying to get ID taught in schools. Now they want them to "teach our controversy" about evolution, but oh no, we don't want ID itself to be taught.
Clintonian-strength spin doctoring, but it has served them well in the PR sphere so far. (It's in the process of breaking down in the legal sphere, because they don't have a leg to stand on. But it's good enough to impress enough school boards that they should be able to keep the game running a long time yet.)
So DNA is the magic wand you wave to differentiate between intelligent design vs. undirected evolution. In other words, if something is complex without DNA it's designed, but if something is complex with DNA it evolved without any intelligent direction. Is that correct? What about genetic engineering?
Just saying so does not make it so. The Evolutionist can justify rape and pillage as survival of the fittest at any time. I do not consider rape and pillage as meaningless.
Ironically that's pretty much what Ken Miller (the evo witness in the article) believes, too!
You know, I really dislike these people. It's too bad they've been thrown a slow pitch right over the plate that they'll knock out of the park. It gives them respectability that I wish they couldn't get.
When a few protestant Christian denominations started preaching this creationism/ID silliness, they really shot themselves in the foot. They just haven't figured it out yet.
Evolution is about life only. And the difference between a ferarri engine and life is this:
1) no plausible natural mechanism exists to explain the existance of ferrari engines. A plausible natural mechanism does exist to explain the diversity of life on earth. It is called evolution.
2) We have observed humans making ferarri engines. We did not observe anyone making life.
I argue that we only assume intelligent design if either we have observed the designer making the object, or if we cannot imagine any natural mechanism that could have produced it. In fact this last one is not foolproof, as even if we know of no natural mechanisms we might very well discover one in the future. For example there was a time when there were no known natural mechanisms for the weather. Man therefore wrongly assumed the weather was ID. This really highlights why we should never assume ID but should always seek natural mechanisms.
"not intelligently directed" does not equate to "entirely undirected".
there are organizing effects of the properties of matter and energy which select in favor of some results over others.
this is direction, of a sort. it simply does not require a pilot at the tiller.
This argument is one of the most ridiculous arguments that can be made. Perhaps you would rape and pillage if you lost your belief in a God, but no 'evolutionist' I know would do such a thing. If you presume no God, as I and other atheists do, the basis for the morals of the Bible and our personal morals come from the same place - DNA, culture and our ability to predict outcomes, and are therefore similar.
Gee...I'm a deist who thinks that evolution is the best explanation we have for the origin and diversity of species....um, do I still get to rape and pillage? Or am I confined to things like petty larceny? Could you provide me with some sort of permit for that? I mean, I haven't committed any crimes yet, so I'm not sure how your system is supposed to work, you know?
The evolutionist, since he isn't a complete moron, would not confuse a scientific law with a moral constraint. The Law of Universal Gravitation says that bodies will fall towards the enter of the earth. Does that mean it's OK to throw your grandmother downstairs?
On the other hand, a Christian might well justify rape and pillage as a Divine Command. As in, for example, Numbers 31:7-18.
Would not have believed it if someone told me. Still having hard time believing my own eyes, that you actually think along these lines. What difficulties you must have mingling with common folk, seeing as you walk on water and stuff.
I see we are on the same page :)
He's engaging in "projection." If it wasn't for his belief in the "loss of heaven and the pains of hell" he'd be pillaging and raping "to his heart's content." Such people are frightening in that they have no self control and do not believe others do either, and hence control must be imposed.
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