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.
So basically your are saying the experiment in global genocide was a failure.
Because that one family had hundreds, then thousands, then millions of descendants.
Not everybody kept in touch after awhile (especially after the Babel incident and they could not longer speak to each other).
Babel was somewhere about 4200 years ago (from an earlier post on these threads).
What about all of the radiocarbon dates I have that are older? I must have a hundred or more that are older than 4200 years ago (it could be more, I haven't counted lately).
Can you explain these?
And please don't give me the "Answers in Genesis" stock answer on this subject, as that does not appear to apply. I am using nice clean pieces of marine shell, with no contamination (I think the "Answers" samples were contaminated). I am very careful in my sample collection.
What about the samples I have over 6,000 years? And over 8,000 years?
All those infants and fetuses were beyond redemption. Nice.
No. But that's because I know what Jefferson couldn't have known, that the story of Noah is merely a recycled Babylonian myth. There was no global flood. Human genetics are incompatible with descent from a single family 4000 years ago. The duck billed platypus couldn't have swum all the way from Turkey to Australia. And no one but a daft fool could seriously believe any of this is the literal truth.
But the geologic/archaeological history of most of the world does not support such a flood. You have a few cases of major floods, and that's it.
Apparently the lesson to be learned from the story of Noah is that omnipotence is rather indiscriminate in its actions. Hey, the whole world got flooded because there were wicked men - by comparison, a believer or two getting caught in the cosmic bug zapper directed at you is no big deal ;)
Only if you are a New Age believer, is it about choosing your reality.
Casting pearls before swine again ?
Experimenting and finding out that a 12 cylinder engine works better in a race car than an 8 cylinder engine didn't just "happen", either. A Designer was/is at work. The vile and weak evo theory is circling the drain, and a lot of the hoaxers know it - one reason they're getting so lathered up...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.