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.
A significant admission early on in the cross examination.
Does evolution teach that it created organisms that get together and one of them gets pregnant and bears a liter of little infant organisms suckling off the mother?
It can't, doesn't and won't! People who imply that it encompasses the creation of reproduction in living organism, aren't familiar with the lack of available evidence. Without evidence, one is forced to consider these implications a philosophy. Therein lies the problem.
The evidence reveals a commonality of programming in the DNA of living organisms. The evidence reveals that mutations can alter an organism in a horizontal or descending manner, but has not revealed mutations that increase complexity.
Nature is eroding the DNA of humans and the animal kingdom. This is why we see extinctions and not blossoming new forms of life. The evidence shows a tremendous decrease in the number of kinds of animals, and not a single new one. Heck, scientists can't even force a creature to become more complex than it's DNA is already preprogrammed for.
Sounds like if "evolution" was God's plan, that is ID.
All "god did it" is "creationism" now.
If you would spend as much time reading real science books as you do reading charlatan pseudo science, you would know something and wouldn't make a fool of your self posting nonsense like this on line for everyone in the world to read.
No, the original story was the Epic of Gilgamesh, written more than a millennia before the story of Noah was put to paper. Now, considering the folks writing the story of Gilgamesh were closer to the event, you would think their version would be the most accurate. It seems the Hebrews appropriated the story much later and turned it into a morality tale.
Considering this, and considering the complete lack of physical evidence for a worldwide flood, and knowing that nearly all early civilizations built near rivers, so floods were fairly common and made good plot hooks for stories, one might have to seriously consider rethinking one's interpretation of the Noah story.
Besides, you've already been shown historical evidence why your belief that all people lived near "Babel" ca. 2200 BCE is incorrect. You really need to be more widely read on this than you are before making such claims.
And yet the genetic evidence does not bear this out. The genetic bottleneck recorded in human genes happened ca. 70,000 years ago, and there were on the order of 1,000 to 2,000 survivors, not eight.
The "sins of the father" and whatnot...
Dunno. I'd have to see pictures, first.
I'm thinking it's because they worked their butts off studying and devoting a goodly portion of their lives to the subjects they study. Your jealousy reeks of liberalism.
So you're saying God is a eugenicist. So those Southern preachers were right and miscegenation is a sin...
Now where did you get that? As one of the "evo crowd" I'd have to say I like Israel. I've been there a couple of times and really enjoyed myself. The country is cleaner and the people more friendly than many places I've been in the Middle East, or even Europe.
False dichotomy. Libertarian atheists (of the Rand set) believe that individual humans are the highest power in the universe, and neither the state nor religion should dominate them.
Your error, foolish man of flesh, is that you have succumbed to temptation. You used macro-arithmatic. If you stay with micro-arithmatic you won't fall into heresy.
Hint: You were created with ten fingers, not ten million. There's a reason! Think about it before it's too late.
</internet maniac mode>
Then there are the koalas, specialized marsupials of oh-so picky diet almost helpless out in the open on the ground any distance from one their beloved eucalyptus trees. It's a long way from Ararat to Aussieland for those guys!
Gosh! Darwin Central really is the conspiracy that cares!
"The one big hang up the evo crowd has is their frevrent hatred of Israel, what is up with that?"
Did you sleep through Sunday school when they discussed the Decalogue? Or does "thou shalt not bear false witness" perchance ring a bell?
BTW, that brings up an interesting point. How did the fresh water and sea water "un-mix" when the Flood was over? Shouldn't the oceans and lakes all be pretty brackish, considering all this happened only 5k years ago, or so?
I've been trying to sell the evo email list to spammers, but so far the only interest that's been shown is from a manufacturer of pocket protectors.
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