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To: balrog666
"Robert Pennock, a Michigan State University professor of the philosophy of science, pointed to a reproduction shown in court of writing by Phillip Johnson, a law professor at the University of California-Berkeley and author of books including “Darwin on Trial” and “Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds.”"

Will he also point out what one of his own colleagues said?

Zoology professor, and philosopher of science, Michael Ruse stunned his listeners at an annual AAAS meeting in Boston by announcing that he had recently come to view evolution as ultimately based on several unproven philosophical assumptions.

He justified his change of heart by tracing a succession of leading Darwinist thinkers, including T. H. and Julian Huxley, who had viewed evolution as "something akin to a secular religion." At the end of his talk, Ruse opened the meeting for questions. Greeted by a moment of stunned silence, he leaned toward the microphone and asked, "State of shock?"

So how much damage has been done to the teaching of evolution as undisputed scientific fact since Ruse's concession? Dr. Arthur Shapiro, a zoologist at the University of California at Davis and a fellow symposium participant, published an account of the meeting in the anti-creationist NCSE Reports titled "Did Michael Ruse Give Away the Store?" Many Darwinists fear he did. .."

Ruse Gives Away the Store - says Darwinian doctrines are ultimately based as much on "philosophical assumptions" as on scientific evidence.

90 posted on 09/28/2005 1:03:38 PM PDT by Matchett-PI ( "History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid." -- Dwight Eisenhower)
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To: Matchett-PI
Will he also point out what one of his own colleagues said?Zoology professor, and philosopher of science, Michael Ruse stunned his listeners at an annual AAAS meeting in Boston by announcing that he had recently come to view evolution as ultimately based on several unproven philosophical assumptions.

Michael Ruse, the author of Keep Intelligent Design Out of Science Classes?

93 posted on 09/28/2005 1:07:46 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Matchett-PI
This Michael Ruse?

In fact, although some ID supporters are literalists, most are not. The leaders of the movement--the retired lawyer Phillip Johnson, the biochemist Michael Behe, and the philosopher and mathematician William Dembski--all believe in a very old earth, and they all embrace some measure (for Behe, particularly, a large measure) of evolution. The point is that none of these people think that natural selection alone--or any natural-law-driven mechanism--can explain everything.

Having made this distinction, however, I do think that ID and creationism have more than a few links. Supposedly, the ID people do not specify what kind of intelligence is involved in getting over the hump of irreducible complexity, but it is pretty clear in their writings that this intelligence is the Christian God. No one thinks that a super-bright grad student on Andromeda is running an experiment here on planet Earth, and that every now and then he or she jiggles things about a bit to see what will happen. Dembski, for one, has been explicit that he sees the designing intelligence as the Logos talked of at the beginning of Saint John’s Gospel.


96 posted on 09/28/2005 1:25:18 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: Matchett-PI
Or maybe this other Michael Ruse?

Why do I say this? Why should my beliefs--my evolutionary beliefs--be given unique status in biology classes? First, because teaching an essentially religious theory like ID--outside of the "comparative religions" scenario I've described--is illegal. ID is religion carefully disguised as science to get around the Constitution--that is why ID supporters rarely talk explicitly of God--but it is religion nevertheless. If the Supreme Court rules otherwise, then that will not be the first time that the Supreme Court has been wrong.

99 posted on 09/28/2005 1:30:26 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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