Go cry me a river.
Posted on 09/29/2005 6:22:55 PM PDT by wallcrawlr
A group of Nobel Prize winners should have done more homework before criticizing proposed science standards in Kansas, advocates of the guidelines said in a letter Thursday.
Intelligent design advocates pushing new standards, which would expose students to more criticism of evolution, say the laureates' complaints are an attempt to suppress debate on the issue.
The letter was signed by Bill Harris, a professor of medicine at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Greg Lassey, a former middle school science teacher, who helped draft the disputed language.
"We all want good standards," the letter said. "However, demeaning rhetoric that does not address specifics but serves only to belittle and misrepresent the changes is not helpful."
Earlier this month, 38 laureates, including prominent chemists, physicists and medical experts, asked the State Board of Education to reject the proposed standards.
The laureates, led by Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel, said evolution is the foundation of biology and that it has been bolstered by DNA studies.
Many scientists see intelligent design as another form of creationism, which the Supreme Court has banned from public schools.
Intelligent design theorists believe the complexity of the natural world cannot be explained except by attributing creation to some higher intelligence.
The Kansas board expects to vote this year on the standards, which will be used to develop tests for students but would allow local boards to decide how science is taught.
“Logically derived from confirmable evidence, evolution is understood to be the result of an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection.”
The statement was that if it is imaginable, a person should be able to build it. I see nothing that specifies it has to have evolved.
We synthesize natural products (a result of evolution) all the time.
Now, you may disagree with this signed statement but - this appears to me as a “wedge” document from scientists/philosophers/writers that are intent on turning science from methodological naturalism towards philosophical naturalism
We understand the trajectories of objects in the solar system to be unguided and unplanned (unless you think there are angels pushing them). Was Newton therefore a philosophical naturalist? I don't think so!
So ‘I’ build a nuclear reactor in order to prove what?…
We understand the trajectories of objects in the solar system to be unguided and unplanned (unless you think there are angels pushing them). Was Newton therefore a philosophical naturalist? I don't think so!
Isaac Newton had no trouble offering a design argument, based on scientific evidence, in his greatest scientific publication, Principia. I still don’t see your point.
Ask Hastings. He says that if it's imaginable, you should be able to build it. I think that's the dumbest thing I've read here recently, and you know I'm not inclined to mince words.
Isaac Newton had no trouble offering a design argument, based on scientific evidence, in his greatest scientific publication, Principia. I still don’t see your point.
The trajectories of planets in the solar system are widely acknowledged to be unguided and unplanned. No one has a problem with that. Newton apparently didn't; he worked out the laws of motion that (approximately) govern them. He didn't feel it necessary to include Divine intervention in his physics. So why must we allow for it in evolution?
Numero pondere et mensura Deus omnia condidit
Hmmmm. My taxdollars go to support your church tax exemption. That is a government policy. Seems like churches are supported by public policy and money. If churches had to pay taxes like others, THEN they wouldn't be publicly supported.
Once again, I see that truth is not welcome here. And where did I bash people of faith? I bashed the churches that are more interested in paying mega-salaries to a pastor based on his ability to draw new members/donations rather than preach.
Thanks! I'm glad that somebody got the joke. Sadly, I think that my joke went over most people's heads. I thought that it was a weighty joke. As weighty as a whale's vestigal legs. :)
If you can imagine how a nuclear reactor is made, build me one.
Take your time. Monday will be soon enough.
I didn't say it had to be*YOU*. I said it could be *ANYBODY*.
There are plenty of nuclear reactors which people have been able to imagine how to build. How many would you care for me to show you?
Can you show me *ONE* tiny bit of synthetic life?
Take your time. One hundred years from Monday will be soon enough.
My point was obvious. You just choose to squirm around it. There isn't one person in all of mankind who has the slightest idea of how to make synthetic life. Until there exists such a person, then my statement of fact stands.
Life is *UNIMAGINABLY COMPLEX*.
No I didn't. I said that you can't build it until you can imagine how to do so.
If you can't build it, how are you going to prove that you have imagined how to do so? Don't try to hide behind star formation or colliding continental plates. Those things obviously can't be duplicated in the laboratory. But the physics of those events can be pretty convincingly demonstrated in other ways. And no one is arguing the points of star formation nor tectonic activities.
Convince me that you, or anyone else has even the slightest notion of how to create synthetic life. If all of man's intellect can't figure out how to put ingredient "A" together with ingredient "B", and come up with life, then it is pretty arrogant to insinuate to others that they are stupid to not believe that it could happen by random chance.
And you think numeri, ponderes et mensurae don't apply to evolution? If Newton lived in 2005, he'd be counting DNA base pairs.
Yeah you did.
Can you show me *ONE* tiny bit of synthetic life?
You can buy synthetic DNA for a dollar a base pair. It's not just available, it's cheap. Crack a science book, guy. We've made viruses from components.
Life is *UNIMAGINABLY COMPLEX*.
Hare Krishna Hare Krishna.
Hmmmm. My taxdollars go to support your church tax exemption. That is a government policy. Seems like churches are supported by public policy and money. If churches had to pay taxes like others, THEN they wouldn't be publicly supported.
Bobo: Funny how you look at taxes. No tax dollars go to support a church. The Feds give the church nothing but grief. My tax dollars support people who build thier homes twenty feet below sea level. You want to fight about property taxes? I think that is insane. Property taxes mean that you own nothing and the government has the right to take it away from you if you cannot cough up the cash.
In other words, you cannot own property. The government owns it and you merely lease it as long as you pay.
Your point is moot.
Blessings, Bobo
Go cry me a river.
Your 'correction' is off the mark. Galileo's persecution provides a parallel for the attack. The extra-scientific commitments of the defenders are the unprecedented thing here.
Well, I guess you are on the side supporting removing the tax exemptions for churhes. That way, they are self-supporting and not subsidized by public moneys.
You don't know that. They might be frowning because they're ugly and frowning comes naturely to them.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm!
On behalf of the Grand Master, I am,
PatrickHenry
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