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Intelligent Design Advocates Fight Back
Associated Press ^ | September 29. 2005 | JOHN HANNA

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.


TOPICS: Extended News; US: Kansas
KEYWORDS: anothercrevothread; creation; crevo; crevolist; crevorepublic; enoughalready; evolution; intelligentdesign; played; superstition
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To: Zuben Elgenubi
By my heritage

Hah! I knew it. You just want to impose your heritage on everyone! :-)

61 posted on 09/29/2005 8:08:56 PM PDT by GSHastings
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To: whershey
I sometimes think that Darwinism has become a religion.

It has, or rather it has become the creation-myth for atheistic secular humanism.

Whatever the merits and demerits of the neo-Darwinian synthesis as science (and it has both), the polemical defense of the neo-Darwinian synthesis is now largely carried out by shrill atheists like Dawkins and leftist know-nothings with legged-fish Darwin decorations on their car trunks in parody of the Christian IXTHUS, who thus, unwittingly, make a 19th century biologist into an Antichrist.

The virulent defense of Darwinism has no parallel for other scientific theories--some of which have been attacked by religious figures (witness the Latin church's assault on the early heliocentric theory; Bp. Berkeley's attack on the calculus as used by the freethinker Edumund Halley--which oddly, was spot on, including at its core a rigorous proof of the absuridity of fluxions or infinitesimals)--precisely because other scientific theories have not come to fulfill mythic functions for a significant portion of the population.

Of course, the both the defense of Darwinism as a bulwark for atheism, by Dawkins and his ilk, and the assault on it as the same, have at their core the falacious belief that if a phenomenon is, in our best model, described in terms of a random process, it is void of intent. (The atheistic Darwinist uses this to reason Darwinism implies atheism, while the devout creationist uses this to reason, God implies the falsity of Darwinism.)

The belief is falacious as the case of futures markets shows: our best model, for futures pricing, the Black-Scholes Options Pricing Formula, is a stochastic differential equation, but no one believes that futures markets 'arose by chance', or that their dynamics is not, in fact, the result of actions by purposeful actors (traders).

62 posted on 09/29/2005 8:09:44 PM PDT by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know . . .)
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To: Zuben Elgenubi

sheesh dude...you went way over the edge on that last one.

it was a joke, no offense was meant, in fact I was poking fun at myself.

go take a walk bud.


63 posted on 09/29/2005 8:09:46 PM PDT by wallcrawlr (http://www.bionicear.com)
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To: GSHastings
Even the simplest form of life is not just extremely complex. It is UNIMAGINEABLY complex. That is a simple fact.

Only if you've got an EXTREMELY limited imagination. A MYCOPLASMA genome has FEWER than a million basepairs, and 500 genes.

64 posted on 09/29/2005 8:12:08 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor
Only if you've got an EXTREMELY limited imagination. A MYCOPLASMA genome has FEWER than a million basepairs, and 500 genes.

Then if you think you've succeeded in imagining how to do it, then DO IT. Make some.

I did'nt ask you to count noses and toes. I asked you to imagine how to MAKE life. If it's within the realm of imagination, much less the realm of possiblity of random events, then MAKE some.

65 posted on 09/29/2005 8:16:21 PM PDT by GSHastings
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To: GSHastings
Then if you think you've succeeded in imagining how to do it, then DO IT. Make some.

Why?

I know we've gone to the moon. I'm confident, if we had the will, we coukld go to Mars. That I personally won't and can't do either of these things proves nothing.

It is entirely within the capability of current technology to make a mycoplasma. It would, however, be expensive, and since the scientific world knows that vitalism was disproven in 1828 (though apparenly news of this hasn't penetrated much of FR), there's really no good reason to do it. It would prove nothing.

66 posted on 09/29/2005 8:23:27 PM PDT by Right Wing Professor
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To: Right Wing Professor
It is entirely within the capability of current technology to make a mycoplasma.

Well then HEY, lets DO IT! Let's put to rest once and for all the notion that life is so complex that it couldn't have occurred by random events. (well I guess we would only be proving that INTELLIGENCE could produce synthetic life, but that's a start.)

About 4 billion years ago some pond scum figured out how to generate life. And it didn't even have the benefit of a science eduction from public school.

So, in answer to your question "Why?". I guess just to prove that we're not dumber than pond scum.

67 posted on 09/29/2005 8:31:37 PM PDT by GSHastings
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To: Right Wing Professor

his point on making life....

on the evo time line, how long before a myco becomes a plant?


68 posted on 09/29/2005 8:32:12 PM PDT by wallcrawlr (http://www.bionicear.com)
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To: Zuben Elgenubi

Now that is a lot easier to understand than the rest of this thread.


69 posted on 09/29/2005 8:36:05 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.Walt Meier, of NSIDC, said: "Having four years in a ro)
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To: Clintonfatigued
If someone were to be in a place with no evidence of human life, and then stumble upon a television set or a laptop computer, they would never say that these items invented themselves.

Well, suppose they stumbled upon some grass, what would they say?

Check Gen 1:12 before you answer.

70 posted on 09/29/2005 8:37:37 PM PDT by dr_lew
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To: bobo1
Evolutionists are so afraid of opposition that they cannot allow an opposing view. So much for diversity!

I am sure you teach evolutionary theory in your Sunday School ...

71 posted on 09/29/2005 8:38:26 PM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: WildTurkey

I doubt its "taught"....although with some churches maybe....but I'll bet its at least mentioned as the alternative.


72 posted on 09/29/2005 8:40:15 PM PDT by wallcrawlr (http://www.bionicear.com)
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To: wallcrawlr
I doubt its "taught"....although with some churches maybe....but I'll bet its at least mentioned as the alternative.

Do they mention the truth or the lies spread by the creationists?

73 posted on 09/29/2005 8:41:51 PM PDT by WildTurkey (When will CBS Retract and Apologize?)
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To: WildTurkey
I am sure you teach evolutionary theory in your Sunday School ...

That would be unconstitutional. It would be contrary to the separtation of church and state.

74 posted on 09/29/2005 8:43:22 PM PDT by GSHastings
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To: WildTurkey

well from my informal poll of sitting in on every single sunday school class in america I found that it was mentioned exactly how you'd like it to be. extremely respected with no dissention.


75 posted on 09/29/2005 8:44:06 PM PDT by wallcrawlr (http://www.bionicear.com)
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To: whershey
I sometimes think that Darwinism has become a religion.

re·li·gion: a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith

It has.

76 posted on 09/29/2005 8:45:58 PM PDT by Tim Long (No, Christine Todd Whitman, it's not your party too.)
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To: Zuben Elgenubi

Probably everyone has embarrassed themselves here at one point or another. I am totally confused with the chart that was posted (#7) and what keyword abusers are. Sitting back and listening isn't helping me any. Can someone translate, please?


77 posted on 09/29/2005 8:48:04 PM PDT by metmom (Welfare was never meant to be a career choice.Walt Meier, of NSIDC, said: "Having four years in a ro)
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To: Right Wing Professor
I know we've gone to the moon. I'm confident, if we had the will, we coukld go to Mars. That I personally won't and can't do either of these things proves nothing.

Good point.

Surely then there must be SOMEONE in the world capable of creating some simple synthetic life. That's got to be a whole lot easier than going to the moon. It's not exactly rocket science.

78 posted on 09/29/2005 8:50:00 PM PDT by GSHastings
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To: Right Wing Professor
I know we've gone to the moon. I'm confident, if we had the will, we coukld go to Mars. That I personally won't and can't do either of these things proves nothing.

Good point.

Surely then there must be SOMEONE in the world capable of creating some simple synthetic life. That's got to be a whole lot easier than going to the moon. It's not exactly rocket science.

79 posted on 09/29/2005 8:50:00 PM PDT by GSHastings
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To: metmom

its listing the name of the person who posted the keyword.

thats it.

to me there are way to many instances of people tossing up a stupid keyword without having to post.
its like an anonymous shot at the thread.
I think its good to identify the keyword with the user who added it.


80 posted on 09/29/2005 8:50:49 PM PDT by wallcrawlr (http://www.bionicear.com)
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