Posted on 09/30/2005 7:45:00 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
The Campaign to Defend the Constitution, a group organized to promote the teaching of evolution, sent letters Thursday to all 50 governors, urging them to ensure that science classes teach material based on established science.
The letters were signed by more than 100 scientists and clergy of various faiths, the group said.
Although Gov. Ed Rendell had not received the letters as of Thursday afternoon, spokeswoman Kate Philips said he is committed to the idea of teaching evolution in science classes.
Rendell "believes that (intelligent design) is more than appropriate to be taught in religion classes, but has no room in science classes in public schools," Philips said. "But this is in the court's hands now, and other than his opinion, he has no influence."
But a spokeswoman for DefCon, the group's nickname for itself, said the group hopes that after governors receive the letter, they will make a public announcement opposing the teaching of intelligent design.
"It would be nice if (Rendell) took a stance and said, whether it's in the Dover district or any other Pennsylvania district, 'We need to protect the teaching of science in our science classrooms,'" Jessica Smith said.
The group named Dover its top "Island of Ignorance" in the country. It has targeted areas in the country where it says evolution is being challenged at the state level or in public school science classrooms. They include Cobb County, Ga.; Kansas; Blount County, Tenn.; Ohio; Grantsburg, Wisc.; Alabama; Utah; South Carolina; and Florida.
Advocates of intelligent design say life is so complex that it is likely the result of deliberate design by some unidentified creator, not random evolutionary mutation and adaptation.
Critics say it is essentially creationism and violates the separation of church and state when it becomes part of a public school curriculum.
"We can do better when we let science do its job, and ask religion to do its job," former ACLU executive director Ira Glasser said Thursday, "and if there's a need for conversation, please, let's not do it in the classrooms of our children."
An excellent question!
Machines are created also.
Therefore, they fail the test of standing outside time and matter in order to qualify as being the First Cause.
I do like the humor.
Best, ampu
I appreciate your commitment to a fellow freeper! You are indeed a gentleman and true friend.
You know this how? And you have a better candidate?
"Whatever," indeed...
There is perhaps one more thing - though this may be spitting in the wind... there actually is a difference between speaking truthfully and name calling.
You understand that I took the term "name calling" and reversed it, using it as a literary reflection in order to segue to my point on objectivity and proper identification of things.
And, yes, there is a difference between speaking truthfully and name calling.
But emotion-coddling PC garbage is an insult to the one it presumes to protect, in favor of sparing the feelings of the speaker. A man who is half deaf is not "hearing challenged," he's half deaf. Similarly, if a man is ignorant, stupid, insane, or brainwashed enough to disbelieve the science establishing the fact evolution and the modern synthesis theory which explains it, it would an insult to truth not to identify him as ignorant, stupid, insane, or brainwashed.
Certainly you know this, but machines are not self-reproducing. And even if they were, they wouldn't qualify as a first cause since they are inside time and the material world. Only something outside time and the material world could be a first cause. But then, you knew that. :-)
D*mn, WildHorseCrash, tell me you're not married!
Since I know of no such thing, I'm sticking with the big machines. :^)
Of course I believe species go extinct. I was just questioning how anyone knows how many have.
And just how do you know that?
I didn't see that you got an answer to your question. The answer is the fossil record. And more new extinct fossil species are found weekly. The last estimate I saw is 95% of all known species are extinct.
So that's why stremba said that.
"All blatant lies. I think you know the evidence supporting evolution is out there, you are just choosing to ignore it."
Yes there is evidence supporting evolution within a species.
"Thousands of examples of transitional fossils have been found. Many intermediate stages between humans and apelike ancestors have been found that have been well-verified."
Well verified? I've yet to see a single fossil that is compelling. I don't know of a single complete skeleton that has been found that shows an evolutionary step between man and ape.
The evidence tends to be part of a skull in one case, part of a jaw in another case, and in one case one tooth.
If you have more compelling fossils you can direct me towards, I'd beinterested in reading about them.
Personally I don't know if evolution did happen. If it did it won't shatter any of my beliefs. It won't even disprove intelligent design, though it my disport some theories based on intelligent design.
From what I've seen, the evidence supporting human evolution amounts to people theorizing how we might evolve, and then looking for evidence to support that. Nothing wrong with that.
However, when they find evidence they believe supports their theories, they sure don't try very hard to look for other explainations.
Here's the biggest problem. If you happen to find a human fossil with a apelike charistic, you're found evidence of a single mutation, not evidence of evolution. We don't need a fossil record to show us that mutations happen.
To start showing something resembling compelling evidence you would need to show a progression from one form to another.
The problem is that there are a huge number of differencet species of ape out there, and we keep finding evidence of even more species that have become extinct.
Add to that the possibility of single mutations, and the acts of some overzealous people trying to support evolution and you end up with a chain of evidence that keeps being broken by finding out that fossils were either human, or ape, but not something in between.
The parts of the chain that aren't broken are questionable as well, because we're trying to read too much into examining the shpes of a few bones.
The link you sent me on empirical predictions I found to be especially amusing. You see, they didn't teach that we evolved from apes as recently as 100 to 200 million years ago when I was growing up. At that time they pointed to "fossil" evidence that they welt we had evolved int the much more distant past.
When the theory that we had decended from a small number of humans as recently as that in an isolated area, it was discarded as creationists' laughable attempts to try and prove the story of Noah's ark.
As we come to understand DNA better and the evidence points toward mankind decending from a very small pool of people in the last 100 to 200 million years, the theory of evolution itself evolved and people say that the evidence could be predicted by the theory of evolution.
Of course it could predict that evidence, mutation and random chance can be used to predict just about anything.
It also kind of flies in the face of your falsification conditions idea that if an idea based on the theory of evolution were proved false, that it would disprove the theory of evolution.
"No. Not how science works. Nothing is more scrutinizing of new data than the peer review system and the people who work to referee journal submissions."
You're got to be kidding me. The scientific journal business is about as nepotistic and self congradualatory of a busniess as there is.
We're talking about people extrapolating millions of years of history form literally a few bones and some teeth. Peer review of such highly theoretical endevors is somewhat limited at best, and it's not hard to pick your audience to get published. If they didn't publish questionable theories about evolution they wouldn't be publishing much of anything about evolution.
As an example let's use the "hominid" fossil named Piltdown found in 1914. It survived "peer" review for 41 years. Well, actually it was highly criticized from the outset but it was still taken as a factual "hominid" skull for 41 years by much of the scientifice community. It was used as the basis for many theories. It inspired the theory of asymmetric evolution.
It was also a fake. The skull was a human skull, the jaw was a chimp jaw that had been treated with chemicals to give an impression of age.
"I have provided many good examples of predictions made by evolutionary theory. You still have have not provided any examples of specific physical examples that ID helps you find."
No. You absolutely have not done that.
The "predictions" you mention are along the lines of me saying that I predict that because God destroyed the world in a flood we will find evidence that we are all descendents from Noah we will find evidence that we all come from one area and colonized the world from that area.
Hey, look! The dna evidence supports my theory! God does exist! Thankfully he promised to never destroy the world with a flood again.
" It's not for little reason that creationists or IDers can't get their ideas into peer-reviewed journals."
There was many times peer reviewed discussions and writings on forms ID before Darwin was even born that there have been on the topic of evolution.
The level of intellectual tunnel vision it takes to amke a comment like that is appalling.
Theories about ID are still being written about, discussed, and refined. Ideas that may support ID over evolution are being hypothesized and tested. They don't get into you're "scientific" journals, because your beloved journals have defined them as not being science.
"Like I said, I'm all for biology teachers being able to talk about ID in school. I'm just telling you that based on their knowledge, educated science teachers would shoot holes through the "theory" of intelligent design, and rightfully so; nothing could stop them from doing so."
While tere are educated science teachers, the requirements for becoming a science teacher are very sparce in the area of science. Which might explain why they might try and shoot holes in a theory that basically impossible to disprove such as either ID or the theory of evolution.
"If someone wishes to ignore the facts supporting evolution or ignore the fact that ID is shoddy science"
You going to support that statement with some more logical fallicies?
"they have no business telling biology teachers what to teach,"
If they want to teach whatever they pelease regardless of being able to justify it with logic, then they have no business teaching in public schools.
When you start teaching theory as fact you start encroaching on the first ammendment to the constitution, and I'm not talking about freedom of the press.
If you want to complain about other people using shoddy science, maybe you should take a basic course in logic and quit spouting logical falacies.
"If you want to change science, make a submission to a refereed journal. (No promise you'll succeed, though. That's life.)"
So it's now journal referees that decide what is science? That's amusing at best. Dark ages here we come again. How about you come up with an argument that holds up to the rules of logic rather than refer me to what you consider to be scientific journals. Since it's that community that is trying to redefine science.
Don't believe me, take a good look at the history of science, and you'll find that science started with philosophers and theologians. Now "scientists" say those aren't science, and logic is taught in the philosophy department.
I'm an engineer by education and by trade. I deal with provable facts and empiracal, measurable evidence. Even in engineering we have to deal with the fact that there are things we know and things we don't know. It's always important to keep in minds what you don't know, because otherwise you're conclusions aren't worth a thing.
When you take a topic like how life became to be like it is and start excluding possibilities and making a priori assumptioins because you are trying to prove something, not discover something, the chances that your conclusion will be wrong are much higher than it will be right. This is simply because the amount that we do know on the subject is so small compared to what we don't know.
People are treating the theory of evolution as more than it is, and they are making the mistake of trying to prove that theory rather than discover the truth. Evolution may be the truth, but the chances that you will correctly guess the trugh when you know little about the subject is very small.
Open up your mind and start realizing how weak the evidence supporting the theory of evolution really is. I'm not going to disagree with you that the evidence supporting ID isn't as weak. The evidence supporting both are weak enough that trying to say one is more weak than the other is meaningless.
I definately am. Happy and lucky.
"When a theory is supported by as much evidence as evolution, it is held with a very high degree of confidence."
The theory of evolution is made up of three basic parts.
A: Creatures evolve
B: The evolution is caused by random mutation
C: Natural selection causes beneficial mutations to be passed on to descendents
For the theory of evolution to be true, all three part must be true. If two of the three parts are proven true, while a third is completely unsupported, the theory in effect is unsupported.
It's basic logic.
While there is ample evidenct that supports the part of the theory that creatures evolve due to mutations becuse mutations can be passed on to descendents. There's evidence in the fossil record. There is evidence in our experiments in controlled breeding of animals and plants. There is evidence in our knowledge of genetics.
There is not evidence to show that mutations are merely random events.
Let's look at a competing "theory" of my creation.
Evolution by Intelligent Design by Untrained Skeptic:
A: Cretures evolve ove time
B: That evoution is caused by genetic mutation that is part of an intelligent design which produces a diversity of life.
What element of the set of evidence supporting Darwin's Theory of Evolution does not also support my theory of Evolution by Intelligent Design?
Are those elements, if any exist, a large enough part of the whole body of evidence that supports both theories to make one theory significantly better supported?
I've got another theory for you to try and disprove.
Theory of the faith in chaos.
The "scientific" community has such a strongly held faith that the guiding force in the universe is random chance that they fail to even see that they have made a leap of faith.
I propose that the evidence for my theory is vast and compelling, and I submit that your NSF abstract is part of that body of evidence.
So? Where's the fault in my logic? After all, people of science should be able to easily address an attack on their theories based on logic.
The argument about the body of evidence that "supports" the theory of evolution is a strawman argument, because it only supports part of the theory.
You can quote me all the definitions from NSF abstracts and whatever sources you like, but if that information doesn't support a logically consistent argument, it's useless.
And between species. Do the research. It's out there.
Well verified? I've yet to see a single fossil that is compelling. I don't know of a single complete skeleton that has been found that shows an evolutionary step between man and ape.
Many nearly complete skeletons. Many intermediate steps between apes and humans.
The evidence tends to be part of a skull in one case, part of a jaw in another case, and in one case one tooth.
Sounds like something read off of a creationist website. Many nearly complete skeletons have been found of intermediary steps between humans and apes.
If you have more compelling fossils you can direct me towards, I'd beinterested in reading about them.
Some transitional forms This list is by no means exhaustive. Keep in mind that paleontology is only one of the lines of evidence for evolution.
If it did it won't shatter any of my beliefs. It won't even disprove intelligent design, though it my disport some theories based on intelligent design.
Nothing can disprove ID, that is the problem. That is why it is not science. There are no theories based on intelligent design. ID explains everything. ID could explain any environment one can imagine, that's the problem.
Here's the biggest problem. If you happen to find a human fossil with a apelike charistic, you're found evidence of a single mutation, not evidence of evolution.
Mutation is essential to evolution. If individuals with mutations that are favorable to their environment reproduce, that's evolution. Given the presence of such "mutations" in nature, you have a harder time explaining how evolution didn't occur over the 3.5 billion year history of life on earth.
You see, they didn't teach that we evolved from apes as recently as 100 to 200 million years ago when I was growing up. At that time they pointed to "fossil" evidence that they welt we had evolved int the much more distant past.
What crackpot did you learn about the descent of man from? We've known for a very long time that the earliest humans were around somewhere on the order of a few million years.
The scientific journal business is about as nepotistic and self congradualatory of a busniess as there is.
Coming from someone who's never seen erroneous ideas get torn to shreds in a scientific conference, apparently. Scientists are their own harshest critics - it's what keeps them successful.
Of course it could predict that evidence, mutation and random chance can be used to predict just about anything.
No they can't. A wide range of results can come from evolution. But we keep finding the sequential development of fossil forms in progressively dated strata in time. We keep seeing the DNA evidence relating different forms. Everything from the eyespot structure of lancelets to the collective mutation rates between humans and apes keeps fulfilling necessary predictions made by evolution. These are deep waters indeed. It takes years to learn about these things that took humans centuries to learn. Funny that people think they can take scientific theories like evolution, Einstein's theory of relativity, etc. and say the evidence is insufficient based on a layperson's understanding of them.
The "predictions" you mention are along the lines of me saying that I predict that because God destroyed the world in a flood we will find evidence that we are all descendents from Noah we will find evidence that we all come from one area and colonized the world from that area.
Nope. Doesn't work. A global flood would have other physical consequences that aren't observed. That is why the hypothesis is falsified. Evidences for evolution are supported across many unrelated lines.
We're talking about people extrapolating millions of years of history form literally a few bones and some teeth.
Scientists don't know everything about evolution. Where gross extrapolations occur, it is generally openly admitted. When several unrelated fields of inquiry draw the same conclusion, however, it is no longer an extrapolation.
As an example let's use the "hominid" fossil named Piltdown found in 1914. It survived "peer" review for 41 years.
And was eventually discovered to be a fraud by peer-review. Funny how a "self-congratulatory" and "nepotistic" system can work to correct its own errors.
Ideas that may support ID over evolution are being hypothesized and tested. They don't get into you're "scientific" journals, because your beloved journals have defined them as not being science.
Ah, here we, go, the conspiracy theory of the "scientific establishment". This always comes along eventually. Should we teach the conspiracy in schools, too? The fact is, there are no hypotheses undergoing testing worthy of enough scrutiny for a major journal. That's the problem. The only "conspiracy" here is against bad science. Here's some other "suppressed theories" that maybe we should teach in schools. I really like the one where they say there's a ball of ice at the core of the sun. Is this viable "alternative" science? After all, we can't really prove that a "hot fusion" reaction is powering the sun by direct evidence, can we?!
While tere are educated science teachers, the requirements for becoming a science teacher are very sparce in the area of science. Which might explain why they might try and shoot holes in a theory that basically impossible to disprove such as either ID or the theory of evolution.
Considering that the biological community is practically 100% in favor of the position that evolution took place, I would expect this to be the position of a well-educated biology teacher, and it is the position of every biology teacher I've ever known.
If they want to teach whatever they pelease regardless of being able to justify it with logic, then they have no business teaching in public schools.
Evolution is well-supported by logic and empirical data, an equally important criterion of good science. It is a cornerstone of the biological sciences. That is why it is taught. ID is scientifically useless. That is why it is not taught as science.
When you start teaching theory as fact you start encroaching on the first ammendment to the constitution, and I'm not talking about freedom of the press.
Evolution is both a theory and a fact. Based on your criteria for what a fact is, we wouldn't be allowed to teach gravitational theory as a fact, either.
If you want to complain about other people using shoddy science, maybe you should take a basic course in logic and quit spouting logical falacies.
Just because you don't like what I've been saying doesn't make what I say logical fallacy. Maybe you should take a few basic courses in science and learn how the scientific method really works.
So it's now journal referees that decide what is science? That's amusing at best. Dark ages here we come again.
And ID is leading the charge. Peer review is an essential part of the refinement of scientific knowledge. What you're suggesting is a free-for-all where everyone picks what theory they like the best. I'm rooting for the cold sun core theory, myself...
I'm an engineer by education and by trade. I deal with provable facts and empiracal, measurable evidence. Even in engineering we have to deal with the fact that there are things we know and things we don't know.
You don't think evolutionary biologists realize this? Good grief. Why don't you stick to building things and let the biologists do biology. You're not really helping them out, here.
Open up your mind and start realizing how weak the evidence supporting the theory of evolution really is. I'm not going to disagree with you that the evidence supporting ID isn't as weak. The evidence supporting both are weak enough that trying to say one is more weak than the other is meaningless.
The more I read about the subject the more I realize how strong the evidence supporting evolution really is. ID isn't science at all, and is supported by no empirical evidence. Two sides of an argument don't always deserve equal consideration. Evolution vs. ID is an exemplary case of this.
That's Piltdown Man. While it is often written that it took 40 or 50 years for Piltdown to be determined a fraud, its influence actually lasted only a few years.
The bones were found roughly 1908 through 1912, and the formal announcement was made in December, 1912.
By 1925, Edmonds had reported that there was a problem with the geology of the find.
Some researchers recognized early on that Piltdown didn't fit. Friedrichs and Weidenreich had both, by about 1932, published their research suggesting the lower jaws and molars were that of an orang (E.A. Hooton, Up from the Ape, revised edition; The MacMillan Co., 1946). So, within 20 years there were serious doubts, and Piltdown was increasingly ignored.
The hoax was formally demolished completely in 1953 (that's 41 years), but by then Piltdown was almost completely ignored in favor of the African specimens.
I suspect such a fraud now would be discovered and rooted out in far less time. The catalogue of fossils we have now presents a much clearer picture of the past than what they had to work with in 1912.
This point deserves to be emphasized. The reason it didn't fit is because evolution makes predictions about the kinds of evidence that ought to be found. In the case of Piltdown Man, it made no sense at all that the "missing link" (the popular term in those days) would be found in England -- an island with no fossil history of pre-human hominids. The fact that it was such an out-of-place anachronism suggests that whoever faked the fossil didn't understand very much about evolution.
The great virtue of a scientific theory is that it is devised to fit the evidence, and thus -- if the theory is good -- it provides a framework in which future evidence should also fit. And Piltdown Man didn't fit.
With creationism (or ID), there is no such reality check. Anything that shows up is the work of the designer, so a creationist (or ID devotee) has no reason to suspect any evidence at all.
This is probably the first time I've ever agreed with "Fast Eddie."
"How come Evolution folks keep saying Evolution has nothing to say about when life begin...yet all the arguing I see happening is about the fossils of men and animals?"
Because because the fossils of men and animals isn't about the origin of life? :)
I'm not sure I understand the question. There is a lot of discussion of men and animals and insects and everything in between on these threads as that is the database for evolution. The study of modern and past organisms provides a time line, and that permits the study of change over time.
All of this took place after life began, so I don't understand your question. Please rephrase.
Your part B is flawed. Evolution in no way relies on mutations being random events. Evolution is caused by the natural selection of variants. Mutations are a major source of the variants that are selected for. However, there's no reason that the mutations must be random for evolution to be valid. In fact, a good argument can be made that these mutations are not random, since certain portions of the genome seem more prone to mutation than other portions. Even were the mutations actually guided by the hand of God, however, the mechanism by which evolution occurs is still applicable so long as new variations of organisms are formed by these guided mutations and those variants that are more likely to survive and reproduce will pass the mutations to their descendants. That's evolution, regardless of whether the mutations are random, non-random due to natural processes (something I personally consider to be the most likely state of affairs), or guided by God or some other intelligence.
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.