Professor, teachers to testify in intelligent-design trial [Dover, PA, 05 Oct]

Times Leader ^ | 05 October 2005 | MARTHA RAFFAELE

[PatrickHenry]

HARRISBURG, Pa. - A philosophy professor and two science teachers were expected to testify Wednesday in a landmark trial over a school board's decision to include a reference to "intelligent design" in its biology curriculum.

Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, is being called as an expert witness on behalf of eight families who are trying to have intelligent design removed from the Dover Area School District's biology curriculum. The families contend that it effectively promotes the Bible's view of creation, violating the constitutional separation of church and state.

Forrest's testimony was expected to address what opponents allege is the religious nature of intelligent design, as well as the history and development of the concept, according to court papers filed by the plaintiffs before the trial.

U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III was also expected to hear testimony from Bertha Spahr, chairman of Dover High School's science department, and biology teacher Jennifer Miller.

Under the policy approved by Dover's school board in October 2004, students must hear a brief statement about intelligent design before classes on evolution. It says Charles Darwin's theory is "not a fact," has inexplicable "gaps," and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for more information.

Intelligent-design supporters argue that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force, and that natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.

The plaintiffs are represented by a team put together by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State. The school district is being defended by the Thomas More Law Center, a public-interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Mich., that says its mission is to defend the religious freedom of Christians.

The trial began Sept. 26 and is expected to last as long as five weeks.

[Ichneumon]

Is this the same Ken Miller who is testifying at the trial

Yes it is.

and admitted evolution is not a fact,

Why are you misrepresenting his position? Is it through your failure to understand, or through dishonesty? Please address the questions I asked you in post #186. I need to know, so that I can better know how to address your posts in the future.

and that there are gaps in the ToE?

Of course there are. So? There are gaps in *every* field of human knowledge. Whoop-de-do. Did you imagine you had a significant point here?

Are you claiming he is not biased?

I'm claiming that he has an excellent knowledge of the subject, and that this biases him towards the truth. I'm sorry if that bugs you.

When does Behe take the stand? For me, these earlier witnesses aren't contributing much. The cross examination of Behe should be very interesting.

Yes it should be very interesting, since Behe is an idiot, who can't even get trivial basics of biology correct, and his arguments are fatally flawed.

It does not speak well for the "ID movement" that it reveres such clowns as their "big guns".

[js1138]

I'd like to know whether our resident "IDers" support the use of this deeply dishonest book in classrooms.

You can bet that some inflict this deeply dishonest book on their children.

[connectthedots]

Children/offspring are always the same species as their parents.

I've made that exact point on numerous occasions. If this statement is true, and I believe it is, evolution cannot explain life as it exists today.

[Oztrich Boy]

The Bible is bad science?

Less than 23 minutes for the tissue paper disguise

Intelligent-design supporters argue that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force

to fall apart. is this a record? (probably not)

OK the statement to be read to the students clearly falls under the clause regarding the Establishment of a Religion, so it's out.

[b_sharp]

Yah, that's it. Give them another argument.

Sheesh!

On second thought, go for it, the old ideas are getting a bit stale.

[balrog666]

Unfortunately, none of the shining lights of ID seem to be very eager to testify.

Well, they would have to be under oath.

[King Prout]

I'll take any opportunity to allow IDiots to expose their whopping ignorance

[shuckmaster]

Not everyone is willing to learn enough about science to have an understanding of it. We see that in all of these threads when people are unwilling to even discuss the TOE in terms of its own ideas.

That's why I try to translate what I learn from the scientists here into simple layman's terms that even I can understand. I know I sometimes get it wrong but, I'm learning. For example I just learned from Ich's previous post... It's "evidence" not "proof"... evidence not proof... evidence not proof... Nothings ever proved but there's lot's of evidence...

[Thatcherite]

I won't respond to a troll, crackpot, half-wit, or incurable ignoramus.

So you've give up talking to creationists, have you?

[js1138]

One need only read "Elmer Gantry," to believe.

One need only read "Stranger in a Strange Land" to know that vegetarians are not all that innocent of murder. If you really grock grass, you can hear it scream. Plants are like People.

[connectthedots]

Like I said, the testimony of Behe will be very interesting.

Keep in mind that Miller did not contradict anything in the four paragraph statement proposed by the Dover school board.

[shuckmaster]

Early drafts of a student biology text contained references to creationism before they were replaced with the term "intelligent design," a witness testified

Imagine that! An IDer is a sneaky creationist trying to fool a science student!

[Ichneumon]

[Radiometrics are accurate to +- 1% based on current half-lives, calibration against other knowns, and they correlate with a number of other measuring methods.]

+- 1%? I doubt that you could find a majority of evolutionists who would agree that they could approximate the age of the earth within 1%. I think that is simply a number pulled out of thin air.

Tell you what, why don't you go actually learn the topic before spouting off more of what you "think" about it based on nothing more than your presumptions?

From The Age of the Earth, we find that yes, Virginia, many radiometric methods of dating the Earth have an accuracy in the range of 1%:

How Old Is The Earth, And How Do We Know?

he generally accepted age for the Earth and the rest of the solar system is about 4.55 billion years (plus or minus about 1%). This value is derived from several different lines of evidence.

Unfortunately, the age cannot be computed directly from material that is solely from the Earth. There is evidence that energy from the Earth's accumulation caused the surface to be molten. Further, the processes of erosion and crustal recycling have apparently destroyed all of the earliest surface.

The oldest rocks which have been found so far (on the Earth) date to about 3.8 to 3.9 billion years ago (by several radiometric dating methods). Some of these rocks are sedimentary, and include minerals which are themselves as old as 4.1 to 4.2 billion years. Rocks of this age are relatively rare, however rocks that are at least 3.5 billion years in age have been found on North America, Greenland, Australia, Africa, and Asia.

While these values do not compute an age for the Earth, they do establish a lower limit (the Earth must be at least as old as any formation on it). This lower limit is at least concordant with the independently derived figure of 4.55 billion years for the Earth's actual age.

The most direct means for calculating the Earth's age is a Pb/Pb isochron age, derived from samples of the Earth and meteorites. This involves measurement of three isotopes of lead (Pb-206, Pb-207, and either Pb-208 or Pb-204). A plot is constructed of Pb-206/Pb-204 versus Pb-207/Pb-204.

If the solar system formed from a common pool of matter, which was uniformly distributed in terms of Pb isotope ratios, then the initial plots for all objects from that pool of matter would fall on a single point.

Over time, the amounts of Pb-206 and Pb-207 will change in some samples, as these isotopes are decay end-products of uranium decay (U-238 decays to Pb-206, and U-235 decays to Pb-207). This causes the data points to separate from each other. The higher the uranium-to-lead ratio of a rock, the more the Pb-206/Pb-204 and Pb-207/Pb-204 values will change with time.

If the source of the solar system was also uniformly distributed with respect to uranium isotope ratios, then the data points will always fall on a single line. And from the slope of the line we can compute the amount of time which has passed since the pool of matter became separated into individual objects. See the Isochron Dating FAQ or Faure (1986, chapter 18) for technical detail.

A young-Earther would object to all of the "assumptions" listed above. However, the test for these assumptions is the plot of the data itself. The actual underlying assumption is that, if those requirements have not been met, there is no reason for the data points to fall on a line.

The resulting plot has data points for each of five meteorites that contain varying levels of uranium, a single data point for all meteorites that do not, and one (solid circle) data point for modern terrestrial sediments. It looks like this:

Pb-Pb isochron of terrestrial and meteorite samples.
After Murthy and Patterson (1962) and York and Farquhar (1972) .
Scanned from Dalrymple (1986) with permission.

Most of the other measurements for the age of the Earth rest upon calculating an age for the solar system by dating objects which are expected to have formed with the planets but are not geologically active (and therefore cannot erase evidence of their formation), such as meteorites. Below is a table of radiometric ages derived from groups of meteorites:

Type	Number Dated	Method	Age (billions of years)
Chondrites (CM, CV, H, L, LL, E)	13	Sm-Nd	4.21 +/- 0.76
Carbonaceous chondrites	4	Rb-Sr	4.37 +/- 0.34
Chondrites (undisturbed H, LL, E)	38	Rb-Sr	4.50 +/- 0.02
Chondrites (H, L, LL, E)	50	Rb-Sr	4.43 +/- 0.04
H Chondrites (undisturbed)	17	Rb-Sr	4.52 +/- 0.04
H Chondrites	15	Rb-Sr	4.59 +/- 0.06
L Chondrites (relatively undisturbed)	6	Rb-Sr	4.44 +/- 0.12
L Chondrites	5	Rb-Sr	4.38 +/- 0.12
LL Chondrites (undisturbed)	13	Rb-Sr	4.49 +/- 0.02
LL Chondrites	10	Rb-Sr	4.46 +/- 0.06
E Chondrites (undisturbed)	8	Rb-Sr	4.51 +/- 0.04
E Chondrites	8	Rb-Sr	4.44 +/- 0.13
Eucrites (polymict)	23	Rb-Sr	4.53 +/- 0.19
Eucrites	11	Rb-Sr	4.44 +/- 0.30
Eucrites	13	Lu-Hf	4.57 +/- 0.19
Diogenites	5	Rb-Sr	4.45 +/- 0.18
Iron (plus iron from St. Severin)	8	Re-Os	4.57 +/- 0.21
After Dalrymple (1991, p. 291); duplicate studies on identical meteorite types omitted.

As shown in the table, there is excellent agreement on about 4.5 billion years, between several meteorites and by several different dating methods. Note that young-Earthers cannot accuse us of selective use of data -- the above table includes a significant fraction of all meteorites on which isotope dating has been attempted. According to Dalrymple (1991, p. 286) , less than 100 meteorites have been subjected to isotope dating, and of those about 70 yield ages with low analytical error.

Further, the oldest age determinations of individual meteorites generally give concordant ages by multiple radiometric means, or multiple tests across different samples. For example:

Meteorite	Dated	Method	Age (billions of years)
Allende	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.52 +/- 0.02
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.53 +/- 0.02
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.48 +/- 0.02
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.55 +/- 0.03
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.55 +/- 0.03
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.57 +/- 0.03
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.50 +/- 0.02
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.56 +/- 0.05
Guarena	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.44 +/- 0.06
	13 samples	Rb-Sr	4.46 +/- 0.08
Shaw	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.43 +/- 0.06
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.40 +/- 0.06
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.29 +/- 0.06
Olivenza	18 samples	Rb-Sr	4.53 +/- 0.16
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.49 +/- 0.06
Saint Severin	4 samples	Sm-Nd	4.55 +/- 0.33
	10 samples	Rb-Sr	4.51 +/- 0.15
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.43 +/- 0.04
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.38 +/- 0.04
	whole rock	Ar-Ar	4.42 +/- 0.04
Indarch	9 samples	Rb-Sr	4.46 +/- 0.08
	12 samples	Rb-Sr	4.39 +/- 0.04
Juvinas	5 samples	Sm-Nd	4.56 +/- 0.08
	5 samples	Rb-Sr	4.50 +/- 0.07
Moama	3 samples	Sm-Nd	4.46 +/- 0.03
	4 samples	Sm-Nd	4.52 +/- 0.05
Y-75011	9 samples	Rb-Sr	4.50 +/- 0.05
	7 samples	Sm-Nd	4.52 +/- 0.16
	5 samples	Rb-Sr	4.46 +/- 0.06
	4 samples	Sm-Nd	4.52 +/- 0.33
Angra dos Reis	7 samples	Sm-Nd	4.55 +/- 0.04
	3 samples	Sm-Nd	4.56 +/- 0.04
Mundrabrilla	silicates	Ar-Ar	4.50 +/- 0.06
	silicates	Ar-Ar	4.57 +/- 0.06
	olivine	Ar-Ar	4.54 +/- 0.04
	plagioclase	Ar-Ar	4.50 +/- 0.04
Weekeroo Station	4 samples	Rb-Sr	4.39 +/- 0.07
	silicates	Ar-Ar	4.54 +/- 0.03
After Dalrymple (1991, p. 286); meteorites dated by only a single means omitted.

Also note that the meteorite ages (both when dated mainly by Rb-Sr dating in groups, and by multiple means individually) are in exact agreement with the solar system "model lead age" produced earlier.

[Thatcherite]

It's depressing. It's also humorous. But it's mostly depressing.

Taken individually I find the posts and attitudes humorous. There is a rich vein of comedy in creationist "insight". Taken as a totality creationism seems to be a profoundly depressing nihilistic worldview however. Must we really be constrained by the campfire tales of Bronze-age goatherds, who probably didn't even believe the stories themselves, if they thought much about them?

[shuckmaster]

Noah's Oak was said to be built out of wood. So some evidence floated away.

Noah's oak is still sitting on the side of mount arafat but the mean ol' turks won't let us climb up there and have a look at it.

[js1138]

I am curious how you determine specificity without knowledge of the designer. Anybody have any ideas?

If you read creationist posts you would know that human beings have to be the specified goal of evolution.

I believe even bright people like Teilhard de Chardin have believed this.

[Thatcherite]

By the way, Noah just carried animals. What happened to all the plants?

And 20,000,000+ insect species, all the different microscopic forms of life, fresh/saltwater fish and marine life in general...

[b_sharp]

"I am curious how you determine specificity without knowledge of the designer. Anybody have any ideas?"

"An excellent question. One might also ask what the motivation of the designer might have been."

I agree. In fact I've asked that same question myself.

"The answer, some will tell you, can be found in Genesis. And that's the problem with ID as it is being presented. Its proponents are pretending to have a non-specific entity in mind for their "intelligent designer." In fact, they have a very specific entity in mind, and are engaging in a little misdirection, thinking that their opponents are too stupid to see through their subterfuge.

The necessity of knowing the motives and capabilities of the designer pretty much limits him/her to being the Christian God.

In any case, the idea that design can be recognized without knowing the designer is put to rest by the specified complexity argument. If they insist on using SC then they have to admit the designer.

[js1138]

If this statement is true, and I believe it is, evolution cannot explain life as it exists today.

You really should learn something about the subject you criticise before making a fool of yourself.

[Thatcherite]

Then, after I've pocketed great gobs o' money from the public, I could publicly announce that I just made it all up. Maybe that would get through some of the thick skulls. But more likely, I'd just get depressed =when it turned out that they'd continue believing the nonsense and would just take my exposure of the hoax as my having been possessed by evil or whatever.

There is no limit to people's desire to believe in fairies. Incredibly, people are more likely to believe in the paranormal *after* they've been spoofed by James Randi, and then he's outed himself, than they were before he spoofed them. Deeply depressing.