Posted on 10/05/2005 3:53:39 AM PDT by 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.
You didn't read anything about the cross examination of Miller? Answering unfriendly questions is often more revealing than handling softball questions.
Since it is the evolutionist who makes the claim, the burden to prove it has happened rests with them.
"Perhaps you will tell us in some detail what's so leftist about her papers compared to, say, those of Tom Paine."
"An Analysis of the Causal Interpretation of Karl Marx's Theory of History"
And fwiw, didn't Paine move to .... where? Oh, yeah. France as I recall. Looks like his time there had some influence on his outlook about Christians:
"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is none more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory in itself, than this thing called Christianity. Too absurd for belief, too impossible to convince, and too inconsistent for practice, it renders the heart torpid, or produces only atheists and fanatics."
Funny. He sure sounds a lot like a leftist French dude.
Try googling Lamarkian evolution.
No; it's because the evidence overwhelmingly weighs too heavily against the possibility. Even Miller admitted evolution is not a fact, so why should I? He said it is a theory, and that there are gaps. You assume there is some unknown explanation that can reconcile those gaps and problems. Explain to me how that is not an exercise in faith; and thus have the attributes of a religion?
Make that Lamarckian evolution.
From Discovery.org's Six Myths About the Evolution Debate:
MYTH #6: The design inference is an argument from ignorance, something lazy scientists do when they don’t understand how something arose naturally. Reporters often describe ID with something like: “some biological systems are too complex to be explained by natural selection alone.”
FACT: Such descriptions of intelligent design are far off the mark. Design theorists argue for intelligent design not only because natural selection and other materialistic mechanisms are incapable of explaining, for example, the origin of digital information and complex machines in cells, but also because we know from experience that systems possessing such features do invariably arise from intelligent causes.
As the pioneering information theorist Henry Quastler observed, "Information habitually arises from conscious activity." A computer user who traces the information on a screen back to its source invariably comes to a mind, that of a software engineer or programmer. Similarly, the information in a book or newspaper column ultimately derives from a writer—from a mental, rather than a strictly material, cause. Thus, what we know about the present cause and effect structure of the world suggests intelligent design as an obvious explanation for the information necessary to build living systems.
There are also strong positive reasons for inferring design from the intricate machines and circuits now found in cells. Michael Behe has shown that these systems are irreducibly complex, that is, they need all of their parts in just the right place to function at all. This is significant, not only because (as Behe shows) natural selection cannot produce irreducibly complex structures such as the bacterial flagellar motor, but also because we know that irreducible complexity is a property of systems that are known to be intelligently designed. In fact, every time we know the causal history of an irreducibly complex system (like a car engine or an electronic circuit), it always turn out to have been the product of an intelligent cause.
Thus, the inference to design in biology is not based upon ignorance or religion, but instead upon our knowledge of the cause and effect structure of the world. In particular, it is based on our knowledge of what it takes to build information rich and irreducibly complex systems. Cells contain miniature machines, complex circuits and sophisticated information processing systems, exquisite nanotechnology that in any other realm of experience would immediately, and properly, trigger recognition of prior intelligent activity.
Here, you argue interbreeding between species and someone else argues that one species will eventually diverge into two.
Which is it; or is it both? You guys needs to get together and come up with a unified position. That's another problem with evolution. Different factions have different explanations for how evolution works. Which one is THE one?
She did post asking to be put on her ping list
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-backroom/1495642/posts?page=175#175
There is no evidence that it has happened in the past, so there is no reason to think it will be different in the future.
Tom Paine, the son of a Quaker corset maker, was born in Thetford in Norfolk on 29th January, 1737. After being educated at the local grammar school Paine became an apprentice corset maker in Kent. This was followed by work as an exciseman in Lincolnshire and a school teacher in London.In 1768 Paine moved to Lewes where he was employed as an excise officer. Paine became involved in local politics, serving on the town council and establishing a debating club in a local inn. Paine upset his employers when he demanded a higher salary. Paine was dismissed and he responded by publishing a pamphlet The Case of the Officers of Excise. While in London Paine met Benjamin Franklin who encouraged him to emigrate to America.
Paine settled in Philadelphia where he became a journalist. Paine had several articles published in the Pennsylvania Magazine including one advocating the abolition of slavery. In 1776 he published Common Sense, a pamphlet that attacked the British Monarchy and argued for American independence. During the war with England Tom Paine wrote articles and pamphlets on the superiority of republican democracy over monarchical government and served with Washington's armies. Paine also travelled to France in 1781 to raise money for the American cause.
Paine played no role in American government after independence and in 1787 he returned to Britain. Paine continued to write on political issues and in 1791 published his most influential work, The Rights of Man. In the book Paine attacked hereditary government and argued for equal political rights. Paine suggested that all men over twenty-one in Britain should be given the vote and this would result in a House of Commons willing to pass laws favourable to the majority. The book also recommended progressive taxation, family allowances, old age pensions, maternity grants and the abolition of the House of Lords.
The British government was outraged by Paine's book and it was immediately banned. Paine was charged with seditious libel but he escaped to France before he could be arrested. Paine announced that he did not wish to make a profit from The Rights of Man and anyone had the right to reprint his book. The Rights of Man was printed in cheap editions so that it could achieve a working class readership. Although the book was banned, during the next two years over 200,000 people in Britain managed to buy a copy. One person who read The Rights of Man was the shoemaker, Thomas Hardy. In 1792 Hardy founded the London Corresponding Society. The aim of the organisation was to achieve the vote for all adult males.
In 1792 Tom Paine became a French citizen and was elected to the National Convention. Paine upset French revolutionaries when he opposed the execution of Louis XVI. He was arrested and kept in prison under the threat of execution from 28th December 1793 and 4th November 1794. Paine was only released after the American minister, James Monroe, put pressure on the French government.
While in prison Tom Paine worked on book on the subject of religion. Age of Reason was published soon after his release and caused a tremendous impact because it questioned the truth of Christianity. Paine criticised the Old Testament for being untrue and immoral and claimed that the Gospels contained inaccuracies and contradictions.
In 1802 Paine moved back to America but the Age of Reason had upset a large number of people and he discovered that he had lost the popularity he had enjoyed during the War of Independence. Unable to return to Britain, Paine remained in America until his death in New York on 8th June 1809. By the time he had died, over 1,500,000 copies of The Rights of Man had been sold in Europe.
What's not to like about him?
A reasonable simple definition of a species would be where a male and female can produce offspring that is also capable of reproducing.
Actually, to all objective appearance, true!
While fraud is indeed not uncommon in biomed fields, psychology, and even some fields in technology or the physical sciences, it is almost entirely unknown (insofar as committed by researchers, as opposed to, say, Chinese fossil merchants) in evolutionary biology, paleontology and so on. After nearly one hundred years, Piltdown remains the only real case of intentional fraud that may have been committed by a research scientist in a field related to evolutionary science. (Even this is not certain as the identity of the hoaxer is not certain.)
BTW, I don't think this reflects any generally higher moral character on the part of scientists working in fields related to evolution. As usual it's a case of "follow the money". Bioscience is were the most money is, and where the most fraud is as well.
"That is just one example of the faulty logic. Needless to say, I am unimpressed"
You missed the essence of the point made and created your own logical fallacy in the form of a false analogy. The Greenish Warblers Phylloscopus trochiloides plumbeitarsus and Phylloscopus trochiloides viridanus do not interbreed despite an overlap in territory. Humans of all shapes and sizes interbreed all the time. Language, country, even culture do not impede humans that want to 'get it on' because the signals passed between the sexes are consistent everywhere.
Your myth and fact say the same thing in different words. Do you expect to fool someone with that hogwash?
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