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.
Golf is not boring!
You must try it.
golf is not boring, provided:
1. you are VERY drunk
2. you have long-green riding on the game
3. you have scantily-clad nubile cheerleaders
otherwise, golf is only marginally less boring than watching your toenails lengthen
And the positive evidence that macro-evolution has occured can be found where? Aren't those really the 'gaps' in the ToE? Isn't it interesting that the 'gaps' in the ToE constitute the basic claims of evolution?
The truth of evolution is dependent on the 'gaps' being filled. If they are not filled, there is no positive evidence for evolution; only speculation.
In the legal arena, once the defendant controverts the claims of the plaintiff in a motion for summary judgment by providing evidence that the plaintiff has not real claim, the burden of proof shifts to the plaintiff. in the case of evolution as a plaintiff, the IDers have credibly indentified a number of problems with evolution. What else would you call 'gaps' that even evolutionists admit exist.
Unless the evolutionist can provide evidence that fills in the 'gaps' to controvert the ID defense, the ID defense should prevail.
Read post 562. The guy uses an example that is totally irrelevant to any discussion of evolution v. ID.
To compare the amount of gas needed to get from point A to point D with speciation is an outrageous abuse of the most basic of the principles of logic.
I came upon this post after having read a number of mostly interesting posts that strangely enough relieved most of the stresses of the day. I dove into this post expecting to experience more of the cathartic release provided by previous posts.
After I stopped pounding my head against the wall I decided to try to straighten out your misapprehensions of the process of speciation.
First we need to realize that of the millions of species that have lived on earth in the millions of possible different environments, there is room for a number of different speciation paths for a few to deviate from any 'norm' we may have evidence of. Each species path is contingent on what variations the species has experienced, is experiencing, and what limitations the current phenotype is constrained by. Physics, the environment and genotype determine which subset of the set of all possible changes a given species can experience. As the environment and genotype evolve, the 'variation subset' is guided through the full 'variation space'. This in effect removes the possibility of saltation from the set of possibilities.
Variation occurs in any population at speeds contingent on the same factors as mentioned above. There is no hard and fast rule, based on physics or environment that will regulate the speed of variation. Because the environment is essentially a complex system the speed of variation can proceed at a rate, given our short observation timeframe, that would be considered static or, at another timeframe within the species life, at an extremely fast, but gradual (morphologically speaking) rate.
Now back to speciation. The origin population, the 'parent', species 'A' lives in an environment that will only support a limited number of organisms. Because of this a small portion of the population heads off in search of greener pastures creating a 'daughter' population. These two populations never meet again. Over time the parent population experiences variation, going through a number of incarnations, A A1 A2 A3...An and the other population, the daughter, also experiences variation, A A-1 A-2 A-3...A-n. Each variation is based on previous variations in both populations for a cumulative effect. An and A-n are far enough apart in morphology to class as different species. At the same time, A and An are far enough apart that if a member of the A population were transported in time to the An population that member would have no desire or capability to interbreed with any member of An. They will be classed as different species. As you can see it is not a matter of either/or as you stipulate in:
"I am further aware that some evolutionists believe that new species evolve through divergence and yet other claim that interbreeding leads to new species.
Now lets look at Gould and Punk Ek.
For a while, scientists have been puzzled by the paucity of inter-species fossils while many transitional fossils have been found that span the higher taxa. If you take a look at Gould's response to the creationist quote-mining of his words you will see he was concerned by the inter-species fossils, not the transitionals of the higher taxa.
If evolution proceeded at a specific pace with a specific variation 'size' we should find fossils that show the gradual change from one species to another, for example, a sequence of fossil changes between an ocelot and a jaguar. We do not find that.
Gould proposed that speciation occurs at varied rates, many times with one species changing into another species too quickly for intermediate fossils to be preserved.
For example:
Species A gradually changes into species B over a time of one million years. If the generation cut off for species A is 20 years, there will be 50,000 generations, meaning that each generation is .002% different than the previous generation. (BTW - This is too small to observe in 150 years.) If one fossil is preserved in such a way that we are able to uncover it every 100,000 years, the difference between any two neighbouring fossils will be 10% different, enabling us to see, once we find all 10 fossils, a gradual and extremely smooth transition between the two species. However if the rate of evolution varies such that during the first 500,000 years each generation varies by .0006%, then goes through 90,000 years of rapid evolution say .018% per generation then 410,000 years of .0005% change per generation, those fossils will tell a very different story. The first 5 fossils found would look static, as if there was no change at all, especially if the changes were mostly of soft tissue which is not preserved. The next fossil found would be after the cumulative changes classified a new species, and would be different enough to appear as though the species appeared suddenly and 'fully formed'. All later fossils would reinforce this view. That's it for tonight. I still have a heck of a headache.
First we need to realize that of the millions of species that have lived on earth in the millions of possible different environments, there is room for a number of different speciation paths for a few to deviate from any 'norm' we may have evidence of. Each species path is contingent on what variations the species has experienced, is experiencing, and what limitations the current phenotype is constrained by. Physics, the environment and genotype determine which subset of the set of all possible changes a given species can experience. As the environment and genotype evolve, the 'variation subset' is guided through the full 'variation space'. This in effect removes the possibility of saltation from the set of possibilities.
This is really a lot of speculation.
If evolution proceeded at a specific pace with a specific variation 'size' we should find fossils that show the gradual change from one species to another, for example, a sequence of fossil changes between an ocelot and a jaguar. We do not find that.
Given that you acknowledge that these fossils haven't been found, you must consider the real likelihood that they simply do not exist and never existed. Isn't the absence of such fossils a big part of the 'gaps' in the ToE. To claim that they exist is speculation.
Gould proposed that speciation occurs at varied rates, many times with one species changing into another species too quickly for intermediate fossils to be preserved.
Proposed? Again, this is mere speculation and an attempt to explain away the absence of the fossil record that should exist if speciation was true. Wasn't that the primary reason for Gould's proposal?
You examples are not based on real world evidence. They are speculative; and you should really understand that while it may be an explanation, there is no evidence that it is based in reality.
It is frustrating when the evolutionists are reduced to using 'examples' which are not based on the real world or trying use irrelevant illustrations to support evolution. The worst abuse of this little 'trick' was the one about the amount of gas it takes to get from point 'A' to 'D' via 'B' and 'C'. Even you ought to admit that is a stretch far beyond all reason.
Real men code assembler. (OK, there are no real men anymore!)Agreed!
| Logical test algorithm for new computers |
... MOV CX, 0 start: INC CX MOV AX, creationism MOV BX, intelligent_design CMP AX, BX JE exit CMP CX, 100 JNE start JUMP set_pc_on_fire_and_buy_a_new exit: JUMP praise_pc_and_keep_it... |
Let's try again, you claim my understanding of a day in Genesis one is wrong, my question to you is:
Than how about being kind enough to explain to me how I am confused over the "days text". I say it is a 24 hour day, and you say it is what?
You replied with this: I say that the content of information in Genesis is orders of magnitude less than the content of information in the creation. Since Gods word, and Gods creation cannot conflict, and there is so much more content of information in His creation, then what we read in his creation must be the truth.
How you rationalize the human language in Genesis, which is a very poor transmitter of information compared to the multidimensional and experiment-able world in the creation, is your decision.
Which is not an answer, so how aobut it? Willing to tell me what you understand a day to mean in not twenty four, sixty minute, hours?
Almost? You should thank the God you don't accept for it being "Almost".
Now how about stopping the avoidance bull and define "Evolution" for me, your avoidance makes you look somewhat foolish. Seems you can't explain or define what you believe in, which would make you more than just kinda dumb. But then again anyone who believes that evolution is science has more than just one screw loose.
Why do you falsely state that the ToE holds high-taxa saltation to be necessary (even possible... a hint: such saltation is ruled out by the ToE)?
strawman/non-sequitur/high-taxa-saltation/psychological projection/bearing-false-witness/"it's too early for this crap" placemarker
Why perhaps it is because we are just not as smart as you. So how about helping us less smart than you along? How about starting with some real basics like, defining evolution for us?
And maybe, just maybe you could tell us how, if it evolution has nothing to do with original matter, what evolves.
Or maybe you will avoid it and prove Peter right, again. In Second Peter chapter 3 verse five.
I am speaking of the scientific community here, not any legalistic practice. You can have all the legal actions you want, and evolution, not ID, will still be the accepted scientific theory. It is insufficient to establish that there are gaps in the accepted theory. There are gaps in ALL scientific theories. To gain acceptance as an alternative theory, ID must provide evidence that ID is correct, not just evidence that evolution is incomplete. So far, no ID'er has even attempted to provide positive evidence for ID. Arguments such as the ones I outlined earlier in the thread do not provide such positive evidence. Even granting their validity, (which I obviously don't) all they accomplish is casting doubt on evolution. They don't provide any evidence in favor of ANY alternative theory, let alone the idea that an intelligent being designed life.
There are gaps in the TOE, but there are gaps in ALL scientific theories. Treating evolution as somehow being weaker than any other theory is fundamentally dishonest. As far as positive evidence for evolution goes, try reading either on some of the past threads or elsewhere about retroviral insertions. That's a particularly convincing piece of evidence that different species share a common ancestor.
Basically, the whole point is that we know that viruses reproduce by inserting their genome into the DNA of a given cell in an organism. Occasionally, the cell so infected will be a sex cell, so this insertion will be passed on to the offspring of that organism. Since organisms typically have very large genomes, it is very unlikely that an identical insertion at an identical genomic location will occur in two different organisms as independent insertion events. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that two organisms who have an identical viral insertion at the same genomic location share a common ancestor which was the original source of the viral insertion.
If we then use evolution to predict what we might see, we would predict that if different species of creatures share a common ancestor, we might very well see different species of organisms share the same viral insertion at the same location in their genome. We can even go further in the type of predictions we can make. We can predict, for example, that if gorillas, chimpanzees and humans all share a common ancestor, then there should be identical insertions found at the same location in the genome of all three of these species.
We can further predict that if the hypothesized evolutionary relationship between these species is correct, then there should be a specific pattern to the insertions. We hypothesize that a species ancestral to gorillas, chimps and humans branched into two species, one which led to gorillas and another which later branched into chimps and humans. Therefore, it should be possible to find insertions that occur in chimps and humans, but not in gorillas. It also should be possible to find insertions that occur in any of these three species alone, and not in the others. That is, only the insertion patterns of GCH, CH, G, C, H can occur. Note that there can be no insertions found in gorillas and chimps, but not humans or found in gorillas and humans but not in chimps. When tested against the genomes of gorillas, chimps and humans, these predictions are found to be 100% correct.
Beyond the utterly useless statement that "that's the way the designer wanted it," ID cannot provide an explanation for this state of affairs. No other idea can provide an explanation for these observations either. Please note that this is only one line of evidence in favor of evolution. There are certain patterns in the fossil record, certain patterns in the morphology of species, and certain patterns in the DNA of organisms that make no sense and have no other explanation if evolution is not true.
You are a genius man.
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.