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.
Major prime coming up!
The headache came from the job, not the post.
"This is really a lot of speculation.
Not really, we are seeing evidence that some genes self repair and others are prone to multiple mutations. (Dawkins). It also appears that the two groups of genes are from different times in our evolution, since they are shared with different organisms. (Dennet)
"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.
I should have been clearer. We do find that, we do not find those fossil sequences to be as ubiquitous as we would like. There are series of fossils that show gradual change from one species to another. We also have extant species that show gradual change between A1 to An-1 (See ring species) where the species is one step away from splitting into two different species. In addition to those smooth transitions we have speciation events in extant plants and insects that happened without us noticing.
Even though intermediate fossils are few and far between, we have many sequences of fossils that span taxa as high as Order. The clearest IMHO simply because of the diagnostic features used, is the arteriodactyl to cetacean sequence.
When viewed together, the information above allows us to deduce information about the mechanics of speciation. This is not just a guess.
"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?"
Remember my earlier comment of the paucity of intermediate fossils between two species. There is not an absence of fossils, just not as many as we would like. You are using induction to determine that Gould was trying to cover up a hole in the fossil record. However the premise that there are no transitionals and no intermediate fossils is false, there are fossils that fit those two descriptions. You have been pointed to them many times.
Science uses both inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning to develop a picture of what is happening, what has happened in the past and how they relate. Even when something is directly observed, we use both deductive and inductive reasoning to develop the full picture. Why is your use of induction any more accurate than evolutionary science's use of deduction and induction?
"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.
Actually - fossils, tectonics, light speed, radioactive decay times, tree rings, DNA, RNA, chemistry, quantum mechanics, varves, diagnostic features, and the statistical analysis of all of the above are very much part of 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.
That depends on whether or not the analogy preserves the essence of the idea it is analogous to and the intent of the analogy. What was the essence of the analogy as you see it? What similarities/differences between the analogue and the original idea do you see?
What does the variation in allele frequencies within a population have to do with the creation of matter?
Yup. I also need to get back into coding and forget this spyware junk.
"There will never be another assembler like Macro-11TM. I mean, anybody can get a computer with 256 megabytes of memory to do something.
I learned assembler on a PDP-11. No monitor, just a keyboard and a teletype. Those were the days.
Why not?
Big Daddy is good, but The Death Cookie is the essential Chick.
ROTFLMAO. Darn near choked on my pizza just now.
ooooooo!
Anglomemetic?
then my day's labours have not been entirely fruitless
Now that is an understatement if I ever heard one.
wail, het beats when un meks mur nise nur a jack-daw, rackon.
Luxury. Punch cards are the only way to learn anything. Hand punched, that is.
death cookie?
[philosopher mode]Because ![/philosopher mode]
LOL. You are on a roll.
You a rackon-teur?
CPU cabinet the size of a large refrigerator. Disk drives the size of washing machines! A linker that cried and quit if your program was bigger than 64K.
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