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.
Please. 'We don't yet understand how something works' is not positive evidence of anything except the observer's lack of understanding.
Is this comment supposed to bring ID up to the level of evolution? Or bring evolution down to the level of your religion?
Lots? Show me ONE!
Your two statements don't connect. Hurling bricks (whether in error or correctly) at the theory of evolution does not for one instant validate a Theory of ID (whatever that may be). You are trying to treat ID as a default answer, to be used if you can invalidate ToE. ID must stand or fall on its own merits (and I wish it luck attempting to do so, as the sum total of ID theory and attempts to create ID theory by its supporters appears to be zip, zilch, nada).
It seems he is still having trouble connecting the dots.
The artiodactyl to cetacean sequence looks pretty complete to me. To show evidence of, therefore the existence of, transition between organisms, we only need one sequence. All else is just gravy.
It's a theory until you prove it wrong.
Is that because they're such lousy teachers? Or because your ability to learn is that weak?
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But, how can you prove a forest exists if one of the trees is unaccounted for?
Unfortunately, none of the shining lights of ID seem to be very eager to testify.
Perhaps you will tell us in some detail what's so leftist about her papers compared to, say, those of Tom Paine.
Translation: Science doesn't have all the answers, so God exists.
I'm sure your predecessors said the same thing about lightning a few centuries ago. That it was "proof of God".
Your problem is that you depend on there being unexplainable phenomena as your evidence of God, but unexplainable phenomena are getting fewer every day.
Wouldn't you be better off to believe that God worked WITH the natural world, rather than apart from it? That way you can say that "God raised up the sun this morning, and brought the rain in the afternoon", rather than saying that conservation of energy turned the earth toward the sun but God created the species in an instant, even though there's no evidence to support that conclusion.
You are imagining a God hiding in the mysteries of life, rather than a God that is all around you and can be studied to discover that He created species by a process we call "evolution".
I have never claimed that there is positive evidence for ID, have I? there is plenty of evidence that casts serious doubt on the feasibility of Darwinian evolution.
The conclusion of ID is that if evolution is not true, there must be some other cause. ID is a reasonable explanation absent a third, fourth or any other potential explanation.
Most Christians, and I would include myself, would conclude that that intelligent force is the God of the Bible. My faith in God is not based on ID; it is based on the historical truth of the Bible (also confirmed by secular historians) and the historical record of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There must have been some spectacular about Christ that the history of the world is indexed in relation to the date of his birth.
There are other IDers who would simply conclude that there is some, unknown to them, designer. Behe would fit in that category.
What evolutionists refuse to admit is that their belief in evolution comes, at least in part, from a religious point of view.
They are definately following in the footsteps of their mentor:
"Origin of man now proved. -- Metaphysics must flourish. - He who understands baboon would do more toward Metaphysics than Locke." --- Darwin, Notebook M, August 16, 1838
Metaphysics: Beyond nature - a branch of philosophy concerned with the ultimate nature of existence. A priori speculation upon questions that are unanswerable to scientific observation, analysis, or experiment.
The "scientific qualifications" of Barbara Carroll Forrest:
B.A., English, Southeastern Louisiana University, 1974 - M.A., Philosophy, Louisiana State University, 1978 - Ph.D., Philosophy, Tulane University, 1988
Teaching positions:
Professor of Philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University, 2002 - Present
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University, 1994-2002
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University, 1989-1994
Full-time Instructor of Philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University, 1988-1989
Part-time Instructor in Philosophy, Southeastern Louisiana University, 1981-1988
Among her awards: "Friend of Darwin" Award, National Center for Science Education, March 1998
Conference Presentations [excerpts]:
"A Critical Philosophical Analysis of the Moral Distinction Between Active and Passive Euthanasia," Mid-South Sociological Association, Jackson, MS, November, 1978.
"Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection," and "The Possibility of Meaning in Human Evolution," Science and Society Conference. Russian Academy of Sciences; Institute of the History of Natural Sciences and Technology; Faculty of Philosophy, St. Petersburg State University. St Petersburg, Russia, June 19-25, 1999.
"Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection," at Science and God: A Naturalistic Examination of Cosmology, the Anthropic Principle, and Design Theories. Society of Humanist Philosophers, Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina, September 25-26, 1999.
Lectures/Presentations [excerpts]:
"Creation and Evolution: A Philosophical View of the Concept of Balanced Treatment." Public forum: "Evolution and Creationism in Louisiana Public Schools," SLU, March 31, 1981.
"The Influence of Darwin on 19th- and 20th-Century Culture," Dept. of Biological Sciences, Southeastern Louisiana University, April 21, 1995. ...
Journal Articles [excerpt]: "An Analysis of the Causal Interpretation of Karl Marx's Theory of History," Lamar Journal of the Humanities, Spring 1989.
...Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection," Philo, Fall-Winter 2000.
"The Possibility of Meaning in Human Evolution," Zygon, December 2000.
*
The "scientific qualifications of James Still:
James Still B.A., Philosophy, University of Minnesota - "...helped to build and maintain the Secular Web. ... President of the Internet Infidels from 2000 until 2002. ..Compulsively and deterministically dwells on philosophical problems and issues, ..epistemology, religion......an avid yoga practitioner ... reads widely in Eastern mysticism" , etc., etc., @ Infidels.org
All theories are laced with words such as those to show the tentative nature of science. You cannot complain about the tentative language used by evolution without expanding the complaint to cover all other sciences.
If your intent is to call all science false, do so without singling out the study of evolution for special attention.
As pointed out by many, there are no sciences that are '100% proven'. This is true of physics and math as well. Quantum physics has many questions and Godel has shown our inability to prove that math is self consistent.
Please cite the last time the nominee made the news thumping a bible!
On the other hand, perverts and the love that "dare not speak its name" can't seem to STFU!
How about the Univerity of Sarasota, where ICR's long time curriculum director got his mail-order diploma?
Let's see it! You don't have to go to all the trouble to show us all of it. Just one little piece of the evidence you have plenty of will do,
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