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Dover, PA Evolution Trial [daily thread for 07 Oct]
York Daily Record ^ | 07 October 2005 | Staff

Posted on 10/07/2005 7:23:15 AM PDT by PatrickHenry

To keep this all in one daily thread, here are links to two articles in the York Daily Record (with excerpts from each), which has been doing a great job of reporting on the trial:

Forrest cross-examination a rambling wonder.

About the time that Richard Thompson, head law guy at the Thomas More center and chief defender of the Dover Area School Board, started his third year of cross-examination of philosopher Barbara Forrest, it was easy to imagine that at that moment, everyone in the courtroom, including Forrest, who doesn’t believe in God, was violating the separation of church and court by appealing to God for it to please, Lord, just stop.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if there was a point to the ceaseless stream of questions from Thompson designed to elicit Lord knows what. He’d ask her the same question 18 different times, expecting, I guess, a different answer at some point. And he never got it.

Thompson, who said he’s a former prosecutor, should have known better. Forrest, a professor at Southeastern Louisiana University and expert on the history of the intelligent design creationist movement, was a lot smarter than, say, some poor, dumb criminal defendant.

Here is a summation of Forrest’s testimony: She examined the history of the intelligent design movement and concluded that it’s simply another name for creationism. And what led her to that conclusion? The movement leader’s own words. They started out with a religious proposition and sought to clothe it in science. The result was similar to putting a suit on your dog.

[anip]

Thompson was in the midst of asking Forrest whether she had heard a bunch of things that some people had said to indicate, well, to indicate whether she’d heard a bunch of things that some people had said, I guess, when the topic came up.

Thompson asked whether she had ever heard a statement by some guy — frankly, this one caught me off-guard and I didn’t catch the guy’s name — who said that belief in evolution can be used to justify “cross-species sex.”

This came on the same day that Thompson grilled Forrest about her opposition to the so-called Santorum amendment to the No Child Left Behind Act that seemed to encourage, sort of, the teaching of intelligent design. Our U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum is a friend of the intelligent design people.

He also has a strange obsession with bestiality, commenting that court decisions that uphold the right to privacy would lead to — naturally, and you know you were thinking it — man-on-dog sex.

Dover science teachers testified that they fought references to intelligent design.

Defense attorney Richard Thompson [he represents the school board] said differing opinions on whether teachers and administration worked in cooperation to create the Dover Area School District’s statement on intelligent design comes down to perspective.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; Philosophy; US: Pennsylvania
KEYWORDS: crevolist; dinosaur; dinosaurs; dover; evolution; godsgravesglyphs; paleontology; scienceeducation
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To: Michael_Michaelangelo
The "Hobbit" was thought to be a new species based upon the way it "looked." Turns out, it was a vertically-challenged dude with a brain impedement.

Do you have a source for this nonsense?

281 posted on 10/08/2005 9:42:16 AM PDT by VadeRetro (I'll have a few sleepless nights after I send you over, sure! But it'll pass.)
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To: Michael_Michaelangelo
I did a quick google and found: 'Hobbit' Fossil Likely Represents New Branch On Human Family Tree

A fossil of a diminutive human nicknamed "the Hobbit" likely represents a previously unrecognized species of early humans, according to the results of a detailed comparison of the fossil's brain case with those of humans, apes and other human ancestors...

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050304175249.htm

Looks like the "vertically-challenged dude with a brain impedement" hypothesis has been falsified.

282 posted on 10/08/2005 9:53:18 AM PDT by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: Doctor Stochastic

Luxury. In the old days we had to make do with XON/XOFF.


283 posted on 10/08/2005 9:53:28 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: Coyoteman; Michael_Michaelangelo
I thought maybe he was talking about floriensis, but it's hard to be sure. The likeliest scenario is it's a typical island dwarf-form off of H. erectus. (The first erectus fossil ever found was "Java Man," a few islands over.) Selection pressures for dwarfism often exist on small islands. Thus, in one instance, a "dwarf mammoth" species.
284 posted on 10/08/2005 10:01:54 AM PDT by VadeRetro (I'll have a few sleepless nights after I send you over, sure! But it'll pass.)
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To: VadeRetro
I thought maybe he was talking about floriensis, but it's hard to be sure. The likeliest scenario is it's a typical island dwarf-form off of H. erectus. (The first erectus fossil ever found was "Java Man," a few islands over.) Selection pressures for dwarfism often exist on small islands. Thus, in one instance, a "dwarf mammoth" species.

You mean (gasp) that evolution didn't keep on making people bigger, stronger, smarter, etc.? You mean, some actually had to adapt to local conditions by getting smaller and more efficient, and, in this case, may even have become a different species?

Maybe there's something to this science stuff after all!

285 posted on 10/08/2005 10:07:47 AM PDT by Coyoteman (I love the sound of beta decay in the morning!)
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To: VadeRetro
Are you claiming to be hearing this for the first time ever in your [3 words deleted] life?

I like that phrase since I can insert the most appropriate three words I can think of. And they are really good ones too.

286 posted on 10/08/2005 10:27:32 AM PDT by balrog666 (A myth by any other name is still inane.)
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To: Ichneumon; Ulugh Beg; VadeRetro; Doctor Stochastic; balrog666; Coyoteman; PatrickHenry
But in general the origin of life occurred via "pre-evolutionary" processes (even if some unspecified "designer" was involved), whereas evolution itself can only begin once something *already* exists which undergoes replication in a heritable fashion.

My questions?

If evolutionists are willing to concede that some unspecified 'designer' may have created life forms, why is there a trial going on in Dover?

Do you concede that evolution cannot explain how original life forms came into existence.

It seems to me that your statement is nothing more than natural selection within species. Is that an accurate construction of your statements? I believe in natural selection; what some would call micro-evolution.

So, do you believe in the whole primordial soup thing that was taught in many schools, at least when I was growing up and that life came into existence from non-life?

If you concede that a 'designer' may have been involved in the creation of life, why do you think students should not be told of this possibility?

Given that the Dover school board has stated that evolution will be taught, and given your construct of evolution not having anything to do with how life came into existence; what's the problem? seems to me that the school board statement does not contradict anything in your statement.

287 posted on 10/08/2005 10:47:04 AM PDT by connectthedots
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To: mlc9852; js1138
What is the point of ID if they accept common descent? What are they arguing about then?

Since ID wants to claim to be a science, it must account for observed phenomena that Darwinian theory accounts for, in this case, the observed commonality between all species. A simple way to put this is: "if there's a fossil gap, what is it a gap in?". The strength of Darwin's argument lies in the easily observed continuity of morphology, function and geological location you see when you match up lifeforms in the geological column, the fossil-established tree of life, and the independently derived DNA mutational clock tree of life.

Since it wants to be a science, unlike the micro-macro argument you are mistakenly assigning to it, ID can't just put blinkers on and and pretend it doesn't have to explain why the fundamental machinery every species uses is nearly identical across the board, to the extent that we can all pretty much eat each other. Darwinian theory provides an answer to these puzzles which can't be ignored so, as the quotes you were offered more than suggest, ID is a potential modification of Darwinian evolutionary theory, not an alternative to it.

ID suggests that God, or little green men, or whatever, descended from the sky and tweaked an ongoing process, not started one up from scratch, over and over. The latter would be the "poof" theory of evolution, which, while possibly true, can't even pretend to have scientific credentials, since it allows us to detect or predict nothing, which puts it outside of science's domain of competence.

288 posted on 10/08/2005 11:13:19 AM PDT by donh
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To: donh
ID can't just put blinkers on and and pretend it doesn't have to explain why the fundamental machinery every species uses is nearly identical across the board, to the extent that we can all pretty much eat each other.

I already explained this.

The designer (definitely NOT any recognizable deity, of course) is a bloody, psychopathic, murderous sadist who set out, with malice aforethought, to design an ecosystem that would maximize pain and suffering. I think it will be fairly easy to find confirming evidence for this conjecture, and pretty hard to find disconfirming evidence. Assuming that life forms are intentionally designed.

289 posted on 10/08/2005 11:19:59 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: js1138
Of course the designer missed a few opportunities to inflict pain. Humans have filled that gap.


290 posted on 10/08/2005 11:23:08 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: connectthedots
Given that the Dover school board has stated that evolution will be taught, and given your construct of evolution not having anything to do with how life came into existence; what's the problem? seems to me that the school board statement does not contradict anything in your statement.

The problem is that they want to teach this in science class, teach it somewhere else, and it won't be an affront to science.

Do you concede that evolution cannot explain how original life forms came into existence.

I suspect he concedes that evolutionary theory doesn't presently explain the origin of life in any spectacularly compelling way.

So, do you believe in the whole primordial soup thing that was taught in many schools, at least when I was growing up and that life came into existence from non-life?

Nobody but creationists have been clamging the gong for spontaneous abiogensis for a very long time now. Gradual pathways such as the various forms of RNA world seem to better account for the available evidence.

291 posted on 10/08/2005 11:24:56 AM PDT by donh
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To: donh

"unlike the micro-macro argument you are mistakenly assigning to it,"

Believing we descended from apes is hard an argument over micro-macro evolution.


292 posted on 10/08/2005 11:35:08 AM PDT by mlc9852
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To: mlc9852
"unlike the micro-macro argument you are mistakenly assigning to it,"

Believing we descended from apes is hard an argument over micro-macro evolution.

Well, yes, as a matter of fact, it is, and as has been pointed out to you repeatedly and definitively, both sides of the argument going on before the Dover schoolboard concede that evolution is occuring, and is the seamless source of the variety of species seen on our planet today, including the human species. Whatever the argument is that you seem to want to have, it is not related to the subject of this thread, and ID theory, as it relates to being a science, is not your ally.

293 posted on 10/08/2005 11:50:07 AM PDT by donh
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To: donh
Nobody but creationists have been clamging the gong for spontaneous abiogensis for a very long time now.

I don't think creationists ever believed that. It would be totally opposite ogf their beliefs.

294 posted on 10/08/2005 11:59:23 AM PDT by connectthedots
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To: CarolinaGuitarman

All things have an end ... except a sausage, which has two.


295 posted on 10/08/2005 12:32:16 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch ist der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: js1138
You're treating her rather harshly. Maybe she's also masochistic.
296 posted on 10/08/2005 12:34:52 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch ist der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: Doctor Stochastic

Only if she is a pantheist.


297 posted on 10/08/2005 12:36:30 PM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
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To: js1138


298 posted on 10/08/2005 12:47:44 PM PDT by Doctor Stochastic (Vegetabilisch = chaotisch ist der Charakter der Modernen. - Friedrich Schlegel)
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To: mlc9852
What is the point of ID if they accept common descent? What are they arguing about then?

ID is part of a radical left wing plot to dumb down our schools by teaching charlatan pseudo science in class.

299 posted on 10/08/2005 12:51:55 PM PDT by shuckmaster (Bring back SeaLion and ModernMan!)
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To: Coyoteman; VadeRetro
Not so fast - Wile - E - Coyoteman:

New 'Hobbit' disease link claim (September, 2005)

Indonesian anthropologist Teuku Jacob controversially took possession of the remains and declared them to be those of a modern human with the condition microcephaly.

This disorder is characterised by a small brain, but it can also be associated with dwarfism, as well as abnormalities of the face and jaw. For this reason, some scientists believe the condition could cause a modern human to look primitive in evolutionary terms.

Microcephaly

Development of motor functions and speech may be delayed. Hyperactivity and mental retardation are common occurrences, although the degree of each varies. Convulsions may also occur. Motor ability varies, ranging from clumsiness to spastic quadriplegia.

What we have here is, a vertically-challenged dude - Frank - with a brain impedement.


"Hey - I resemble that remark."

~Frank Flores

300 posted on 10/08/2005 12:57:40 PM PDT by Michael_Michaelangelo (The best theory is not ipso facto a good theory. Lots of links on my homepage...)
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