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.
300
Dang!
A crock-pot is similar to a psycho-ceramic.
I like that phrase since I can insert the most appropriate three words I can think of. And they are really good ones too.
Don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. Gives the idea but not the excuse to delete the post or the poster.
But there's a problem with the sceptics' version of the story. The Hobbit team has found more human remains. These include a lower jaw with the same unusual features as the original find (including twin roots to the molars).The other counter-argument is that the morphology of floriensis doesn't match microcephaly. It really looks like a dwarf erectus."Let's buy into [the sceptics'] argument just for a bit of fun," said Professor Bert Roberts of the University of Wollongong, Australia, a member of the discovery team.
"We've got a complete lower jaw that's identical to the first so there we have a situation where we've now got to have two really badly diseased individuals.
"We've got a diseased population like some sort of leper colony, living in Liang Bua 18,000 years ago. The probabilities have got to be vanishingly small."
From Coyoteman's link:
Researchers produced additional data for comparisons by measuring latex endocasts—real models cast in latex of the likely brain structures found in10 human skulls, 18 chimpanzee skulls and 5 skulls of Homo erectus, a hominin that lived in Asia and Africa from about 2 million to 25,000 years ago.So what you have done is taken one opinion and its single supporting data point (the unexpectedly small brain) and proclaimed it as "... what it turned out to be."Included among the human skulls were a microcephalic skull and a pygmy skull. In microcephalic patients, chromosomal abnormalities impede normal growth of the top of the skull and the brain. Scientists found few structural similarities between the brains of modern microcephalics and the Hobbit.
"We still can't rule out secondary microcephaly, which can be caused by exposure to infections or toxins in the womb," Hildebolt notes. "But there are reports that scientists in Indonesia have found more fossils like the Hobbit. As those surface, it becomes much harder to attribute their brain size to secondary microcephaly."
Scientists also found little similarity to the Hobbit in the virtual endocast produced from the pygmy skull.
The issue hasn't "turned out" yet. It's still unsettled. The preponderance of evidence hasn't even swung your way. Do you feel any obligation at all to the facts?
I'll agree with that. I'm just showing a competing view of the evidence.
Because there is no need to cast doubt over common descent diverging via variation and natural selection to claim somehow God set it all up. The latter addition is also not a promising area of research.
Do you concede that evolution cannot explain how original life forms came into existence.
You're still not straight on what evolution is about versus what abiogenesis is about? How [one hyphenated-compound deleted] do you want to play this?
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.
Not to answer your question, but if you don't know what evolution is, how do you know it's wrong? Do you think there's a Nobel Prize in Stupidity?
Of course, if you learned anything, you might accidentally rethink something and risk the fires of Hell.
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?
Speaking for myself, I think that's more likely than seeding from Space or by any particular direct supernatural agency.
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?
I concede it can't be disproven, but that's really not in it's favor if you're talking about what goes into science class.
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.
If the school board's purposes did not require casting unjustified aspersions upon the scientific status of evolution as an explanation for the diversity of life, then they should not have done so. Also, they should not have recommended a retreaded creationist tract of a book for their source of alternate opinion on the "scientific controversy."
What observations have you made to lead you to believe humans are now evolving? Evolving into what?
I don't think creationists ever believed that. It would be totally opposite ogf their beliefs.
However, many creationists have been, and are, more than willing to attribute the theory of spontaneous abiogensis of protists to Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Which, whatever IS going on, is almost certainly not it. There may be still only one brain case, but are TWO tiny lower jaws now with twin-root molars.
Nevertheless, you trumpeted microcephaly as "what it turned out to be," injecting it into a thread on the Dover School Board Trial. Why the sudden change of subject? For creationism, every tiny little spinnable squeak anywhere in the world is somehow the vindication of decades of buffoonish behavior. The good news must be shared!!!
No. Nothing depends on what floriensis is or was. The evidence is in. You've got it all the important stuff wrong. The age of the Earth, the origin of species, the geologic column, everything. You will be wrong until you change.
Well, to begin with, the fact that humans have 4 different blood types, several different eye colors, several different skin colors, 3 distinct genetically heritable body types that predispose them to being better at different athletic events. Body heights that outfit some people to be jockeys and some to be basketball players.
And then there's Pigmys, hottentots, mauri, & bushmen.
And then there's the fact that we share genomic heritages, general body plans, and the ability to eat our fellow creatures across a wide spectrum of phyla.
Evolving into what?
Whatever best survives and prospers in the environment it finds itself in--like black-skinned people trying to defend themselves from sunlight, and white-skinned people trying to suck in every last bit of sunshine they can get.
I think it makes you throwbacks to the Dark Ages. Unlike in the Dark Ages, We don't presently consult the Pope or the uneducated masses to determine what professionals think. And that is what science class is about--what professional scientists think. Not what the voters think they ought to think.
<< Not to answer your question, but if you don't know what evolution is, how do you know it's wrong? >>
Just acuz it is! Hahaha!
I teach logic to college students. One of the first things I have to get across is that a critical thinker has enough sense not to argue about something he knows next to nothing about. But that never stops these guys.
In thirty-five years of dealing with this issue, I have met thousands of creationists. I started out as a pig-ignorant Young Earth Creationist [ignorant of what evolution was, that is -- which didn't stop me from spouting off just as we see here], then for a short time as an Old Earth Creationist [in a desperate attempt to hold on to some vestige of creationism in the face of what I was learning] -- and then finally, after actually studying the subject scientifically instead of getting all my "facts" from fundy religious tracts -- I have yet to meet anyone who both understands the ToE and rejects it as "bad science" or "just a theory" or "just religious faith." Not a single one.
I notice that we repeat certain facts again and again and again, only to have them ignored -- so here goes again. The big names in ID accept evolution and common descent. Not only "micro-evolution" [to use the creationist shibboleth] -- but also "macro." Those scientists understand it -- and they do not reject it.
You'd think it would give these creationists pause to realize that their great ID heroes think they are all full of tercus stauri -- but it doesn't. They are happy to use the IDers for their purposes.
They love to castigate those who accept the mainstream scientific explanation in the most vicious terms -- atheist, anti-God, religious bigots, etc. -- but even their own chosen heroes -- the IDers -- agree with those evil-utionists. The irony is delicious.
But ever since 1987, when creationism was tossed out on its ear in court, after creation "scientists" swore on the Bible that their "model" had nothing to do with religion [liars] -- creationists have desperately latched onto ID as their new wedge. When ID crashes and burns, they will just move to a new one.
It seems hopeless to engage them in debate. It's like talking to a brick wall. But I woke up -- after a LONG time. I know many others have, too. So it is worth it, even though it is supremely frustrating having to put up with all the nonsense.
M
Those fighting against ID are narrow-minded bigots who don't want any other position discussed.
BWAHAHAHA. And those advocating the creationist position are, OTOH, very open minded to other 'positions'. BWAHAHAHA. Thanks for the laugh.
The problem, of course, is that every thread turns into every previous one. If on some thread sometime nobody rebuts, the back-again-dumb-as-a-stumpers might seem to have made a point and might actually recruit some unsuspecting person to their nonsense. That's all they live for, the few tiny instances when they can post something bogus which goes unrebutted by fact or logic.
huzzah!
I'll be willing to bet that if those same people knew exactly what ID advocates believe about common descent and the age of the earth, they would reject it also.
What you have is science rejectors being scammed by more sophisticated science rejectors.
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