Posted on 10/16/2005 12:02:32 PM PDT by gobucks
Natural history museums around the country are mounting new exhibits they hope will succeed where high school biology classes have faltered: convincing Americans that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a rigorously tested cornerstone of modern science.
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"I think everyone is realizing that we need to be doing a great deal more. We just haven't made the effort to communicate evolution to people in terms they can understand. Evolution is exciting," Diamond said.
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"One of the big misunderstandings, I think, is that a lot of people have stopped realizing that science is a secular activity," said Lance Grande. Field's $17 million, 20,000-square foot, "Evolving Planet" exhibit is slated to open on March 10, 2006.
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"In many ways, I blame science itself in that we have done a terrible job of explaining what science is," said Leonard Krishtalka of ... Kansas in Lawrence.
"I would imagine to non-scientists a lot of science and technology sounds like so much magic," he said. "Is it any surprise that so many people are choosing one kind of magic over another kind of magic?"
In an effort to deepen visitors' understanding of evolution, the Field Museum has designed "Evolving Planet" to showcase dinosaurs without allowing them to overshadow everything else. In past evolution exhibits, McCarter said, people "whipped through the origin of life, and everything before the dinosaurs, to go look at the dinosaurs. And by the time they got done looking at the dinosaurs, they were so tired that they whipped out."
This time, he said, "we're using the dinosaurs as kind of the marquee to draw them in and saying, this is a very complicated story, which you've got to dig into over a long period of time."
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Time for sleep now; signing off.
No, I didn't lie before. He said plainly that the best place for mutation to occur is in the developement of the embryo. Evolution is a theory. It is a theory because you've never seen it happen. If you've never seen evolution happen before, you can't say how it "can't" happen - only how your theory expects it to happen or how your theory expects it not to happen. I'm looking at it from a common sense biology point of view and a practical life view in general. Or in other words, I'm suspending disbelief long enough to pretend it's a fact and then imagining where his statement leads. It leads to the leap from one to another. Why? Simple. Cause an undirected random event Doesn't care where or when it happens - it really doesn't care how either.
You said it plain as day. I marched you right down the path and you said it:
"If an organism gave birth to a new species, there wouldn't be another of the same species to mate with. It's not how any evolutionist says evolution can or does work."
Your words. What is the problem with this statement? Evolution is a random process that acts based upon chance.
If it happens based on chance, chance doesn't care that there will be no mate. It flat doesn't care. You may care because it's a problem with your theory now. I'm just trying to get you to see that. Evolution can't think. It doesn't have a mind of it's own that knows where it's going. It's an undirected process that just stumbles where it will and wakes up the next morning with the girl it can't explain, doesn't know the first name of and might only remember "she didn't look that way last night..." But as for where evolution ends up, it doesn't care.
It isn't that Evolution somehow knows there won't be a mate there that is the problem. It's the fact that you know there won't be a mate there that is the problem. Or more specifically, it's the fact that everyone of us here knows that which becomes the problem. This is why you have to carefully define it in the theory side and pretend what "cannot happen" makes sense. When evolution can't know what the end result is because it doesn't know where it's going, you can't limit where evolution takes place, how fast, why or what the end result is. If it's truly random and based on mutation, the theory isn't the guide. Reality becomes the guide. And we all know the reality of the woman that would be screaming in horror at this thing that just came out of her. I'm sure that would be her last memory as a cardiac episode would soon follow and probably be partnered with severe psychiatric issues if she lived through it.
So, yes, I believe Rainbow said this - whether intending to or not. I think the guy is brilliant. Perhaps I inferred too much. If I did, so be it. I don't wish to impugne the man. But there is the theory and there is reality. When you define it as random and undirected the reality then imposes itself. You don't then get to direct it with semantic games or theory. If it's random, it is random. If it's directed, then you have another problem. Evolution knowing there won't be a mate destroys the randomness and introduces direction.
Do you see it now? I'm sure a lot of people do. The question is whether you do.
Anything to add to 122?
BTW, if you wish to see Dr. Rainbow's presentation I uploaded it to rapidshare tonight:
Pt1 http://rapidshare.de/files/6470620/hovind_rainbow_300k.part1.rar.html 48,829kb
pt2 http://rapidshare.de/files/6470882/hovind_rainbow_300k.part2.rar.html 22,330kb
This is a single wmv file compressed and split into two rar files. The extracted file size is in excess of 80mb.
The backlash and the repulsion felt towards Evolutionists is because of the the values they bring to the culture wars."
So you are stating that the entire argument against evolution and modern biology is not based upon reason or facts but is simply a political device used to obtain a cultural result you want? That's what I'm reading in your response quoted above.
OK, since they are in bed with what is supposed to be the enemy, can we assume that the basis for the anti-evolution (anti-science) movement is unpatriotic at the very least?
I'm neither kidding nor exaggerating. Honest science education is very much the friend of democracy. These are people who want to impose some type of authoritarian control, and each side (Islamic/Fundamentalist) is betting they will prevail in the end so they cooperate to tear down education.
Both science and religion have been used as battering rams to destroy one crowd or another. I would tie neither, of necessity, to any sense of patriotism. If you will remember from history or from first hand experience depending on how old you are, Jack Kennedy faced issues over electability because of his religious background. It was wondered openly whether he could divorce himself from the whims of Rome and be patriotic in the face of rhetoric that might emanate from the Vatican. It is not an irrelevant concern to have had either then or now IMO. If the public needs to be informed on the issue, they need to be informed. No one in modern times is so divorced from their high school history as to be ignorant of the Darkages.
That said, we also are accutely aware of the role Evolution in the hands of "scientists" within Communist countries has been used as a weapon against religion to destroy or pre-empt people's interest in or allegience to God. If this is what you would reference as supporting "patriotism", then, yes, science might be seen as patriotic - by dictators who make of themselves god. This is no more fair or unfair an estimate of worth than the latter estimate.
Given the above, it would seem your premise has vanished..
Yes, ID exploits a gray area in evolution.
I see them doing here what they've been doing in Turkey for years.
Not nearly as much as Al Smith did.
Degree isn't the issue.
You claim: "Given the above, it would seem your premise has vanished.."
You err.
Firstly, the "above" (now below) is scarcely to be considered "given"
Secondly, if don't see that using anti-American Islamists to further your cause is unpatriotic, I can't help you.
On to the specifics...
You assert, without documentation that science has been used as a battering ram to destroy people (the exact quote being "Both science and religion have been used as battering rams to destroy one crowd or another...")
If anything, science is a bettering ram, improving life and creating opportunities. And don't waste anyone's time by blathering about some technological application of science used in war.
Then you go on about Kennedy... entirely valid, but an inverse relation to the point. Meirs is closer...where the presence of a presumed religious outlook is the requirement.
Next wou wander into Lysenkoism and call it evolution: (the relevant quote being "...we also are accutely aware of the role Evolution in the hands of "scientists" within Communist countries has been used as a weapon against religion to destroy or pre-empt people's interest in or allegience to God..."
1. Who's "we"? Certainly not me.
2. Codswallop. They simply used indimidation and fear. How many pre-revolution Russian or Chinese peasants had any notion of any form of evolutionary theory? And, to repeat...it was Lysenkoism.
Not to you, perhaps. It was of some importance to Smith.
Actually, it is the reason. It remains a theory because it has never been observed. If it had been observed, we'd be looking at scientific journal after scientific journal endlessly discussing that fact. It's never happened. Instead, we're constantly treated to repeated articals about "could this be what evolutionists were hoping for" only to find the evo crowd depressed because it's hopes were once again dashed; but, saying the failure proves now more than ever the truth of the theory... lol You can get lost in the semantics games all you want. You've never witnessed it and are trying to define it theoretically because of that.
The ToE predicts that an organism will not give birth to another species in one generation.
So what. If evolution is random and undirected as your crowd states, then predictions of this nature are irrelevant as random chance would immediately overrule the predictions.
Therefore, your fantasy about a mother giving birth to something nonhuman would falsify the ToE.
My fantasy? Can you think for yourself, or are you just sworn to defend this stuff in absence of rational thought? Your theory is a fantasy hoping to be true. I merely pointed out the conflict between your dogmatic assertion of what can't happen in light of evolutions same dogmatic pronouncement that it is a random operation that is not directed. The obvious paradox that protrudes from that collision is that single step is not only possible; but, probable because radomness can deem it so. Randomness doesn't have your theory to consult.
That leads to a brick wall for you in many ways. If randomness isn't consulting your theory for permission, then one of two things is true - either one step is possible, or something intelligent is guiding the process.
I wasn't arguing that single step falsified your theory. You were. If randomness makes singlestep possible, then you've just admitted that your theory nullifies itself.
Take a sabbatical and construct it logically. Get out your copy of Copi and go to work. There isn't any way around it. As soon as you invoke randomness, you can't rule out single step. It's not possible. In order to rule out single step, you have to invoke direction. You literally have to tell a random process to consult your theory. At that point, you've invoked direction and left the realm of randomness. So, which dogmatic pronouncement goes away? Either, neither - do we just switch the brain off and flip the light on the "tilt" switch...
Please don't feed the trolls. Evolution taking place after conception should be a clue as to what you are dealing with here.
You're the one proffering Science as patriotism, I just offered some things that defy your "theory". The burden is on you, not me son. I reject the notion out of hand because science may be something in and of itself until people become involved. Once people enter the equation, science can be anything people want it to be. That is the underlying point to be made in what I offered. If you want to ignore history, and there's plenty of it out there to ignore - like Nazi Germany where science was used to promote the Aryan vision. You can argue that "science" wasn't the problem; but, those pesky scientists that misappropriated the field to their own ends... At that point, you may think yourself clever; but, you've proved my point, not your own.
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