Posted on 10/19/2005 11:23:30 PM PDT by nickcarraway
No sooner had the Darwinists ended their 80th anniversary celebrations of the Scopes trial than they turned their attention to conducting censorship trials of their own. The ACLU has gone from defending teachers to prosecuting them. In a federal courtroom this week, the ACLU argued that science teachers in the school district of Dover, Pennyslvania, are not free under the Constitution to question evolutionary theory. That the Dover school board has to defend the constitutionality of its science curriculum before a federal judge is one more illustration of the insane First Amendment jurisprudence of the last 50 years.
The elite, sensing a chance to score a victory against critics of Darwinism, are watching the trial breathlessly. Slate has assigned famed correspondent Hanna Rosin to cover the trial; the New York Times dispatched Laurie Goodstein -- note that she is a religion not science reporter for the paper -- to cover it. There is an all-hands-on-deck feel to the reporting, which has been made even more critical by the presence of the Dover school board's star witness, Lehigh university biochemist Michael Behe. A dreaded scientist who perversely refuses to accept the overwhelming and obvious "consensus" in favor of Darwinism.
While neither Rosin nor Goodstein are up to the task of explaining evolutionary theory convincingly, they do realize the sacred duty of stopping this scientist. He's wandered much too far on to the Darwinists' turf.
Garbling the elite's dogmatic schema, Goodstein, in the Wednesday edition of the Times, had Behe challenging the "Darwinian theory of random natural selection." Random natural selection? No, no, Ms. Goodstein, nature selects not randomly but necessarily, choosing random mutations that happen to prove useful, under Darwin's theory. What is nature? And how does it choose with such incredible precision and marvelous efficiency? Well, that's not important and certainly not within the province of science, even if Aristotle, who probably believed in Gods and went to temple, did consider these questions in The Physics and concluded that nature requires an intelligent cause.
Goodstein doesn't have the Darwinian terminology down, but she is keenly aware of the elite's favorite argument for evolutionary theory: the scientific establishment says it is so and no reasonable person would question these omniscient scientists. Here's how she presents that point: "Scientific critics of intelligent design -- and there are many -- have said for years that its proponents never propose any positive arguments or proofs of their theory, but rest entirely on finding flaws in evolution." What delightful casualness.
Never mind that through history scientists -- and there are many -- have considered it "science" to examine a theory and find it inadequate if it couldn't explain the facts they did know, such as that beings in nature contain awe-inspiring intricacy, beings they couldn't replicate with their own intelligence. But then what do they know next to the scientific experts at the ACLU?
Aristotle was one of those creationists in a cheap toga who concluded that the abundant design in nature points to an intelligent cause even if that cause isn't visible. "For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true," he wrote in The Physics, a book that the ACLU would argue violates the separation between church and state.
Though Darwinism resembles an astonishing fable of chance -- the Greek mythmaker Empedocles, not Darwin, deserves credit for launching the idea that nature is undesigned and the product of genetic happenstance -- Goodstein feels confident enough to lampoon Intelligent Design as no more scientific than "astrology." She provides no proof in her story, but leads with the claim that Behe "acknowledged that under his definition of a scientific theory, astrology would fit as neatly as intelligent design." Doesn't Goodstein know that astrology is one of her secularist audience's favorite hobbies?
The problem with Behe's testimony for Hanna Rosin was not too little scientific explanation but too much. She found it all very taxing.
"The courtroom, it turns out, is a poor place to conduct a science class. Behe runs through specific examples of 'irreducible complexity' -- his idea that certain biochemical structures are too complex to have evolved in parts: blood clotting cascades, the immune system, cells," she writes. "He claims his critics have misread crucial bits of data. To a nonscientist such as myself (and presumably the judge), this is like Chinese: I recognize the language, but I have no idea whether the speaker is faking it. I have no context, no deeper knowledge of the relevant literature. The reporter seated next to me has written only four lines of notes for three hours of testimony. The mere fact that the trial is being conducted in such highly technical language means, for the moment, ID is winning."
Nevertheless, she is sure Behe's wrong, and adduces herself as evidence that intelligent design is impossible, "I need look no further than myself for counter-evidence: weak ankles, diabetes, high probability of future death. If there is a designer, she doesn't seem so intelligent."
Scientists who stood alone used to inspire a little more deference in the left. But Michael Behe is one nonconformist they won't defend. The silencers of unpopular science once feared ACLU lawyers. Now they retain them.
George Neumayr is executive editor of The American Spectator.
George Neumayr Ping
> Lehigh university biochemist Michael Behe. A dreaded scientist who perversely
Well, at least there's one accurate thing in this editorial: Behe = perverse.
BUMP!
The logic of your engine just went 'KABOOOM' on the pad.
Wolf
Weak ankles are not evidence of unintelligence. Eagles see better, Cheetahs run faster, Bears are stronger, but Man's design still dominates the planet. We know that we are not optimally designed, for "we were made lower than the angels", who have far superior bodies and abilities.
Diabetes and the probability of future death is not evidence of unintelligence. For we have been told clearly that our original design was modified to allow death and disease when we sinned.
Well, there's an ignorant statement for sure...
Wrong, dead wrong. Read The Physics and see for yourself. (The "teeth" stuff is in Book II Part 8). He argues that Nature is purposive, not intelligent. Which is exactly the position of the evolutionist: the purpose of living things is to survive, be fruitful, and multiply.
Aristotle of course never wore a toga - that's truly a schoolboy howler. And he hardly ever went to a temple, which is one reason he was accused of impiety and exiled. He taught, you may recall, that the Gods had no need of our worship, being utterly outside the natural order.
Points out the folly of academic snobbery, now attempting to use censorship to accomplish academic excellence.
Let's not confuse the Darwinian teachings on mutation and natural selection with its many proponent's rediculous and unsubstantiated claims that they can be used to solve the mystery of the origin of life itself.
In this arena Behe shines and the godless Darwinists want him censored. They maintain that the evidence cannot point in Behe's direction of Intelligent origins, merely because of their own godless presuppositions.
It's the teachers who are the plaintiffs in the case. The argument is that the school board can't use the pretext of charlatan pseudo science to sneak religious superstitions into science class and force qualified teachers who know better to teach it against their will and better judgment.
> that is your conclusion, not what the article says at all.
Oh, agreed. Because my conclusion is based on *facts*, while the article is based on ignorant drivel. They quote Aristotle on the topic of evolution vs. Creationism? Might as well look up what the man had to say about quantum mechanics. How can someone make a sound judgement about a discovry or a theory centuries *beofre* that discovery is made or the theory postulated?
B/c its their court and they can do what they want to -- that's how.
I never realized our Constitution had so much to say about the teaching of evolution. Must have missed it but I'm sure it's in there with the right to an abortion, isn't it? I mean the ACLU understands the Constitution better than any other group. We all defer to their stance on everything.
What are you talking about?
ID "IS" a criticism of evolutionary theory and problems with it. It has not been presented as an alternative theory, but as a criticism.
That said, an "intelligence" does not have to be personal or divine. It can be an "organizing principle." For example, I know when I enter a cave that I'll see things growing out of the ceiling and of the ground. I could say, "See a miner has been in here and has carved these neat pillars in the ground and on the ceiling." However, we know that the deposit of minerals from dripping groundwater has, via gravity, caused the formations. Gravity, it turns out, was an "organizing principle."
In that light, Darwin proposed an organizing principle (intelligence) to account for the variety of life as we see it. His "intelligence" or "organizing principle" was natural selection operating on random variation.
The problem with natural selection has been highlighted by Behe. Given the theorized age of the earth and of life on earth, there simply isn't enough time to account for the irreducible complexity that is seen.
Natural Selection is not a sufficient organizing principle/intelligence.
The criticism leveled by ID is valid, imo. Either Natural Selection requires a serious recalibration or we need to look for another organizing principle/intelligence.
Some people have a blind faith in global warming and others in evolution. Science of course is 100% accurate, that's
why the National Hurricane Center shouldn't bother updating
reports on Hurricane Wilma every few hours. Why does the National Weather service give us new forcasts every six hours? Meteorologists can project the weather days ahead
and just go on vacation, right.
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