Posted on 10/21/2005 10:26:36 AM PDT by Behind Liberal Lines
ITHACA, N.Y. — Cornell University Interim President Hunter Rawlings III on Friday condemned the teaching of intelligent design as science, calling it "a religious belief masquerading as a secular idea."
"Intelligent design is not valid science," Rawlings told nearly 700 trustees, faculty and other school officials attending Cornell's annual board meeting.
"It has no ability to develop new knowledge through hypothesis testing, modification of the original theory based on experimental results and renewed testing through more refined experiments that yield still more refinements and insights," Rawlings said.
Rawlings, Cornell's president from 1995 to 2003, is now serving as interim president in the wake of this summer's sudden departure of former Cornell president Jeffrey Lehman.
Intelligent design is a theory that says life is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying a higher power must have had a hand. It has been harshly criticized by The National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which have called it repackaged creationism and improper to include in scientific education.
There are brewing disputes involving evolution and intelligent design in at least 20 states and numerous school districts nationwide, including California, New Mexico, Kansas and Pennsylvania. President Bush elevated the controversy in August when he said that schools should teach intelligent design along with evolution.
Many Americans, including some supporters of evolution, believe intelligent design should be taught with evolution. Rawlings said a large minority of Americans — nearly 40 percent — want creationism taught in public schools instead of evolution.
For those reasons, Rawlings said he felt it "imperative" to use his state-of-the-university address — usually a recitation of the school's progress over the last year — to speak out against intelligent design, which he said has "put rational thought under attack."
Thanks for the ping!
It's already happening, according to their own numbers, 88 percent of the children raised in evangelical homes leave church at the age of 18, never to return.
Their Anti-Evolution stance is probably a significant factor (I'm sure hucksters like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and other televanglist do their part in contributing to those numbers) and if they continue with this ID nonsense things can only get worse.
I'm not "afraid." I'm offended at the raw arrogance of your ilk.
Sorry, I don't mean to be patronizing or pedantic.
No you weren't. Your post was very good. But as you noted, it depends on the definition of "ape". And as this site indicates (http://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/classification/Hominidae.html#Hominidae)
Home 
the word ape still excludes humans.
My original point was to establish that this Humans are apes. QED. is not an argument. Your post was.
No doubt. It does not logically follow, however, that God-hating evolutionists do not actually exist.
Clue for the clueless: The majority of American evolutionists are Christians. Sorry if that makes your head explode, and shatters your false and defamatory accusation.
Well, DUH. If all evolutionists hated God, it'd be redundant of me to refer to "God-hating evolutionists." There are plenty of evolutionists who don't hate God, and who don't exhibit a visceral hostility toward religious people. Clearly those weren't the ones I was talking about.
Looks like a 12 year old Arnold Schwartzenegger.
It seems to depend on what definition you are using. Traditionally apes excluded humans, but recently (as in the last few decades) biological evidence has indicated that humans are not distinct from the (other) apes. So there has been a change to include humans as apes. However the traditional definition of ape is still ingrained in popular culture.
The traditional definition of ape is inaccurate because it doesn't reflect biology as it is now understood. By excluding humans the old definition creates the false impression that biologically chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans are clumped together with humans miles apart from them. But this is not the case. Biologically humans are clumped together with chimpanzees. Gorillas are miles away from them, and orangutans are miles away from all those three.
So if chimanzees are X, and gorillas are X then from a biological standpoint humans should be X too.
But I don't think you are wrong in arguing that humans are not apes. Humans might not be distinct from great apes biologically, but they are distinct behaviourly, so in that context I can see it makes sense to exclude humans.
So the difference between humans and (other) apes is cultural, not bioligical.
And while you are right that wikipedia is not a primary source, it is equally true that neither the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language nor the Encyclopedia Britannica is the arbiter of scientific knowledge. When defining "ape" scientifically, both of these sources are irrelevant.
This is an abstract discussing some of the modern taxonomy
APES BELOW HERE
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As you can see from the above, there is no natural group in which the "traditional" apes, the chimps, gorillas, orangutans and gibbons, which does not include the humans.
I have to disagree here. The more we observe chimps and gorillas the more their behaviour resembles ours. It is simply a matter of degree rather than type. Even then the degree of separation is very small.
Wasn't one of the creationists here recently claiming that every single species of the cat family (lions/tigers/pumas/domestic cats etc etc etc) had evolved from a single prototypical cat pair on the ark within presumably a few-hundred years? But they won't allow anything like the same latitude when it comes to the primate family.
Humans aren't apes. They didn't evolve from apes and apes didn't evolve from humans. Yet the DNA is so close as to be one and the same (with just micro-evolutionary differences and we all accept micro-evolution don't we?), our behavioural differences are minor and a matter of degree rather than type, social groupings are as similar as possible without being the same species and all the similarities taken together make us just another species of chimp (Pan sapiens) but we aren't apes.
You may feel you evolved from an ape. That's your right. But I don't. Someone with more intelligence and thought developed my ancestors.
The new prez of UI also recently had a heart attack (he's in his mid-50s with new wife and baby) and was released from the hospital about 2 weeks ago. A friend of mine, big donor at UI, who usually is invited to comment on new prez wasn't on this one. My friend would have voted his application down for lack of experience and diverted other interests. The head of the hiring committee knew this and told my friend that the committee knew my friend would veto this man's application. As a result, my friend wasn't allowed comment. My friend has every right to say "neaner, neaner".
Amen!
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