Posted on 11/08/2005 4:17:17 AM PST by PatrickHenry
For the past six weeks, the debate over evolution and intelligent design has played out in a Pennsylvania courtroom.
Today, Kansas gets the national spotlight back — and with it, the possibility of a federal lawsuit here.
“What’s going on in Kansas,” said Kenneth Miller, a Brown University biologist, “is much more radical and much more dangerous to science education” than the contested decision in Dover, Pa., to mandate the teaching of “intelligent design” in public school science classes.
Intelligent design speculates that the world is too complex to have evolved without the help of an unknown designer — an alien, perhaps, or God. Such teachings in public schools, the ACLU says, violate constitutional restrictions on the separation of church and state.
“Absolutely, absolutely,” said T. Jeremy Gunn, director of the ACLU’s Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, when asked if the new science standards Kansas is expected to adopt today could be vulnerable to litigation.
An official with the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which helped defend the Dover school board, said Kansas should be able to avoid legal scrutiny. Casey Luskin said the standards here critique evolution, but they don’t promote intelligent design.
“It’s definitely a different issue in Kansas” than in Pennsylvania, Luskin said.
‘More radical’
It’s a different battle, perhaps, but definitely the same war. Many of the participants in the Pennsylvania trial are veterans of the Kansas evolution debates, and are keeping a close eye on today’s meeting of the Kansas Board of Education.
Miller, for example, testified in the Pennsylvania trial against intelligent design. He came to Kansas in 2000 to campaign against conservative school board members the last time the evolution debate flared up here.
The new Kansas standards literally change the definition of science, he said, so that natural explanations aren’t necessary to explain natural phenomena. That opens the door, he said, for astrology to be taught in public school classrooms.
“Is this what proponents on the Kansas Board of Education have in mind?” Miller asked.
Michael Behe, a Lehigh University scientist, wrote “Darwin’s Black Box” — a touchstone text of the intelligent design movement. He testified in Pennsylvania, and before the Kansas Board of Education when it held hearings on the science standards.
“I think having students hear criticisms of any theory is a great idea,” Behe said. “I think in one respect, it’ll mean it’s permissible to question evolution. For odd historical reasons, questioning evolution has been put off-limits. If Kansas can do it, it can be done elsewhere.”
More evolution?
Luskin agreed.
“In contrast to what everybody has said, Kansas students will hear more about evolution and not less about evolution,” he said. “This is a victory for people who want students to learn critical thinking skills in science.”
But Gunn noted that the vast majority of scientists believed in evolution as a proven explanation for the origins of life. The “handful” who don’t, he said, have resorted to making their case through politics instead of through traditional scientific methods.
“Do we teach both sides of the controversy on astrology in science class? Do we teach both sides of phrenology?” Gunn said. “This is not a scientific controversy, it’s a political controversy.”
Testimony in the Pennsylvania trial wrapped up on Friday. A ruling in that case is expected in January.
Argument from incredulity.
Many have studied the woodpecker, including its tongue, and come to a different and highly educated conclusion.
This sounds like a typical Hovindite manipulation of information. What the creationist sites you visit do not tell you can be more important than what they do tell you. In the case of Carbon 14 dating they forget to mention all the calibration techniques and precautions against contamination used. There is a reason they stick to 30 second sound bites. There is a reason they don't tell you everything.
Being a republican or a conservative is not synonymous with being ignorant in spite of the efforts of the demented left to project that illusion.
That's about the same odds as a shuffled deck of cards coming up in their resulting order but, you can shuffle a deck of cards all day long. Me thinks you put too much belief in a radio talk show host.
"Mechanics of ATP Synthase.
Wolfgang Junge, D. Cherepanov; O. Panke; K. Gumbiowsky; M. Muller; S. Engelbrecht
Departement of Biophysics, University of Osnabrück, Barbarastr.11, 49076 Osnabrück, Germany
ATP synthase functions as two rotary motor/generators coupled together by a central shaft and an eccentric bearing. Symmetry mismatch between the protonmotive drive, FO, and the nucleotide processing device, F1, call for a soft elastic power transmission. Its existence is demonstrated by micro-videography of rotation and its functional benefits are theoretically scrutinised.
Keywords:
ATPase; motor protein; nanomechanics; viscoelasticity; proton"
from:
http://bio.web.psi.ch/MV2001/abstracts.html
Micro-videography of rotation? - wow! Pure speculation, but does this sound like an evolutionary prototype for the flagellum?
Aggghhh!!! Must you guys mimick all our worst habits!? ;)
Geeze, I wonder? LOL
Even molecules enjoy the dance and occasionally spin.
Your saying that does not make it so.
Quite the contrary, actually. Evolution has centuries of testing and confirmation behind it. You may choose to ignore the evidence, but to deny it is a lie.
An idea how many decades old? Interesting to speculate on something almost accepted for many years all ready.
Recent article from Japan: Direct observation of steps in rotation of the bacterial flagellar motor, Nature 437, 916-919 (6 October 2005)
Has movie in supplementary info page.
Then how can Behe and Minnich claim that the flagellum is irreducibly complex, when not only does it work in the absence of some components, but there are sequence and mechanistic homologies to a near-ubiquitous protein system that operates by a rotary coupling mechanism?
Why do you care what Behe and Minnich say?
You have to know that by now. Why this disingenuous rhetorical stupidity?
Disingenuous rhetorical stupidity is all they have left.
They have no facts, no evidence, nothing. The school board in the Dover case got caught lying, and since creationists have almost to a man refused to condemn them for doing so, we have learned that lying is okay to them....
What?!? No Black Sabbath?
Lying for the cause is another thing creationists have in common with the left.
Your zeal blinds you.
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