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.
That's not the problem here. The problem is biologists who don't know anything about mathematics or probability or logic and who have therefore ended up trying to defend a worthless atheistic ideological doctrine (evolution) which basically stands everything we know about probability and logic on their heads.
And don't mention the Wistar Symposium.
Why? The truth hurts that much?
For well known reasons, having even one complex creature arise via combinations of mutations and "natural selection" would be a probabilistic miracle, i.e. an absolutely zero probability event come to pass.
The problem is that a reasonable person might could buy off on some sort of a theory which demanded one such probabilistic miracle in the whole history of the universe but evolution requires that every creature which ever walked, swam, or flew on, under, or over the Earth arise in such fashion, which is basically an endless sequence of probabilistic miracles. That basically stands everything we know about modern mathematics and probability theory on their heads.
The Earth is commonly supposed to be three or four billion years old and the universe itself about 20 billion years old. Nonetheless entirely reasonable calculations have shown that even if there was such a thing as mutation and selection creating our present biosphere from inorganic materials (hint, there isn't such a thing), it would demand quadrillions or quintillions of years.
One statement of the actual time frames demanded for evolution is here.
They say we've never observed macroevolution, and yet there's a chiropteran that became a lagomorph in - home many generations is this? Seven? Eight?
Queen and -servant- to the sciences.
The problem with your logic is that you don't seem to have the premises right.
Do you agree with what geologists have estimated as the age of the earth?
Do your own google search on 'evolution probability calculations'. I don't do other people's research for them.
http://www.evolutionisimpossible.com/
Of course the prime advocate of the ID movement, Michael Denton, says that natural laws make evolution inevitable. Interesting.
He's probably talking about microevolution, which is a non-arguable fact of life. Macroevolution is an ideological doctrine and a quasi-religioius belief system.
Michael Denton's "Nature's Destiny," on intelligent Design, says this:
"it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes.This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law.
Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies."
Behe, the chief defence witness at Dover, has this to say about evolution:
I didn't intend to "dismiss" the fossil record--how could I "dismiss" it? In fact I mention it mostly to say that it can't tell us whether or not biochemical systems evolved by a Darwinian mechanism. My book concentrates entirely on Darwin's mechanism, and simply takes for granted common descent.
Behe and Denton, and Dembski, the three scientific leaders of the ID movement all disagree with you.
Oh, and evolutionary biologists use math and probability theory all the time. There are papers that are full of almost nothing else. Math is a tool used by all scientists. All the mathematical arguments against evolution that I've ever seen are vacuous in their relationship with the real world. They set up a straw man, that doesn't relate to anything any biologist believes happened, and knock it down. Why don't you present your very best one. It is up to you to substantiate your arguments, not up to us to do research to back up your argument. (BTW, don't bother presenting anything about abiogenesis; that is a different field, you need to present something that knocks down evolution, not the origin of life if you want to discredit evolution)
What would the REAL scientists throughout history think of the shrill, arrogant tone with which you attempt to ram your BELIEFS down my throat? For someone who claims to revere fact and logic, you purposely mischaracterize the statements of others...
Someone who threatens others with eternal damnation for not agreeing with your scientific opinions calls your opponents "shrill and arrogant". Sheesshh. Feel free to provide an example of me actually mischaracterising your arguments.
and make lofty-sounding cotton candy statements like 'there is no status for scientific truth higher than theory.'
That is just the truth.
I happen to have two scientists in the family (one was actually a White House official under Reagan). I sent him your little saying, and its context, and he turned right back around and said the same thing with which I started...why is ID less of a theory than the TOE?
That question has been answered numerous times in this thread alone, and any genuine scientist would know the answer. To be considered a theory by scientists an explanatory framework must do certain things:
You'll forgive me for not being impressed by a "White House Official Scientist" who isn't aware of the rudiments of science. It is quite common for IDCreationists to post here with 3rd hand justification from unnamed relatives "who are real clever", or "who are important scientists". I've never seen those of us on the evo side do it. You may draw your own conclusions from that.
The other thing I find very, very interesting is that my sarcastic, offhand comment about you guys being f--ked provoked a tirade of defensiveness from many, many people on this thread. To this unscientific mind, it seems to me that there may be an element of doubt in your positions that REALLY strikes a deep nerve.
Not at all, but I do find the arrogance of those who are happy that they are going to heaven while they believe that 99%+ of everyone who has ever lived is not absolutely astounding. That anyone should take joy in such a situation I think is interesting psychologically. That they would worship or God who endorses such a situation is likewise interesting. Fear must be it, I guess.
Skepticism in science is healthy, or at least used to be. Circling the wagons and refusing to acknowledge other points of view is not.
Indeed skepticism is in rude health, but there has to be data to be skeptical about. Present real objective evidence that the theory of evolution is not true and watch the feeding frenzy of biologists rushing to be the first to get results in the new field. ID is an idea is ten-thousand years old, and thus far it has produced zip, zilch, nada in the way useful results, it suggests no further lines of enquiry; indeed it closes them off. Ten years ago IDers would have had us throw our hands in the air about the bacterial flagellum for example, yet since then biologists have shown how it could have evolved.
Best wishes to you in your scientific, earthly, wordly life (and afterlife).
Thank you, I don't believe in the afterlife, but best wishes to you too.
PS = There are many clear flaws with evolution, and I'd be happy to list them (fabrication of evidence comes to mind right off the bat)
Lets see, evolutionary biology has been around for 150 years, with millions of practicioners. Over that time there are maybe 5 frauds/errors that are endlessly wheeled out by the religious rejectors of evolution. Would that most other fields had such a fraud/error free history. ALL of the frauds in evolutionary biology were exposed by evolutionary scientists, because of the predictive power of real theories that I referred to above the frauds didn't fit. The creationists had no basis to recognise and separate the frauds from the real data so didn't expose them. Compare mainstream science's record if you will with the avalanche of fraud and deceit that floods from the creationist side; but then again they haven't got anything else.
but I still have two inquiries floating out there that have never been addressed. Take a look.
Sorry I don't want to wade through 400 posts to try to guess what you are referring to. Please post your very best objections to evolution again.
Apologies, I forgot to ping you re the above.
So in other words, you don't know anything about the probabilities yourself. Yet you have the audacity to state them as authoritative. Typical Medved bluster. :) If you're going to make wild statements about the impossibility of evolution according to probability and logic, it is up to YOU to provide the details. And if you can't explain them yourself, then you really don't know what your links are saying.
The big problem is the requirement for multiple zero-probability events for any/every kind of complex creature, e.g. for flying birds you need wings, flight feathers, the special adaptation for turning flight feathers, specialized light bone structures, super high efficiency hearts and lungs, specialized tail and balance parameters, beaks (necessary since the creature will no longer have hands to feed itself)....
Now, without knowing the exact probability for each of these adaptations arising via mutation and selection, it is still possible to say that each of the individual probabilities is some sort of an infinitessimal, and that the joint probability is gotten by multiplying all of those infinitessimals together, which amounts to some sort of tenth or twelth order infinitessimal, i.e. which can't happen by chance.
It's also possible to note that even if the first such adaptation were to occur ala Darwin, then by the time another 10,000 generations rolled around and the second such thing were to arise, the first (having been antifunctional all the while) would have either become vestigial or mutated into something else.
In other words, the entire Darwinian scenario is basically nonsensical.
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