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Posted on 11/13/2005 6:07:54 AM PST by NYer
"They wanted to tell high school students once a year that evolution is only a theory."
And gravity is only a "theory" too.
How many times does the distinction between a scientific theory and the word "theory" as used in general conversation have to be explained to these idiots.
As for Dover, Behe made a fool of himself, even if (typically) he's spinning it as some kind of victory.
The only thing that "Darwinism" tells us is that the frequency with which genetic traits are expressed is constantly in flux. That, and only that, is the idea behind evolution. And it's a damned good idea, backed by sound science, common sense, and a very good knowledge of the mechanism involved.
Really?
Anyone have a list of the discoveries made at the Discovery Institute? I mean besides how to maximize fund-raising.
So we'll be seeing some papers any day now, will we?
I find it great that all these arguments come out about what "theory" really means when we get to discussing that evolution is one. A theory is a presupposition based on ignorance of a matter at hand. If you really knew about the matter in a more concrete way than guess work then it would be a fact.
It reminds me of Clinton and his parsing the word is. These evolutionist are willing to cling to each and every piece of flotsam in the water in order not to believe. God help them, i feel sorry for them, but not sorry enough to let them corrupt the young and curious minds of children who no longer believe it is so because the evolutionists say it is so.
The more they stop answers from coming through anything but their CULT of evolution the more they look like the catholic church demanding that science teach that the world is earth centric, and that everything revolves around the earth in our solar system instead of the sun. They are the new persecutors of those who don't buy the evolution "chic" and popular notions.
It is funny how they are so insistent that the other side not be heard. They know they live and die on the idea of "theory" so they, like clinton, do their thing and promote the idea that a theory is not a theory. Is is not is. HA they make themselves the fool.
The proplem with ID is it may take an above IQ to understand it.
Uh, oh. The official dogma apparently can’t compete in the marketplace of ideas. If Darwinism can’t stand the scrutiny of scientific inquiry and universities have to resort to censorship to protect it, how long can it survive? Will natural selection eliminate it?
New ideas are always met at first with ridicule;
then with vehement opposition; afterwards, they
are seen to have been obvious.
where there is obvious design, there must be, just as obviously, a designer
. Evolutionist Martin Moe correctly commented that “a century of sensational discoveries in the biological sciences has taught us that life arises only from life” (1981, 89[11]:36 ). Even the eminent evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson and his colleagues observed that “there is no serious doubt that biogenesis is the rule, that life comes only from other life, that a cell, the unit of life, is always and exclusively the product or offspring of another cell” (1965, p. 144 ). Yet with almost the same breath, these same teachers and professors tell their students that nonliving chemicals produced living organisms some time in the distant past—that is, spontaneous generation occurred.
Moe, Martin (1981), “Genes on Ice,” Science Digest, 89[11]:36,95, December.
Simpson, G.G., C.S. Pittendrigh, and L.H. Tiffany (1965), Life: An Introduction to Biology (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World).
"So we'll be seeing some papers any day now, will we?"
Not when the peers who review them for publication are doing things like prohibiting all mention of ID.
Video’s are always the best way to resolve ideological disputes. I’ll put that on my viewing list next to “Fahrenheit 9-11”
AMEN BROTHER!
Where is evidence of ID? Stating that current theories of evolution cannot explain a particular phenomenom does not constitute evidence FOR intelligent design. For example, astronomers knew that Newton's theory of gravity could not explain the precession of Mercury's orbit around the sun. This was an argument against Newton, but it was not in favor of anything else. When General Relativity predicted the precessin of Mercury's orbit, it was strong confirmation of that theory's correctness.
Scientific theories are usually incomplete or inaccurate. The fact that we have unexplained phenomonom is what drives science forward to better theories and more complete explanations. This is a key component of the scientific method. However ID makes the claim that no such theory can ever possibly exist and thus we shouldn't bother and should rather rely on an intelligent designer to handle those things that we can't currently explain.
ID is not a new idea, but a very old one. It was used by ancient civilizations to explain why planets zig-zag across the starry heavens - they were Gods you see, and Gods can go hither and yon as they wish; so why bother predicting their movements? You can't. It's not possible. It's too hard. It was the scientists who sought a scientific theory that did not rely on ID that ultimately gave us the theories of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.
This is true for a tiny fraction of new ideas. Most deserve the ridicule that's heaped upon them at the outset. It's a winnowing process that I wouldn't change, even if I could.
I'm reminded of an ecology professor I once had, who delighted in bullshitting his students to see how far they'd let him go. Once he took the class out into the woods, and cried excitedly, "look at what the Indians have done to these trees!" Neatly placed around the base of each tree was a perfect circle of small stones. He let us students go on theorizing about Indian religious rituals, until at last he could stand it no longer and informed us the truth; namely, that rainwater running down the tree trunks had eroded the soil from the base of the trees, leaving what appeared to be something that could only have been done by intelligent design.
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