Posted on 11/13/2005 3:49:41 PM PST by Crackingham
U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said Saturday that he doesn't believe that intelligent design belongs in the science classroom. Santorum's comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a "legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom."
But on Saturday, the Republican said that, "Science leads you where it leads you."
Santorum was in Beaver Falls to present Geneva College President Kenneth A. Smith with a $1.345 million check from federal funds for renovations that include the straightening and relocation of Route 18 through campus.
Santorum's comments about intelligent design come at a time when the belief that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power, an alternative to the theory of evolution, has come under fire on several fronts.
A federal trial just wrapped up in which eight families sued Dover Area School District in eastern Pennsylvania. The district's school board members tried to introduce teaching intelligent design into the classroom, but the families said the policy violated the constitutional separation of church and state. No ruling has been issued on the trial, but Tuesday, all eight Dover School Board members up for re-election were ousted by voters, leading to a fiery tirade by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson.
Robertson warned residents, "If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected him from your city."
Santorum said flatly Saturday, "I disagree. I don't believe God abandons people," and said he has not spoken to Robertson about his comments.
Though Santorum said he believes that intelligent design is "a legitimate issue," he doesn't believe it should be taught in the classroom, adding that he had concerns about some parts of the theory.
You could, but you would be mistaken.
And for you science freaks:
Intelligent Design
The scientific alternative to evolution:
http://www.intelligentdesignnetwork.org/NCBQ3_3HarrisCalvert.pdf
For your reading pleasure. :)
That's OK. Your opinion isn't the arbiter of science.
I could just as easily state that the complexity of man provides a preponderence of evidence that Intelligent Design is the only possible origin.
You could, but the statement would simply be false. I've asked you several times now where on earth you got this idea that just because you say something means you have to be taken seriously. Honestly, it doesn't. You could just as easily state that the ubiquity of fecal matter provides a preponderance of evidence that you pulled the universe out your @$$. Who cares what it looks like to you? The only thing that matters is what it looks like. Period.
I don't seek to make that case.
Why not? If that's what the preponderance of the evidence shows, then make the case. I strongly encourage you to do so.
Your side does seek to claim that your theory is the only possible origin based on the evidence.
Based on the evidence, evolution is the only plausible explanatory model.
Well, I disagree.
Here's a cookie.
It's certainly your perogitive to claim falsity and inanity.
Yeah, but I don't rely on merely my say so.
I'm sorry, but I can't buy into your last statement.
That's OK.
Threads like this refute that perception. Some of you folks are willing to compare others and myself to the Taliban...
I wasn't talking about "us folks" but rather just about me. Nothing I've posted in this thread refutes my statement, which would be unlikely if for no other reason than that it's true.
...just because we don't buy into your theories lock stock and barrel, and do not think exclusivity should be yours any more than ours.
I am not a relativist, and never will be. If you want any claim to 'inclusivity' then support your position. Otherwise, you can spout whatever nonsense makes you happy, just don't expect to be taken seriously, at least not by me.
If you were genuinely concerned about scientific progress, you'd be willing to take a look at the 'evidence', and see two possible conclusions based on the evidence that exists and the evidence that doesn't.
I have taken a look at the evidence, and I even see multiple potential conclusions based upon it. Intelligent design isn't one of them.
Your conclusions concerning the evidence, are all focused on accepting what you cannot prove. What bothers you is that I have also elected to accept something I cannot prove.
That is false. What bothers me is that you have elected to equate fantasy with science.
The holes in your evidence don't dissuade me.
Gosh, I'd hope not. It's the evidence itself that's persuasive, not whatever holes might be in it.
The holes in my evidence should not disuade you.
You have no evidence at all. In fact, you explicitly stated above that you don't even seek to make the case.
This leaves us both unable to categoricly prove the other wrong.
Umm, no it doesn't. My position is that you have no evidence. If you disagree with that, then unless you come up with some you are categorically wrong.
None the less, your belief is teachable and my belief, both based on the uprovable, is not.
Your belief is definitely teachable as whatever it is, which isn't science.
Down through the ages, there have been many people judged to be heritics.
Yes, well, the most common reason for that is because they were.
Today the scientific community is the one making that charge, all the while claiming the high moral ground.
Science is not faith-based. What on earth makes you think that just because you represent it that way means anyone has to take you seriously?
I am getting tired of this. I don't have to prove it wrong, you have to prove it exists, before I have to prove it wrong.
Prove Unicorn Farts make rainbows before I have to prove they don't. Do you get it?
Prove elephants raping girls create BIGFOOT creatures before I have to prove that BIGFOOT doesn't exist.
Prove Leprechauns steal 4 leaf clovers which is why there are so few before proving that wishing on a 4 leaf clover will answer your dreams.
Do you get it yet?
Perhaps we could revert to what is being taught in the classroom, and who's being vilified for trying to change that.
That is the reality isn't it? Hmmmm?
"I hate to break the news to you, but evolution has been sustained as a scientific theory for 146 years. That's longer than most current scientific theories of physics and chemistry have been sustained.
Intelligent design has been sustained as a scientific theory for a grand total of zero years. To be clear, that's zero followed by an infinite number of zeros."
And more than 146 years ago, many thought the world was flat.
News evidence debunks evolution, and more and more scientists are becoming skeptical of evolution.
The 2LoT is necessary for evolution to have happened, it is not a restriction to evolution. The idea that the 2LoT is some sort of force that evolution must overcome is a misunderstanding of what the 2LoT means for the combination of chemicals.
>>>Santorum's comments to The Times are a shift from his position of several years ago, when he wrote in a Washington Times editorial that intelligent design is a "legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom."<<<
I believe this is called pandering.
Funny that the writers compare the 'research' in ID to that of SETI. Both projects have had about the same amount of luck finding what they're looking for.
What are you babbling about?? No scientist has thought the earth was flat for well over 2000 years. From the very first instance that science is recorded to have looked at the question (Pythagoras) it was recognized that the earth is a sphere.
Perhaps we could revert to what is being taught in the classroom, and who's being vilified for trying to change that. That is the reality isn't it? Hmmmm?
You didn't answer the question. I'll repeat. Isn't Santorum being vilified for keeping I.D. out of science class?
Another question: Do you D1 believe that ID should be taught in science class?
Me too! Toomey would have and could have won, if Bush and Santorum did not support the the other guy.
The voters are responsible for their own vote. That's a simple conservative philosophy.
It's not an "argument [I'd] like to fall back on," it's the nature of a scientific theory. I find it ironic that someone who has no idea of how science operates takes it upon him(her?)self to inform the world of what science must allow.
ID fails as a scientific theory for a variety of reasons: It assumes an entity (the "intelligent designer"), for which there is no evidence and no possible test, it predicts nothing, and there's no way to falsify it.
If your theory is not provable, it's just comical to watch as you demand that it be taught to the exclusion of other theories.
Like I said, it's the nature of a scientific theory. There is no way to "prove" electromagnetic theory, gravitational theory, or any other scientific theory. So why would you think evolutionary theory should be any different?
You have faith in your theory. I don't necessarily have a problem with that. What I do find objectionable is that you simply refuse to accept the falibility of your theory.
I have no faith whatever in any theory. What I have is evidence. In the last 150 years, all evidence found has confirmed the accuracy of evolutionary theory, including evidence that Darwin and his contemporaries never imagined. No one anywhere in the scientific community has claimed "infalibility" for any theory. Theories are the best we have. They explain all the known evidence in the simplest manner possible. They are not contradicted by any evidence. And they are capable of falsification.
Well, just for starters:
In those days the cell was a black box, a mystery. But in the 20th century, scientists were able to open that black box and peek inside. There they found not a simple blob but a world of complex circuits, miniaturized motors, and digital code. We now know that even the simplest functional cell is almost unfathomably complex, containing at least 250 genes and their corresponding proteins.
Explains New Zealand geneticist Michael Denton, each cell “is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms.”
The odds of a primordial soup randomly burping up even one protein strand of moderate length are dramatically less than 1 chance in 10150.
It’s hard to grasp how long these odds are—one followed by 150 zeros. We know that a lot of strange things can happen in a place as big and old as our universe, but as mathematician and philosopher William Dembski explains in the Cambridge University Press book The Design Inference, the universe isn’t remotely big enough, old enough, or fast enough to generate that much complexity.
Nor have attempts to explain this complexity as the natural outworking of the laws of nature proven successful. The best explanation? INTELLIGENT DESIGN. (emphasis mine)
excerpt from http://www.discovery.org/scripts/vi...nd=view&id=2350
And.......
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103ap_czech_intelligent_design.html
Monday, October 24, 2005 · Last updated 11:28 a.m. PT
'Intelligent design' supporters gather
By ONDREJ HEJMA
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
PRAGUE, Czech Republic -- Hundreds of supporters of "intelligent design" theory gathered in Prague in the first such conference in eastern Europe, but Czech scholars boycotted the event insisting it had no scientific credence.
About 700 scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States attended Saturday's "Darwin and Design" conference to press their contention that evolution cannot fully explain the origins of life or the emergence of highly complex species.
"It is a step beyond Darwin," said Carole Thaxton of Atlanta, a biologist who lived with her husband, Charles, in Prague in the 1990s and was one of the organizers of the event.
"The point is to show that there in fact is intelligence in the universe," she said. The participants, who included experts in mathematics, molecular biology and biochemistry, "are all people who independently came to the same conclusion," she said.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/printer2/index.asp?ploc=b&refer=http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103ap_czech_intelligent_design.html
There is, however, substantial evidence that man evolved from a common ape ancestor and that other extant animals evolved from ancestors common with other extant animals. The evidence does not need to be a continuous line from man to protolife, or more correctly, initial life to man. Humans excel at discerning patterns, patterns such as the common descent of all animals, from incomplete information. If we see a pattern often enough in similar circumstances, we can infer that the consistency in the pattern is valid in other like circumstances. Why deny this pattern recognition ability when it comes to common descent but rely on it for everything else in your life?
"Those who have swallowed that pipe dream hook line and sinker are experiencing nothing more than a faith based experience.
Since scientists are the ones that actually investigate, test and verify their ideas before accepting them but creationists simply accept the meanderings of the Hovindites and Johnsonites of the world, which do you logically think are really swallowing that pipe dream? Remember, be logical.
"Even definitive proof of how the one celled organism originated is up for grabs.
That may be true today, but as science has shown time after time, what is unknown today will likely not remain that way very long.
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