Posted on 11/22/2005 12:44:07 PM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
THE first court trial over the theory of intelligent design is now over, with a ruling expected by the end of the year. What sparked the legal controversy? Before providing two weeks of training in modern evolutionary theory, the Dover, Pa., School District briefly informed students that if they wanted to learn about an alternative theory of biological origins, intelligent design, they could read a book about it in the school library.
In short order, the School District was dragged into court by a group insisting the school policy constituted an establishment of religion, this despite the fact that the unmentionable book bases its argument on strictly scientific evidence, without appealing to religious authority or attempting to identify the source of design.
The lawsuit is only the latest in a series of attempts to silence the growing controversy over contemporary Darwinian theory.
For instance, after The New York Times ran a series on Darwinism and design recently, prominent Darwinist Web sites excoriated the newspaper for even covering intelligent design, insulting its proponents with terms like Medievalist, Flat-Earther and "American Taliban."
University of Minnesota biologist P.Z. Myers argues that Darwinists should take an even harder line against their opponents: "Our only problem is that we aren't martial enough, or vigorous enough, or loud enough, or angry enough," he wrote. "The only appropriate responses should involve some form of righteous fury, much butt-kicking, and the public firing and humiliation of some teachers, many school board members, and vast numbers of sleazy far-right politicians."
This month, NPR reported on behavior seemingly right out of the P.Z. Myers playbook.
The most prominent victim in the story was Richard Sternberg, a scientist with two Ph.D.s in evolutionary biology and former editor of a journal published out of the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History. He sent out for peer review, then published, a paper arguing that intelligent design was the best explanation for the geologically sudden appearance of new animal forms 530 million years ago.
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel reported that Sternberg's colleagues immediately went on the attack, stripping Sternberg of his master key and access to research materials, spreading rumors that he wasn't really a scientist and, after determining that they didn't want to make a martyr out of him by firing him, deliberately creating a hostile work environment in the hope of driving him from the Smithsonian.
The NPR story appalled even die-hard skeptics of intelligent design, people like heavyweight blogger and law professor Glenn Reynolds, who referred to the Smithsonian's tactics as "scientific McCarthyism."
Also this month, the Kansas Board of Education adopted a policy to teach students the strengths and weaknesses of modern evolutionary theory. Darwinists responded by insisting that there are no weaknesses, that it's a plot to establish a national theocracy — despite the fact that the weaknesses that will be taught come right out of the peer-reviewed, mainstream scientific literature.
One cause for their insecurity may be the theory's largely metaphysical foundations. As evolutionary biologist A.S. Wilkins conceded, "Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superfluous one."
And in the September issue of The Scientist, National Academy of Sciences member Philip Skell argued that his extensive investigations into the matter corroborated Wilkins' view. Biologist Roland Hirsch, a program manager in the U.S. Office of Biological and Environmental Research, goes even further, noting that Darwinism has made a series of incorrect predictions, later refashioning the paradigm to fit the results.
How different from scientific models that lead to things like microprocessors and satellites. Modern evolutionary theory is less a cornerstone and more the busybody aunt — into everyone's business and, all the while, very much insecure about her place in the home.
Moreover, a growing list of some 450 Ph.D. scientists are openly skeptical of Darwin's theory, and a recent poll by the Louis Finkelstein Institute found that only 40 percent of medical doctors accept Darwinism's idea that humans evolved strictly through unguided, material processes.
Increasingly, the Darwinists' response is to try to shut down debate, but their attempts are as ineffectual as they are misguided. When leaders in Colonial America attempted to ban certain books, people rushed out to buy them. It's the "Banned in Boston" syndrome.
Today, suppression of dissent remains the tactic least likely to succeed in the United States. The more the Darwinists try to prohibit discussion of intelligent design, the more they pique the curiosity of students, parents and the general public.
Since I doubt that you've actually asked any (much less a large sampling) of these same 10,000 clergy about their actual views on these topics, I'm going to have to ask you to try, just for a moment, to stop posting outright lies as a poor substitute for an ability to actually rebut the material -- no matter how popular that tactic obviously is in the AECreationist playbook.
It appears that ID is not attracting Christians, either. ID does not support Trinity theory and does not support the Bible.
from an interview:
Church of the Nazarene
Rev. Ron Moeller, Pastor
"There isn't very much interest here in intelligent design, because we think the most important thing is saving souls for our Lord Jesus. It doesn't matter if people believe in evolution as a way of understanding the flowers and meadows and animals of God's creation. People come to Christ sometimes by the Bible, but just as often by personal experiences of the Holy Spirit and are born again, sometimes by family or friends, sometimes, I hope, by their pastor. Intelligent design doesn't help at all, because it has no foundation in the Bible.
"It has come up a few times in our Adult Study classes, but the 'specified complexity' and stuff didn't attract much interest. Someone asked, "What does this have to do with the Bible?"
The Presiding Bishop said that "ID opens the door to pantheism and every kind of New Age cults. And it does not mention Christ or the soul, so it is not Christian, and doesn't seem to be good science."
"It [Intelligent design] is probably like one of these cults that come along every few years, like New Age. Maybe it will become its own church, like Scientology or Christian Science. I think in two or three years we will hear very little from them."
No one but you has any control over the content of your profile page.
This is remarkably bizarre spin on the actual events.
As it happens, it is a fact that the sun is at the center of the solar system. But knowledgeable historians of science are careful to point out that Galileo was scientifically unable to prove it to be factual.
To date no one can *still* "prove it to be factual". There's no such thing as ironclad "proof" in this reality. Nor does science deal in "proofs".
Your handwaving utterly fails to excuse the Church's behavior in that debacle.
The simple-minded idea that Christianity is closed-minded and discourages scientific advances simply does not hold up to careful historical reading.
Have you *read* some of the replies on this thread?
The contrary argument, that religion was an impediment to science, is the work of anti-Catholic bigots and anti-Christian atheists.
I repeat the question.
There is, even today, a great deal of religiously-motivated resistance and often outright hostility to science, and to science education.
Would you please explain how exactly we got to the point where it takes a male and a female (in hundreds of species throughout the animal world) to procreate? What exact steps did that take? And how did genitalia and reproductive organs and sperm and eggs get involved? Go ahead - use your imagination.
You demonstrate invincible ignorance. Try reading a few recent histories of Galileo.
Okay, you have *got* to be a troll... No one can be *this* misguided, can they?
You can start by reading Darwin's Black Box, if you have the courage.
This is an interesting non-answer to the question of why you had a quote on your profile page from a notorious racist and anti-semite about how interracial marriages cause cultural destruction.
I'm highly suspicious of this individual, myself.
Actually, Intelligent Design theory simply suggests that the evidence makes it likely that some intelligent designer was at work behind the universe as we find it. It makes no claim as to what or who that intelligence is.
Just as you might pick up a piece of flint shaped as an arrowhead and say, "This looks as if it was shaped by intelligence, not chance," so the ID theorist looks at aspects of nature and comes to similar conclusions.
To go from there to say that the creating intelligence is God is a matter for religion, not science. The doctrine of the Trinity and the revelation that Jesus is Savior are things that have been revealed. They are beyond the scope of natural philosophy or theology or science to discover.
So, I think the pastor you cite somewhat misunderstands what ID theorists claim.
The fact is that most PhDs assert that macro evolution is impossible and, therefore, according to these PhDs, the odds are against evolution.
Son, I am a Ph.D. I studied human osteology and fossil man as two of my four fields for the Ph.D. exam.
ps. you have made a fool of yourself.
Well, relativity suggests that we really don't know what is moving in relation to what. But you could say that motion within the solar system is a special case, just as you can say that Newton's laws of motion are a special case that apply for practical purposes to observable motions on earth, until you start approaching the order of magnitude of light speed.
Have you forgotten saying "good bye?"
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