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.
No, that wasn't, but his attack stating that Gould did not read his book was, and was unnecessary.
No. That was a strawman.
An interjection from someone who has only cursorily read the thread. It would help if people who understood the atmosphere in biology in the late 70's. I was starting grad. school at the time at Harvard, where on the one hand Gould and Lewontin were standing for a particular left wing view of evolution; and on the other E. O. Wilson had continued, with his magnificent Sociobiology, Dawkins' insights on behavioral evolution in The Selfish Gene.
This wasn't a genteel argument. Gould and Lewontin were, if not organizing, then encouraging demonstrations against Wilson and disruptions of his lectures. Wilson and Dawkins they saw as the successors of the Social Darwinists. Gould and Lewontin justified their extremism as revolutionary action (they were, of course, Marxists). The argument went on for perhaps 20 years, though Wilson and Dawkins have unequivocally won.
What I find amusing is that all the while our creationist friends are claiming Darwinism to be at the root of Marxism, they are on the side of those who stood with Marxism against developments in evolutionary theory that threatened it. Dawkins' politics appear to be squishy liberal; Wilson was one of the founders of the National Association of Scholars, a conservative faculty organization.
Creationism has some strange bedfellows, and I don't mean the Senator.
Bump, because this Darwinist thread had a count of "666" and caught my eye.
I guess you haven't been around here very long. Your "evo-leadership" has previously and automatically dismissed any and all info from sites that defend creation because they were "biased", but never disclosed the fact that their reference sites are equally "biased".
So, thank you for making my point and further discrediting your "leadership". I happen to agree with you, at least the point you made that I quoted here.
Again, thanks! That's all I wanted to accomplish.
The very definition of a disruptor, a troll, a thread clown, a fool, ...
Actually, I think they've dismissed info from such sites because that info is almost uniformally scientifically illiterate balderdash, not because it is "biased". It's the same qualitative reason even many conservatives tend to be dismissive of the daily excretions of WorldNetDaily and Debka in the political arena -- when you've established a track record of shoddy, erroneous, and occasionally outright dishonest work, it's hard to get people to pay attention to anything you produce.
I used to tell my management that I could build better and better RNGs (more unpredicatble) at higher and higher costs.
"Ignorance Is Expensive"
I implied nothing, which is evidence you made up a strawman as much as Dawkins did by bringing up an insult about Gould. Despite your obstinate refusal to read and understand, the fact remains, Dawkins stated an unproven allegation against a person. That is Ad Hominem. Second you asserted that I implied something. Well, I get to tell you that I implied no such thing, something that Gould did not get to do with Dawkins, since Gould was not involved as an author in the workers party exchange. See this?
Gould was a major part of Bradley's argument, and bringing it up again is not ad hominem.
No, that wasn't, but his attack stating that Gould did not read his book was, and was unnecessary.
Having told you that I did not imply what you drew from it, makes your stretch quite a strawman. Something you built to argue about and beat up. Nice job of strawman building.
I already told you that the discussion is over. Don't ping me again on this.
Buddy, I get to answer. If you don't like it don't ping me.
"Buddy, I get to answer. If you don't like it don't ping me."
Second warning, don't ping me.
And no, you don't get to answer after I have told you to stop.
The heck you say I don't get to answer. I will in whatever way I want to. Now I have answered your idiotic traipse into illogic. Don't ever ping me again. Last warning.
Since ballistic physics seeks to promote 'no-angels' as a scientific concept, and since all scientific concepts are tentative and refutable, then the disagreement with the hypothesis of no-angels is scientific.
If you feel that strongly about your theory then go ahead and demand equal time. I would offer a little advice though… Get your tenure first ; )
BTW, we may call them ‘Newton’s laws’ but I think you and Newton might be on the same page…
Numero pondere et mensura Deus omnia condidit
-NewtonIt is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else, which is not material, operate upon, and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must be if gravitation in the sense of Epicurus be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me a great absurdity, and I believe that no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my reader.
- Newton [letter to Dr Bentley dated 25 February 1693]
Anyway, I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
(raising hand excitedly) ooh, me! ooh, me! taking it up the poop shoot?!?!?!
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