Posted on 12/30/2005 2:29:22 PM PST by PatrickHenry
In this last month of the year, when many Americans' thoughts are turning to holidays -- and what to call them -- we may miss another large story about the intersections of religion and public life. Last week a federal appeals court in Atlanta listened to oral arguments about a sticker pasted, and now removed, from suburban Cobb County, Georgia’s high school science textbooks warning that evolution is a "theory, not a fact." The three-judge panel will take their time deciding the complex issues in the case. But on Tuesday, a federal district court in Pennsylvania ruled the Dover Area ( Penn.) School Board’s oral disclaimers about scientific evolution to be an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The school district's statement to students and parents directed them to an "alternative" theory, that of Intelligent Design (ID); the court ruled found "that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism." (Kitzmiller opinion, p. 31.) Apparently in a case about evolution, genealogical metaphors are unavoidable.
Seemingly every news story about the modern trials feels it necessary to refer to the 1925 Tennessee Monkey Trial, the clash of the larger-than-life legal and political personalities of William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow in the prosecution of high school teacher John Scopes for teaching evolution in violation of state law. As an historian who has written about evolution, education, and the era of the Scopes trial, I will admit the continuities between 1925 and today can seem striking. But, these continuities are deceiving. Though the modern court challenges still pit scientists supporting evolution against some parents, churches, and others opposing its unchallenged place in public school curriculum; the changes in the last eighty years seem even stronger evidence for a form of legal or cultural evolution.
First, the continuities. In the late 19th century religious commentators like the southern Methodist editor and professor Thomas O. Summers, Sr. loved to repeat a little ditty: "When doctors disagree,/ disciples then are free" to believe what they wanted about science and the natural world. Modern anti-evolutionists, most prominently under the sponsorship of Seattle's Discovery Institute, urge school boards to "teach the controversy" about evolution, purposefully inflating disagreements among scientists about the particulars of evolutionary biology into specious claims that evolutionary biology is a house of cards ready to fall at any time. The court in the Dover case concluded that although there were some scientific disagreements about evolutionary theory, ID is "an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion" not science. In a second continuity, supporters of ID reach back, even before Darwin, to the 19th century theology of William Paley, who pointed to intricate structures like the human eye as proof of God's design of humans and the world. Though many ID supporters are circumspect about the exact identity of the intelligent designer, it seems unlikely that the legions of conservative Christian supporters of ID are assuming that Martians, time-travelers, or extra-terrestrial meatballs could be behind the creation and complexity of their world.
While these issues suggest that the Scopes Trial is still relevant and would seem to offer support for the statement most often quoted to me by first year history students on why they should study history -- because it repeats itself -- this new act in the drama shows some remarkable changes. Arguing that a majority of parents in any given state, acting through legislatures, could outlaw evolution because it contradicted their religious beliefs, William Jennings Bryan campaigned successfully in Tennessee and several other states to ban the teaching of evolution and to strike it from state-adopted textbooks.
Legal challenges to the Tennessee law never made it to the federal courts, but the constitutional hurdles for anti-evolutionists grew higher in 1968, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas. that an Arkansas law very similar to the Tennessee statute was an unconstitutional establishment of religion. The law's purpose, the court found, was expressly religious. So anti-evolution was forced to evolve, seeking a new form more likely to pass constitutional muster. Enter Creation Science, a movement that added scientific language to the book of Genesis, and demanded that schools provide "equal time" to both Creation Science and biological evolution. Creation Science is an important transitional fossil of the anti-evolution movement, demonstrating two adaptations: first, the adoption of scientific language sought to shield the religious purpose of the statute and second, the appeal to an American sense of fairness in teaching both sides of an apparent controversy. The Supreme Court in 1987 found this new evolution constitutionally unfit, overturning a Louisiana law (Edwards v. Aguillard).
Since the 1987 Edwards v Aguillard decision, the anti-evolution movement has attempted several new adaptations, all of which show direct ties to previous forms. The appeal to public opinion has grown: recent national opinion polls reveal that nearly two-thirds of Americans (and even higher numbers of Alabamians) support teaching both scientific evolution and creationism in public schools. School board elections and textbook adoption battles show the strength of these arguments in a democratic society. The new variants have been far more successful at clothing themselves in the language -- but not the methods -- of science. Whether by rewriting state school standards to teach criticisms of scientific evolution (as in Ohio or Kansas) or in written disclaimers to be placed in school textbooks (as in Alabama or Cobb County, Georgia) or in the now discredited oral disclaimers of the Dover Area School Board, the religious goal has been the same: by casting doubt on scientific evolution, they hope to open room to wedge religion back into public school curricula. [Discovery Institute's "Wedge Project".] But as the court in yesterday's Dover case correctly concluded, Intelligent Design is "an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion" not science. Old arguments of a religious majority, though still potent in public debate, have again proven constitutionally unfit; Creationists and other anti-evolutionists will now have to evolve new arguments to survive constitutional tests.
But you didn't cite the source of your material as an essay by James Bancroft that the whole thing has just been cut-and-pasted from, so either you are James Bancroft, or you plagiarised that essay from him, or he plagiarised it from you.
THOSE are the features that you consider to differentiate between apes & humans??? Wow.
Our old cat, Lightbulb (RIP), had always had a saggittal crest. Our younger cat, Neko, does not. I once knew a kid in HS who had two rows of teeth (4 in all), and IIRC a common dental problem is when you have too many teeth for your mouth. (Not referring to wisdom teeth; it's something else.) And there's large variation in the shape of people's jawbones. Compare Richard Kiel vs. Bobby Darin.
Strangely, I've never heard the creationist explanation for how the Flood accounts for the sudden yet meticulous replacement of bone tissue by hardened stone. I've always been dying to hear this one.
I like the "running for higher ground" argument used to explain the differing levels creatures are found at. I've yet to see it explained how it applies to the similar stratification of plantlife.
It all makes sense now. The running animals must have been "petrified" with fear.
If you point that out then they just add more ad-hoc factors. Soon stratification of fossils becomes a consequence of several factors from ability to run up hill, weight of the organism, density, surface area, etc etc. It works great as an obfuscation tactic.
Here are some more problems for global flood advocates to address:
lets face it advocation of that is becoming more rare. I remember a time when every other person was a flood geology advocate. Nowadays it's Intelligent Design, ie secular creationism, that is all the rage. A pity, as in my opinion Intelligent Design isn't quite as exciting as creationism is.
and I realise i can't use commas correctly before someone points it out
I take it this group of pictures is all the fossil information available.
LOL!!
In almost all of those cases, I would bet that the entire fossil shown in the picture is missing most of the fossil itself in the actual evidence!
Not sure what you mean by that. There is a lot of evidence. Here is one example.
This is specimen "KNM-WT 15000." The KNM stands for Kenya National Museum, and the WT stands for West Turkana. The number, 15,000 is the number assigned; this suggests there are 14,999 previous specimens of one kind or another. And in some of the specimens you see ER, for East Rudolph, another area. There are thousands of specimens from there also. Multiply this by many areas all over Africa, and to a lesser degree in Europe and Asia as well, and you begin to see how much there actually is in the fossil record.
Site: Nariokotome, West Turkana, Kenya (1)
Discovered By: K. Kimeu, 1984 (1)
Estimated Age of Fossil: 1.6 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, faunal & radiometric data (1, 4)
Species Name: Homo ergaster (1, 7, 8), Homo erectus (3, 4, 7, 10), Homo erectus ergaster (25)
Gender: Male (based on pelvis, browridge) (1, 8, 9)
Cranial Capacity: 880 (909 as adult) cc (1)
Information: Most complete early hominid skeleton (80 bones and skull) (1, 8)
Interpretation: Hairless and dark pigmented body (based on environment, limb proportions) (7, 8, 9). Juvenile (9-12 based on 2nd molar eruption and unfused growth plates) (1, 3, 4, 7, 8). Juvenile (8 years old based on recent studies on tooth development) (27). Incapable of speech (based on narrowing of spinal canal in thoracic region) (1)
Nickname: Turkana Boy (1), Nariokotome Boy
See original source for notes:
Source: http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=38
oK, i'LL REPHRASE
iS THAT THE ENTIRE SKULL THAT WAS FOUND, OR
IS THAT A PLASTER CAST OF WHAT WAS FOUND, WITH PLASTER ADDED TO MAKE THE SKULL APPEAR COMPLETE?
Sorry, Caplock, Im doing CAD at home now
The YEC's are still all here. They just bang on about ID because they think it sounds scientific. In reality most Freepers who post in support of ID reject virtually everything that Behe, Denton, or Dembski acknowledge (common descent of all life on earth, great age of the earth, no global flood, no physical evidence of Designer intervention for 100'sMyears).
IS THAT A PLASTER CAST OF WHAT WAS FOUND, WITH PLASTER ADDED TO MAKE THE SKULL APPEAR COMPLETE?
The normal practice is to fill in missing pieces of a skull with a different color material. This shows pretty clearly in the picture I posted in #227.
When casts are made--most are now plastics rather than plaster--the areas missing in the original are also color coded in the same way. Usually no attempt is made to fill in detail in these missing areas--just blank plaster or plastic.
This shows pretty clearly in the specimen below; the gray areas are missing.
Fossil: KNM-ER 3733 Site: Koobi Fora (Upper KBS tuff, area 104), Lake Turkana, Kenya (4, 1)Discovered By: B. Ngeneo, 1975 (1)
Estimated Age of Fossil: 1.75 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, faunal, paleomagnetic & radiometric data (1, 4)
Species Name: Homo ergaster (1, 7, 8), Homo erectus (3, 4, 7), Homo erectus ergaster (25)
Gender: Female (species presumed to be sexually dimorphic) (1, 8)
Cranial Capacity: 850 cc (1, 3, 4)
Information: Tools found in same layer (8, 9). Found with KNM-ER 406- A. boisei (effectively eliminating single species hypothesis) (1)
Interpretation: Adult (based on cranial sutures, molar eruption and dental wear) (1)
See original source for notes:
Source: http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=33
Nice Ape.
How do they know the broken sharp stone are tools? Was there a handle strapped to one of them?
Too much guessing called science, this specimen in invalid.
You're the best. You're also an "ape."
[I send my kids to a Christian School were Evolution in taught in the Science class and they learn about the Creator in Religion. It's just no big deal when Science and Religion both have a voice.]
That describes my schooling and I think I'm better off for learning both views.
But I can't see public school teachers teaching the subject of religion as being a good thing.
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