Posted on 01/03/2006 12:12:37 PM PST by PatrickHenry
If you poke an IDer enough, eventually they will (probably 99+%) say God is the designer. The aliens or space hippies are a red herring. Somewhere less than 15 billion years ago life arose somewhere, and probably many millions of somewheres. At each of those origin events there is only one question: Did that life arise by natural chemical mechanisms (i.e. Abiogenesis), or was it zapped into its designed existence by a god? These are the only two choices as I see it. The designer of ID is a god, or there is no God involved in the origin of life, and subsequently evolution.
If there are other possibilities, I'd like to hear them.
I actually like bones. I did a lot of years in grad school working with all manner of human and fossil bones; with several classes in evolution, human races, osteology, primates, advanced osteology, anatomy, even animal bones.
I prefer them to be clean and dry, however. Two or three thousand years is just about right.
You clearly do not understand (and I am not sure you want to)
Aw, c'mon C-man. If you were offered the opportunity to go and dig in the hot spot of Africa, I think I'd hear your bags packing from the hundreds of miles that separate us.
I have read that she was a small primate with rickets/arthritis, or something in that vein and that she was not peer-reviewed until several years after her discovery.
You know...Bones of Contention.
I think I understand much better than you'd be willing to admit.
Why are you afraid to admit the designer is God?
Africa? Hot spot? Snakes? You must be joking.
I have figured out a way to do archaeology on the California coast; winter lasts about a week, in a bad year. No packed bags here, sorry!
I think you may think you know more than you do - I am not afraid to admit anything. ID could expose a designer or it could expose intelligence in the form of seeding from another planet. I call them like I see them and in this context - hopefully - dogma-free (be it the dogma of religion or the dogma of materialism)
I've poked a number of these guys. They are so afraid to admit that God is the designer. But it's a good bet that that is exactly what they think. Why? The only answer I can see is political. To admit that God is the designer makes ID a religious concept and that means that it can't gain traction in public schools. But everyone can see the emperor has no clothes on. It's really kind of sad.
Why not punt and come back with something that makes more sense and is not so blantantly obvious?
"ID could expose a designer or it could expose intelligence in the form of seeding from another planet."
Can't you see this answers nothing. It just removes the question from Earth to another planet. No matter how many seedings you try, sooner or later, you get back to the original beginning.
Then what are your choices?
And it just shifts the question from here to there.
Does God have a spacecraft?
"And it just shifts the question from here to there."
And Crick was quick to point this out. He always said conditions may have been better elsewhere.
"Does God have a spacecraft?"
Would he need one? If so I guess he could zap one into existence or get one of his space alien minions to do it for him.
I have read that she was a small primate with rickets/arthritis, or something in that vein and that she was not peer-reviewed until several years after her discovery.
You know...Bones of Contention.
Lucy seems to be a pretty good find. Certainly a very small primate, but she looks to have been bipedal. Somewhere on the direct line or very close. There is a lot of good data there (about 40% complete) and there have now been some 30+ years to digest and evaluate the discovery.
The rickets/arthritis idea does not seem credible. That's the same explanation initially given for the first Neanderthal (from the Neander Valley in Germany, something like 1856). The disease theory was based largely on the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the bones, and was discarded almost immediately. I have never seen anything on Lucy that suggest any such.
And let me assure you, the fossil casts of Lucy have been examined by just about every good paleontologist in the world, along with many folks in related sciences (I examined many of the older fossil man casts in school, but not Lucy). Any of these folks would love to make a name for themselves by finding something the discoverers missed and publishing it--a true "gocha" moment.
I think you can take the recent published literature pretty much at face value. That is not to say there is no contention over nomenclature or exact placement in the family tree, or that new finds may not shed more light on the exact placement of Lucy, but the differences are being worked out with a lot of study and discussion. That's the nature of science.
....you'll probably mistake her for a broomstick, with measurements like that. ;)
"The humeral fragment from Kanopoi, with a date of about 4.4 million years, could not be distinguished by Patterson and myself in 1967 (or by much more searching and analysis by others since then). We suggest that it might represent Australpithecus because at that time allocation Homo seemed proposterous, although it would be the correct one without the time element".(Bones of Contention, Lubenow, Dec. 1992, pp. 56-57)
Here's the key phrase you should really be bolding:
to protect a religious view from what the Board considers to be a threatThe "remind schoolchildren" part isn't a problem, and the judge (and Constitution)) wouldn't have any problem with it if that had been all the "disclaimer" was. However, what you're "forgetting" is the rest of the testimony and decision, which overwhelmingly demonstrates that the clear intent and result of the "disclaimer" and "ID textbook" was, and I quote, "to protect a religious view from what the Board considers to be a threat". *That* is the part you should boldface when you quote that passage, because it's the key phrase, the one that makes the "disclaimer" unconstitutional. Read the whole decision (instead of the creationist websites and their spin) if you're still unclear.
Noah's Space Ark
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