Posted on 01/09/2006 12:02:22 PM PST by WatchYourself
Not every evolutionist is ecstatic about the decision Judge John Jones made on December 20, 2005. In a startling article published January 5, 2006, Lloyd Eby, a philosophy professor from George Washington University, stated that the judge overstepped his bounds when he defined "science" in his 139 page ruling.
As a result of Jones' statements Eby wrote, "I predict that sometime in the future -- say a hundred years hence -- this case and Judge's Jones opinion in it will turn out to be seen as having been like the Catholic Church's case against Galileo. Except that this time the winning and losing sides will have switched; the proponents of evolution and scientific naturalism will by then have lost the war against religion and ID, even though they won the Dover battle." Possibly the prediction could come true much sooner than Eby thinks.
The overstepping slip by the judge amplifies one of the major arguments creationists have voiced against evolution from the beginning of this debate -- evolution is not science! While evolutionists prefer an obscure definition of science, Judge Jones has now put it into law. This is very exciting for critics of evolution because Jones has made "science" definitive. The ramifications in the future court cases could overturn evolution education in public schools, which is exactly what Eby has predicted and is exactly the opposite of what Jones intended.
(Excerpt) Read more at capitolhilljournal.com ...
The Empire brooks no dissent. Resistance is Futile, sayeth the Borgs.
Unless this case is appealed, it is not a precedent outside Pennsylvania.
Utter crap. The fossil record and genomics constitute massive evidence for 'macroevolution'. The Big Bang is based on the solution to the General Relativity field equations, galactic recession, and the cosmic microwave background, and has absolutely nothing to do with evolution or any other area of biology. There is no evidence I'm aware of that says the Universe has a 'center' and an 'edge' - c.f. the fact some Christians believed the world had a center and an edge. The dating of the earth is based on the physics of radioactive decay and has nothing to do with evolution.
Interestingly enough, Bendewald while building his whole article out of Eby's earlier article, doesn't provide the actual citation. Eby's article was published in the Moonie World Press Herald. Eby identifies himself not as an "evolutionist," but as an advocate of "Intelligent Design." And Bendewald doesn't mention that Eby said this about the Dover case:
Even if you favor some form of ID, as I do, you should recognize that the ID proponents vastly overplayed their weak hand in this Dover case and deserved to lose. Nowhere did or do ID proponents perform any of the philosophical heavy lifting needed to show where and how the demarcation should be made between science and non-science, nor did or do they produce any credible attempt - credible to the larger non-ID scientific community - to show how ID could be incorporated into the corpus of received scientific methodology. They also tried to claim that ID is not religion, but they did not give a credible account of how it is either good science and thus not just religion, or how religion and science could or should be merged, if, as I suspect, that is really their view. Because of those catastrophic failures they deserved the scorching that Judge Jones gave them.
The author of this article states that "Not every evolutionist is ecstatic" about the Dover ruling, then gives as his only example Lloyd Eby, who the author says "clearly is an evolutionist." The problem is, Eby himself, in the very article that this author quotes so heavily, says he favors Intelligent Design!
Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
See my profile for info
Evolution is principally metaphysics based on many unprovable assumptions. There is no empirical evidence for macro-evolution, and the evidence that some call micro-evolution is simple adaptation. The extrapolation of evidence from adaptation to macro-evolution is not empirical science. Uniformitarian geology and interpreting the fossil record in favor of evolution is based upon the unprovable assumption that evolution is true. The Big Bang is also based on the assumption that evolution is true. There is much better evidence to suggest that the universe has a center and an edge which is contrary to the Big Bang Theory.
There isn't one true statement in this paragraph.
What kind of "non-activist" judge thinks he has the right to establish the biases of science by law? The same kind who thinks atheism is a "non-religion."
That's what happens when the guy who ran the Pa. Liquor Control Board gets promoted to federal judge.
Teach the controversy! Teach the Intelligent Bang!
/sarcasm
Obviously Tom Wolfe isn't very informed on this subject. Evolution and abiogenesis have nothing to do with one another.
I liked "The Right Stuff" better.
Got a little too close to that "demon Rum" I guess. [/sarc]
Ooh, and until right this minute, I was looking for a candidate for my "Fundy Liar of the Week' award. No longer!
I always did view the Big Bang theory with doubt. The people who first came up with the idea were a Catholic astronomy organization that sought to discover God by looking at the stars. Hubble merely gave the hypothesis a little data to go on.
This "massive evidence" depends largely upon the subjective interpretations of its observers, inference, and reasonable conjecture. Hard science has only witnessed limits to evolution that certainly have not exceeded boundaries between kingdoms. Morphological similarities do not necessarily constitute relationships in history. The phylogenetic tree is rife with reasonable guesses far more subjective than, for example, studies and measurements related to gravitational forces. "Massive evidence?" Sure, if one starts with certain assumptions and puts the right spin on it.
Yeah. It's all just a big conspiracy. Like the "Moon Landing".
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