Darwinist Ideologues Are on the Run

Human Events Online ^ | Jan 31, 2006 | Allan H. Ryskind

[Sweetjustusnow]

The two scariest words in the English language? Intelligent Design! That phrase tends to produce a nasty rash and night sweats among our elitist class.

Should some impressionable teenager ever hear those words from a public school teacher, we are led to believe, that student may embrace a secular heresy: that some intelligent force or energy, maybe even a god, rather than Darwinian blind chance, has been responsible for the gazillions of magnificently designed life forms that populate our privileged planet.

[longshadow]

You deserve Avocado's number.

Sorry; I'm not a vegetarian.....

[longshadow]

RE: lying Dover School Board defendants

Don't forget, one of them blamed it on drug abuse!

How could I forget! Priceless!

[Coyoteman]

[Gore3000:] Unnamed skulls are not evidence.

That's OK. This skull has a name.

[Gore3000], meet Mrs. Ples. Mrs. Ples, meet [Gore3000].

Please ignore that fact that Mrs. Ples may be male. (These things happen in the best of families.)

---

Fossil: Sts 5 Site: Sterkfontein Cave South Africa (1)

Discovered By: R. Broom & J. Robinson 1947 (1)

Estimated Age of Fossil: 2.5 mya * determined by Stratigraphic, floral & faunal data (1, 4)

Species Name: Australopithecus africanus (1, 2)

Gender: Male (based on CAT scan of wisdom teeth roots) (1, 30) Female (original interpretation) (4)

Cranial Capacity: 485 cc (2, 4)

Information: No tools found in same layer (4)

Interpretation: Erect posture (based on forward facing foramen magnum) (8)

Nickname: Mrs. Ples (1)

See original source for notes:
http://www.mos.org/evolution/fossils/fossilview.php?fid=24

[longshadow]

Great research!

What's truly stunning is if you compare the hypothetical quote I used in my illustration, and then look at the language that G3k used in the actual quote you found, the similarity is uncanny. Some of the phrases are even identical!

Memory can be a scary thing....

[GLDNGUN]

Ah, Professor, the good old Feduccia dispute, how thoughtful of you to resurrect it. Let’s review.

Some review. I think there's one thing these Darwinist athiests hate more than an uninformed creationist.

An informed creationist.

The former will get you called a "moron", while the latter will get you called a "stupid moron".

They love to quote their sources up the ying-yang. But don't YOU dare do it.

[mudblood]

I'm a bit of a creationist darwinist. I think God's fancy.

[Dimensio]

I think there's one thing these Darwinist athiests

What about the "Darwinists" who are not atheists?

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Thanks Eagle -- you've made my week.

[Ichneumon]

I just don't think humans evolved from something else.

Feel free, but there are absolutely massive amounts of evidence which indicates that you're wrong.

And since there is such debate over which ones were apes and which were humans, I will go under the assumption that apes were and are apes and humans were and are humans.

See above. You're also overlooking the fact that humans are *still* apes (and still primates, still eutherians, still mammals, still synapsids, still tetrapods, still vertebrates, still chordates, still eukaryotes, etc.)

If "humans are humans" in some way distinct from "apes are apes", please explain why we have every diagnostic characteristic of the ape taxon?

Note, by the way, that you're mixing levels of grouping in your sentence. Let's rework it slightly this way to help you spot the problem:

I will go under the assumption that dogs were and are dogs and dachshunds were and are dachshunds.

Note that there are two problems with this: a) it implies that the author thinks that dachshunds are *not* dogs, and b) it overlooks the fact that dachshunds were *not* always dachshunds, they were derived from earlier lineages of dogs which were not themselves dachshunds. As it is with "dogs/dachshunds", so it is with "apes/humans".

Closely related just as many species are closely related.

"Related" has no meaning under a "separate creation" scenario, which you indicate you believe.

I'm still learning what different scientists think so I am not sure when I will have enough information that I actually will feel assured of what I believe. I am trying to keep an open mind, but I am looking at things as if we were created separately so I will be looking for interpretations to confirm what I believe.

Then you don't have an open mind.

Anyone can search for "interpretations" (or evidence) "to confirm what you believe". People who believe the Earth is flat can find interpretations and evidence to support their belief. That's the easy part. The hard part is how honestly you deal with evidence that *contradicts* your beliefs, how honestly you *test* your beliefs against the evidence, and how honestly you consider whether other interpretations fit the evidence far better than your current belief.

It may not be "scientific", but that's my viewpoint.

Well, you have plenty of company.

You emphasize the disagreement among creationists but there are also many disagreement among scientists so that doesn't worry me.

It should, because that *kind* of disagreement among creationists indicates that their presumptions are wrong.

What worries me is how many actual "experts" there are that are truly qualified to make determinations that so many others are going to give great weight to, if you understand what I'm trying to say. If there are thousands of scientists checking fossils, doing the aging, categorizing species, etc., then that's good.

There are tens of thousands, at least, more likely hundreds of thousands.

If it's basically a hundred or so, then I would question more.

If that were the case, I might too, but it's not. In any case, science is an "open source" project -- you're entirely welcome to examine the evidence yourself and doublecheck their results.

And who decides if something is a new species. I have really tried to find out but I haven't been able to. I found the organization that handles the names but they don't make the decisions of species.

There's no "committee" for it, that's for sure. Like a lot of things in science, it's done by overall consensus -- someone finding a new species (or a new fossil specimen they believe represents a novel species) publishes the information about their find and (optionally) names it. If it's clearly something new, the announcement is quickly accepted without fuss. On the other hand, if most other scientists in the field disagree, they'll pretty much ignore the announcement, publish the reasons for their disagreement and which existing species they feel it should be included in, and subsequently refer to it by the "old" name (usually with a footnote about how the original discoverer disagrees).

[GLDNGUN]

Congratulations, you're delusional.

And what would a post of yours be without an immediate insult?

Just curious, but what do you think insults, condescension, and arrogance accomplish to further your arguments? Or is it a a "survival of the rudest" kind of thing?

Again, you are exhibiting your poor reading comprehension.

Ok, well let's review. Quoting from the earlier post I was referring to:

"If humans are products of Darwinian natural selection, that obviously includes the human brain–which in turn means all our beliefs and values are products of evolutionary forces: Ideas arise in the human brain by chance, just like Darwin's chance variations in nature; and the ones that stick around to become firm beliefs and convictions are those that give an advantage in the struggle for survival. This view of knowledge came to be called pragmatism (truth is what works) or instrumentalism (ideas are merely tools for survival).

One of the leading pragmatists was John Dewey, who had a greater influence on educational theory in America than anyone else in the 20th century. Dewey rejected the idea that there is a transcendent element in human nature, typically defined in terms of mind or soul or spirit, capable of knowing a transcendent truth or moral order. Instead he treated humans as mere organisms adapting to challenges in the environment. In his educational theory, learning is just another form of adaptation–a kind of mental natural selection. Ideas evolve as tools for survival, no different from the evolution of the lion's teeth or the eagle's claws.

In a famous essay called "The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy," Dewey said Darwinism leads to a "new logic to apply to mind and morals and life." In this new evolutionary logic, ideas are not judged by a transcendent standard of Truth, but by how they work in getting us what we want. Ideas do not "reflect reality" but only serve human interests.

The pragmatists were among the first, however, to face squarely the implications of naturalistic evolution. If evolutionary forces produced the mind, they said, then all are beliefs and convictions are nothing but mental survival strategies, to be judged in terms of their practical success in human conduct. William James liked to say that truth is the "cash value" of an idea: If it pays off, then we call it true.

'Constructivism' is a popular trend in education today. Few realize that it is based on the idea that truth is nothing more than a social construction for solving problems. A leading theorist of constructivism, Ernst von Glasersfeld at the University of Georgia, is forthright about its Darwinian roots. "The function of cognition is adaptive in the biological sense," he writes. "This means that 'to know' is not to possess 'true representations' of reality, but rather to possess ways and means of acting and thinking that allow one to attain the goals one happens to have chosen." In short, a Darwinian epistemology implies that ideas are merely tools for meeting human goals.

These results of pragmatism are quite postmodern, so it comes as no surprise to learn that the prominent postmodernist Richard Rorty calls himself a neo-pragmatism. Rorty argues that postmodernism is simply the logical outcome of pragmatism, and explains why.

According to the traditional, common-sense approach to knowledge, our ideas are true when they represent or correspond to reality. But according to Darwinian epistemology, ideas are nothing but tools that have evolved to help us control and manipulate the environment. As Rorty puts it, our theories "have no more of a representational relation to an intrinsic nature of things than does the anteater's snout or the bowerbird's skill at weaving" (Truth and Progress). Thus we evaluate an idea the same way that natural selection preserves the snout or the weaving instinct–not by asking how well it represents objective reality but only how well it works."

To which I remarked, "the Darwinisits described don't believe in absolute truths, only 'usefulness'".

So how exactly does my comment reflect "poor reading comprehension" of the speech cited?

[GLDNGUN]

What about the "Darwinists" who are not atheists?

They have a little more tolerance.

[caffe]

Evolutionists are finally (and with great reluctance) publicly acknowledging large morphological gaps in the fossil record. These gaps are so distinct that evolutionists now recognize them as real, rather than as an artifact of poor fossil preservation.

The known fossil record is not, and never has been, in accord with gradualism. The majority of paleotologists felt their evidence contradicted Darwin's stress on minute, slow and cumulative changes leading to species formation STANLEY

One must acknowledge that there are many gaps in the fossil record...there is no reason to think that all or most of these gaps will be bridged RUSE

The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between jamor transitions in organic design..is a persistent and nagging problem for gradulastic accounts of evolution...GOULD

The fossil record flatly fails to substantiate the expectation of finely graded change Eldredge and Tattersall

Undeniably, the fossil record has provided disappointingly few gradual series. Origins of many groups are still not documented...Futuyma

So many more evolutionists recognizing what YOU fail to acknowledge

[longshadow]

MAJOR QUOTEMINING EVENT HAS BEEN DETECTED.

[Ichneumon]

So you want people to learn something before you will give them any credit at all, yet when they try, you insult them.

Not true.

First, my wanting people to learn about a subject before they attempt to make declarations about it -- especially a subject as complex as a field of science -- is not about whether I'll "give them any credit", it's about the fact that people who haven't learned about a subject are far more likely to make false declarations about the subject (born of ignorance) than they are to add something to the discussion of actual value. And it's even worse when they're wildly overconfident of their abilities to debate the subject, as anti-evolutionists usually are -- they think that because they've read some creationist attacks on evolution, that they're competent to debate the subject against people who *are* very familiar with the subject. You know how it is when an empty-headed liberal drops by to "debate" conservatism and tell us how it's all "wrong" by simply parroting stuff they've heard Michael Moore say but they've never tried to double-check any of it and they've never read Locke or Adam Smith or the Constitution or anything else? That's rather what it's like when anti-evolutionists try to "debunk" evolutionary biology based on just reading a few creationist sources but little or no biology. It's a waste of *everyone's* time.

When people actually ask *honest* questions (as opposed to for example questions that try to play "gotcha" or rhetorical questions intended to ridicule because the writer feels there is no valid answer), I'm glad to answer them. When people really *want* to learn, I'm very glad to help. But that's rare among anti-evolutionists -- the few times they really ask a question desiring an answer, it's because they think they can use the answer to justify their rejection of biology, not because they actually want to learn with an open mind, to see where the knowledge leads.

That hardly promotes the interests of science. That's why so many people get turned off to science - attitudes of those who use their knowledge to embarrass and insult people rather than trying to actually become interested in learning on their own. Attitude means a lot.

It does, but I've actually seen very few examples of anyone truly desiring to "use their knowledge to embarrass and insult people" rather than sharing their knowledge. (The one Freeper I can think of who does that actually uses it to attack the *evolutionists*, by the way, even though he thinks "ID" is twaddle -- he's got issues.) For the most part, the folks who get heavily into science *love* knowledge and learning and understanding, and are eager to share it with others, not use it as a weapon.

If you think you've seen me stoop to that without provocation, please point it out to me and I'll be glad to apologize.

What we *do* often do, however, which I suppose could be mistaken for what you describe (but which is not the same thing) is smacking people who are being insulting in their attacks on science but who know far less than they think they do. In those cases, it's appropriate to show them just how wrong their claims are and how little they really know compared to the people they're attempting to belittle and insult as being "idiotic" for believing something as "stupid" as evolutionary biology...

Again, consider the liberal nitwits who drop in here from time to time, laughing at us and spewing Michael Moore nonsense as if it were gospel in order to "put the stupid deluded conservatives in their place" -- in response to that sort of belligerent arrogance, the most appropriate response is to demonstrate to them, as thoroughly as possible, just how out of their league they are and how little they actually understand about the subject, in the hopes that it will a) get them to stop spewing nonstop nonsense the next time, and b) get them to realize the extent of their ignorance and prompt them to start learning something for a change instead of swallowing all the propaganda without engaging their critical thinking abilities.

[Senator Bedfellow]

How unusual.

[Ichneumon]

[childish taunts and bluster and belligerence]

Did you really type that without feeling a hint of hypocrisy?

I did indeed.

I don't make childish taunts, I make adult-level taunts, by showing ignorant loudmouths just how little they actually understand about the subject they're attempt to "lecture" us on.

I don't bluster. At all. I back up my points with so much support and evidence and explanation that you guys keep whining about the amount.

And I'm not belligerent -- I'm perfectly willing and able to be civil and courteous with anyone who hasn't already been obnoxious themselves. I'm even civil the instant a formerly obnoxious poster makes a courteous non-confrontational post for a change.

[spunkets]

"With respect -- the definition of theory that Coyoteman posted is bogus. It's worse than a "layman definition" -- it's wrong. Theories can be based either on deductive or inductive reasoning. Here's a definition from Answers.com (just the parts that pertain to this discussion)
1. A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena.
2. An assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture.

Your post says you're an educator. Coyoteman's def. is fine. #1 and #2 here are absolutely wrong. #2 is completely wrong. #1 is wrong, because a hypothesis only becomes a theory after it has been tested and evidence gathered that it does in fact describe reality. There's no "especially if"; the evidence and testing is required. W/o the required testing and evidence, their is no theory. From this, I can see that answers.com is junk written by the ignorant.

"simply making a bunch of observations; then creating a tentative theory (conjecture) that seems to explain the observations."

That's a hypothesis. It is not a theory.

"I've also been an educator and think it is a huge mistake to try to keep opposing views out of the classroom -- no matter how lacking they may be."

ID is not science. It does not belong in the science class. Teaching it in the science class is a 100% waist of time.

"Scientists cannot be trained by memorization of approved "truths" and indoctrination into certain world views -- they have to have to learn how to "do" science."

Science does not carry "approvals, or certificaitons". The science stands on it's own. You first learn how to "do" science by noting and understanding the basic concepts, such as the difference between hypothesis and theory. Then the knowledge base is taught, w/o introducing irrelevant nonscientific nonsense.

[Ichneumon]

You say they are transitionals.

Because the evidence overwhelmingly indicates that they are.

I say they are either one or the other but with the limited information scientists actually have, it's flip a coin - heads, it's human, tails, ape.

This is a wildly incorrect description of the situation.

There are some obvious things we have in common with apes but that doesn't necessarily prove we had a common ancestor.

The ERVs we have in common do, as do hundreds of other types of evidence, as *well* as the characteristic kinds of differences we have. *All* of them point loud and clear to common ancestry. So does the *lack* of any feature, commonality, or difference which is outside of the kind which common descent would have produced -- "design" would not have restricted itself in so narrow and misleading a fashion. When I write separate computer programs, I don't carefully craft them to mimic only the features which a genetic algorithm could have produced...

And all the DNA info that keeps getting thrown around, what is the oldest DNA of an ape that they have looked at?

This entirely misses the point. It's like objecting to DNA analysis which shows that two men are brothers, just because their parents are dead and can't be tested as well. It's not necessary to have the ancestral DNA, the DNA of the *current* descendants can be analyzed to the same "one in fifty billion" standard as the kinds of DNA tests which courts use to prove that the defendant's DNA matches the blood found at the crime scene.

Perhaps they are in fact transitional between something and something else. I don't know but neither do you

Actually, we *do* know that, because we have seen the evidence, in the same way that we *know* that the droplets of blood found at the murder site of Nicole Simpson were that of OJ Simpson.

so in the end, it comes down to what someone wants to believe.

That's *your* standard, but it's not ours. We *know* what we know because of the evidence.

[Ichneumon]

Do you think the declaration of a new species is arbitrary?

See post #682.

[longshadow]

at least 2 of the "quotes" are traceble to:

http://www.harunyahya.com/nas05.php

And we all know who those folks are.....