Posted on 03/07/2006 2:34:37 PM PST by SirLinksalot
Darwin smacked in new U.S. poll
Whopping 69 percent of Americans want alternate theories in classroom
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Posted: March 7, 2006 5:00 p.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
A new poll shows 69 percent of Americans believe public school teachers should present both the evidence for and against Darwinian evolution.
The Zogby International survey indicated only 21 percent think biology teachers should teach only Darwin's theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it.
A majority of Americans from every sub-group were at least twice as likely to prefer this approach to science education, the Zogby study showed.
About 88 percent of Americans 18-29 years old were in support, along with 73 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of independent voters.
Others who strongly support teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory include African-Americans (69 percent), 35-54 year-olds (70 percent) and Democrats (60 percent).
Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs with Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture said while his group does not favor mandating the teaching of intelligent design, "we do think it is constitutional for teachers to discuss it precisely because the theory is based upon scientific evidence not religious premises."
The Seattle-based Discovery Institute is the leading promoter of the theory of Intelligent Design, which has been at the center of challenges in federal court over the teaching of evolution in public school classes. Advocates say it draws on recent discoveries in physics, biochemistry and related disciplines that indicate some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.
"The public strongly agrees that students should be permitted to learn about such evidence," Luskin said.
The Discovery Institute noted Americans also support students learning about evidence for intelligent design alongside evolution in biology class – 77 percent.
Just over half – 51 percent – agree strongly with that. Only 19 percent disagree.
As WorldNetDaily reported, more than 500 scientists with doctoral degrees have signed a statement expressing skepticism about Darwin's theory of evolution.
The statement, which includes endorsement by members of the prestigious U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Sciences, was first published by the Discovery Institute in 2001 to challenge statements about Darwinian evolution made in promoting PBS's "Evolution" series.
The PBS promotion claimed "virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true."
Great. So when you've found some evidence from ID, let me know. In the mean time, it has no place in the classroom.
That guy looks an awful lot like D*rwin.
The shameful thing about ID is, in its two hundred year history, it has never looked, nor has it ever suggested what it might be looking for.
It's not implication. It's plain English. "Is" is present tense. "There is no" [noun] means there is (present tense = at present) no [noun]. It doesn't mean their was no [noun], or will be no [noun], or can be no [noun].
Or are you going to explain how it all depends on what the meaning of "is" is?
Like the singularity of the “Big Bang” theory, these two are categorically inseparable as immaculate conceptions. It only takes a mere application of logic.
I suppose your comparison wouldn't have as much kick if you said that the universe originated from a point where spacetime curvature was infinite.
And of course the Big Bang in no way conceptually resembles God speaking the universe into existence.
For the lurkers: The majority of the genome is non-coding, a small portion of which comprises highly-conserved non-coding areas which appear to be control sequences. The rest is comprised of sequences which code for proteins. There is roughly a 1/3 chance in the coding and control regions that it will hit the third nucleotide in a codon leaving the amino acid pretty much unchanged.
What is more interesting for evolution outside the possibility of having one of the above point mutations becoming part of a coding sequence are those sequences where an active portion of a gene is affected but the resulting feature/function is invisible to the selection of the time. What is a neutral feature under current selection can become either beneficial or detrimental under differing selection.
Btw, this wasn't a correct statement of the issue.
"None has been found" does in fact mean that "none exists".
"Evidence" in science is like "evidence" in the law. Until it is discovered and recorded it doesn't exist. Indeed even the observation/discovery of the underlying factual material doesn't make it "evidence." It only becomes evidence when it's relevance to some scientific issue or problem has been elucidated.
Piling up facts is not science--science is facts-and-theories. Facts alone have limited use and lack meaning: a valid theory organizes them into far greater usefulness.
A powerful theory not only embraces old facts and new but also discloses unsuspected facts [Heinlein 1980:480-481].
oops.... exits = exist
"All the way from the setup of the analysis through the interpretation of the results."
Well its a good thing then that scientists publish the numbers and the setup to their work, that way any fudging of figures are obvious.
I'm always amused by the twit who thinks I'm giving away the store when I say science is an inventive, creative process that involves imagination.
We seem plagued by folks who think everything can be derived from axioms by deduction or by mathematics.
Dembski's misuse of probabilities and information/complexity theory has been brought to his attention.
Yes. I would certainly say that everything and anything "yet to be discovered" does not (and cannot) presently exist as "evidence".
The very word evidence means that it possesses implicatory relevance to some issue. Indeed the word is usually used only to describe something which has been generally recognized as relevant to some issue (even if there may be disagreement as to the conclusions to be drawn from it) by some group of persons, as for instance by a court of law, or by scientists investigating some problem.
How can anything "yet to be discovered" possibly qualify (in the present tense) as "evidence"???
None of these things are true of anything "yet to be discovered." How can we recognize the relevance of something we don't know yet? How can we appeal to something undiscovered in advancing or overturning some argument?
If all humans descended from Adam & Eve, how and why did some end up tall, skinny & dark skinned, some end up very fair skinned, and some, like eskimos, stocky and somewhat chubby?
Here's a similar quote from another fellow...
About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember someone saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service.
~ Charles Darwin, letter to Henry Fawcett, 18 September 1861
You still miss the point. That is not science, that is diversion. Like putting a crossword puzzle together.
P.S. I don't do red herring. The discussion is ERV, and its lack of conclusiveness for determining absolute relationships. This result shows that it is not conclusive. Open your mind to the concept that no matter what the relationship of the ERV would have been with the three branches, the scenario presented would hold all possibilities. It is not falsifiable. They could all have had the virus, none, or any one of them different than the other two and the tree would have been the same.
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