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An Urgent Call By Scientists to: DEFEND SCIENCE (BIG Barf Alert!!!)
defendscience.org ^ | Recently | Various Liberals

Posted on 03/14/2006 6:34:30 PM PST by Heartlander

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Wait, there is more from a so called expert with regard to ID within the scientific community - Barbara Forrest. You might remember her as one of the expert witnesses in the Dover Trial.

More is at stake in the ID issue than science education, though that’s important enough by itself. ID creationists must not be viewed in a vacuum. The insidious feature of ID is not only its attack on public education, but the fact that ID creationism is another column in the Religious Right’s decades-old attack on secular, constitutional democracy. And ID proponents are plugged into the conservative political and Religious Right power structure. As most people now know, their supporters include the president of the United States. They also include U.S. senators (Rick Santorum, Bill Frist, John McCain, Judd Gregg, and Sam Brownback) and congressmen (e.g., House Majority Leader John Boehner). Three state governors, Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Rick Perry of Texas, have announced their support for teaching ID in public school science classes. The Discovery Institute creationists are the most politically well-connected creationists with whom we have had to deal. This is what makes ID a significant and dangerous phase in the history of American creationism. Their attack on evolution symbolizes their contempt for public education, modern science, and ultimately the Enlightenment ideals on which American constitutional democracy is based. The Wedge Document clearly shows that ID creationists want to overthrow secular culture and public policy, to which the only alternative is some type of theocracy.
HT to MikeGene

So let’s sum this paranoia up… If you think that there is more than just purely natural causes that caused our human intellect to come into existence - you are a creationist… part of the Right Wing Conspiracy… and you want to make the entire world into a theocracy…

Hey, I think some people on this forum actually peddle this same crap.

I could also quote other experts including Dawkins, Dennett, Pinker, et al…

But I prefer to point to the Bright Movement .

And the celebration of Darwin Day :

Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations
Darwinism refutes typology; i.e., that the world is stable and invariant
Darwin's theory of natural selection made any invocation of teleology unnecessary
Darwin accepted the universality of randomness and chance throughout the process of natural selection
Darwin developed a new view of humanity and in turn, a new anthropocentrism
Darwin provided a scientific foundation for ethics

1 posted on 03/14/2006 6:34:35 PM PST by Heartlander
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To: Heartlander
Ages ago (back in college) the common observation was that smart guys who wanted to become scientists were satisfied to read one book 70 times. On the other hand, smart guys who wanted to become lawyers and politicians were more satisfied to read 70 different books but 1 time.

Occasionally inclinations would get mixed up and you'd find a political type just 10 hours away from his doctorate in Chemistry when he'd discover his true calling, and vice versa.

Looks like that's what we've got here.

College career guidance counselors should be encouraged to do a better job before this sort of disaster happens to others.

2 posted on 03/14/2006 6:43:56 PM PST by muawiyah (-)
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To: wallcrawlr; AndrewC; betty boop; Alamo-Girl

(((ping)))


3 posted on 03/14/2006 6:45:58 PM PST by Heartlander
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To: Heartlander
Official government-run bookstores at the Grand Canyon have carried books promoting as fact the literalist Biblical notion that the Grand Canyon was formed only a few thousand years ago by "Noah's Flood,....

Is this true? Who in the world is stupid enough to believe that the Grand Canyon was made by Noah's flood? I just can't believe that anyone with half of a brain would even believe this nonsense? Can someone confirm or deny this is happening?

4 posted on 03/14/2006 6:47:01 PM PST by trashcanbred (Anti-social and anti-socialist)
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To: Heartlander

Geez, they have all but directly claimed to have proven a negative.


5 posted on 03/14/2006 6:48:04 PM PST by Vn_survivor_67-68
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To: trashcanbred

I'm still trying to figure out how Noah got at least one pair of each of the 30, million species on his ark.


6 posted on 03/14/2006 6:48:56 PM PST by cripplecreek (Never a minigun handy when you need one.)
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To: trashcanbred

It is true. Next point...


7 posted on 03/14/2006 6:49:41 PM PST by Heartlander
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To: Heartlander
Dawinism is a THEORY. a theory = "an idea of or belief about something arrived at through speculation or conjecture"

Piltdown man has been proven a hoax.

Scientists now state: " a study published in the current "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences." Recent computer analysis of skulls from modern humans, Neanderthals,... show enough physical differences between them to indicate that Neanderthals should be considered a separate species from Homo sapiens, not a subspecies." We are not descended from the Neanderthals...

Darwinism is full of holes...but still taught as "scientific fact."

New 'scientific facts' are discovered every day that disproves former 'scientic facts'

8 posted on 03/14/2006 6:51:55 PM PST by maine-iac7 ("...BUT YOU CAN'T FOOL ALL THE PEOPLE ALL THE TIME." Lincoln)
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To: Heartlander

This is one of the Democratic talking point: trying to scare the puublic with
the spectre that Repubilicans/Christians are going to dismantle the US
science establishment.
Actually, the screams are really the concern of many scientists that
their jobs might not be essentially entitlement programs.

This scare-mongering is also useful for selling books to the Air America crowd,
such as

With God on Their Side: How Christian Fundamentalists Trampled Science, Policy,
and Democracy in George W. Bush's White House
by Esther Kaplan
(oh and you can get a package deal with "The Republican War on Science"!)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1565849205/sr=8-2/qid=1142390908/ref=pd_bbs_2/102-9381754-1528955?%5Fencoding=UTF8


9 posted on 03/14/2006 6:53:41 PM PST by VOA
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To: Heartlander
"moral codes" are increasingly imposing restrictions on what kinds of questions can be investigated

Confusing morality with morals. The moral codes might better be called ethical codes.

10 posted on 03/14/2006 6:53:55 PM PST by RightWhale (pas de lieu, Rhone que nous)
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To: Heartlander

My email to them:

I would like to help you but lets be honest. Science is manipulated by advocates every day. Your organization is concerned about Conservative Christians manipulating science. To be honest, they have had a rather poor record trying to manipulate it.

I would be curious for your reaction to the following manipulations:

1. Misrepresentations of DDT as dangerous so as to impede the eradication of Malaria-- a disease which every year kills more than nine times as many people as AIDS.

2. Representations by climatologists in the 1970s and 90s saying fossil fuel burning must be stopped because it would cause an ice age (Lowell Ponte-- in case you really want to know).

3. The founder of Greenpeace now works for a logging company because he argues such groups are antagonistic to the very purposes they were founded upon.

4. Fabricated stem cell research in South Korea that was heralded as 'good science' because it fit the political agenda of stem cell activists.

5. Fabricated cold fusion research by Pons and Fleischman.

6. AIDS research and treatment conducted far beyond the bounds of all other medical research-- creating resistant virsues and dangerous health regimes.

7. The promotion of condoms without warnings that they provide NO protection from HPV-- one of the leading causes of cervical cancer in women.

8. MTBE being added to refined gasoline at the behest of enviro-scientists and then being discovered to be a destroyer of the environment. Now activists want to be able to sue the oil companies for adding the expensive treatment to gasoline. [I have an idea lets start holding activists liable for their suggestions. I bet that would clear up some of this nonsense].

9. Scientists argued that acid rain would denude all the forests of the American east coast.

10. . . .


I guess I would like to know why it is Christians that constitute the unique threat to science. My brother who works at NOAA tells me they regularly cook the data for global warming government grants. I really would like an explanation about why certain other deadly misrepresentations of science are not only tolerated but encouraged.


11 posted on 03/14/2006 6:56:44 PM PST by lonestar67
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To: Heartlander
Particular Christian fundamentalist "moral codes" are increasingly imposing restrictions on what kinds of questions can be investigated by scientists

Some scientists were convicted at Nuremberg because of the questions they investigated. So what else is new?

12 posted on 03/14/2006 6:57:18 PM PST by JoeFromSidney (My book is out. Read excerpts at www.thejusticecooperative.com)
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To: cripplecreek

The best way to answer that is "don't think about it".


13 posted on 03/14/2006 6:57:29 PM PST by trashcanbred (Anti-social and anti-socialist)
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To: trashcanbred

Don’t tell me what to think. That is partially the point of this post.


14 posted on 03/14/2006 7:00:55 PM PST by Heartlander
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You could write this whole thing off as a leftist rant with no substance, but then they get to the evolution part, and that gem of truth IMHO, gives this screed more weight than it deserves. Shame..


15 posted on 03/14/2006 7:04:14 PM PST by Paradox (".. and remove all doubt.")
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To: Heartlander
It is true. Next point...

I am sorry... this is nonsense. To believe the Grand Canyon was made during the great flood? You can't possibly believe such made up stuff. Who in the world would be foolish enough to think this? And to push off this nonsense in a government run bookstore? Well there is no wonder why scientists are alarmed.

I know the muslims are living in the 15th century but I find it hard to believe that modern day Americans purposely want to live in the 12th.

16 posted on 03/14/2006 7:05:33 PM PST by trashcanbred (Anti-social and anti-socialist)
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To: Heartlander

So, what they're saying is that scientific research cannot happen without federal funding. They are demanding more money from the taxpayers and they want all that money to arrive with absolutely no strings attached. Sounds good to me. Please, Mr. Government, send me a few million so I can do some important research on the effect of Ferraris on the environment.


17 posted on 03/14/2006 7:07:37 PM PST by Fresh Wind (Democrats are guilty of whatever they scream the loudest about.)
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To: trashcanbred
To paraphrase Berlinski; if we were to replace the word evolution with ‘allah’ and the label of creationist with ‘infidel’ - I don’t think these discussions would read significantly different. But this obviously offends those who use this ‘creationist label‘ often. Why?

BTW, I am not a creationist.

18 posted on 03/14/2006 7:09:26 PM PST by Heartlander
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To: Heartlander
Don’t tell me what to think. That is partially the point of this post

You know one of the things I hate about the liberal school teachers is that sometimes it seems they want to keep our children ignorant so that they are easier to control. Teaching that the Grand Canyon was made by the great flood is the flip side of the same coin. If people want to believe that then fine... but put that trash in a bookstore in a national park.... no way. It is junk science.

19 posted on 03/14/2006 7:10:32 PM PST by trashcanbred (Anti-social and anti-socialist)
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To: trashcanbred

What other people believe in terms of religious thought or tradition is actually none of your business.


20 posted on 03/14/2006 7:11:03 PM PST by muawiyah (-)
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