Probably just me, but there's something about including the words "dating techniques" and "Ann Coulter" in the same sentence which just begs for a picture...
Posted on 07/07/2006 2:39:21 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
A Seattle-based research group that advocates intelligent design said today it will campaign to educate Kansans that the science standards approved by the State Board of Education are sound.
“Kansas citizens need to have accurate information about what the science standards do,” said John West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture for Discovery Institute.
West said the group will start an information campaign over the Internet immediately and possibly start a radio campaign. He declined to say how much the center would spend.
The decision puts the Discovery Institute in the center of hotly-contested State Board of Education school board races.
The board’s 6-4 decision to approve science standards that question evolution has been a major issue in the five board places that are up for grabs this year. The science standards are used as guidelines to what students learn in Kansas public schools.
Mainstream scientists have said the standards criticize evolution in a way that could introduce intelligent design in science classrooms. Intelligent design posits there was a master force that designed life.
Now I've heard everything.
Maybe we should send them over to talk to Fester, two falls out of three.
Evolutionists could then take on the winner.
You know you have the right side when your allies are Hare Krishnas and Islamists.
It just shows the intellectual power of the creationist theory. It appeals to so many different kinds of well-informed people that it's just gotta be true.
Actually progress is being made.
"This time around, the challenge comes from a new breed of sophisticated, scientifically trained creationists who are pushing the theory of "intelligent design" (I.D.). The `ID-ers' do not interpret the Bible literally. They accept fossil record as evidence of the evolution of human beings from apes, and they accept that the earth is about 4.6 billion years old (and not 6,000 years old, as the earlier generation of Biblical creationists believed.) "
What I still don't understand is how a YEC'r can support ID'r that BELIEVE in evolution (aided by ID) and an old earth?
Probably just me, but there's something about including the words "dating techniques" and "Ann Coulter" in the same sentence which just begs for a picture...
I would think there would be a few liberals, or progressives, or D*m*cr*ts in there somewhere.
CRID rule number 1. All transitional gaps must be filled or the word is useless.
Here's my take on the widows. Conservatives are so used to being cowed by trumped up accusations of "racism" or "intolerance" or "insensitivity" and the like, that they have learned to keep silent on any issue where the left has trotted out a victim-spokesperson.
All this is well known, as is the fact that Ann called them on it .
What has gone unnoticed, is that she did it by in fact *being* rude, insensitive, and over the top--so not only did she open up breathing room on the right, concerning being allowed to respond at all, she also moved the bar on what kind of response is allowed, without being called cold. With Ann's remarks to contrast with, ordinary disagreement with the widows and their ilk can no longer be shouted down as rude or cruel.
It was a master stroke rhetorically and I applaud her.
Cheers!
. . . because ultimately people who don't spend years studying a discipline will "blindly" (at least by your lights) accept someone's word on scientific work. And by your lights, blindly accepting your word on scientific work is OK. Naturally enough.The problem boils down to the conundrum I addressed in the initial post. It is demonstrated to my complete satisfaction that "objective" journalism is in fact sophistry. People who own presses, and broadcast licenses, use them for fun and profit - and do so by operating on the P.T. Barnum principle that there is a sucker born every minute.
That's painfully obvious in the "TANG memo" case, in which Dan Rather brought forth as a smoking gun crude forgeries purporting to be TANG documents dating back to 1972 but containing anachronisms in textual content and in the technology by which they patently were created. Anyone who ever worked in an office in the 1970s can see the technological anachronisms when they are pointed out, if not before.
But when called on the patent forgery involved, Rather and CBS "doubled down" by sticking with the story. If you reflect on the question, "Why would they go with such an obviously fake story, and why would they stand by it when called out?" there is one answer that suggests itself. First, they knew that no other organ of "objective journalism" would go after them no matter how flimsy their story was, and second, they took for granted that the public consists almost exclusively of suckers who even if individually suspicious could not coalesce into a critical mass which would not accept the con.
Journalism used to get by with that sort of stuff all the time. Alar scare, silicone implant scare, whatever. Things that tear down the reputation of anyone who earns their reputation by actually doing things. If you actually accomplish things - whether it be growing food or policing your neighborhood or in the military - your reputation is the natural prey of those whose reputation is made exclusively by making others look bad. Given the slightest excuse they will second-guess you mercilessly.
Truth has nothing to do with it. The case of Joe McCarthy is instructive. As someone at the time wrote, people from one end of the country to the other were shouting, "I am being cowed. I am afraid to speak out!" And all over the country reporters responded, "Look, he is being cowed! He is afraid to speak out!" It is a case of the medium denying the message. "Everyone knows" that newspapers were being intimidated - yet every actual newspaper would, if somehow haled into court on the matter, be able to prove conclusively that in fact they had not been intimidated.
So what Ann Coulter has been doing, with Slander, Treason, and Godless, has simply been to point out where the emperor journalism has no clothes.
Maybe Coulter is wrong on this issue - but if "objective" journalism happens to be right about it, it is the merest of accidents. A case of a stopped clock happening to be right for a moment, twice a day. Because "objective" journalism has motive to promote evolution simply because it tears at the reputations of people who oppose cynicism. And although you may well believe yourself to be smarter than me (and that isn't impossible), I credit journalism with cunning but not with the ability to understand science better than I do. They make far too many elementary mistakes for that.
Well stated. However the risk is that those educated in public schoolsTM (tee hee), since they don't have much background, might jump to the conclusion that since the supernatural is not mentioned, it is therfore excluded. In my undergraduate days (back in the 1300's), I have had just such conversations with campus radicals.
Cheers!
Easter and the ascenscion come to mind. ;-)
Cheers!
I can just see it now. In the class of aerodynamics and the theory of flight the teacher has to mention that there is an alternative theory that angels hold the planes up. (tee hee)
How many angels can dance on the head of an aileron?
D*m*cr*ts ... is [sic] useless.
Rule 2: quote out of context
I was mistaken. I had misread a 'to 51' as 'to 5'
Hardly. I expect those that read my posts, if they are so inclined, to investigate the content of my posts. The vast majority of evos are quite scrupulous in posting links to sites that contain accurate information and cites to the primary literature. No evo expects you or anyone else to accept what we say 'blindly'. However, many times we are castigated for the number of links our posts contain so, at least in my case, the number of links has markedly dropped. If you wish to explore paths to the primary literature I suggest you visit PatrickHenry's home page here or Ichneumon's home page here.
As stated above I *expect* readers of my posts to further investigate the content, not to accept what I say blindly.
"Maybe Coulter is wrong on this issue - but if "objective" journalism happens to be right about it, it is the merest of accidents. A case of a stopped clock happening to be right for a moment, twice a day. Because "objective" journalism has motive to promote evolution simply because it tears at the reputations of people who oppose cynicism.
That Coulter is in error in her attack on evolution is most assured. That the journalists, whether objective or not, have picked up on those errors and consequently listened to the scientists that actually do the work and know a great deal more than Coulter and her sources, is no accident. In most instances you would be correct about the value of journalistic information, however in this case those in the know have been vocal enough to attract the eyes and ears of journalists. If you doubt those that are refuting Coulter, don't take their word for it - go to the primary literature.
"And although you may well believe yourself to be smarter than me (and that isn't impossible), I credit journalism with cunning but not with the ability to understand science better than I do. They make far too many elementary mistakes for that.
My criticism of the content of your original post is not based on my opinion that I am more intelligent than you (I suspect the exact opposite) but on the errors in the information contained by that one site. Everything that I read at that site was a rehash of common creationist/IDist strawman arguments that have been repeatedly refuted in popular science articles written by scientists and based on primary literature.
When speaking to science, the vast majority of journalists brazenly expose their ignorance. No one should 'blindly' accept what they say. Fortunately, the Web makes it relatively easy to access the primary literature or at the very least, popularizations of it written by working scientists.
The claim that 'science' is suppressing dissent is an argument that pseudoscience presents as a matter of course. In the case of ID the reasons are the same - the work simply is not of sufficient depth and quality to be published by a reputable science journal.
When mutations were originally suggested as the major source of allele variety at the beginning of the 20th century, much the work was rejected because it was incomplete. As the work improved it was gradually accepted. When S. J. Gould suggested Punctuated Equilibrium, his words of dissent were listened to because of the work he and Eldridge put into the theory. Eventually, as the theory fleshed out, more and more biologists accepted it as an evolutionary process. Even today there are not a few that question the role PE actually plays in the overall Evolutionary picture.
Dissent is *not* stifled, if the work behind it passes the various checks and balances built into the methodology. The ID work done by Behe and by Dembski have been reviewed by a fair number of scientists outside of journals and have been shown to be low in quality. One review of Dembski's work (Elsberry & Shallit) went so far as to provide corrections to the paper.
The majority of work done by the DI fellows has consisted of publicity not science. Any and all of the science that has been produced by the DI fellows that has been published has not been about ID. The only method they have thus far presented to identify and differentiate design in the natural world from the purely undesigned has failed in the very few instances it has been applied.
If the DI and its fellows want to be accepted as science they need to step up to the plate and produce some original, publishable work. Work that necessarily survives the same trials and tribulations that the evolutionary sciences have undergone.
Just ask any working scientist if they have had papers rejected at least once by the journals and I suspect you will find that the vast majority have suffered that embarrassment at some point in their career. I have an acquaintance who is very intelligent (more so than I, I'm afraid) that had one paper returned twice for corrections before it was deemed publishable. Published papers are routinely torn apart by other scientists. The scientific process is very adversarial.
Why should IDists be excused from that process? Should their work not stand on its own merits rather than be promoted through political means?
Good post. You captured the spirit of how science works.
Would you rudder they dance on an elevator?
Would you rudder they dance on an elevator?
Is this what they mean by "flying on a wing and a prayer?"
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