Posted on 03/24/2007 10:28:12 PM PDT by SirLinksalot
Professors opposed to the Bush library aren't the only angry faculty members at Southern Methodist University this week.
Science professors upset about a presentation on "Intelligent Design" fired blistering letters to the administration, asking that the event be shut down.
The “Darwin vs. Design” conference, co-sponsored by the SMU law school’s Christian Legal Society, will say that a designer with the power to shape the cosmos is the best explanation for aspects of life and the universe. The event is produced by the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based organization that says it has scientific evidence for its claims.
The anthropology department at SMU begged to differ:
"These are conferences of and for believers and their sympathetic recruits," said the letter sent to administrators by the department. "They have no place on an academic campus with their polemics hidden behind a deceptive mask."
Similar letters were sent by the biology and geology departments.
The university is not going to cancel the event, interim provost Tom Tunks said Friday. The official response is a statement that the event to be held in McFarlin Auditorium April 13-14 is not endorsed by the school:
"Although SMU makes its facilities available as a community service, and in support of the free marketplace of ideas, providing facilities for those programs does not imply SMU's endorsement of the presenters' views," the statement said.
The school also will review its policies about who is allowed to hold events on campus, Dr. Tunks said.
The size of the dispute reflects two ongoing battles about academic freedom and responsibility.
One is local: The concern that some SMU professors have that the proposed Bush library and an accompanying policy institute would create the impression that the school tilts politically toward the positions of the current administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at dallasnews.com ...
Which doesn't mean that the remaining 99.999% of species are explained by ID.
You can not say that the pigs were produced by intelligent design, you can only say that the pigs were modified by intelligent design.
"That's not religion. That's modern science.
Genetic manipulation is science. CM did not say otherwise. He was referring to the idea that all life, starting 3.8 bya is the result of intelligent design. That we can currently modify the genomes of animals to get what we want shows that it is possible for intelligence to produce variation in life, it does not give any evidence what so ever that the life on Earth is the result of ID. We need physical evidence that it happened that way not evidence that it is possible. All scientists recognize that genetic manipulation by intelligence is possible. What we don't believe is that there is any independent evidence that shows that is what happened.
"Evolution can't explain those pigs, by the way...
Evolution can and does explain the pigs used as the basis for these new ones. We just modified the genome, we did not create it. I'm not saying that we could not have created it, nor that some other intelligence could not have created it, I am saying that your argument, as you present it, is jumping to unwarranted conclusions.
There you go again.
The pig does show that ID can produce changes to a genome. It does not show that all life is the result of ID. Showing that it is possible is not the same as showing that it is universally true.
Why is requiring ID follow the same processes and conditions as every other science being a zealot?
Just as an experiment, do the calculations necessary to produce an accurate probability for the gradual incremental change from a simple chemical complex we would define as nonliving to the more complex chemical complex we define as alive and compare that probability to the probability that an all powerful, all knowing, all encompassing being exists. Tell me what you get and show me your work.
I have to hand it to you. Based on your past posting history, I had you pegged as a moron, but now you've bested our best. My hat's off to you.
ID is supposed to be able to differentiate between the intelligently designed and the naturally occurring. If they can't then the conclusion that life is designed is an unfounded conclusion.
"Darwin's Theory, too, is less "scientific" than meets the eye. He has made a theory that explains the "HISTORICAL" record. It cannot be experimentally validated; in other words we cannot create human beings in laboratories using the methods of natural selection.
Where do you get the idea that we would have to replicate the creation of a organism, let alone a specific organism, for the study of evolution to be science?
The 'replicable experiments' done in a lab does not refer to the replication of the phenomenon under study but that the test produced in the lab be replicable and the results be consistent. What is required is that the tests be broadly and specifically applicable to the question being asked.
As far as selection is concerned, all that is necessary is that the tests be formed in such a way that it can be shown that selecting for a specific trait will produce changes in the dominant genotype and phenotype of a population. In other words that selection will maximize the number of organisms with the changes and minimize those without. This has been done many times. We certainly do not have to build a specific organism from scratch.
By the way, Darwin's original theory is just the beginning of what has become a much larger and encompassing set of theories. Restricting the modern study of evolution to Darwin's ideas is to create a straw man.
"We can only collect historical data and ask if this data fits the theory. If it doesn't perhaps we modify or update the theory. To prove its uniqueness, that it is the only possible theory would be nearly impossible.
This is true of all sciences. Science does not try to determine if an explanation is 'true' it determines which of a number of explanations best fits the evidence. Testing of a hypothesis is always done with respect to another hypothesis, even if that hypothesis is simple - it didn't happen that way'. The hypothesis, and the resulting theory are based on the inability to falsify, in the Sober sense, the hypothesis under question. Your statement does not in any way reduce the modern theories of Evolution to anything but science.
Sequential data probability is one area where we have already done the math (and yes, the work is shown). The math alone completely rules out the Theory of Evolution, by the way.
Ever heard of genetic engineering?
Evolution explains how the pig came to be a pig.
Intelligent design explains nothing. It is based on religious belief, and has no explanatory power in science. It is a dishonest attempt by the Discovery Institute to sneak creation "science" into science classes following the Supreme Court decision of the late 1980s that tossed it out.
(While we're on the subject, you want some lipstick for that pig?)
Ah yes, an attack on me from the man who once tried to tell the world that bacteria do not have recessive traits: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1326116/posts?page=680#680
Dear Child, you *failed* to answer which theory (I even listed the multiple choice options to simplify your obviously Herculean task) explains how the pig came to have the human growth hormone gene.
Do you realize that you will have to dance in every post that you make to me (and I've heard all of the common flee-from-the-debate-excuses) until you *answer* that query?!
...but it doesn't explain how the pig came to have a new HGH gene. Another theory, however, explains that occurrence.
Whatever.
Ah, the cowardly retreat from an intellectual challenge. Pity.
BS.
The "Dear child" reference didn't impress me.
That's "Dr. Dear child" to you. And half of that Dr. was in various evolutionary sciences.
Until you can come up with something better the tripe you have been peddlin' don't bother me.
So, calculating that monkeys could not type a line from Shakespeare rules out the possibility that evolution has taken place?
Sorry SH but all that little exercise in futility shows is that the author has some really bad assumptions about abiogenesis, evolution and the calculation of their probability. If he seriously believes that he has calculated the probability of abiogenesis, or more importantly the probability of a genetic change spreading through a population, he is deluded.
For any argument by analogy to work the analogs have to be demonstrably identical in the essential properties.
In what way is a single monkey typing away anything like the processes involved in abiogenesis and evolution? (Remember, evolution is concerned with populations and changes to existing genomes)
Your claim that this bit of misguided probability rules out the ToE is jumping to a rather large and unwarranted conclusion. All it does prove is that monkeys would have a difficult time typing "TO BE OR NOT TO BE, THAT IS THE QUESTION.".
So I take it then that you would be willing to stipulate that John Baxter is the Intelligent Designer of the gene? If it wasn't him then who?
Assuming that you agree with John Baxter then I don't think we have a disagreement. We have evidence that that is the case and the gene sequencing from Genentech.
Now I have a tougher question, who designed the pig and what is your evidence to support your claim? It was your example so I am certain that you must have an adequate answer.
Until you can answer, yes, really answer the scientific question posed in post #29, then you aren't worth bothering.
He simply uses the monkey analogy to make his *math* readable for laymen.
His probability math itself is quite sound (which is why Darwinists can't post math of their own to refute it). Said math is also quite germane to whether or not genetic DNA programming can sequence itself (or not) without aid (read: external bias).
Is the theory that germs cause certain diseases still a theory ot is it now a proven fact?
90 percent of Academics absolutely suck. They're Marxist-lite, or outright Marxist, or Atheists on a mission to absolutely destroy faith. It's a testament to God's power that most of their students don't buy into their crap.
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