Posted on 05/05/2007 6:10:09 AM PDT by shrinkermd
...On one level the debate can be seen as a polite discussion of political theory among the members of a small group of intellectuals. But the argument also exposes tensions within the Republicans’ “big tent,” as could be seen Thursday night when the party’s 10 candidates for president were asked during their first debate whether they believed in evolution. Three — Senator Sam Brownback; Mike Huckabee; and Tom Tancredo of Colorado — indicated they did not.
...The reference to stem cells suggests just how wide the split is. “The current debate is not primarily about religious fundamentalism,” Mr. West, the author of “Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest” (2006), said at Thursday’s conference. “Nor is it simply an irrelevant rehashing...Darwinian reductionism has become culturally pervasive and inextricably intertwined with contemporary conflicts over traditional morality, personal responsibility, sex and family, and bioethics.”
The technocrats, he charged, wanted to grab control from “ordinary citizens ...so that they alone could make decisions over “controversial issues such as sex education, partial-birth abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and global warming.”
For some conservatives, accepting Darwin undercuts religious faith and produces an amoral, materialistic worldview that easily embraces abortion, embryonic stem cell research and other practices they abhor. As an alternative to Darwin, many advocate intelligent design...
Some of these thinkers have gone one step further, arguing that Darwin’s scientific theories about the evolution of species can be applied to today’s patterns of human behavior, and that natural selection can provide support for many bedrock conservative ideas, like traditional social roles for men and women, free-market capitalism and governmental checks and balances.
...“The intellectual vitality of conservatism in the 21st century will depend on the success of conservatives in appealing to advances in the biology of human nature as confirming conservative thought.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Anti-biology, anti-archeology, anti-geology... it’s a shorthand to say antiscience, but that’s what they are.
...which is to say that the scientific method applies and is equally supportable across the spectrum of science, from biology to physics.
We are each the beginning of a new branch of the evolutionary tree.
Hey Doc, you wasted your time again. What a surprise.
http://www.truthinscience.org.uk/site/content/view/57/65/
I see no reason to repeat what is already there.
That site appears to be arguing the creationist position. That is not an alternative scientific theory of evolution. It is a religious belief.
One of the issues that page does not address is how would anyone of any repute get his/her theory heard? To apply for a grant from the U. S. government, requires getting past a hand-picked committee that represents the status quo in the science industry. How would one obtain tenure at a university if one did not buy into the prevailing Darwinian theory? Too many “scientists” have their reputations at stake to allow a serious challenge to their “life’s” work.
One small example of rogue scientists eventually making a little headway over the entrenched establishment positiion is in this:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/stoneage/about.html
But, we didn’t get to hear much about that, now, did we?
Couple the difficulty of fighting entrenched reactionaries in the scientific community and the prevalence of political correctness (where is the Kennewick Man?), there is very little chance of of any really new thinking about the orgins of the earth/man getting a fair shot at a hearing.
Now you are in my field. I am an archaeologist.
There is substantial evidence that Clovis was not first. There seems to have been an early coastal migration, using watercraft, which extended from Alaska to the tip of South America. Here is a good article on some recent research. Some of my own research also supports this early coastal migration.
You mention Kennewick Man: he is being studied more intensively than any other Native American skeleton has ever been studied. I would not doubt that mtDNA will be a part of that study. This came about because scientists sued the government and won both at the trial and appellate court level. I see no attempts to hide the evidence supporting new theories there; rather a very distinguished panel of scientists is working hard to learn what Kennewick Man has to tell us.
As interesting as this discussion is, you have still not specified any scientific theories that the "bully boys" are preventing from challenging the theory of evolution.
Instead you have supplied a link supporting creationism and some examples from archaeology which do not support your claims about them.
This is a New York Times devide-the-conservatives, horse-shirt article.
Why fall for it?
I peeked into this thread to see if there was any actually scientific thought and I was very pleased to see you jump in. Thanks for all your previous insights...great appreciated...
...(should be), “divide”.
“The terms *evolution* and *science* are not interchangeable. Nobody is talking about an anti-science candidate, just someone who doesn’t agree with the currently accepted *scientific* interpretation of the fossil record....”
DNA record nowadays.
Awww, sh*t.
Just when did that happen?
I had pinged him to some stuff a month or so ago, IIRC...
“Evolution has no bearing on Constitutional governance. This is all meant [to] cast conservative candidates under the wheels of PC denigration.”
Bump to that. It don’t mean a darn thing to how you read the plain text of the Constitution whether you think God made little green apples, or that they evolved from bigger/smaller/other-colored apples. You’re either a Constitutionalist or you’re not, no matter your religious viewpoint.
No, just hysterical name calling talking points.
Before the Big Bang theory was accepted, the only ones who had any reason to believe that the universe had a beginning were those silly Bible literalists who took God at His word.
Then Einstein’s equations showed that the universe had one, but in a stroke of intentional fraud, he changed his equations To match the prevailing scientific *thinking* which was accepted until Hubble’s observations demonstrated that those equations were, in fact, correct.
So instead of correcting scientific thinking to match the equations, he changed the equations to match the scientific thinking. Nice. Just another reason in a long line of frauds and hoaxes that give people another reason not to trust scientists, and we’re not talking about some nobody here.
So how are scientists to know that something will not be discovered that will blow the ToE apart some day? They can’t. The best they can do is say that this is what the data leads them to conclude. They can’t say science is right and creationism is wrong, because they simply don’t know. That would imply a corner on the knowledge market and they don’t have it yet.
And no, not accepting the ToE as the best explanation of how life appeared on the earth does not automatically mean that one is anti-biology, anti-archeology, anti-geology. You just wish it did. It’s an unsubstantiated conclusion and besides, there are plenty of scientists on this forum who will state otherwise. Calling them all liars doesn’t prove anything or get anywhere.
I accept the Creation account but am NOT anti-science. I am anti-abuse, and misuse of science, but I have no problem with science itself.
On a Rudy thread about a week ago.
DNA can also demonstrate common design and it doesn’t do anything about disproving that God created everything.
************
Agreed, TC. They've got to learn to avoid these attempts to lead them astray not only during the debates, but in all contacts with the MSM. I was traveling the other night and unfortunately missed this debate, but heard that Hunter and Romney did well.
And DNA could indicate common design if it were not for viral insertions, plagiarized errors and suchlike.
It’s a good idea to learn a subject before one claims the expertise to refute it.
Yes, they should. They should address the question behind the question: "Do you hold a materialist worldview, such that the driving ethical principle is 'Who can, may,' and do you support Federal government funding of anything for which a scientist wants funding?"
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