It just keeps getting nuttier, doesn't it?
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And the very scientific ad hominem arguments begin in 5, 4, 3, 2....
“You must not have gone to a REAL school!”
“You probably don’t use electricity!”
“It’s been proven over and over again. Look it up for yourself, if you can read.”
One of these days, I’m going to start a thread that posits that Jefferson Davis was a better president than Abraham Lincoln because he would have euthanized Terri Schiavo in the name of natural selection and watch the fur fly.
Or, how about the celebration of the Birth of Christ?
A lot of the arguments could be used against the religion "industry".
'Fittest' does not mean physical strength in human societies; atleast not always. In the natural world, it may be so, but in the case with humans, the dominance of ideas has taken over all other avenues of displays of strength to attract mates, including physical strength, by a very, very acute degree.
The CRSC calls its strategy the “Wedge,” because it wants to liberate science from “atheistic naturalism.”Johnson refers to the CRSC members and their strategy as the Wedge, analogous to a wedge that splits a log — meaning that intelligent design will liberate science from the grip of “atheistic naturalism.” Ten years of Wedge history reveal its most salient features: Wedge scientists have no empirical research program and, consequently, have published no data in peer-reviewed journals (or elsewhere) to support their intelligent-design claims. But they do have an aggressive public relations program, which includes conferences that they or their supporters organize, popular books and articles, recruitment of students through university lectures sponsored by campus ministries, and cultivation of alliances with conservative Christians and influential political figures.
Philip E. Johnson: “This isn’t really, and never has been, a debate about science. It’s about religion and philosophy.”The Wedge aims to “renew” American culture by grounding society’s major institutions, especially education, in evangelical religion. In 1996, Johnson declared: “This isn’t really, and never has been, a debate about science. It’s about religion and philosophy.” According to Dembski, intelligent design “is just the Logos of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory.” Wedge strategists seek to unify Christians through a shared belief in “mere” creation, aiming — in Dembski’s words — “at defeating naturalism and its consequences.” This enables intelligent-design proponents to coexist in a big tent with other creationists who explicitly base their beliefs on a literal interpretation of Genesis.
At heart, ID proponents are not motivated to improve science but to transform it into a theistic enterprise.“As Christians,” writes Dembski, “we know naturalism is false. Nature is not self-sufficient. … Nonetheless neither theology nor philosophy can answer the evidential question whether God’s interaction with the world is empirically detectable. To answer this question we must look to science.” Jonathan Wells, a biologist, and Michael J. Behe, a biochemist, seem just the CRSC fellows to give intelligent design the ticket to credibility. Yet neither has actually done research to test the theory, much less produced data that challenges the massive evidence accumulated by biologists, geologists, and other evolutionary scientists. Wells, influenced in part by Unification Church leader Sun Myung Moon, earned Ph.D.’s in religious studies and biology specifically “to devote my life to destroying Darwinism.” Behe sees the relevant question as whether “science can make room for religion.” At heart, proponents of intelligent design are not motivated to improve science but to transform it into a theistic enterprise that supports religious faith.
The ID movement is advancing its strategy but its tactics are no substitute for real science. Wedge supporters are at present trying to insert intelligent design into Ohio public-school science standards through state legislation. Earlier the CRSC advertised its science education site by assuring teachers that its “Web curriculum can be appropriated without textbook adoption wars” — in effect encouraging teachers to do an end run around standard procedures. Anticipating a test case, the Wedge published in the Utah Law Review a legal strategy for winning judicial sanction. Recently the group almost succeeded in inserting into the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 a “sense of the Senate” that supported the teaching of intelligent design. So the movement is advancing, but its tactics are no substitute for real science. ----By Barbara Forrest
“No one knows how life began,”
No one knows how life began?
“And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven.”
It was created by the spoken Word of God. Unlike men, God has never lied.
“Will the Real Theory of Evolution Please Stand Up? exposes the rivalry in science today surrounding attempts to discover that elusive mechanism of evolution, as rethinking evolution is pushed to the political front burner. ..” ~ Ethan Clive Osgoode
“...What is the significance of such a theory? To address this question is to enter the field of epistemology.
A theory is a metascientific elaboration distinct from the results of observation, but consistent with them. By means of it a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation.
A theory’s validity depends on whether or not it can be verified; it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought.
Furthermore, while the formulation of a theory like that of evolution complies with the need for consistency with the observed data, it borrows certain notions from natural philosophy.
And, to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution.
On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based. Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist, and spiritualist interpretations. What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology.
Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person. ...”
Excerpted from:
Theories of Evolution http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9703/articles/johnpaul.html
John Paul II
Copyright (c) 1997 First Things 71 (March 1997): 28-29.
Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1575742/posts?page=70#70
Evolutionary biology is a different discipline than abiogenesis.
If the author can’t, or refuses, to understand the topic, why read any further.
The alignment to the evolution versus ID debate is even closer -- why? Because many if not most of the major blogs and pundits taking the line that questions about the certificate and birth legend are nutso, are also those same blogs that deride intelligent design.
I just mention this as a curiosity at this point. That is, if people are still allowed to be curious or skeptical about ideas held by force and inquisitions against heresies.
Does that make it false? Polling is truth?