Posted on 01/30/2003 7:15:04 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-evolution-dispute0130jan30,0,713004.story
Professor's Letter Refusal Causes Probe By LISA FALKENBERG Associated Press Writer
January 30, 2003, 9:50 AM EST
DALLAS -- A biology professor who refuses to write letters of recommendation for his students if they don't believe in evolution is being accused of religious discrimination, and federal officials are investigating, the school said.
The legal complaint was filed against Texas Tech University and professor Michael Dini by a student and the Liberty Legal Institute, a religious freedom group that calls Dini's policy "open religious bigotry."
(Excerpt) Read more at newsday.com ...
To the contrary, God has never forsaken man. It has always been the other way around. When His children stray, He removes His protection and/or disciplines them. When they turn again to Him and humble themselves, He restores them.
Some, who are considered too good for this world (Hebrews 11) are allowed to suffer for a greater purpose. But many are miraculously saved in this mortal life.
To those who believe that which can be observed is all that there is, there is no spiritual realm, no higher purpose, no completeness, no hope. This life is all they can see and thus, mortal survival and prosperity comprise the petition of grievance against God and His family.
But for those of us who have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the knowledge of His being, we are one within the body of Christ. Mortal life and prosperity become insignificant except to speak the Word so others who have the ears to hear, might do so. We are already alive in the spiritual realm and our home awaits us.
Here is a link to the remarkable history of the Jews linked to Bible prophecy.
How strange that a language and people and faith could survive and return to their homeland from diaspora after thousands of years. They were also miraculously gathered from Egypt and Babylon. How strange such a small country with so few people could defeat enormous countries and people who surround them. How strange, visceral and irrational is the hatred of Jews.
Apparently, you don't know or won't see that a human baby starts as a unicellular. It escapes your education?
And you just can't answer why science textbooks still use the faked Haekel drawings?
I was subtly inviting you to cite your sources. Sorry to be so obscure. I see a lot of dumb claims about what textbooks, especially high school textbooks, "still" have, claims which clearly have no foundation except cretinist pamphlets.
Take your time; I've got about three workdays worth of snow to shovel.
I gather that your position is like that of the Longevity Organization, that aging is not a gene (or genes) but a pleiotropic phenomenon. If so, can I gather from that, that aging arose by happenstance, coincident with complexity?
I was going to say "Such as? You see any specific evidence here to refute?" but then read on first and saw that whatajoke had already posted the obvious answer (and it is worth repeating):
His posts are intellectually insulting, resulting in insulting.
Also, there is that pisser of a sticking point: He has posted no evidence yet. In fact, no creationist has ever posted one iota of evidence. Posting past mistakes which have since been corrected from the field of biology is hardly evidence for a creator. It is merely evidence for the scientific process.
Furthermore, the day creationists stop being picayune literary critics, and try some science once in their lives, this whole so-called "debate" will finally go away.
This topic (like all science threads) is of some minor interest to most scientists, professional and amateur. If you want to play, please post something other than scripture.
As for X-Con, he is repeating himself to an annoying degree and proving to be "tone deaf" to the replies he engenders. As far as I am concerned, that makes him worth ridiculing.
Genes with more than one phenotype are pleiotropic. The genes that keep cells from growing out of control also impose mortality on cells. It's easy to think of these genes as being controlled in trade-off manner between optimization of one trait vs. lethality.
The Genesis account of Creation is a beautiful allegory, and I have no problems with it as long as the "days" mentioned in English translations represent unspecified periods of time. For if God does indeed exist, He surely exists outside of time itself...such measurements would be utterly meaningless.
Additionally, I have always found it strange that God would have to "tweak" His creation from time-to-time, which implies that His creation was somehow insufficient or flawed. How much greater would the God be that knew all in advance as He set the Universe in motion, as opposed to a god that had to fix things every so often? If there is a God, then I'm convinced He would have performed all work at the beginning, and nothing further would need to be done until Christ's appearance on Earth.
What about the milliards of frauds concocted by Christians, especially Young-Earth Creationists?
If someone put together all the wood supposedly belonging to Jesus’ cross, he could build a whole row of houses.
The incredible naivete about Christians buying into frauds “proving” miracles is well documented.
As a matter of fact, there is even a case of an atheist who filmed his backyard and sold the film to a creationist research institute as the newly-found Noah’s Ark.
Being an objective Christian I propose that the amount of fraud, truculence, and deceit by Christian shysters has not been matched yet by the similar dark traits among evolutionists.
An honest Christian flabbergasted at the chicanery and charlantry of Christian archeologists:
I felt I should look at the evidence from Wyatt Archaeological Research (WAR). They sent me two videos and three books. One video was a two hour presentation entitled Discovered, Noah's Ark. The other video was entitled Presentation of Discoveries. [snip]Complete articleWhat I saw on the video and read in the small spiral-bound book made my jaws drop. I saw video clips and photographs of ancient sites and artifacts which just seemed unbelievable. This man, Ron Wyatt, believed he had verified the true discovery of Noah's Ark approximately 15 miles from the main peak of the Ararat Mountains, discovered the cities of Sodom and Gomorroh, revealed exact location of the Red Sea Crossing of Israel, showed in incredible video and photographs the original Mount Sinai, and to top it all off, he laid claim to having discovered the exact stake hole for the beam which held Jesus Christ.
The crowning achievement was the discovery of the lost Ark of the Covenant buried 20 feet below the crucifixion site. He claimed the Ark was sprinkled by the blood of Jesus Christ when his side was pierced and the earthquake opened a crack which opened the way for His blood to literally drop down onto the Mercy Seat of the Ark.
As I watched this video and read the book, I could hardly believe my eyes. If this was all true, why hasn't every television channel broadcasted these amazing discoveries. But then some of it has appeared on television. His work on Noah's ark was aired on the television program 20/20, the Today Show, Discovery Channel as well as others.
Wyatt's video on Noah's Ark was full of top quality scientists, archaeologists, government officials, and Hugh Downs and Barbara Walters, all seeming to acknowledge that this structure 15 miles south of the central peak of the Ararat Mountains was indeed, Noah's Ark.
I could hardly believe my eyes! But when watching Ron Wyatt make his presentation on the video, looking into his watery eyes as he described the blood of Christ sprinkling the Mercy Seat of the Ark of the Covenant, I couldn't call him a liar. He looked like one of the most humble, loving men I have ever seen.
This video of the Ark of the Covenant was filmed at a convention of a large world-wide Christian Women's organization. The Christian astronaut James Irwin seemed to be involved with the Noah's Ark video. The videos and books were full of names of prominent people in Christian, scientific and archaeological, circles.
Every time I read about these Christian frauds, I become saddened, since I once was a true believer in Creationism. The first time I came across damning evidence against Creationism written by other Christians, I was appalled. I would never have considered such accusations if hurled by “wicked, atheist, secular” evolutionists.
Since then, I have found that my faith in Jesus has become stronger since I do not have to depend in pieces of bones to “prove” that a particular interpretation of the creation account must be true. As a matter of fact, whether Jesus used evolution or any other method to create our human bodies is completely irrelevat to my salvation.
Regarding the Futuyma book, I was immediately suspicious since Futuyma is too much the leading light to be so out of touch. So I Yahoo!ed around and it didn't take long.
The charge seems to have have a lot of life in creationist publications. Jonathan Wells said it prominently in Icons of Evolution, and that was wrong.
Numerous other mistakes and distortions could be mentioned, here is but one. Regarding Futuyma's use of the Haeckel embryo drawings in the 3rd edition of Evolutionary Biology, Wells writes (p. 109), "But it was Futuyma who mindlessly recycled Haeckel's embryos in several editions of his textbook, until a 'creationist' criticized him for it." However, an inspection of Futuyma's 1st and 2nd editions of Evolutionary Biology reveals that no such drawings were included in these editions. In the first edition, Haeckel's biogenetic law and the problems with it are discussed on page 153 in respectable fashion (this corresponds with page 303 in the second edition) -- and in fact the primary issue surrounding Haeckel in textbooks, which has always been to debunk Haeckel's "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" oversimplification, is in fact admirably discussed in all three editions.Makes me wonder how good your other examples are. Lots of creationist pubs reproduce Haeckel's drawings, too. What is the context? Why am I asking you? If it isn't in some AiG pamphlet, you're not going to know.
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