Posted on 06/09/2003 6:07:51 PM PDT by Mr. Silverback
In the years that BreakPoint has been on the radio, I've had some strong words about our nation's public television broadcasting system, PBS. Two years ago, for example, I criticized PBS's airing of a deeply flawed series on the theory of evolution. That series was inaccurate and one-sided, leaving out any mention of the scientific evidence that supported the theory of intelligent design.
But today I've got good news about PBS to report. And this is news where you can make a real difference.
Over the past few weeks, here and there around the country, some PBS stations have been broadcasting the one-hour science documentary "Unlocking the Mystery of Life." This program tells the story of the biological theory of intelligent design. Using interviews with scientists and philosophers, computer animation, and location footage -- from such sites as the Galapagos Islands -- "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" describes the emergence of an alternative theory to strictly naturalistic evolution.
Naturalistic evolution, you see, credits all the amazing diversity and complexity of life solely to mindless natural causes, and that's how PBS science programs usually explain biology. That's "usually" as in "the sun usually goes down at night." You'd search fruitlessly if you tried to find PBS presenting the scientific case for a different viewpoint than Darwinian. And so airing "Unlocking the Mystery" points to a significant breakthrough.
The documentary tells such a good scientific story that, earlier this year, PBS made the program available to all of its national affiliates. Local stations could download the program from a satellite link, and -- if they so decided -- put it into their schedules.
Stations in Oklahoma and Michigan have already done so, and in a couple of days, PBS affiliates in Maryland, Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Texas will broadcast the program as well. You can contact BreakPoint (1-877-3-CALLBP) for the days and times of these broadcasts.
Airing "Unlocking the Mystery" on taxpayer-supported public television is great news for intellectual freedom and openness in science. Most Americans learn about new developments in science from TV -- shows like the long-running PBS series NOVA. A well produced TV documentary can take complicated scientific theories and make them accessible and easy to understand -- even fun to watch. For young people, science that might be boring in the classroom becomes fascinating when presented imaginatively on television.
But TV can also exclude scientific ideas if they're deemed too controversial or likely to upset the scientific establishment. Challenges to Darwinian evolution have been seen just that way, religiously motivated and therefore suspect. But science suffers as a result, because there is plenty of evidence that does challenge Darwinism, and the public needs to hear both sides.
So here's what you can do. Call your local PBS station if it hasn't scheduled "Unlocking the Mystery," and encourage it to show the program. Send them an e-mail. If they've already shown it, let them know you appreciate their willingness to present alternatives to Darwinian evolution -- and that you'd like to see more of such programming in the future.
You don't naturally find zebras and horses in the same geographic area. There were, until recently (about 45,000 years ago, if I remember correctly), other species of hominids; at one point there were simultaneously fully-modern, or nearly so, humans in Africa, Neanderthals in Europe and the Middle East, and even a few surviving homo erectus in parts of Asia. Once homo sapiens began to spread out from Africa, the other species disappeared because they couldn't compete. (Neanderthals, who appear to have been very close to us in brainpower, hung around until quite recently.)
Not directly inferred, no, but observations of the velocities of the stars and clouds of Hydrogen that orbit the galactic center indicate that the mass distribution of matter in the galaxy is not all accounted for by the clouds of gas and stars that are observed, hence inference of dark matter.
Very simplified definition. mind-body problem. Do a Google search on it. Tons of stuff.
They're looking. Dark matter's pull spotted.
Anyone who claims to speak in tongues is a liar.
My faith in Jesus tells me so.
Just as my belief in God supports evolution.
God created this beautiful exsistence which we share and then just stopped?
Have their been any signifcant studies of by astrophysicists trying to observe same?
Yes. There were the hunt for MACHOs (acronym for MAssively Compact Halo Objects) that as far as I know are still occurring. These are programs in the Southern Hemisphere that look at stars in the Magellanic Clouds nightly, and look for gravitational lensing events. They use star fields that are extremely dense, to maximise the number of possible lensing events in each frame. There are also some programs that look toward the galactic bulge.
Check out:
There are probably more projects, just do a web search. These are just what I'm aware of. They have had some success, but not at the amount necessary to claim their detections are actually dark matter.
And here I thought *I* was old.
Sure is a lot of wiggle room in these numbers. And usually when I'm shown a corpse of Bro, it's not even a whole limb or even a whole skull. I remember my first disillusionment with the evolutionists was when I actually found out how little in the way of corpus was in all this delecti--enormous theories built around such small holy relics. And that's a curious thing in and of itself--where're the bodies buried?
Dark matter is only inferred in other galaxies as well. Dark matter has never been directly observed. Only their gravitation effects have been observed.
Kind of a redundant statement (things are considered supernatural that have no place in science) Yet we all know that things that were once considered supernatural are now part of science. It took free thinkers willing to think outside the box to begin to process of moving the supernatural to the natural.
The supernatural is beyond explanation, and therefore out of the purview of science.
Not true. It is the goal of science to explain everything.
ANYTHING that starts with Goddidit, or here a miracle happened is NOT scientific.
Therefore all theories of cosmology are NOT scientific (using you logic)(of course you think saying “duh, I don’t know” allows you to overcome your miracle rule)
Therefore, ANY theory or hypothesis that uses the supernatural as a causation is either religion or philosophy, NOT science.
Not true. If a theory or hypothesis uses supernatural as causation and can be supported using the scientific method – it sure as heck is scientific. There is no ban on the supernatural in science like you are claiming. Things that can be supported using the scientific method are considered scientific.
Geez, you have a hard head...
You just love spewing insults (a sure sign your position is weak). You spend more time insulting people than you do providing supporting evidence for your claims. This is the knee-jerk evolutionist crap I am talking about: parrot the evolutionist slogans and insult anybody with a different opinion.
The reason it's called "dark matter" is because it isn't observable. It's presumed to exist because otherwise there is no accounting for the apparent gravitational effects seen in the rotation of galaxies. This seems easier to detect with distant galaxies rather than our own, as we're inside it. I really don't know if our own galaxy has been observed to require the presence of dark matter to explain its rotation. An astronomer would know this, and we have a few on this website. They'll speak up if I've blown this answer.
That is also the Pope's position. Message from the Pope, 1996.
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