Posted on 01/07/2002 3:16:27 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Edited on 04/22/2004 12:32:03 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court declined Monday to be drawn into a debate over the teaching of evolution in America's public schools.
The refusal is a victory for schools that require teachers to instruct on the subject even if the teacher disagrees with the scientific theory.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Too bad nothing supports their contentions.
We had essentially the flip-side of this case here in Kansas when the State B.O.E. decided to leave up to the districts how much emphasis they put on evolution in the classroom. The Naturalists were up in arms that Kansas was destroying the education of its students and would be seen as a "hick" State by one and all. Perhaps, but the B.O.E. was a properly elected body exercising powers delegated to it by the People of the State. At least one member lost her job over said decision, so I guess the People are still at the controls.
The point is, school curriculum is not a Federal issue. SCOTUS was right to stay out of it.
Because population gene frequencies respond to selection pressures.
"How do you know what Dembski knows? How do you know that these 'sets' are 'hodge-podges'?" -- Exnihilo
Dembski has published. What he knows is less obvious to his readers than what he doesn't know. He doesn't know any genetics.
Hodge-podges result when information is lost but the medium is retained. If a functional gene at a particular loci suffers a fatal mutation the now useless sequence of DNA remains. Further mutations to this sequence are not removed by selection because the thing is already useless. It is just along for the ride. The genomes are filled with this kind of stuff. The similarity of these degraded sections to corresponding functional genes is obvious. Plenty of literature on the Human Genome Project is available to explain this in detail.
"...known biological processes preclude the possibility that any individual life form on this planet was ever purposely designed." -- Vercingetorix
"Why?" -- Exnihilo
Think of the life processes operating over great expanses of time upon millions of species. At what point in this continuum did the Designer insert his latest design? How long would the design last intact before it was inexorably altered by these processes? Even ancient species with seemingly unalterable morphology are genetically greatly removed from their ancestors. Horseshoe Crabs, for example, have the highest genetic polymorphism ever measured.
Think about design and variation. Where and how does the Designer insert variation? Think of how Dembski's Designer would go about producing variants of his early designs. Apparently he uses a trial and error approach judging by all the mistakes. The ID proponent ignores this and sifts among those bits that geneticists call fitness characteristics for evidence of unchanging design excellence. This is just the place where natural selection has temporarily backed the species into a corner. The selection pressure to maintain these traits is very high or deviations are strongly selected against.
The ID argument rests on the special case or astonishing example for support when the general condition refutes it completely. It has no mechanism to deal with design modifications to ancestral forms except to guess that the Desinger intervened. Blind cave fish have all descended from once sighted stock and all modern birds descended from once volant stock. These "designs" are modifications resulting from the fact that information is expensive and it is not possible to maintain information that has no use. If Dembski understood this consequence of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics he could have saved himself a great deal of trouble.
True, it's an issue of states' rights. But there are limite on state's rights (alas). A state can't violate the federal constitution -- for example, the 14th amendment says no state can violate the life, liberty, or property rights of any citizen. So there's room for any state to bump up against the 14th amendment, and have its activities reviewed by the US supreme court. In this case, telling the teacher to tone down his creationism seems not to have been a big issue for the supremes.
Fantastic! Now try learning a little practical biology to go along with your vast knowledge of evolution theory. First though you will have to learn to recognize facts (hint: there are at least 18 facts in the post you were responding to). When you have accumulated enough "facts" perhaps you can devise your own theory of evolution. Because all of your "facts" will be culled from the natural world you will be hard pressed to offer a supernatural explanation without introducing information not included in your database. Where will you get this information? From your a priori beliefs?
Perhaps when you are able to explain the historical records -- both geologic and genomic -- you can boast of your understanding of evolution theory. Your knee-jerk dismissal of several critical facts does not bode well for the prospect that you might someday actually understand evolution.
A good yawn is just what you need to resuscitate your oxygen starved brain. I only hope it's not too late.
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