This makes no sense as written. Please rephrase and run it past me again. 
Posted on 03/01/2004 1:02:07 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
Almost 150 years ago, Charles Darwin knew something that the scientific establishment seems to have forgotten -- something that is being endangered today in the state of Ohio.
In Ohio, high school science students are at risk of being told that they are not allowed to discuss questions and problems that scientists themselves openly debate. While most people understand that science is supposed to consider all of the evidence, these students, and their teachers, may be prevented from even looking at the evidence -- evidence already freely available in top science publications.
In late 2002, the Ohio Board of Education adopted science education standards that said students should know "how scientists investigate and critically analyze aspects of evolutionary theory." The standards did not say that schools should teach intelligent design. They mandate something much milder. According to the standards, students should know that "scientists may disagree about explanations . . . and interpretations of data" -- including the biological evidence used to support evolutionary theory. If that sounds like basic intellectual freedom, that's because it is.
The Ohio Department of Education has responded by implementing this policy through the development of an innovative curriculum that allows students to evaluate both the strengths and the weaknesses of Darwinian evolution.
And that has the American scientific establishment up in arms. Some groups are pressuring the Ohio Board to reverse its decision. The president of the National Academy of Sciences has denounced the "Critical Analysis" lesson -- even though it does nothing more than report criticisms of evolutionary theory that are readily available in scientific literature.
Hard as it may be to believe, prominent scientists want to censor what high school students can read and discuss. It's a story that is upside-down, and it's outrageous. Organizations like the National Academy of Sciences and others that are supposed to advance science are doing their best to suppress scientific information and stop discussion.
Debates about whether natural selection can generate fundamentally new forms of life, or whether the fossil record supports Darwin's picture of the history of life, would be off-limits. It's a bizarre case of scientists against "critical analysis."
And the irony of all of this is that this was not Charles Darwin's approach. He stated his belief in the ORIGIN OF SPECIES: "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." Darwin knew that objective science demands free and open inquiry, and while I disagree with Darwin on many things, on this he was absolutely right. And I say what's good enough for scientists themselves, as they debate how we got here, is good enough for high school students.
Contact us here at BreakPoint (1-877-322-5527) to learn more about this issue and about an intelligent design conference we're co-hosting this June.
The Ohio decision is the leading edge of a wedge breaking open the Darwinist stranglehold on science education in this country. The students in Ohio -- and every other state -- deserve intellectual freedom, and they deserve it now.
This makes no sense as written. Please rephrase and run it past me again.
Nicely put - bravo!
I'll jump in, if I may. Experiments are tests of a theory. Every experiment is an opportunity to falsify the theory. Experiments (in the sense of falsification tests) need not take place in a lab. Observations of relevant data, even outside of a lab, can also qualify as experiments. This is obvious, as many sciences (for example, astronomy) aren't amenable to lab work.
In the case of evolution, every fossil that is dug up, every DNA examination, is an occasion whereby the model of common descent predicted by evolution can be tested. Thus far, for 150 years, evolution has passed every test. Nothing has been observed which contradicts the theory of evolution, although hundreds of thousands of opportunities to find such contradictions have occurred.
Creationists are quite adept at sweeping all of this aside and claiming that there's "no evidence" for evolution. Such declarations merely illustrate that such people aren't qualified to discuss the subject.
What you speak of is NOT a repeatable experiment - you are describing interpretation of data.
First off, Scientific American is not a scientific journal. It is a layman's journal that translates the stuff in scientific journals for everyday consumption. Secondly, the papers published in scientific journals are not wishy-washy commentary on others work. Scientific papers are original research and scholarship that details the methodology used and the conclusions drawn. The reason the methodology is included in exquisite detail is so that other researchers can recreate the experiment or observation. Now, if Denton or Behe actually had a scientific paper to publish (including detailed methodology and conclusions) and other researchers could recreate their work, there is no reason they wouldn't be published. However, no "creation scientist" has ever actually produced anything remotely resembling original research. If you know of such research, please enlighten us.
non sequitur
Mr. Silverback never claimed there was "no evidence" for evolution - he was asking for a repeatable experiment that supports evolution. Clearly you are having troubles understanding the difference between data and experimentation.
Sardae imber inferior facent?
There are a zillion vulnerable parts of evolutionary theory, any one of which could be brought crashing down by a well designed experiment.
So where ar the creation science experiments? Where are the ID experiments?
I suppose ewe will be told that the evil science establishment won't fund such experiments. Does this mean the creationist organizations can't fund a few field workers? I might toss out the fact that the Killer meteor theory of dinosaur extinction was first advanced by a couple of gys with no large amount of funding. They faced opposition and ridicule. Even today, as we speak, there are challenges. It doesn't take a lot of money to challenge existing theories. All it takes is some good ideas, ane oh yes, some actual evidence.
To correct Mr. Silverback, evolution has nothing at all to do with spontaneous generation" or any sort of abiogenesis.
Ahem. From ‘15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense’ by John Rennie, the editor of Scientific American:
7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.
The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science’s current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.
So, we once again have the evolutionist "Heads I win, tails you lose" argument: Evolution theory includes the origins of life arising from non-life, but it doesn't include the origins of life arising from non-life.
Absolutely, 100% blatantly false. Par for the course.
The theory of evolution makes predictions about the relationships between organisms, and hence predictions about where certain fossils should and should not be found - e.g., which strata they will and will not be found in. The test of those predictions, then, is to go out and dig up fossils to see if their locations are in accord with the predictions of the theory.
Ah...but why am I a bully in your scenario?
That's a new position for me, you understand; I was 160 pounds soaking wet when I graduated from High school.
Technicalities technicalities. Who cares if the DNA 'evidence' doesn't match the fossil record. Who cares if we are no closer to finding LUCA than we are to finding ET. Who cares if we can't conduct repeatable experiments showing evolution to be true. Believe it or be flogged, non-believer!
We now return you to your regularly scheduled evolutionist banter.
Good ideas ... actual evidence ... well, if you're going to throw all those wildly unreasonable obstacles in the path of creation "science" then you're just part of the conspiracy.
Does too.
Who cares if we are no closer to finding LUCA than we are to finding ET.
Are not.
Who cares if we can't conduct repeatable experiments showing evolution to be true.
Can too.
Believe it or be flogged, non-believer!
Don't want to flog you. Just want you not to tell lies to schoolkids.
Je pense qu'il va pour tous les petits poissons, ils fournissent un matériel faible de sac de douche
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