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.
do you not understand. There is, oddly enough, no law of physics or rationality to prevent one from speculation, providing you start with a disclaimer such as "The origin of life remains very much a mystery".
I was not saying that evolution is invalid because evolutionists don't know what the exact origin of life was; Holding them to be in intellectual error because they don't claim to know it all is silly. I am saying that evolutionists like Mr. Rennie tend to gas on for whole pages at a time about how life could have arisen from non-living matter, but then claim that evolution has nothing to do with the origin of life, especially not the origin of life from non-living matter. That's like saying that creationism has nothing to do with belief in God, or that Intelligent Design theory has nothing to do with the concept of irreducible complexity.
Suuuuuuuuuuure he doesn't.
Tell you what, how about I write you a paragraph about how you dig and lay a foundation. Then I'll claim that my paragraph had nothing to do with building houses. Then, I'll claim that the housing contractor community has nothing to do with laying foundations, and that anyone who says we do is mischaracterizing our industry. All of this in answer to a strawman "nonsense" assertion that house builders don't know how to lay foundations. Oh, and then for added points I'll impugn your integrity and call you a dunderhead that can't drive a nail into a wall.
Hey, what do you know, I'm John Rennie with a hard hat and a tape measure!
what observations would show that ID is wrong?
Is the hypothesized designer capable of making things that are forbidden by standard biology (eg, a transitional form between a bird and a mammal, a centaur, a whale with gills, etc etc).
If it can, where are they?
IF it can't, the designer hypothesis adds nothing to the theory, and should be rejected by Occam's Razor. Further, the theory would have to acccount for this limitation.
Specifically, Darwin predicted that the intermediate forms between people and apes would be African. In fact several have been: Homo erectus; H. habilis; Australopithecus africanus; A. Afarensis. et al.
He also predicted intermediates between four-footed animals and cetaceans. Guess what? multiple confirmations of this: Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, etc.
BTW, what were the predictions made by the creationists? That such things would never be found, because they never existed? EG, Behe said:
[I]f random evolution is true, there must have been a large number of transitional forms between the Mesonychid and the ancient whale. Where are they? It seems like quite a coincidence that of all the intermediate species that must have existed between the Mesonychidand whale, only species that are very similar to the end species have been found.
Not really a prediction, but he seems to think it was unlikely. A few months later, intermediates were in fact found.
LAWYER, n. One with professional training in lying under oath.
I didn't use that one in deference to CobaltBlue.
Seriously, there have been contributions made to science by lawyers: Lyell and Fermat are the only ones I can think of.
First, understand that ID and ToE is not an ‘either / or’ situation. ID, ToE, and OOL disagree with the actual mechanisms. At the root of this debate; it’s natural mechanisms i.e. mindless, void of purpose and intent (neo-darwinism) - or mechanisms which display intelligence, purpose, and intent (ID). Furthermore, Design Theory encompasses the Anthropic Principle while ToE and OOL stand alone in what they theorize (at least sometimes – see Dawkins). And if ToE or OOL do not state the creator of life and consciousness to be mindless than ID should not be scorned. IOW, design in biology is an illusion or real. Now, to your question…
We have always underestimated cells. . . . The entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines. . . . Why do we call the large protein assemblies that underlie cell function protein machines? Precisely because, like machines invented by humans to deal efficiently with the macroscopic world, these protein assemblies contain highly coordinated moving parts.
Bruce Alberts, "The Cell as a Collection of Protein Machines: Preparing the Next Generation of Molecular Biologists," Cell 92 (February 8, 1998): 291.
So what does ID bring to the table and what predictions does it offer science?
· Transposable LINE-1 (junk) actually serves a purpose.
· Functional parts will be reused in unrelated species.
· Intelligent and purposeful information will be found in DNA (encoded information).
· Mindlessness cannot create consciousness.
· Absolutes exist beyond mankind.
It's a shame, too - I've seen you on other threads, and you are capable of making a coherent argument, probably because on those other topics you are actually attempting to make a case, rather that simply arguing for the sake of arguing as you appear to be doing here. When you can come up with something more substantive than silly semantic arguments, drop me a line and we'll have a real chat.
You've managed to read quite a bit into that. I suggest you stick to parsing the words themselves, rather than trying to invent hidden meanings between the nouns.
Rennie says, quite clearly, that there are several hypotheses for how life "could have" arisen from nonliving sources - this is speculative, as indicated by the use of the words "could have". He then continues on to say that, even if some non-material, non-natural force was responsible for the origins of life, it does not invalidate the theory of evolution, which has already been confirmed by experimentation. Therefore, whether one of the speculative hypotheses is correct or not, or whether some other agency was responsible, the theory of evolution is not affected. Why? Because the origins of life are irrelevant to the theory.
Read for content. It'll do you a world of good.
If those were reasonable summaries, one would be quite right in questioning them. But they aren't, which pretty much invalidates the whole exercise.
BTW, welcome aboard. Who were you before?
You might want to rephrase this.
Oh yeah! Stephen Gould and Niles Eldredge really knew how to party!
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