[Fester Chugabrew]

Biochemistry and evolution provide the most important means of organizing the immense body of biological data.

Evolution does not assist in organizing facts and data. It makes unnecessary assumptions once the data has already been organized. I could learn the ins and outs of molecular biology very easily without making the assumption there is no god involved, but I could n't even participate in the gathering and observation of facts were it not for intelligence and design.

[PatrickHenry]

Good story on the politics (it certainly wasn't science) behind the Ohio decision:
How state board thinking evolved on biology lesson.

[js1138]

I could learn the ins and outs of molecular biology very easily without making the assumption there is no god involved...

No you couldn't and that's the whole point.

You may believe that God designed the universe, and you may very well be right. But once the universe is in motion, the only way science can operate is to assume that day to day affairs are not tampered with, and that ordinary processes and phenomena work according to initial laws and conditions.

A lot of IDers like to cite the existence of a modern jetliner, and ask how do you suppose it came into existence. When you answer this question you are drawing on knowledge and experience. Obviously the first time isolated tribes saw an airplane they had no frame of reference from which to answer.

The same is true of how biologists go about answering the question of how species come into existence. Someone with no grounding in molecular biology, or someone who believes that physical processes are tampered with on a regular basis, will have a different conjecture from someone who believes the laws of nature are constant over time.

The assumption that the laws of nature are constant is the heart and soul of science. You can't do science without believing that the phenomena you observe are the result of regular and untampered processes. You might well be the world's greatest lab technician, but as a researcher you will never be able to ask original scientific questions.

[js1138]

There is one other thing that simply has to be put on the table. I notice a lot of threads on FR dealing with miracles. One recent example was a thread whose title asked whether President Reagan's life was saved by an angel.

I'm going to ask all the creationistist and ID posters to answer the following: Is it anti-religious to question claims of miracles? Is it anti-religious to investigate phenomena like the now-deceased church window showing an image of Mary?

Assuming it isn't anti-religious to investigate, is it anti-religious to be skeptical when you have no explanation?

In short, is it anti-religious to assume that everyday phenomena are the working out of unchanging laws of nature. Is it anti-religious to formulate hypotheses based on that assumption?

[RightWingNilla]

Evolution does not assist in organizing facts and data.

Utterly false. Without Evolution there is no framework to organize anything in biology. Your'e just birdwatching.

[Virginia-American]

Evolution does not assist in organizing facts and data. It makes unnecessary assumptions once the data has already been organized

In the case of Linnaeus, the *fact* of evolution jumped out at him because he organized the data- after he had organized all known life, he began to doubt that species are immutable.

Remember that Darwin came up withnatural selection - it was already known that some sort of evolution had taken place, and other scientists and scholars like Lamarck had come up with theories. Only Darwin's has survived all tests.