Posted on 09/29/2005 3:36:00 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) -- The concept of "intelligent design" is a form of creationism and is not based on scientific method, a professor testified Wednesday in a trial over whether the idea should be taught in public schools.
Robert T. Pennock, a professor of science and philosophy at Michigan State University, testified on behalf of families who sued the Dover Area School District. He said supporters of intelligent design don't offer evidence to support their idea.
"As scientists go about their business, they follow a method," Pennock said. "Intelligent design wants to reject that and so it doesn't really fall within the purview of science."
Pennock said intelligent design does not belong in a science class, but added that it could possibly be addressed in other types of courses.
In October 2004, the Dover school board voted 6-3 to require teachers to read a brief statement about intelligent design to students before classes on evolution. The statement says Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection is "not a fact" and has inexplicable "gaps," and refers students to an intelligent-design textbook for more information.
Proponents of intelligent design argue that life on Earth was the product of an unidentified intelligent force, and that natural selection cannot fully explain the origin of life or the emergence of highly complex life forms.
Eight families are trying to have intelligent design removed from the curriculum, arguing that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state. They say it promotes the Bible's view of creation.
Meanwhile, a lawyer for two newspaper reporters said Wednesday the presiding judge has agreed to limit questioning of the reporters, averting a legal showdown over having them testify in the case.
Both reporters wrote stories that said board members mentioned creationism as they discussed the intelligent design issue. Board members have denied that.
U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III agreed that the reporters would only have to verify the content of their stories -- and not answer questions about unpublished material, possible bias or the use of any confidential sources.
"They're testifying only as to what they wrote," said Niles Benn, attorney for The York Dispatch and the York Daily Record/Sunday News, the papers that employed the two freelancers.
The reporters were subpoenaed but declined to give depositions Tuesday, citing their First Amendment rights. A lawyer for the school board had said he planned to seek contempt citations against the two.
The judge's order clears the way for the reporters to provide depositions and testify Oct. 6.
Evolution says that all of that came about over a long period of time, by random chance, unguided and without purpose. It would also lead us to believe that somehow all of this randomness can account for a highly sophisticated, complex system coming into existence - natural selection assessing each mutation, keeping "useful" changes, rejecting each "un-useful" change. And yet, how does a random chance process define "useful" and "un-useful"? How does the organism "know" what is "useful" and what is not? It doesn't even "know" what the end product/process is going to be...how can it assess usefulness?
Useful changes are the ones that allow the organism to survive in its environment and pass its genes to future generations. We see evidence of this in Asia now, where the few elephants born without tusks are better equipped to survive in a poacher-saturated environment. They survive to pass the tuskless gene to their offspring. The elephant population begins to be dominated by the previously-rare tuskless elephants, and the tusked elephants may well die off altogether because the tuskless elephants are better equipped to survive predation.
Nature doesn't need a "designer" to evaluate how useful a mutation is. Those that are useful will survive.
This all begs for some kind of controlling intelligence.
Ah, here is the only piece of evidence to support ID. IDers want it to be so, so it must be so. In the absence of any concrete facts to support it (which evolution has), ID requires an emotional appeal to make its case. That one sentence, in a nutshell, demonstrates why ID has no business in a science class. In a theology class? Obviously. In a philosophy class? Absolutely. But in a science class? Not in the slightest.
Did they ever meet Bette Davis, Leslie Howard, or Humphrey Bogart?
There are NO actual real fossils found that show evidence of evolution
Then what is your explanation for all of these hominid skeletons that have been unearthed in the last 150 years? Many of these have characteristics of both humans and apes. What are they in your expert opinion? (I am really curious to hear your answer here).
Man did not evolve from monkey and apes. The DNA is completely different and cannot support that theory at all.
Both genomes have been sequenced. I know this has little to no chance of sinking in, but for anyone else interested: The current sequences of the human and chimp genomes are directly comparable over approximately 96 percent of their lengths, and these regions are 99 percent identical.
Seriously now, do you really think you do anyone any favors by proclaiming such blatant falsehoods? Do you do it to make yourself feel better?
The USDA runs the Forest Service and mad cow.
"If you want, I'll go step bystep and show you the error of your ways re #211 when i get home.
"
We're still waiting, Nathan. It must take you a very long time to get home.
I have a request. Could you please post in blue from now on? Thanks in advance.
I think we found his long lost twin brother.
There are no "controlling instructions" in biological systems. It is a bottom up phenomenon.
Thats because he is living in a river in Egypt.
Bah!! Et tu, Furball! ;)
"An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly by numerous, successive, slight modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional. .... Since natural selection can only choose systems that are already working, then if a biological system cannot be produced gradually it would have to arise as an integrated unit, in one fell swoop, for natural selection to have anything to act on." (Behe 1996b)Evolution cannot explain irreducible complexity, defined as systems which cannot suffer the removal or disablement of a single component without loss of function. -- VR, 2005
OK, I said "Evolution cannot explain it" rather than "It can't have evolved."
Anyway, all it takes is a little scaffolding, something that goes away eventually. You can word it this way or that way, but the argument is still wrong-headed.
Methinks some of these guys are seeing a lighted Christmas tree....oh, excuse me....I mean a Winter Holiday tree.
"Methinks some of these guys are seeing a lighted Christmas tree....oh, excuse me....I mean a Winter Holiday tree."
Huh? It's a Christmas tree. It will always be a Christmas tree. It's a Christian thing. Even us atheists call it a Christmas tree.
Most of us atheists know the Jesus story pretty well. In fact, most of the atheists I know once termed themselves Christians, and most are quite well-versed with the Bible.
The Christmas tree has nothing whatever to do with evolution. Please stick to the topic at hand.
That's why the only prediction of evolution is: Things will change...no wait, they can't even say that - I suppose the only "prediction" is: Things changed?!?!?
If we know so much about this process (millions of fossils and peer reviewed articles and scientists named Tom, Dick and Harry) why can we not make a new species prediction (hypothesis) regarding the process and then test it (experiment)? We already know that you can have varieties of cats and dogs and virus strains and Christmas...er...Winter Holiday trees...now let's see the friggin' Winter Holiday cat.
A credit to you, but, some of your brothers have a tough time with that.
The Christmas tree has nothing whatever to do with evolution. Please stick to the topic at hand.
I was, of course, using the Christmas tree in reference to RunningWolf's comment about lights. The Winter Holiday "correction" was a bonus...no extra charge.
A credit to you, but, some of your brothers have a tough time with that.
The Christmas tree has nothing whatever to do with evolution. Please stick to the topic at hand.
I was, of course, using the Christmas tree in reference to RunningWolf's comment about lights. The Winter Holiday "correction" was a bonus...no extra charge.
"Even us atheists call it a Christmas tree.
A credit to you, but, some of your brothers have a tough time with that."
You are most welcome, MineralMan. Do wish them well.
Not to my knowledge. But Gene Simmons once came through the drive through at the Burger King where I worked as a kid.
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