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III agreed that the reporters would only have to verify the content of their stories -- and not answer questions about unpublished material, possible bias or the use of any confidential sources.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.
it'd be sad if it wasn't so pathetic.
get your eyes checked - you'll run into trees otherwise.
connectthedots misinterpreted a simple statement of prediction based on fact (that future fossil discoveries will fill in gaps in the fossil record, providing transitional forms between what came before and what came after) to mean that there is no fossil evidence of transitional forms.
connectthedots has subsequently refused to address a parallel syntactic structure and misinterpretation thereof based on the template provided by his display of shoddy reading skills (or deliberately disingenuous presentation).
now you join him in the pit?
ah, well. grab yourself a shovel.
no, wolf.
1. I make a prediction, based on the fact that there ARE gaps in the record
2. ctd believes this means I have asserted that there is no fossil evidence of transitional species.
if you cannot comprehend this... well, that's par for the course for your side on these threads.
if you DO comprehend this, but misrepresent anyway... well, that ALSO is par for the course for your side on these threads
And exactly what are evolutionists looking for to 'fill in those gaps'?
I have another question based on your post, but I don't want to confuse you by asking you two questions in one post.
Wolf
If you have proof of that, please post it so everyone can see it. OTOH, there is plenty of proof of the TOE; as I said before, try searching "evolution" on PubMed and see how many hits you get Hint: thousands of articles are published every year describing results from different applications of the TOE.
Please note that if there is some conspiracy to try to turn people against Christ (by teaching the TOE), it's far bigger than you think. Scientific research receives billions in federal money each year (that's tens or hundreds of billions). Biological sciences receive the bulk of that money. A life scientist is probably applying some aspect of the TOE to his/her work. (It is pretty hard to study biology without taking the TOE into account. It's a pretty comprehensive theory.) It isn't necessary to be a life scientist in order for the TOE to be important in one's work. Therefore, even federal money that does not fund life science still funds research incorporating the TOE. Either this is a HUGE conspiracy--or the TOE is genuinely a well-established, comprehensive, and widely accepted theory.
Consider, you know very well that this earth is NOT a young earth, and the Bible declares that the earth is ancient, called in one place the "age that was", a time long before man in the flesh walked upon it.
Book and verse, please?
Literal creationists only quote Genesis and posit that creation happened exactly as described there. Which means they believe a young earth. So that is what I am addressing. There are enough contradictions within the Bible to tell me that we were never meant to take it literally, but rather use it as a moral guide.
In the scientific definition, a "theory" is the most comprehensive and logical explanation of the known facts, from which testable hypotheses may be derived. If you want to disprove a theory, you need to know it as well as any scientist. IOW, if you want to disprove the TOE, you need to know as much or more about it as I, or any of the other scientists on the forum, do. You can't disprove it by quoting the Bible.
A few months ago I tried to locate some solid numbers on this. This is all I could find. Most is medical research:
From the website of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): Biological and Ecological Sciences in the FY 2005 Budget:
";... funding for non-medical biology ... accounts for only 3 percent of all federally supported life science funding."The National Science Foundation (NSF) remains the principal federal supporter of the biological and ecological sciences, providing 65 percent of the academic funding for non-medical biology. The NSF proposed budget for FY 2005 includes a 2.2 percent ($13 million) increase in funding for the Biological Sciences Directorate (BIO) to bring it to a total of $600 million.
That $600 million is broken down into Molecular and Cellular Biosci, Integrative Biology & Neurosci, Environmental Biology , Biological Infrastructure, Emerging Frontiers, Plant Genome Research. That seems to be all non-medical (and presumably, even creationists don't object to medical research). Here's a table with a breakdown of those expenditures by category: R&D in the National Science Foundation.
If that $600 million is 65% of all non-medical funding, the total (which would include other stuff from the Agriculture Dep't, forestry bureaucracies, oceanic research, etc.) is about $900 million for non-medical funding, which is 3% of federally supported life science funding. The grand total, adding in the medical funding, is therefore $30 billion. That's a nice number.
But it's only from federal funding. There is also a large amount of private, industrial funding, from biotech and pharmaceutical firms for example. (There is, of course, absolutely no creationism/ID research program of any kind, private or governmental.)
and here we have absolute proof of the fact that your reading skills are either severely defective OR dishonestly selective.
IF you could read and comprehend (or trouble yourself to be honest), you would know very well that the answer to your latest inane posturing is found in the post which kicked off this ever so illustrative dialogue. The following is that post, in its entirety, with emphasis added to the immediately relevant line, so that you cannot claim to have not seen it:
******************
predict future speciation? I cannot.
predict that various "gaps" in the fossil record will be filled by the discovery of currently unknown fossils, and that the morphology of those fossils will be transitional between what came before and what came after? sure. I predict that.
now, as to predictions of what we do not expect: I predict that spontaneously occurring mutation leading to single-generation saltation between high-order taxa will never occur. If it does occur, the ToE shall be substantially falsified.
as to the ToE's supposed inability to back up its claims with empirical evidence - "fossil" genes containing errors common to humans and various forms of primate strongly support the taxonomic cladogram of shared descent.
I'll let the Big Dogs explain what that means to you, and hope you will take a clue from your UserID and actually connect the dots for once.
******************
DO at least TRY not to need a further reiteration.
side note: English Mastiffs are bigger than wolves.
"I'll let the Big Dogs explain what that means to you." is not a "rhetorical reply" - it is a colloquial way of saying "I'll allow those folks who know a hell of a lot more about this than I do (such as: Ichneumon, VadeRetro, Coyoteman, etc...) spell out the the details for you."
Newton, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo..... A bunch of nobodies, huh?
Are you really implying that these four scientists, who died long before the theory of evolution existed, did not state a belief in evolution and that therefore modern evolutionary theory is in jeapordy? Please be explicit: is this really what you are suggesting?
I'm suggesting that their not believing in evolution did not affect their contributions to science as some people have indicated would be the case. In case you haven't read there are some evolutionists who think creationists are incapable of using the scientific method properly. Their lack of belief in the ToE makes them so out of touch with reality that their work is suspect. These men were able to provide the foundation on which much of modern science rests while believing in creation. And they sow no conflict, apparently. As far as I've heard, nothing in their work indicated that the creation belief was invalid.
Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo got into some difficulty because their theories and observations contradicted certain aspects of the Creationist myth of their day.
nothing in evolutionary science or abiogenesis or cosmology refutes the possibility of creation in an ultimate sense, they just contradict specifics of the mythology of some creeds.
re: 539
what the HELL???
wrong thread.
dunno how that happened.
please delete it.
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