Keep Darwin's 'lies' out of Polish schools: education official

(Sometimes only the shotgun approach works!)

1,001 posted on 10/19/2006 9:03:36 PM PDT by Elsie (Heck is where people, who don't believe in Gosh, think they are not going....)

Because it was a long time ago and my memory has been affected by diabetes.

1,002 posted on 10/19/2006 9:06:04 PM PDT by Marysecretary (Thank you, Lord, for FOUR MORE YEARS!!!)

To: Fester Chugabrew

Assertion? LOL

Sorry, it's a fact, not an assertion, ID is not was not and never will be scientific.

It is nonfalsifiable.

Prove or disprove that God exists, you can't, therefore it is nonfalsifiable.

God=Intelligent Designer, whether you care to openly admit it or not, and since the existence of God is not falsifiable, or nonfalsifiable, the entire concept is unscientific.

Discuss ID in classrooms, it's fine with me, just don't do it in a science classroom, because it's not science.

Discuss in a religious studies course, philosophy class, shoot, discuss it in a theology course, fine with me, but it does not belong in a science class, ever.

ID and evolution were not even a concept when our country was founded, so to assume what our founding fathers would think, is the heighth of arrogance.

I am a constitutionalist, not a conservative, if that upsets you, so be it, but our founding fathers were liberals, in the classic sense, not conservatives.

1,003 posted on 10/19/2006 9:13:55 PM PDT by Jaguarbhzrd

We don't need to quotemine scientists, there is no need to.

Creationists quotemine scientists in order to give themselves credibility where none exists.

1,004 posted on 10/19/2006 9:15:58 PM PDT by Jaguarbhzrd

If falsification was the be-all and end-all of science you might have a point. As it stands, however, falsification cannot be tested as a scientifically valid approach to science. It is simply one of the many logical tools we have at our disposal as we intelligently explore an intelligible universe. ID is hypothetically falsifiable through the disintegration of all particle matter into chaos so that nothing is intelligible. Evolution in the wide sense is simply an interpretation of evidence squeezed into preconceived notions.

And please don't rattle my chain as if you are someone who respects the Constitution, or even science. If you were you would not be championing your pet philosophy through the application of the legal system in order to give it an exclusive hearing in public school science rooms.

1,005 posted on 10/19/2006 9:34:50 PM PDT by Fester Chugabrew

"Oh, and I also love the fact that you literally quote mined my post, which explained what I meant in no uncertain terms."

I asked a question. You replied with contradictory statements....just merely pointed out the contradiction of your own statements.

"You better wait until you can post to another page, so that someone doesn't have to just scroll up to see what you did."

I am not worried....here is why:

1) Materialism ("Matter is all there is" Carl Sagan) is false. The origin of all of life by chance and natural process is false.

2) The presuppositions of materialists/evolutionary scientists color everything they think and write, some are even are incapable of even acknowledging that they have presuppositions, let alone are they able to rationally discuss them.

3) Materialist presuppositions result in conclusions which are contradictory to the world. The materialist cannot be consistent to the logic of their presuppositions, because the materialist lives in a reality which was made by something external to matter...God. This being so, the materialist is in a place of tension.

4) Materialists build up walls of protection to shield themselves from the point of tension. The materialist then erects barriers, even if completely irrational or improbable, to try to deal w/ the contradiction of how he observes the world.

5) FreedomProtector will lovingly and with true tears will help to remove the irrational shelters/roofs and allow the truth of the created world to shine upon the materialist. As the truth of the created world reflects the glory of God, God's eternal power and divine nature, are clearly seen. By viewing the eternal power and divine nature of God, the materialist will come to know the Creator, Lord and Savior of the entire created world, Jesus Christ.

There are plenty more contradictory conclusions and contradictory presuppositions to point out, some more challenging then this relatively simple one, some even simpler.

"You're less likely to get caught that way"

I'm still not worried.

Heroes are born in unlikely times.

"you shall know the truth and the truth will set you free."

1,006 posted on 10/19/2006 10:24:30 PM PDT by FreedomProtector

Same idea applied when Paul says, "Don't teach that OTHER stuff."

Except there was no OTHER stuff in Christian communities north of Antioch until after Paul had been killed.

Antioch is where Simon Peter settled in. And other than the 'works & faith' vs. 'faith alone' conflict, Peter didn't have any doctrine that was at odds w/ Paul -- much less a doctrine that required a warning from Paul about corrupting the Church in Ephesus & Crete.

The 'false' doctrine was Gnosticism that showed up in the first part of the second century.
Paul could not have written I & II Timothy warning about false 'science' - 'knowledge' - 'gnosis'. Paul had died at least 35 years before.

1,007 posted on 10/19/2006 10:27:50 PM PDT by dread78645 (Evolution. A doomed theory since 1859.)

To: Fester Chugabrew

You are just as clueless as freedomprotector when it comes to science. It really is amusing.

Then for you to say that because I do understand science, and the theory of evolution, that I somehow cannot understand the constitution, is laughable in the extreme.

Let me give you the mian thrust of this one more time.

Science should be taught in science class, and only science, should be taught in science class.

The Theory of Evolution is science, no matter how many times you whine otherwise, ID is not science, again, no matter how many times you whine otherwise.

Therefore, evolution should be taught in science class, ID should not be taught in science class.

It's just that easy.

If that went over your head, I apologize, but not surprised.

1,008 posted on 10/19/2006 10:28:01 PM PDT by Jaguarbhzrd

To: FreedomProtector

Too bad the truth of science is so far beyond your thought processes, that it is pretty much useless to discuss it with you.

All you want to discuss is religion, and religion has nothing to do with science, and science has nothing to do with religion.

If you wish to discuss religion, there are lots of religious threads, but to bring your religious bigotry into a science thread is wasteful of my time and yours, because you are completely clueless when it comes to science, and do not wish to be taught, or to learn.

That's just fine, believe what you want, but do not demand that science listen to your nonsense, and thank goodness it won't, because then it would be useless.

1,009 posted on 10/19/2006 10:31:45 PM PDT by Jaguarbhzrd

"Why is it that you creationists always automatically assume that anyone that understands science, is therefore unable to understand religion, or be religious?"

I have never made that assumption. I have stated just the opposite. I have clearly stated that evolution is a religion, and the evolution is religious. Everybody is religious. All people have presuppositions about ultimate reality.

Evolution is religious posted here:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1712053/posts?page=397#397

1,010 posted on 10/19/2006 10:32:17 PM PDT by FreedomProtector

Premature enumeration?

1,011 posted on 10/19/2006 10:34:52 PM PDT by dread78645 (Evolution. A doomed theory since 1859.)

"Too bad the truth of science is so far beyond your thought processes, that it is pretty much useless to discuss it with you."

Insulting someone will surely falsify everything a person writes.

Insulting someone will surely change the graduate school grades of someone who graduated top of their graduate school class in a scientific field.

1,012 posted on 10/19/2006 10:43:38 PM PDT by FreedomProtector

To: FreedomProtector

Just stating the truth based on your posts that I have seen thus far.

BTW, Evolution is science, not religion.

It could be falsified and replaced by another scientific theory, and it would not effect me in the least, although, it would excite me.Major discoveries in science are always exciting.

What would you do, if someone proved that Christianity was false? I assure you, that you would not react the way I would if evolution was falsified.

1,013 posted on 10/19/2006 10:49:13 PM PDT by Jaguarbhzrd

To: js1138; FreedomProtector

Besides, evolution can be observed directly in the laboratory in repeatable experiments.

Validate your claim, js1138. Name the journal that has any articles or reported any research in which evolution has been observed in a lab experiment?

1,014 posted on 10/19/2006 11:08:24 PM PDT by SoldierDad (Proud Father of a 10th Mountain Division 2nd BCT Soldier fighting in Mahmudiyah)

To: FreedomProtector; Jaguarbhzrd

<Colin Patterson reference> Ah, poor Colin Patterson. None of you creationists ever quote from his last edition to his Evolution book, which he completed shortly before he died. I wonder why?

Ch. 14 - Proof and disproof; science and politics

The first edition of this book [1978] contained a short chapter with the heading 'Proof and disproof,' applying my (naive) understanding of some of the ideas current in philosophy of science of the 1970s to evolutionary theory. The chapter was troublesome in various ways, but in rewriting the book I eventually decided to leave it much as it was, because I still think the ideas are interesting, and to add a commentary ('Science and politics').
14.2 Is evolution science?
[The general theory of evolution] must be unique and unrepeatable, like the history of England. Before Darwin, species were generally thought to be fixed and immutable, each with some discoverable and universal essence, like the elements or chemical compounds. Darwin explained species as temporary, local things, each with a beginning and an end depending on contingencies of history. So the general theory of evolution is a historical theory, about unique events - and unique events are, by some definitions, not part of science for they are unrepeatable and so not subject to test. ... Yet biologists have enormous advantages over historians. First, they have a coherent, and scientific, theory of genetics, and their interpretations must be consistent with it. Second they have one basic tool, homology. And third they have the universal scientific principle of ... Occam's razor....
The general theory of evolution is thus neither fully scientific (like physics, for example) nor unscientific (like history). Although it has no laws it does have rules, and it does make general predictions about the properties of organisms. It therefore lays itself open to disproof. Darwin cited several sorts of observations which would, in his view, destroy his theory. In this he was certainly more candid than his opponents. The potential tests Darwin mentioned are:

'If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down';
'certain naturalists believe that very many structures have been created for beauty in the eyes of man, or for mere variety. This doctrine, if true, would be absolutely fatal to my theory';
'if it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory'.

Darwin's potential tests may strike the reader as pretty feeble, or as tests of natural selection rather than evolution, but many discoveries, not forseen by Darwin, provide more severe tests of the theory. These include Mendelian genetics, the real age of the earth, the universality of DNA and the genetic code and (most recently and spectacularly) the evidence from DNA sequences of innumerable 'vestigial organs' at the molecular level. Evolution has survived all of these with flying colours. Darwin could not possibly have predicted that the hereditary material (of which he knew nothing) would turn out to be littered with rubbish, with 'rusting hulks' like the delta haemoglobin psuedogene found in Old World monkeys, or with meaningless repeated sequences like the shared Alu sequences in apes and humans. An interesting argument is that in the law courts (where proof 'beyond reasonable doubt' is required), cases of plagiarism or breach of copyright will be settled in the plaintiff's favour if it can be shown that the text (or whatever) is supposed to have been copied contains errors present in the original. Similarly, in tracing the texts of ancient authors, the best evidence that two versions are copies from another or from the same original is when both contain the same errors. ... Shared psuedogenes, or shared Alu sequences, may have the same significance - like shared misprints they can have come about only by shared descent. ...
14.3 Alternative theories
Using Popper's criterion we must conclude that evolutionary theory is not testable in the same way as a theory of physics, chemistry, or genetics, by experiments designed to falsify it. But the essence of scientific method is not to test a single theory to destruction; it is to test two (or more) rival theories, like Newton's and Einstein's, and to accept the one that passes more or stricter tests until a better theory turns up. We must look at evolution theory and natural selection theory in terms of performance against the competition.
The belief that all organisms are related by descent and have diverged through a natural, historical process has only one main competitor, creation theory, though there are different stories of how the Creator went about His work. All creation theories are purely metaphysical. They make no predictions about the activities of the Creator, except that life as we know it is the result of His plan. Since we do not know the plan, no observation can be inconsistent with it. ...
14.5 Science and politics
This chapter is so far much as it was in the first edition, though it then included less on neutral change in DNA and nothing on psuedogenes and other molecular misprints, which were then undiscovered. As a result it was perhaps a bit more agnostic than the version you have just read. What follows is a commentary on some events since. ...
[In 1981 the Natural History Museum opened a Origin of the Species exhibit, which created a controversy over how it should present the theory of evolution. The controversy raged on in the pages of Nature.] Popper had contributed to this debate in 1980 with a letter to New Scientist that included 'some people think that I have denied scientific character to the historical sciences, such as ... the history of the evolution of life on Earth. ... This is a mistake ... historical sciences have in my opinion scientific character: their hypotheses can in many cases be tested. ... some people would think that the historical sciences are untestable because they describe unique events. However, the description of unique events can very often be tested by deriving from them testable predictions or retrodictions.' [ellipses are Patterson's] Popper gave no example of such a prediciton, but one often quoted (attributed to J.B.S. Haldane) is that finding human bones in Carboniferous rocks (about 350 million years old) would falsify the general theory of evolution. ...
In 1978 Popper wrote that the Darwinian theory of common descent 'has been well tested' (he did not say how) and 'That the theory of natural selection may be so formulated that it is far from tautological. In this case it is not only testable, but it turns out to be not strictly universally true. ... Yet in every particular case it is a challenging research programme to show how far natural selection can possibly be held responsible for the evolution of a particular organ or behavioural programme.' [ellipses are Patterson's]
14.6 Summary
...I will close by summing up my own opinion on the truth of evolution. In terms of mechanism, or causes of evolutionary change, the neutral theory of molecular evolution is a scientific theory; it can be put in law-like form: changes in DNA that are less likely to be subject to natural selection occur more rapidly. This law is tested every time homologous DNA sequences are compared, and explains observations (summarized in Chapters 9 and 10) that are otherwise inexplicable. But neutral theory assumes (or includes) truth of the general theory - common ancestry or Darwin's 'descent with modification' - and 'misprints' shared between species, like the psuedogenes or reversed Alu sequences are (to me) incontrovertible evidence of common descent. I see the general historical theory, common descent, as being as firmly established as just about anything else in history. ... The most difficult problems in evolutionary biology are in deciding or discovering the extent to which positive natural selection is responsible for the diversity of life.
Colin Patterson, Evolution, 2nd Ed. (1999)

1,015 posted on 10/20/2006 12:06:54 AM PDT by jennyp (There's ALWAYS time for jibber jabber!)

1,016 posted on 10/20/2006 12:08:48 AM PDT by jennyp (There's ALWAYS time for jibber jabber!)

It's interesting that he decided to "eventually decided to leave it much as it was"

and repeated what he wrote earlier...

"So the general theory of evolution is a historical theory, about unique events - and unique events are, by some definitions, not part of science for they are unrepeatable and so not subject to test."

and repeats it again...

"Using Popper's criterion we must conclude that evolutionary theory is not testable in the same way as a theory of physics, chemistry, or genetics, by experiments designed to falsify it."

Here he states that using Popper's criterion evolution is not testable by experiments designed to falsify it.

This is true:

The belief that all organisms are related by descent and have diverged through a natural, historical process has only one main competitor, creation theory,

This part is interesting....

"It therefore lays itself open to disproof."

Here he is stating that evolution can be falsified, after stating the opposite earlier?

...lays itself open to disproof...by what?

He stated before there is only one main competitor, creation theory.

Thanks for the ping, jennyp.

I appreciate your efforts in adding material to the discussion. I will try to use last edition if I quote Colin Patterson from now on....

1,017 posted on 10/20/2006 1:25:39 AM PDT by FreedomProtector

To: FreedomProtector

I enjoy discussing problems/assumptions with dating methods or the improbability of evolution from common descent or homologous structures or whatever any other related topic.

Why is it that every time the origin of life is mentioned with discussing the origin of all of life, evolutionists get really uncomfortable and want to change the subject?

Would you rather talk about the probability of the human brain developing by chance and natural process alone in any large amount of time you choose? I am more than happy to do that....: )

I'm not going to waste my time on arguments that are so stupid they have been rejected by Answers in Genesis.

I am not at all uncomfortable discussing the origin of life, but since there is no actual scientific theory for it, the discussion gets kind of thin, unless you happen to be doing research on the subject.

The probability of any complex event, such as the formation of a hurricane at a particular time and place, is essentially zero. and yet hurricanes form. You can do the math all day long without error, and have nothing useful to show for it. The odds of your predicting the Closing of the the Dow for next Friday are pretty slim, and yet it will close with a specific number.

Show a touch of understanding for how evolution actually works, and we can discuss.

What you do not understand is that biological states are not specified in advance. There is no pre-specification, so the probability calculation is not relevant.

1,018 posted on 10/20/2006 4:07:38 AM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)

To: Fester Chugabrew

How do you know?

Come back when you find another school board willing to throw away its money. The Discovery Institute will never recover from this. They made the mistake of putting their motives on paper.

1,019 posted on 10/20/2006 5:18:19 AM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1634489/posts

Every process required for evolution has been observed. If you wish to contradict this, please name one.

Isaac Newton's "Rules of Reasoning in Philosophy"

Rule I. We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Rule II. Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.

Rule IV. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions collected by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, 'till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions

1,020 posted on 10/20/2006 5:25:40 AM PDT by js1138 (The absolute seriousness of someone who is terminally deluded.)

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