Posted on 10/14/2006 11:16:50 AM PDT by lizol
Keep Darwin's 'lies' out of Polish schools: education official 2 hours.
WARSAW (AFP) - Poland's deputy education minister called for the influential evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin not to be taught in the country's schools, branding them "lies."
"The theory of evolution is a lie, an error that we have legalised as a common truth," Miroslaw Orzechowski, the deputy minister in the country's right-wing coalition government, was quoted as saying by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily Saturday.
Orzechowski said the theory was "a feeble idea of an aged non-believer," who had come up with it "perhaps because he was a vegetarian and lacked fire inside him."
The evolution theory of the 19th-century British naturalist holds that existing animals and plants are the result of natural selection which eliminated inferior species gradually over time. This conflicts with the "creationist" theory that God created all life on the planet in a finite number.
Orzechowski called for a debate on whether Darwin's theory should be taught in schools.
"We should not teach lies, just as we should not teach bad instead of good, or ugliness instead of beauty," he said. "We are not going to withdraw (Darwin's theory) from the school books, but we should start to discuss it."
The deputy minister is a member of a Catholic far-right political group, the League of Polish Families. The league's head, Roman Giertych, is education minister in the conservative coalition government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Giertych's father Maciej, who represents the league in the European Parliament, organised a discussion there last week on Darwinism. He described the theory as "not supported by proof" and called for it be removed from school books.
The far-right joined the government in May when Kaczynski's ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, after months of ineffective minority government, formed a coalition including LPR and the populist Sambroon party.
Roman Giertych has not spoken out on Darwinism, but the far-right politician's stance on other issues has stirred protest in Poland since he joined the government.
A school pupils' association was expected to demonstrate in front of the education ministry on Saturday to call for his resignation.
Maybe they can just keep education officials lies out of Polish schools.
Of course they could if they could, in principle. But after 150 years of failing, it seems as likely as demonstrating that the sun orbits the earth.
A few years ago ther were many ID advocates posting on these threads, predictions that the genome project would disprove common descent. The results have been the opposite of their hopes. There are no ID advocates willing to testify against common descent in court, under oath. Most openly accept common descent.
Evolution does not attempt to reconstruct the origin of life. Such a reconstruction may be impossible.
The crime can be reproduced or react the crime exactly as it happened.
Utter nonsense. Criminal forensics seeks to place a suspect at the scene of the crime and tie the suspect to a weapon or action. there is no"exactly as it happened," just that the accused committed the crime.
Unless a forensic specialist has an eye-witness account, he is only dealing purely with circumstantial evidence.
Circumstantial evidence is the strongest kind of evidence. Eyewitness evidence is the weakest.
Sometimes there is not enough circumstantial evidence to know the cause or perpetrator of a crime, the circumstantial evidence is inconclusive.
DNA evidence is among the most powerful tools for determining relationships among people. Mathematicians and specialists in information theory like Yockey have looked at the DNA evidence for common descent and found it conclusive. Yockey has used the word "proven."
Thank you for confessing your own philosophy and opinion. Fortunately it has not been granted an exclusive hearing by law in public school science rooms.
You sound cute when you post with your fingers in your ears.
Don't know what you have in mind, but the Dover ruling has shut ID down conclusively, as far as the law is concerned. The unwillingness of the Discovery Institute to testify and face cross examination speaks for itself. As does the failure to appeal.
According to Popper: Thus, theories should be accepted as scientific only if they show the essential characteristic of falsifiability.
Do you really believe that evolution fits Poppers definition to a tee?
If you believe evolution fits Popper's definition to a tee, then are you saying that proponents of Intelligent Design can falsify evolution?
"then are you saying that proponents of Intelligent Design can falsify evolution?"
So, for clarification which side are you on?
Evolution fits Popper's definition to a tee, and evolution can be falsified.
OR
Evolution does not fit Popper's definition to a tee, and evolution can not be falsified.
You are aware, aren't you, that answers In Genesis -- not an evo site -- has investigated the Second Law argument and advises against using it.
Your interpretation of the Second Law would make life impossible.
Besides, evolution can be observed directly in the laboratory in repeatable experiments. The Second Law does not prevent variation and it doesn't prevent selection. Both can be observed in such mundane phenomena as selective breeding of plants and animals.
Evolution in the wide sense does not try to make reconstructions of recent events in courtrooms. Can you tell the difference? No? Well, I should expect as much from someone who is intellectually lazy enough to equate common forms with common history, call the result "science," and then expect his "science" to enjoy an exclusive hearing by law in public schools.
No, it has not. But if it had I am sure you would relish the judicial tyranny.
Exclusive Placemarker
Many have noted that evolution would never stand up in court as a forensic reconstruction or otherwise....Phillip Johnson, law professor at the University of California at Berkeley for more than 20 years, and author of "Darwin on Trial" being one of the more notable.
Popper's statement of nonfalsifiability was pretty mild, not as extensive as it is often taken. He applied it only to natural selection, not evolution as a whole, and he allowed that some testing of natural selection was possible, just not a significant amount.Source
Moreover, he said that natural selection is a useful theory. A "metaphysical research programme" was to him not a bad thing; it is an essential part of science, as it guides productive research by suggesting predictions. He said of Darwinism,And yet, the theory is invaluable. I do not see how, without it, our knowledge could have grown as it has done since Darwin. In trying to explain experiments with bacteria which become adapted to, say, penicillin, it is quite clear that we are greatly helped by the theory of natural selection. Although it is metaphysical, it sheds much light upon very concrete and very practical researches. It allows us to study adaptation to a new environment (such as a penicillin-infested environment) in a rational way: it suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation, and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that. (Popper 1976, 171-172)Finally, Popper notes that theism as an explanation of adaptation "was worse than an open admission of failure, for it created the impression that an ultimate explanation had been reached" (Popper 1976, 172).
Popper later changed his mind and recognized that natural selection is testable. Here is an excerpt from a later writing on "Natural Selection and Its Scientific Status" (Miller 1985, 241-243; see also Popper 1978):When speaking here of Darwinism, I shall speak always of today's theory - that is Darwin's own theory of natural selection supported by the Mendelian theory of heredity, by the theory of the mutation and recombination of genes in a gene pool, and by the decoded genetic code. This is an immensely impressive and powerful theory. The claim that it completely explains evolution is of course a bold claim, and very far from being established. All scientific theories are conjectures, even those that have successfully passed many severe and varied tests. The Mendelian underpinning of modern Darwinism has been well tested, and so has the theory of evolution which says that all terrestrial life has evolved from a few primitive unicellular organisms, possibly even from one single organism.
However, Darwin's own most important contribution to the theory of evolution, his theory of natural selection, is difficult to test. There are some tests, even some experimental tests; and in some cases, such as the famous phenomenon known as 'industrial melanism', we can observe natural selection happening under our very eyes, as it were. Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by, much more so than tests of otherwise comparable theories in physics or chemistry.
The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology [see CA500]. A tautology like 'All tables are tables' is not, of course, testable; nor has it any explanatory power. It is therefore most surprising to hear that some of the greatest contemporary Darwinists themselves formulate the theory in such a way that it amounts to the tautology that those organisms that leave most offspring leave most offspring. C. H. Waddington says somewhere (and he defends this view in other places) that 'Natural selection . . . turns out ... to be a tautology' ..4 However, he attributes at the same place to the theory an 'enormous power. ... of explanation'. Since the explanatory power of a tautology is obviously zero, something must be wrong here.
Yet similar passages can be found in the works of such great Darwinists as Ronald Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and George Gaylord Simpson; and others.
I mention this problem because I too belong among the culprits. Influenced by what these authorities say, I have in the past described the theory as 'almost tautological', and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme. It raises detailed problems in many fields, and it tells us what we would expect of an acceptable solution of these problems.
I still believe that natural selection works in this way as a research programme. Nevertheless, I have changed my mind about the testability and the logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. My recantation may, I hope, contribute a little to the understanding of the status of natural selection.
Directed evolution is now routine in the laboratory, both as pure research and as industrial research and development. It's gone commercial. The toothpast is not going back in the tube.
Phillip Johnson had an opportunity to demolish evolution at the Dover trial and chickened out. You are quite wrong about what would happen in a trial. It's already happened, and you are wrong.
You seem bitter about the trial outcome. That's what happens when you lose.
You just haven't accepted the reality of it yet.
How can you calculate odds on a series of events that have not been observed?
No one believes that life comes from non-life in one step, except creationists.
Without knowing the steps you cannot do meaningful calculations.
But I have already stipulated that we may never know the exact history of the origin of life. We may, however, be able to demonstrate a possible set of steps.
the basic flaw in the math is that it assumes you can't get to the second floor because a single step is impossible. It ignores the possibility of a stairway or ladder.
What OTHER stuff?
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