Scientific Boehner: The new creationism and the congressmen who support it.

The American Prospect ^ | June 5, 2002 | Iain Murray

[Washington_minuteman]

"I hope these Congressmen will also ensure equal time for the Stork theory in biology classes."

Belittle, demonize and marginalize. You guys are good, but not good enough.

[f.Christian]

"It’s remarkable that the same liberals who think business monopolies are sinister think... monopolies---of political power are progressive. When they can’t pass their programs because of the constitutional safeguards, they complain about “gridlock” — a cliché that shows they miss the whole point of the enumeration and separation of powers."

[Tomalak]

The page you linked to is useless. An excellent system for judging Creationist literature's scientific credentials is to search for words like "chance", "random" etc. If the writer states anywhere that evolution is a theory of blind chance, or that something cannot have evolved by random means, then he doesn't understand evolution.

Anyway, let's just take two paragraphs from that long page:

Dawkins goes on to explain how with the help of natural selection it is possible for this random jumble of letters to form into the “target” phrase of “Me thinks it is a weasel.” The assumption of course in natural selection is that the evolving system builds on minor improvements one step at a time until a complicated organism comes into being and that organism eventually evolves into a human being. He explains how with the aid of his computer program the jumble of letters eventually “evolves” into the target phrase with minor changes and improvements made one step at a time. After his program has run for a while he comes up with this improvement for instance: “MELDINLS IT ISWLKE B WECSEL”. As you can see that is a definite improvement. Finally the phrase is perfectly evolved into the target sentence. Now can anyone see one flaw here before I go on?

The flaw of course is the “target phrase”. Anyway, who decided what that target was? Whose intelligent intervention decided that was a worthy goal? Natural selection as Dawkins’ clearly and correctly explains elsewhere does not have knowledge of the future and it cannot direct itself with a mind. There is no hidden intelligence involved in natural selection. It is a “blind watchmaker” as he calls it. It does not know what a “target phrase” is.

The `target phrase` is chosen not by a designer, but by natural selection. In other words, just as the closest phrase in Dawkins' simulation survives each time, the best adapted creature in nature survives each time. The target phrase is whatever unlikely organ you would like to postulate. The better adapted organs survive in nature better than the less adapted organs. If the author can misunderstand (or pretend to misunderstand) a very lucid explanation like that, he isn't worth reading.

[f.Christian]

So the people who mean to do without the Constitution have come up with a slogan to keep up appearances: they say the Constitution is a “living document,” which sounds like a compliment. They say it has... “evolved”---in response to---“changing circumstances,” etc. They sneer at the idea that such a mystic document could still have the same meanings it had two centuries ago, or even, I guess, sixty years ago, just before the evolutionary process started accelerating with fantastic velocity. These people, who tend with suspicious consistency to be liberals, have discovered that the Constitution, whatever it may have meant in the past, now means — again, with suspicious consistency — whatever suits their present convenience."

"changing circumstances,” etc.

"whatever suits their present convenience."

[Gladwin]

I posted that out of fairness, although I personally find it unconvincing.

[Tomalak]

I am not sure what point you are trying to make. If you are suggesting that accepting that in nature life evolved means you have to accept whatever some wacko says the US Constitution should change into, then obviously this is nonsense. Evolution has no moral message. Just because in nature the fittest survive does not mean we should starve unfit humans. Just because male mice abort the babies of females who have already copulated does not mean we should kill the unborn. Why so many people seem to think that someone who argues that something did happen is also arguing that it *should* happen, I have never understood.

[HiTech RedNeck]

If the writer states anywhere that ... something cannot have evolved by random means, then he doesn't understand evolution

This is a proposition which, in principle, is testable. One of the resources with which a putative evolutionary biogenetic process must work is time, and the upper bound in the case of our universe and Earth is generally agreed upon. If life on earth turns out to be such a construct that to produce it by "evolution" would need many orders of magnitude more time than this, well biogenesis starts to look an awful lot like it needs more than "evolution" to happen.

[Tomalak]

Belittle, demonize and marginalize. You guys are good, but not good enough.

Well the Stork theory of reproduction has as much scientific evidence as the Genesis theory of Creation. I say that if one is allowed in the classroom the other should be too.

[f.Christian]

I've been told by the evo cult nazis on the FR that computers and cars---all science too...are all from evolution?

[HiTech RedNeck]

This is true. The problem is that science hasn't evolved to the point of real intelligence yet LOL.

[Tomalak]

My point was that evolution is not a theory of complex life coming into existence by randomness or chance. Anyone who claims otherwise is either a liar or is ignorant of evolution. And why listen to the evolutionary speaking of a man who is either lying about what he is talking about or doesn't know what he is talking about?

[ContentiousObjector]

You know what, you are absolutly right, it is a discrace that in America that even though there are thousands of books that document that human reporduction is accomplished with the assistance of the nobel stork out children can't learn the truth about human reproduction

I am disgusted, sexual intercorse obcessed heatens have banished the stork from American schools.

Thanks for the idea man, next time the creationist clymers show up at the parent council meetings at my daughters school I am going to demand equal time for "Stork Theroy"

[Washington_minuteman]

"I posted that out of fairness, although I personally find it unconvincing."

I was refering to the commentary on Raymond Hendrix's link as deserving the hurrah. If you're an evolutionist, you are one of the most unbiased and objective evolutionists I've ever run into, which is refreshing, to say the least.

[f.Christian]

Once your mind goes ego-plastic-evolution...

the whole world---country---society morphs into this african bee colony---empire!

What's left---allowed(atheism)---forbidden(creation)?

[HiTech RedNeck]

If life on earth turns out to be such a construct that to produce it by "evolution"

(and no help from outside the known physical order... this is what critics of evolution generally mean by "random")

would need many orders of magnitude more time than this, well biogenesis starts to look an awful lot like it needs more than "evolution" to happen.

[Woodstock]

(PING)

[Washington_minuteman]

"Well the Stork theory of reproduction has as much scientific evidence as the Genesis theory of Creation."

I guess it all hinges on one's definition of scientific. Doesn't it?

[Tomalak]

Well I speak only for myself, and not all Evo Cult Nazis here, but methods of transportation, and scientific knowledge and so on evolved in the sense that as time went on they got better. I still don't see how this relates to whether life evolved or was created in six days fifty centuries ago.

[Kevin Curry]

The materialists are running scared.

They far exceed Pope Urban VIII in the ferocity of their resistance to new ideas.

[f.Christian]

Yeah...before Darwin the world didn't exist---wasn't even born for these quacks--whacks!