Ridiculous!
Clearly, the eye's makeup has changed. And the lady in question had no trouble seeing while using either makeup (although in the second shot, she did have to open her eyes).
Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
To Seattle area residents the struggle over how evolution is taught in public high schools may seem a topic from the distant past or a distant place.
Don't bet on it. One nearby episode in the controversy has ended, but a far-reaching, Seattle-based agenda to overthrow Darwin is gaining momentum.
Roger DeHart, a high-school science teacher who was the center of an intense curriculum dispute a few years ago in Skagit County, is leaving the state. He plans to teach next year in a private Christian school in California.
The fuss over DeHart's use of "intelligent design" theory in his classes at Burlington-Edison High School was merely a tiny blip in a grand scheme by promoters of the theory.
The theory is essentially this: Life is so complex that it can only be the result of design by an intelligent being.
Who is this unnamed being? Well, God, I presume. Wouldn't you?
As unlikely as it may seem, Seattle is ground zero for the intelligent-design agenda, thanks to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and its Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).
Headed by one-time Seattle City councilman and former Reagan administration official Bruce Chapman, the Discovery Institute is best known locally for its savvy insights on topics ranging from regionalism, transportation, defense policy and the economy.
In the late '90s, the institute jumped into the nation's culture wars with the CRSC. It may be little known to local folks, but it has caught the attention of conservative religious organizations around the country.
It's bound to get more attention in the future. Just last month, a documentary, Icons of Evolution, premiered at Seattle Pacific University. The video is based on a book of the same name by CRSC fellow Jonathan Wells. It tells the story of DeHart, along with the standard critique of Darwinian evolution that fuels the argument for intelligent design.
The video is part of the anti-Darwin agenda. Cruise the Internet on this topic and you'll find something called the Wedge Strategy, which credits the CRSC with a five-year plan for methodically promoting intelligent design and a 20-year goal of seeing "design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life."
Last week, Chapman tried to put a little distance between his institute and the "wedge" document. He said it was a fund-raising tool used four years ago. "I don't disagree with it," he told me, "but it's not our program." (I'll let the folks who gave money based on the proposed strategy ponder what that means.)
Program or not, it is clear that the CRSC is intent on bringing down what one Center fellow calls "scientific imperialism." Surely Stephen Jay Gould already is spinning in his grave. Gould, one of America's most widely respected scientists and a prolific essayist, died just two weeks ago. Among his many fine books is one I kept by my bedside for many weeks after it was published in 1999, "Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life."
In "Rock of Ages," Gould presents an elegant case for the necessary co-existence of science and religion. Rather than conflicting, as secular humanists insist, or blending, as intelligent-design proponents would have it, science and religion exist in distinct domains, what Gould called magisteria (domains of teaching authority).
The domain of science is the empirical universe; the domain of religion is the moral, ethical and spiritual meaning of life.
Gould was called America's most prominent evolutionist, yet he too, was a critic of Darwin's theory, and the object of some controversy within the scientific community. There's a lesson in that: In the domain of science there is plenty of room for disagreement and alternative theories without bringing God into the debate.
I have no quarrel with those who believe in intelligent design. It has appeal as a way to grasp the unknowable why of our existence. But it is only a belief. When advocates push intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations of evolution, it is time to push back.
That's what they continue to do in Skagit County. Last week, the Burlington-Edison School Board rejected on a 4-1 vote a proposal to "encourage" the teaching of intelligent design. Bravo.
Despite proponents' claims of scientific validity, intelligent design is little more than religion-based creationism wrapped in critiques of Darwin and all dressed up in politically correct language. All for the ultimate goal — placing a Christian God in science classrooms of America's public high schools.
The modern American educational system no longer teaches us the political language of our ancestors. In fact our schooling helps widen the gulf of time between our ancestors and ourselves, because much of what we are taught in the name of civics, political science, or American history is really... modern liberal propaganda.
...champion causes which further conservatism...
My point was not that it was a given, but that it was no less scientific than Darwinism. The aspect of punctuated equilibrium that I find most interesting is that it cannot really be tested very well. When you posit a theory that something evolved from A to B but you can't find any evidence that it ever existed in some intermediate state, saying that it changed from A to B almost instantly isn't much more scientific than saying that the evidence just hasn't been uncovered yet.
While it is true that there are different types of eyes in nature of varying degrees of complexity, the fact that you refer to them as "step-by-step versions" is proof that you have already determined their relationship to each other (i.e., the most complex has evolved from the least complex) without considering the possibility that they are unrelated.
Ridiculous!
Clearly, the eye's makeup has changed. And the lady in question had no trouble seeing while using either makeup (although in the second shot, she did have to open her eyes).
And how does one "leave" science? Science is not a religion that one can subscribe to or not... it's simply a system.How do you "know that some things are just wrong?"
Who decides?
You can appeal to the authority of men, or some authority beyond men. On what basis would you do one versus the other?
It's a system not equipped to answer all questions, nor support all assertions.
You can leave science when you have to deal with aspects of reality beyond the space-time continuum.
Here's an example of a non-scientific statement: "One does not need to believe there is a God or is no God to know that some things are just wrong."
...Unless you have some scientific evidence for it?
Really? Darwinism is falsifiable and makes predictions. How is Irreducible Complexity falsifiable? What predictions does it make?
What predictions does Darwinism make? Did Charles Darwin have any idea how a species would evolve in the future?
12 posted on 6/7/02 12:24 PM Pacific by jennyp
Talk about twisted...evolution is reverso-whacko-sicko 'science'.
Creation was founded on natural design...Adam Smith---'the invisible hand'.
Communism--facsism is from EVOLUTION---inevitable progess---TYRANNY!
How does that make you feel?
>
Gould never said that features like eyes or wings evolved all at one; he believed they evolved gradually, just as Darwin thought. The only difference between Punk-Eek and traditional Darwinism is that Gould believed that most species tend to stay stable for long periods of time, and then evolve in a relatively quick (in geologic terms-- still tens of thousands of years) period in response to environmental changes.
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