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To: LiteKeeper
You obviously have not been reading the vast amount of literature that the ID'ers have published...or your head is in the sand.

What kind of literature? Popular-press polemics, sure. There's a lot of that. But please show me the positive evidence for ID, as opposed to negative arguments against Darwinism? (IOW, we all agree there are still gaps where God can reside, but where's the evidence that he's actually in one of them?)

If there was such evidence, then the Ohio education standards saga would have ended up somewhat differently...

Board member Marlene Jennings was one of the most outspoken opponents of adding ID to the curriculum. She mentioned to me twice, almost in passing, that she believes creationism will win out in the end as science makes new discoveries. I had to make sure I heard her right.

"Yes, I think creationism is true. That's part of my belief structure," she said.

And yet as the testimony progressed through spring and summer, she had become convinced that "the evidence just isn't there yet."

Jennings has a BA in math, as well as a JD, and has always been interested in science. She agrees that exposing students to controversial topics can be a useful tool. But as the pro-ID scientists testified, she found herself asking them such questions as "have you actually seen this dividing line between micro- and macro-evolution?" and "which biological structures that you work with look like the products of design instead of evolution?" She was not impressed when the scientists couldn't give her a straight answer. The turning point for her was when they couldn't give her any examples of "independent freestanding evidence for design," as opposed to just negative assertions against evolution.

Jennings seems to be unimpressed by credentials per se. She noticed that several of the pro-ID scientists who confidently asserted the plausibility of ID were speaking outside their areas of professional expertise. "There are a lot of scientists out there who you wouldn't give a lot of credibility to at all," she concluded.

And Jennings wasn't the only creationist on the Board who ended up a skeptic of ID as a scientific theory. Martha Wise, who at 24 years is the grande dame of the Board, was quick to mention, "I don't want to be painted into the evolution corner, because I am a creationist." But Wise is quite comfortable that "God hasn't told us everything yet." It's just that "it takes science to discover the details and resolve the contradictions in knowledge." In this sense, "creation and science are compatible."

And Wise doesn't think intelligent design rises to the level of a scientific theory. "What theory? There are no other theories" except evolution. "There is no scientific evidence" for the other side. "They think there is, but there isn't."
- from Ohio’s Saga Approaches an Intermission


63 posted on 11/07/2002 10:22:34 PM PST by jennyp
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To: jennyp
I'd say that such a human nature has been fixed ever since Homo sapiens first appeared.


131 posted on 11/07/2002 9:10 PM PST by jennyp


first appeared?

jennyp joseph smith?


Latter day scientists...books of darwin---apparitions!


72 posted on 11/07/2002 11:15:33 PM PST by f.Christian
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