B5-Creation
Graham Kendall
Modified 6/17/2008
Email grahamkendall74135@yahoo.com
I am found on IRC Efnet, Undernet, Dalnet as glk
Files found at http://www.grahamkendall.net
All are free to use any of this material without limit.
*******************************************************************************
==
New Front Opens on Evolution Wars
A battle over science education could soon spill into the courts in Louisiana,
where looming legislation would allow teachers to bring up scientific
criticisms of evolution, global warming and other hot-button topics. The state
House approved the bill Wednesday on a 94-3 vote. Because the Senate already
approved a near-identical measure, supporters expect the upper chamber to pass
this bill also. A spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal would not say
whether he will sign the bill, saying only that he will review it when it gets
to his desk. "It's not about a certain viewpoint," said supporter Jason Stern,
Vice President of the Louisiana Family Forum, a conservative group pushing the
bill. "It's allowing [teachers] to teach the controversy. It's an academic
freedom issue." Opponents, however, say it's a thinly veiled attempt to allow
into science class "intelligent design," which they denounce as disguised
religion and warn of lawsuits if the bill becomes law. Similar bills allowing
teachers to criticize evolutionary theories have been introduced in Michigan,
Missouri, Florida, Alabama and South Carolina, though some of them have died
for the year as legislatures adjourned. The Discovery Institute, a think tank
in Seattle that promotes the "intelligent design" theory, has helped craft
many of the bills - a fact that has raised alarm among the bill's opponents.
==
They also can't get it through their heads that repeating Bible verses over
and over again doesn't make them evidence in the existence of God or creation.
It seems like, for the truly die hard creationist/ID-ist, there is a mental
disconnect when it comes to the concept of evidence.
==
Ken Miller¹s most recent book, just out, makes this point in the title ‹
Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America¹s Soul.

Understanding Intelligent Design: Everything You Need to Know in Plain
Language (co-authored with youth speaker and high-school teacher Sean McDowell)

In this powerfully argued and timely book, Ken Miller takes on the fundamental
core of the Intelligent Design movement, and shows with compelling examples and
devastating logic that ID is not only bad science but is potentially
threatening in other deeper ways to Americas future. But make no mistake, this
is not some atheistic screed  Prof. Millers perspective as a devout believer
will allow his case to resonate with believers and non-believers alike.
Francis Collins, Director, the Human Genome Project and author of The Language
of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
==
There have been at least two private screenings for state legislatures that
have anti-evolution bills on the docket. One was held to drum up support for
Floridas Senate Bill 2692: the so-called Evolution Academic Freedom Act, which
aims to encourage the teaching of creationism by providing legal protection to
educators who present alternatives to evolution (i.e., intelligent design
and/or creation science ). Another screening was held in Missouri, where two
similar bills, House Bills 2554 and 1315, aim to promote academic freedom and
protect intellectual diversity; the latter bill was introduced by a legislator
who previously introduced a bill that would have fired teachers who didnt give
equal time to intelligent design.

==
Ayala
When people ask about the bacterial flagellum, for example, ³I bring up that
by now it has been worked out in great detail how the basic parts of the
bacterial flagellum have evolved independently and exist independently,² he
said. 
As for the moths, he conceded that in famous photographs illustrating the
discovery, the dark moths had been glued to the dark trees. But the observation
that the moths had darkened along with the trees was real, he said. ³To have
a nice photograph, we glue them,² he said. ³That is not falsifying science.
That is something for facilitating teaching.²
==
In May of 2001, the Louisiana state legislature passed a motion by a 9-5 vote,
declaring Darwin to be a racist. The measure read:

"Be it resolved that the Legislature of Louisiana does hereby deplore all
instances and ideologies of racism, and does hereby reject the core concepts
of Darwinist ideology that certain races and classes of humans are inherently
superior to others."
==
http://www.creationtheory.org/
==
Governor Henry's message on his veto of HB 2633:
------------
"This is to advise you that on this date, pursuant to the authority vested in
me by Section 11 and 12 of Article VI of the Oklahoma Constitution to approve
or object to legislation presented to me, I have VETOED House Bill 2633. Under
current state and federal law, Oklahoma public school students are already
allowed to express their faith through voluntary prayer and other activities.
While well intended, this legislation is vaguely written and may trigger a
number of unintended consequences that actually impede rather than enhance
such expression. For example, under this legislation, schools could be forced
to provide equal time to fringe organizations that masquerade as religions and
advocate behaviors, such as drug use or hate speech, that are dangerous or
offensive to students and the general public. Additionally, the bill would
presumably require school officials to determine what constitutes legitimate
religious expression, subjecting them to an explosion of costly and protracted
litigation that would have to be defended at taxpayers expense."

--
(The Governor has vetoed this bill  6/8)
Bill promotes school religion at expense of education
EDMOND  The Oklahoma House of Representatives Education Committee has just
approved House Bill 2211. The bill is expected to pass the full House, and
then to go to the Senate. Its authors describe it as promoting freedom of
religion in the public schools. In fact, it does the opposite.
HB 2211 is identical to bills widely introduced into state legislatures across
the nation, where they have met various fates. Texass Legislature passed it,
and Texas is experiencing serious problems as a result. Liberty Legal
Institute of Plano, Texas, a group of fundamentalist Christian lawyers,
drafted the bill and promoted to legislatures, including Oklahomas. It was not
written by its Oklahoma legislative authors.
The bill requires public schools to guarantee students the right to express
their religious viewpoints in a public forum, in class, in homework and in
other ways without being penalized. If a students religious beliefs were in
conflict with scientific theory, and the student chose to express those
beliefs rather than explain the theory in response to an exam question, the
students incorrect response would be deemed satisfactory, according to this
bill.
The school would be required to reward the student with a good grade, or be
considered in violation of the law. Even simple, factual information such as
the age of the earth (4.65 billion years) would be subject to the students
belief, and if the student answered 6,000 years based on his or her religious
belief, the school would have to credit it as correct. Science education
becomes absurd under such a situation.
If a student chose to take his opportunity to speak to a group of students in
a school-sanctioned assembly to tell them they must accept Jesus Christ as
their personal savior or go to hell, then that student would have a right to
do so, according to this bill. Especially, but not only if the student held a
position of honor and authority (class officer, team captain), and was
speaking in his or her official capacity, the school has clearly established
religion in violation of both the U.S. and Oklahoma constitutions.
The same would be true if the student chose to tell the assembled students
that they would not go to hell, that there is no hell and that those who
promote belief in hell are liars. What if a Wican student chose to tell the
assembled students that the only true God is Nature, or a member of a radical
religious sect advocated assassination in order to preserve Gods will?
According to this bill, those students would be free, in a forum supported by
the school, to do so. Any or all of these scenarios would lead to lawsuits.
The consequence of the bill will be to create havoc and promote discord in the
public schools. Thats already happening in Texas, where the bill has been law
for several months. Denton, Texas Independent School District, responding to
the law, has decreed that no students may ever speak in assembly, to
graduation, to the crowd at an athletic event or in other group function. As
reported in The Denton Record Chronicle Sept. 1, the superintendent there said
if no students are ever allowed to speak, then there will be no discrimination
and no basis for lawsuits. Another school superintendent in Texas said,  were
just trying to have school, and I think this is a complicating factor as
reported by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an
organization that has spoken out against the bill.
What administrators fear as the law is implemented is a barrage of lawsuits.
School administrators in Texas are frightened. They fear lawsuits from
students who feel that the school is forcing them to endure religious activity
they do not agree with nor want to have imposed on them. They also fear
lawsuits from students who claim they have not been properly allowed the forum
the law requires. Theyll be damned (or sued) if they do, damned (or sued) if
they dont. Oklahoma will experience the same.
Students already have the constitutional freedom to organize religious groups,
to pray or to do whatever religious activity they want at school, so long as
they do not impose that on others or use public resources to support their
religion. This bill adds nothing in the way of religious freedom. What it will
do is create a stew of undesirable litigation relating to an important
constitutional issue  separation of church and state.
Both The Oklahoma Academy of Science and Oklahomans for Excellence in Science
Education have asked for the bills defeat. I agree. Dont we have better things
to do with public money, than to give it to lawyers and courts over such
matters?
==
http://www.greenvil leonline. com/apps/ pbcs.dll/ article?AID= 2008805160318
Fair introduces bill to allow teachers to discuss alternatives to evolution
COLUMBIA -- A Greenville senator introduced legislation Thursday that would
allow teachers to discuss alternative theories to evolution.
Sen. Mike Fair, a Greenville Republican, said in a statement that the bill
wouldnat advocate any point of view or preclude any theory.
"Children are being spoon-fed theories as if they are facts, and teachers are
not even allowed the freedom to debate the truth of those theories," he said.
"The very nature of science is to ask questions and to go where the evidence
leads. The evidence regarding evolution is leading away from Darwinas theory
and yet there is a political persistence, a world view that is prejudiced
within the areas of higher education and it is spilling over into the K-12
classroom."
Jim Foster, a spokesman for the state Department of Education, said he didnat
see the need for the bill. "Science teachers are already free to discuss
science," he said. "So unless the intent is to introduce content thatas not
scientific, itas difficult to see why we need this."
The purpose of including science in what students are taught, Fair said, is to
inform students about scientific evidence and to help students develop critical
thinking skills needed to become intelligent, productive and scientifically
informed citizens.
The most crucial step in the scientific method, Fair argued, begins with
asking a question, which is what he said the bill would allow students and
teachers to do.
With nine business days left in the legislative session, Fair said the bill
cannot pass this year. However, he said he hopes that it starts a debate that
will carry over next year, when he plans to re-introduce the bill.
He said he hopes to hear from educators this summer about the bill, especially
about their experiences in attempting to hold discussions on controversial
topics.
"I intend to use their experiences to inform South Carolina about
administration decisions that are impacting the education our students are
receiving," he said.
Similar bills have been introduced in five other states, according to
Education Week, which said the legislation is similar to model
academic-freedom legislation supported by the Discovery Institute, a
pro-intelligent design organization based in Seattle.
Intelligent design is a belief that human beings and other creatures show
evidence of being the result of an unidentified creator.
==
Mud Cracks
http://www.pittpath s.com/st/ 0149.htm

http://www.geology. pitt.edu/ GeoSites/ tr%2028%20dessic ation.jpg
from:
http://www.geology. pitt.edu/ GeoSites/ site%20NKENS% 205-1new. htm

Physical Geology Slides-Sedimentary Rock
http://www.uwgb. edu/DutchS/ EarthSC202Slides /SROXSLID. HTM
(See a picture of Cambrian mud cracks about 2/3 of the way down the page.)
==
Notice that mining & oil geologist, on whose opinions huge sums of money are
bet, rely not on "Flood geology" but real geology, recognizing that the
earth is billions of years old & that rock formations arise, form & weather
away over tens & hundreds of millions of years.
YECs are completely flummoxed, as they are by reality
at all times, when you point out that marine &
terrestrial strata alternate in geologic columns all
around the world, as in Mesozoic Western US & Canada
formations, for instance, where the Inland Sea came in
& went out with warmer & cooler water temperatures
from more or less seafloor spreading, among other forces.
==
If your fundamentalist faith be strong enough, exposure to
science won't dent it. No one says you have to accept
evolution. You just have to learn enough about it to
understand it & pass a test on it. Some kids will
wake up & realize that their church lies to them, but
others won't. Churches can't dictate what's taught in
science classes.
The Bible says the earth is supported by foundational
pillars & doesn't move, but that the sun does (also
the night & day are independent of the movements of
the earth & sun), for instance. Should kids then be
excused from physics class when the movement of the
earth around the sun under gravitational attraction is taught?
==
Our critiques of creationism are: (a) that it stops scientific progress in its
tracks by answering questions in a way that closes off further research; and
(b) that there is no real attempt to meld the approach with the existing
methods of science. We know that the creationists say this is not true, but
their hypotheses relate to books of obscure origin or to faith rather than to
observation.
==
Since Copernicus, science has advanced by
progressively removing God from direct intervention in
nature. The Polish monk removed the earth from the
center of the universe. Newton removed the need for
angels to operate the celestial machinery. Darwin
removed Man from the center of the kingdoms of life,
showing that God didn't need periodically to create
new living things.
This separation has been good for both science & true
religion. If God is in the gaps in our present
knowledge, as they are filled, there is less space
available for Him. Saying "God did it" when we can't
yet explain naturalistically how something happened,
answers nothing & can't help improve our knowledge,
the advancement of which has reaped so many benefits
to people since Copernicus' day.
Attempts to insert Him back into natural processes
where not needed can only retard further scientific
progress. ID shows this plainly. If Behe wanted to
advance humanity's understanding of & ability to cope
with nature, he'd have spent his time researching the
biochemical pathways in the development of the
bacterial flagellum, rather than going around the
country & writing books about its "irreducible
complexity", falsely.
==
Duane Gish is the repeatedly humiliated fool who asserted that no fossil
proto-mammal with two jaw joints would ever be found, right before many of
them were.
==
The state Department of Education disagrees with an Athens School Board
director who wants School Administrative District 59 to drop evolution from
its high school science curricula.
Director Matthew Linkletter claims evolution is an unprovable theory and
shouldn't be taught as fact. He's urged the SAD 59 Board of Directors to
consider his view during its May 19 meeting in Madison, with a goal of
removing evolution from science classrooms.
But David Connerty-Marin of the Department of Education says evolution must be
taught because, in the state's view, it's a proven science.
"For our students to be prepared for college work and life in the 21st
century, it's necessary," said Connerty-Marin.
Connerty-Marin said the Maine Learning Results program mandates the study of
evolution in public science classes.
"Evolution is not just a belief, or based on faith, it's based on scientific
evaluation," he said. "The worldwide science community supports it."
Linkletter believes that neither evolution nor creationism belong in a high
school science curriculum, because they cannot be proven.
"You can't show, observe or prove (evolution)," he said.
School Administrative District 59 includes the towns of Madison, Athens,
Brighton Plantation and Starks.
Chosen at random, two parents of Madison Area Memorial High School students
expressed some support for Linkletter's position.
"I think that's a very valid point, to tell you the truth, because evolution
is only a theory, not a hard fact," said Nancy Martin, an educational
technician at Athens Elementary School.
Martin, who has a son at the high school, said that she believes in
creationism, as outlined in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. She said SAD 59
should pull evolution from the science curriculum unless creationism is
afforded equal footing.
Laney Kirk of Madison, treasurer of the sports boosters who has a daughter at
Madison High, agreed with Martin -- to a point.
"Really and truly, they're both ideas," Kirk said. "We can teach both. But
that's where we run into a problem, when you say they're mutually exclusive.
You're never going to get everyone to agree about it, so why not teach them
both?"
Kirk said she attends most SAD 59 meetings, but missed the one last week when
Linkletter broached the topic. The board voted to table the issue and revisit
it on May 19. Kirk does not believe that the board should remove evolution
from the curriculum.
"There are people who believe that the Holocaust is a theory," Kirk said.
"It's like banning a book."
Town Manager Norman Dean, who taught science in Madison from 1962 through
1996, had stronger words for the proposal.
"That's absolutely stupid," said Dean, who once taught Linkletter. "I thought
we already had the monkey trial."
There is plenty of evidence, Dean said, that Charles Darwin's theory of
evolution is correct.
"Adaption over time is proven time and again," he said. "I believe evolution
is adaptation to the environment."
Roy Blevins is pastor of Linkletter's church, the Church of the Open Bible in
Athens. Blevins spoke in favor of SAD 59 Chairman Norman Luce's suggestion,
that a philosophy class might provide a better forum for the study of
evolution.
"That's a sane approach," Blevins said. "The evolution concept is a theory,
and not provable. If the science department at Madison High is simply teaching
theory, then you ought to leave it in the science department."
Blevins agreed with Linkletter that neither is creationism provable, and thus
does not belong in the curriculum.
==
When the Florida legislature ended its session on May 2, 2008, legislative
attempts to open the door to creationism died in the House of Representatives.
Senate Bill 2692, as originally introduced, purported to protect the right of
teachers to "objectively present scientific information relevant to the full
range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution." The
bill resembled a string of similar bills in Alabama as well as a model bill
that the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the
institutional home of "intelligent design" creationism, recently began to
promote, and was widely viewed as a backlash against the treatment of
evolution in Florida's new state science standards.
As NCSE reported, SB 2692's originally identical House counterpart, HB 1483,
was substantially altered, requiring public schools to provide "[a] thorough
presentation and critical analysis of the scientific theory of evolution." The
phrase "critical analysis" is commonly used by "intelligent design" advocates
in their campaign to undermine the teaching of evolution. The sponsor of SB
2692, Senator Ronda Storms (R-District 10), then sought to smooth the bill's
passage by revising it to match HB 1483, but was unsuccessful. On receiving SB
2692 from the Senate, the House substituted the text of HB 1483 and returned it
to the Senate, which then restored the text of the bill and sent it back to the
House, where it died. HB 1483 was already tabled, and is now dead, too.
Throughout the discussion of SB 2692, its supporters maintained a studied
vagueness about what "scientific information" was contemplated. Asked by the
Miami Herald (March 13, 2008) whether "intelligent design" constituted
"scientific information" in the sense of the bill, for example, a
representative of the Discovery Institute equivocated, saying, "In my personal
opinion, I think it does. But the intent of this bill is not to settle that
question," and adding, unhelpfully, "The intent of this bill is ... it
protects the 'teaching of scientific information. '" And during debate on the
Senate floor, Storms was noticeably reluctant to address the question of
whether the bill would license the teaching of creationism, preferring instead
simply to recite the bill's text.
Storms was also unable to justify the bill's claims of persecution. A report
to the Senate Education Pre-K-12 Committee stated (PDF), "According to the
Department of Education, there has never been a case in Florida where a public
school teacher or public school student has claimed that they have been
discriminated against based on their science teaching or science course work,"
and the St. Petersburg Times (March 6, 2008) pointedly commented, "most of the
evolution-related pressure being put on science teachers is aimed at those who
want to teach the scientific consensus about evolution, not those who want to
teach the 'full range of scientific views' -- which would presumably include
the fringe notion that evolution is not backed by strong evidence."
Similarly, the sponsor of HB 1483, Representative Alan Hays (R-District 25),
was forced to acknowledge that "he didn't have any names" of teachers who
feared retribution for "teaching the 'holes' in evolution," the Miami Herald
(April 28, 2008) reported. His idea of "critical analysis of the scientific
theory of evolution" was suggested by his comment, reported by the Herald, "No
fossils have been found and no witness has ever seen one species turn into
another. This is only a theory." Representative Carl Domino (R-District 83),
voting against the bill, commented, "There are a lot of strange things out
there that I don't want teachers teaching," according to the South Florida
Sun-Sentinel (April 28, 2008).
Nevertheless, the bills passed their respective houses, as NCSE reported.
Whether due to the intransigence of their supporters or to the host of other
issues crowding the legislative calendar, however, a compromise was not
reached before the end of the legislative session. In its editorial reviewing
the accomplishments of the legislature, the Tampa Tribune (May 3, 2008)
commented, "The session will be remembered for what wasn't done to compromise
the quality of education in Florida" (emphasis in original), immediately
adding, "Sen. Ronda Storms was rebuked in her effort to infuse religion into
lessons on biological evolution."
NCSE congratulates and thanks those in the Sunshine State who fought against
these antievolution bills, including the editorial boards of the state's
newspapers, the writers and framers of the state science standards, scientists
at the state's universities and in industry, the ACLU of Florida, a handful of
vocal legislators from both parties, and, especially, the grassroots group
Florida Citizens for Science, whose spokesperson Brandon Haught commented at
the end of the legislative session, "Let us take a moment of silence for House
Bill 1483 and Senate Bill 2692, the deceptively named 'academic freedom' bills.
Time of death: 6 p.m." But looking ahead to the challenges of the next
legislative session, Haught added, "I doubt they will rest in peace, though."

==
Evolution Less Accepted in U.S. Than Other Western Countries, Study Finds

Researchers compared the results of past surveys of attitudes toward evolution
taken in the U.S. since 1985 and similar surveys in Japan and 32 European
countries.
In the U.S., only 14 percent of adults thought that evolution was "definitely
true," while about a third firmly rejected the idea.
In European countries, including Denmark, Sweden, and France, more than 80
percent of adults surveyed said they accepted the concept of evolution.
The proportion of western European adults who believed the theory "absolutely
false" ranged from 7 percent in Great Britain to 15 percent in the Netherlands.
The only country included in the study where adults were more likely than
Americans to reject evolution was Turkey.
The investigation also showed that the percentage of U.S. adults who are
uncertain about evolution has risen from 7 percent to 21 percent in the past
20 years.
Researchers from the U.S. and Japan analyzed additional information from these
surveys in an attempt to identify factors that might help explain why Americans
are more skeptical about evolution.
Led by Jon D. Miller, a political scientist at Michigan State University, the
team reports its findings in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.
American Culture and Evolution
The team ran a complex analysis of the statistics, testing for a causal link
between aspects of U.S. culture and Americans' attitudes toward evolution.
People in the United States are much less likely to accept Darwin's idea that
humans and apes share a common ancestor than adults in other Western nations,
a number of surveys show.
A new study of those surveys suggests that the main reason for this lies in a
unique confluence of religion, politics, and the public understanding of
biological science in the United States.
Researchers compared the results of past surveys of attitudes toward evolution
taken in the U.S. since 1985 and similar surveys in Japan and 32 European
countries.
In the U.S., only 14 percent of adults thought that evolution was "definitely
true," while about a third firmly rejected the idea.
In European countries, including Denmark, Sweden, and France, more than 80
percent of adults surveyed said they accepted the concept of evolution.
The proportion of western European adults who believed the theory "absolutely
false" ranged from 7 percent in Great Britain to 15 percent in the Netherlands.
The only country included in the study where adults were more likely than
Americans to reject evolution was Turkey.
The investigation also showed that the percentage of U.S. adults who are
uncertain about evolution has risen from 7 percent to 21 percent in the past
20 years.
Researchers from the U.S. and Japan analyzed additional information from these
surveys in an attempt to identify factors that might help explain why Americans
are more skeptical about evolution.
Led by Jon D. Miller, a political scientist at Michigan State University, the
team reports its findings in tomorrow's issue of the journal Science.
==
According to a telephone poll conducted by ABCNEWS/Primetime in 2004, 
60% of US residents believe the story of Noah's Ark is literally true.
==
The FL Senate Judiciary Committee today takes up SB 2692, the "Evolution
Academic Freedom Act" which would allow educators to teach intelligent design
and other pseudo-science within the public school science classroom
==
The textbook is Biology for Christian
Schools, and the excerpt is as follows and begins now:
(1) "'Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man says may or may
not be so,' is the only [position] a Christian can take..."
(2) "If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the
conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may
appear to back them."
(3) "Christians must disregard [scientific hypotheses or theories]
that contradict the Bible."
And this isn't buried somewhere in the back. This is on the very
first page of the textbook.  
==
Genetic Entropy & the Mystery of the Genome by John Sanford (October 2005)
===
JEFFERSON CITY A bit of Hollywoods right wing came to Missouri last week as
Ben Stein showed up to pitch his new documentary, Expelled: No Intelligence
Allowed.
The premise of the film is that serious scientists are systematically
disparaged, discredited and blacklisted if they dare to mention the
possibility that the infinite complexity of organisms might indicate design by
a higher power.
Stein, the monotone-voiced actor and political essayist, introduced a special
screening of the film in the Capitol rotunda. Stein said the movie was
inspired by skepticism that a single theory, based on a modest amount of
evidence, could explain the entire universe.
Were not saying teach creationism, Stein said. We just think you should be
able to question Darwinism.
The film, scheduled to open in theaters this month, questions gaps in the
theory of evolution. Scientists who say the existence of God is not science
are derided as closed-minded keepers of a secular faith who refuse to consider
any alternative explanations for highly debatable conclusions.
Charles Darwins theories of species changing through random mutation and
natural selection are depicted as the intellectual underpinnings of Nazi
Germany and the Holocaust.
And a favorite target of social conservatives Planned Parenthood is painted
as a purveyor of contraception as a way to reduce less desirable traits among
the humans not as a way to help the poor attain self-sufficiency by
controlling their fertility.
The movie is essentially a love letter to the religious right packaged as a
call for freedom of speech and a demand for freedom of inquiry at research
institutes and universities. It is being marketed heavily through churches and
socially conservative groups, with endorsements from James Dobson, chairman of
Focus on the Family, and Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for
America.
At a news conference Thursday, Stein urged lawmakers to pass Cunninghams bill
that would require state colleges and universities to promote political and
religious perspectives and competing ideas and alternative claims of truth.
He also plugged Coopers bill that requires local schools to encourage students
and their teachers to critique theories of evolution.
All (Cunninghams) bill does is protect teachers, Stein said. No one can be
told to keep his mouth shut.
Students, he said, should get credit for reasoned, well-expressed arguments
even if they dont agree with the instructors view. Pressure to conform hurts
students and shortchanges serious research, he said.
I saw political correctness at work, Stein said. Its a nauseating thing.
Stein called Darwin a genius and lauded his insight into changes that species
undergo over time. But extrapolating such insights into an overarching theory
of how life began while refusing even to allow discussion of alternatives is
folly, he said. And such ideas have even proven dangerous.
It leads to social Darwinism, which leads to the belief that some people are
superior to others, Stein said. That thinking led to the Nazi regime that
killed 6 million of my fellow Jews.
==
A great many major Christian and Jewish organisations accept that Evolutionary
science is compatible with their vision of God. These include the American
Jewish Congress; the American Scientific Affiliation; the Center For Theology
And The Natural Sciences; the Central Conference Of American Rabbis; the
General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA)
floydfp: the General Convention Of The Episcopal Church; the Lexington
Alliance Of Religious Leaders; the Lutheran World Federation; the Roman
Catholic Church; the Unitarian Universalist Association; the United Church
Board For Homeland Ministries; the United Methodist Church; and the United
Presbyterian Church In The U.S.A.
floydfp: Thank MrDav for this information
floydfp: These organisations represent substantially more than half of all
Christs and Jews worldwide.
floydfp: (Source: World Christian Encyclopedia - quoted here).
==
"Recently, the Oklahoma House of Representatives passed HB 2211, a bill
created in an attempt to increase freedom of religion in public schools. Its
intent is to let students say the earth was
created by God (Allah, Brahma, Eros, Atum, Ymir, etc.) and that humans didn't
evolve, but were intelligently designed,
in accordance with their religious beliefs, and still get a passing grade."
"As long as students say what they are being taught interferes
with their religious beliefs, they cannot be graded down."
http://media.www.thenorthwindonline.com/media/storage/paper1202/news/2008/03/27/Opinion/Column.Religion.Has.No.Bearing.In.The.Classroom-3287692.shtml
 
==
The Phillip Johnson award, the creationists' answer to the Nobel  Prize. 
The first winner of the Phillip Johnson award was Phillip Johnson. 
How nice to see it being handed out to his pals by his pals.
===
The Questionable Authority

Summary Judgment in California Creationist Lawsuit: Bottom Line, and What's
Next (Part 1 of 3)
On Friday, Judge James Otero of the Central District of California issued a
ruling granting the University of California's request for partial summary
judgment in the California Creationist Lawsuit. I've written about this case
several times before now, but it's been a long time since the last update, so
before I get into the details of the ruling, I'm going to quickly review the
details of the case.
In 2005, a group of plaintiffs that includes the Association of Christian
Schools International, Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murietta, and the
parents of several students filed a lawsuit against the University of
California. In their suit, they claimed that UC unfairly and
unconstitutionally refused to accept a number of courses taught at Christian
schools as meeting UC's admissions criteria. The courses in question covered a
range of topics, including English, history, religion, and government, but I've
mostly focused my attention on the biology courses that failed to make the
grade, because that's the area that I know the most about.
One of the specific issues that the Christian Schools are challenging in their
lawsuit is UC's decision to reject any course that uses either the A Bekka
Books or the Bob Jones University Press biology textbooks as the primary text
for the course. As I've said before, this decision makes perfect sense to me.
Even the most cursory look at some of the things that these books claim is
enough to show that the unfortunate students who are forced to use this text
are being taught things that are totally incompatible with science. The
Christian schools, it should go without saying, disagree with my assessment.
In their pursuit of their claim that it's unreasonable to reject these books,
they recruited noted cDesign Proponentsist Michael Behe as an "expert"
witness. He "reviewed" the Creationist books, found them to be fine and dandy,
submitted an expert report that said as much, and sat for a deposition last
year. (Unfortunately for his employers, the Judge apparently actually listened
to what Behe had to say. I'll have more on that in another post later today.)
Last year, both sides in the case asked the Judge to grant them summary
judgment. The Christian schools asked the judge to rule that the entire UC
policy of rejecting certain courses is unconstitutional both on its face and
as it was applied specifically to them. The University of California asked the
court to rule that the policy is constitutional on its face. UC did not ask the
court to grant judgment on the issue of the specific courses, saying that issue
involves questions best settled at trial. In order for the court to grant
summary judgment, it has to agree that there are no material differences about
the facts of the case, and that the party who is asking for the summary
judgment is clearly in the right even if the facts are viewed in the light
most favorable to the other side.
In his decision, Judge Otero rejected every single aspect of the plaintiffs'
claim, along with their entire motion for summary judgment. He accepted the
University of California's arguments, and granted their motion for partial
summary judgment.
This means two things: first, the question of whether or not the University of
California can reject courses from the Christian schools under any
circumstances has been settled in favor of UC. The judge ruled that UC has a
compelling reason to pick and choose the "content" and "viewpoints" that they
will accept as meeting their admissions requirements: ensuring that the
students they accept are qualified. The Christian schools who filed the suit
are not entitled to an exemption from that requirement simply because they are
religious extremists who fiercely reject reality as part of their faith.
Second, the issue of whether or not UC was correct in rejecting the specific
courses and textbooks in question will most likely go to trial. The Christian
schools asked the judge to rule in their favor on that issue, while UC claimed
that the issue involved enough of a dispute about the facts to require a full
trial. Here, too, the judge ruled in favor of UC.
A trial date has not yet been set, but I'll keep watching for one and will let
you know what's going on when more information is available.
I'll also have two more posts on this ruling a little later today. One of the
posts will focus on Judge Otero's discovery of various typical Creationist
argument techniques (most notably strawmen and quote mining) in the Christian
School's claims. The second will focus on the valuable, but accidental,
contribution made by Mike Behe - on behalf of the side of good science.

When are they going to learn that letting creationists like Behe testify in
their favor = Doom

The issue was the University of California's decision
to reject biology courses that used Biology: God's
Living Creation (published by A Beka) or Biology for
Christian Schools (published by Bob Jones University)
as the primary text in the course. Behe was the
plaintiff's "biology expert" (oh, the irony!) and the
court found:

Plaintiffs' evidence also supports Defendants'
conclusion that these biology texts are inappropriate
for use as the primary or sole text. Plaintiffs' own
biology expert, Professor Michael Behe testified that
"it is personally abusive and pedagogically damaging
to de facto require students to subscribe to an idea .
. . . Requiring a student to, effectively, consent to
an idea violates [her] personal integrity. Such a
wrenching violation [may cause] a terrible educational
outcome." [Emphasis added]

Yet, the two Christian biology texts at issue
commit this "wrenching violation." For example,
Biology for Christian Schools declares on the very
first page that:

(1) "'Whatever the Bible says is so; whatever man
says may or may not be so,' is the only [position] a
Christian can take . . . ."

(2) "If [scientific] conclusions contradict the
Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how
many scientific facts may appear to back them."

(3) "Christians must disregard [scientific
hypotheses or theories] that contradict the Bible."

Based in no small part on Behe's testimony, the court
found the there was, at least, a genuine issue of
material fact as to whether the rejection of the
plaintiffs' biology courses was reasonable.


==
The entire foundation of science is the examination of
all ideas and hypotheses, designing experiments to
test those hypotheses, and then evaluating the data in
light of the hypotheses. The reason that intelligent
design is not a scientific discipline is because it
has no relationship to science whatsoever. No
experiments are done, and no hypotheses are
forthcoming. It is declared by Fiat. You know, like religion.
==
More irony from the ID creationist crowd March 30, 2008
On the one hand the ID creationist crowd wail and moan about how they
supposedly face discrimination and censure (thats what film Expelled is
about), and on the other we find this sort of stuff:

Pandas Thumb reports on an article in the Washington Post that talked about
the case of Nancey Murphy of the Fuller Theological Seminary:

Nancey Murphy, a religious scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena,
Calif., said she faced a campaign to get her fired because she expressed the
view that intelligent design was not only poor theology, but so stupid, I dont
want to give them my time.

Murphy, who believes in evolution, said she had to fight to keep her job after
one of the founding members of the intelligent design movement, legal theorist
Phillip Johnson, called a trustee at the seminary and tried to get her fired.

But this isnt the only example.

Back in the mid-1990s Christian biochemist Terry M. Gray was tried and
convicted of heresy by the Orthodox Presbyterian Church for daring to suggest
that humans have primate ancestors in a review wait for it of Phillip Johnsons
book Darwin on Trial (1991).

A. We charge that Dr. Terry Gray has committed the public offense of stating
that Adam had primate ancestors~ contrary to the Word of God (Genesis 2:7,
1:26,27) and the doctrinal standards of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church (WCF
IV.2, W L C 17).

Fortunately Dr. Gray wasnt put on the rack or burnt at the stake for his
heresy (like they used to do), but he was censured and had to write a
recantation.

Dr. Gray has a page on links to articles on the incident: Documents Related to
the Evolution Trial in the OPC

A similar example is Christian physicist Howard Van Till, of Calvin College in
Michigan had the schools board of trustees questioning his views after he wrote
in a book (The Fourth Day 1986) in which he argued that the stories of the
Bible and sciences account of evolution could both be true (from
chicagotribune.com):

His critics on the schools board of trustees had no interest in reconciling
the religious account of creation with a naturalist explanation of how life
and the universe have evolved over the ages. For years after the books release
in 1986, Van Till reported to a monthly interrogation where he struggled to
reassure college officials that his scientific teachings fit within their
creed. Van Tills career survived the ordeal, but his Calvinist faith did not.
Over the next two decades, he became the heretic his critics had suspected.

Over a span of three years a conservative businessman Leo Peters ran thirty
full-page ads in the Grand Rapids Press attacking Van Till for his views.

Seems they can dish it out but cant take it; though they really havent had to
actually take it because most (if not all) of their claims of discrimination
or censure are nonsense.
==
Sen. Larcenia Bullard, D-Miami, made her views clear when she said she
thought kindergartners should not be taught Darwinian evolution
because "that may be brainwashing. " She also told the committee of her
own experience in college, where she refused to answer a science exam
question about evolution with the accepted Darwinian answer and
instead copied down the creation story in Genesis, Chapter 1."
http://www2. tbo.com/content/ 2008/mar/ 27/me-evolution- bill-moves- forward
It's not about letting religion creep into science classrooms, Sen.
Ronda Storms insisted.
It's about protecting the rights of students and teachers who don't
agree with the science behind Darwinian evolution, the Republican from
Valrico argued before the Senate's pre-k through 12 education
committee voted 4-1 Wednesday to approve the bill.
Despite her argument, religion kept coming up anyway, as Storms
pressed for her "academic freedom" act. Her bill would allow public
school teachers to present science-based alternatives to Darwin's
theory of evolution, a theory written into Florida's curriculum
standards and one that is held as a fundamental concept of biology by
most members of the science community.
Although professors spoke in opposition to the bill and a
representative from the American Civil Liberties Union said it would
open the door to teaching creationism, the committee voted to move the
bill forward.
"Evolution will still be taught as a matter of law. This bill does not
undo the current standard," Storms said. She added, "It's interesting
for me to note that the only folks who brought up religion today have
been those in opposition."
A debate about evolution has been swirling in the Capitol since last
month, when the state Board of Education adopted the state's new
science standards, which mandated teaching evolution. Activists
persuaded the board to qualify evolution as a "theory," but the board
did not write in any special provision for teaching alternative beliefs.
Storms filed her bill at the start of the legislative session.
Conservative activists rallied around her, with actor Ben Stein, best
known for playing a boring teacher in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off,"
showing up in Tallahassee to screen his controversial documentary
"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," a film about scientists and
educators who challenged natural selection and Darwin's evolution
teachings.
Those who oppose Darwin's theory of evolution aren't all religiously
motivated, backers said Wednesday, although Sen. Larcenia Bullard,
D-Miami, made her views clear when she said she thought kindergartners
should not be taught Darwinian evolution because "that may be
brainwashing. " She also told the committee of her own experience in
college, where she refused to answer a science exam question about
evolution with the accepted Darwinian answer and instead copied down
the creation story in Genesis, Chapter 1.
Sen. Ted Deutch, D-Boca Raton, who cast the lone dissenting vote
Wednesday, echoed what a staff analysis of the bill said - that there
have been no complaints about teachers or students saying they were
discriminated against because they presented an alternative scientific
theory of evolution.
"What we heard today was the suggestion that there are people of faith
who have some objections and they're not permitted to raise them,"
Deutch said.
Although he thinks students should be allowed to debate things
philosophically, those debates do not belong in the science classroom,
he said.
==
Nobody cares that ID'ers mostly think God created everything. What they do
care about is ID'ers claiming that they have scientific evidence God did it,
or scientific evidence that Evolution is wrong, when they do not have such a
thing. 

The purpose of ID is to provide a theory that its supporters know to be
religion-friendly, but which can be dressed up as science for legal purposes.

Tens of millions of Americans, who neither know nor understand the actual
arguments for or even against evolution, march in the army of the night with
their Bibles held high. And they are a strong and frightening force,
impervious to, and immunized against, the feeble lance of mere reason.
Isaac Asimov

'Belief' is loosely the religious equivalent to scientific 'proof'. When an ID
supporter says "proof" they mean belief.. There are then two clearly different
senses of the word "proof". 

Read about "The Wedge Document" to understand the real motive behind ID - it
is nothing more than an attempt to establish a Christian Theocracy worldwide.
They plan to destroy Universities, Modern art and create a second class
citizenry of all who do not believe in Jesus.
==
The intelligent design folks aren't being silenced, so much as they're being
silent. Because when it comes to actually
explaining anything, they've got nothing to say.
==
Ralph Muncaster's Dismantling Evolution
Phillip Johnson's Darwin on Trial;
David Snoke's A Biblical Case for an Old Earth
Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross' Who was Adam.
==
Genesis is perfectly clear about its cosmology. A
solid dome, hammered out by God's own hand, holds back
the "waters above". The dome contains floodgates
through which rain & snow fall, plus openings for the
sun & moon to come & go over the flat earth, while God
Himself operates the floodgates to water the earth
from above. God looks down on the earth through
clouds from His throne atop the dome of heaven, so
that people appear as grasshoppers to Him.

The stars hang from or are embedded in the dome, but
in danger of falling to earth, which isn't a long way
at all, since it's possible to build a 2.3 to 2.9 km
tall tower to reach heaven. The sun gets up every
morning to run his race, then at night hurries around
outside the dome or under the earth to his place of
rising. In the Book of Enoch, we learn that there are
stiff penalties for the moon & sun to be tardy.
God used to come down to earth to walk & talk with
people, but apparently abandoned this practice
sometime before Moses.
==
I find it amusing that Dubya demands more science and math
from our schools but then makes sure to install people with a very clear
agenda in specific positions so that the results of federally-funded
scientific inquiry are constrained to reach a pre-determined
political/religious/moral conclusion. Any scientific research that is
co-authored or sponsored by the federal government must now be viewed with an
extremely skeptical eye by not only America but by the scientific world
community.
The idea of science being the political tool of those
in power smacks of a return to pre-Enlightenment, to a time when one accepted
the word of the state or church (often one and the same) and those who refused
to acquiesce were ostricised at best or disposed of at worst. Voltaire said it
is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong and this great champion
of liberty and free thought, along with many others independent thinkers,
would be appalled at the present federal administration's insistence on
regressive science.
In campaigning for the presidency in 1999, Bush advocated teaching creationism
in public schools, in blatant violation of the First Amendment, a position
that obliterates his claim to be a defender of science.
The politicization of science presents a severe challenge to modern democratic
governments, which depend on a creative tension between elected
representatives, on the one hand, and unelected technocratic elites on the
other. . .[T]he politicization of science--in essence, a corruption of the
communication channels between credible experts and policymakers--weakens and
ultimately destroys this necessary relationship.
When scientific information becomes merely something to be manipulated to
achieve a political or religious end, the quality and integrity of the
political process inevitably suffer.
Under a republican banner, the Christian right having lost two landmark cases
where they failed to keep evolution out of the classroom, and failed to get
creationism in the classroom, created a marketing miracle with restyling the
latter in a new package of intelligent design. Attempting to influence a
scientifically ignorant public with fallacious claims of unexplained missing
links, and evolution's lack of certainty, they have made inroads with the more
intellectually gullible and naïve. To bolster their cause, they have enlisted
a few contrarian scientists who have carried their guidon, but have failed to
publish their stance in any peer-reviewed journal. 
In 1995, Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich fired the first political salvo
in the war on science by abolishing the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA).
This was an impartial scientific committee that provided scientific consensus
on issues brought to them from the political arena. 
Scientific progress, won within the last 400 years, seems to dissolve into
air in view of the right-wing conservative Christian fundamentalist banding
together. 
Darwin's evolution theory as a component of the biology lesson in schools is
fought by creationism or the slogan of an intelligent designer (God?),
obedient, at this point unruly teachers are threatened with dismissal.
After all, neither evolution nor the age of the universe can be traduced
without bringing into question those sciences dealing with natural history as
a whole.
Their activism ironically came from several centuries of resistance to this
same science and its displacement of age-old religious beliefs. Evolution,
contraception, Big Bang, all had the effect of undermining traditional
authority in vast regions of America, particularly in countrysides and the
South. In the fundamentalist's classically reactionary view, the moral fabric
of America was being ripped asunder and Biblical truths cast aside, while
thenatural sciences, in particular, were designated as a chief culprit. 
The evolution issue is an interesting case in point. If the Bible is literally
true, then before Adam and Eve's sin, there was no death - a death which Christ
conquered by his own death on the Cross. Imagine, then, the fix these people
are in when faced with Darwinian principles that demonstrate that death
predated humans. It is no wonder they equate belief in Darwin with atheism and
no wonder they fight evolution tooth and nail.
==
It is important to educate members of the lay public that fascism doesn't come
out of the blue, but is rather a long methodical power grab that occurs under
the radar unless the public is attuned to what is going on and oppose it
locally and nationally..
==
In Britain, creationist theory is evolving
Groups that oppose Darwin are making headway in schools.
LONDON -- After the Sunday service in Westminster Chapel, where worshipers
were exhorted to wage "the culture war" in the World War II spirit of Sir
Winston Churchill, cabbie James McLean delivered his verdict on Charles
Darwin's theory of evolution.
"Evolution is a lie, and it's being taught in schools as fact, and it's
leading our kids in the wrong direction," said McLean, chatting outside the
chapel. "But now people like Ken Ham are tearing evolution to pieces."
Ken Ham is the founder of Answers in Genesis, a Kentucky-based organization
that is part of an ambitious effort to bring creationist theory to Britain and
the rest of Europe. McLean is one of a growing number of evangelicals embracing
that message -- that the true history of the Earth is told in the Bible, not
Darwin's "The Origin of Species."
Europeans have long viewed the conflict between evolutionists and creationists
as primarily an American phenomenon, but it has recently jumped the Atlantic
with skirmishes in Italy, Germany, Poland and, notably, Britain, where Darwin
was born and where he published his 1859 classic.
Darwin's defenders are fighting back. In October, the 47-nation Council of
Europe, a human rights watchdog, condemned all attempts to bring creationism
into Europe's schools. Bible-based theories and "religious dogma" threaten to
undercut sound educational practices, it charged.
Schools are increasingly a focal point in this battle for hearts and minds.
A British branch of Answers in Genesis, which shares a website with its
American counterpart, has managed to introduce its creationist point of view
into science classes at a number of state-supported schools in Britain, said
Monty White, the group's chief executive.
"We do go into the schools about 10 to 20 times a year and we do get the
students to question what they're being taught about evolution," said White,
who founded the British branch seven years ago. "And we leave them a box of
books for the library."
Creationism is still a marginal issue here compared with its impact on
cultural and political debate in the United States. But the budding fervor is
part of a growing embrace of evangelical worship throughout much of Europe.
Evangelicals say their ranks are swelling because of revulsion with the
hedonism and materialism of modern society. At the same time, attendance at
traditional churches is declining.
"People are looking for spirituality," White said in an interview at his
office in Leicester, 90 miles north of London. "I think they are fed up with
not finding true happiness. They find having a bigger car doesn't make them
happy. They get drunk and the next morning they have a hangover. They take
drugs but the drugs wear off. But what they find with Christianity is lasting."
Other British organizations have joined the crusade. A group called Truth in
Science has sent thousands of unsolicited DVDs to every high school in Britain
arguing that mankind is the result of "intelligent design," not Darwinian
evolution.
In addition, the AH Trust, a charity, has announced plans to raise money for
construction of a Christian theme park in northwest England with a 5,000-seat
television studio that would be used for the production of Christian-oriented
films. And several TV stations are devoted to Christian themes.
All this activity has lifted spirits at the Westminster Chapel, a 165-year-old
evangelical church that is not affiliated with nearby Westminster Abbey, where
Darwin is buried.
In the chapel, the Rev. Greg Haslam tells 150 believers that they are in a
conflict with secularism that can only be won if they heed Churchill's
exhortation and never give up.
"The first thing you have to do is realize we are in a war, and identify the
enemy, and learn how to defeat the enemy," he said.
There is a sense inside the chapel that Christian evangelicals are
successfully resisting a trend toward a completely secular Britain.
"People have walked away from God; it's not fashionable," said congregant
Chris Mullins, a civil servant. "But the evangelical church does seem to be
growing and I'm very encouraged by that. In what is a very secular society,
there are people returning to God."
School curricula generally hold that Darwin's theory has been backed up by so
many scientific discoveries that it can now be regarded as fact. But Mullins
believes creationism also deserves a hearing in the classroom.
"Looking at the evidence, creationism at the least seems a theory worthy of
examination," he said. "Personally, I think it is true and I think the truth
will win out eventually. It's a question of how long it takes."
Terry Sanderson, president of Britain's National Secular Society, a group
founded in 1866 to limit the influence of religious leaders, said that the
groups advocating a literal interpretation of the Bible are making headway.
"Creationism is creeping into the schools," he said. "There is a constant
pressure to get these ideas into the schools."
The trend goes beyond evangelical Christianity. Sanderson said the British
government is taking over funding of about 100 Islamic schools even though
they teach the Koranic version of creationism. He said the government fears
imposing evolution theory on the curriculum lest it be branded as anti-Islamic.
The Council of Europe spoke up last fall after Harun Yahya, a prominent Muslim
creationist in Turkey, tried to place his lavishly produced 600-page book, "The
Atlas of Creation," in public schools in France, Switzerland, Belgium and
Spain.
"These trends are very dangerous," Anne Brasseur, author of the Council of
Europe report, said in an interview.=
Brasseur said recent skirmishes in Italy and Germany illustrate the
creationists' tactics. She said Italian schools were ordered to stop teaching
evolution when Silvio Berlusconi was prime minister, although the edict seems
to have had little effect in practice. In Germany, she said, a state education
minister briefly allowed creationism to be taught in biology class.
The rupture between theology and evolution in Europe is relatively recent. For
many years people who held evangelical views also endorsed mainstream
scientific theory, said Simon Barrow, co-director of Ekklesia, a
British-based, Christian-oriented research group. He said the split was
imported from the United States in the last decade.
"There is a lot of American influence, and there are a lot of moral and
political and financial resources flowing from the United States to here," he
said. "Now you have more extreme religious groups trying to get a foothold."
In some cases, the schools have become the battlegrounds. Richard Dawkins, the
Oxford university biologist and author of last year's international best-seller
"The God Delusion," frequently lectures students about the marvels of evolution
only to find that the students' views have already been shaped by the
creationist lobby.
"I think it's so sad that children should be fobbed off with these second-rate
myths," he said.
"The theory of evolution is one of the most powerful pieces of scientific
thinking ever produced and the evidence for it is overwhelming. I think
creationism is pernicious because if you don't know much it sounds kind of
plausible and it's easy to come into schools and subvert children."
White, the director of the British Answers in Genesis, is well aware that the
group's school program is contentious. The group has removed information about
it from its website to avoid antagonizing people.
The group operates a warehouse with $150,000 worth of DVDs, books and comics
promoting creationism, but he says he only sends speakers and materials into
schools that invite Answers in Genesis to make a presentation.
White, 63, said he was reared as an atheist and, after earning a doctorate in
chemistry, embraced evangelical Christianity in 1964.
He says that when he is asked to speak to science classes, he challenges the
accuracy of radioactive dating which shows the world to be thousands of
millions of years old and says that the Bible is a more accurate description
of how mankind began. He personally believes the Earth is between 6,000 and
12,000 years old.
"Usually I find the discussion goes on science, science and science, and then
when the lesson is finished one or two students say, 'Can we talk about other
things?' and I sit down with them and usually they want to talk about
Christianity," he said. "They want to know, why do you believe in God? Why do
you believe in the Bible? How can you be sure it's the word of God?"
Dawkins feels the effect. He said he is discouraged when he visits schools and
gets questions from students who have obviously been influenced by material
from Answers in Genesis. "I continually get the same rather stupid points
straight from their pamphlets," he said.
White is getting ready for a visit by Ken Ham, who will preach at Westminster
Chapel this spring. Meanwhile, he is pleased that small groups of creation
science advocates now meet regularly in Oxford, Edinburgh, Northampton and
other British cities.
"The creation movement is certainly growing," he said. "There are more groups
than there were five years ago. There are more people like me going out
speaking about it, and there's more interest. You have these little groups
forming all over the place."
==
There is no constitutional right to mis-educate students.  
If they're having Sunday school in science class, that's a problem.''
==
Bill could allow Intelligent Design in science class

TALLAHASSEE -- The religiously tinged evolution-questioning theory of
Intelligent Design could more easily be brought up in public-school science
classrooms under a proposed ''academic freedom'' legislation being pushed by
conservative lawmakers.
And it's not just the ACLU saying it anymore.
A leading voice for the Intelligent Design movement acknowledged as much
Wednesday by saying that the theory constitutes ''scientific information,''
which the bill expressly and repeatedly says teachers should present in
questioning and criticizing evolution without fear of persecution.
The remarks by Casey Luskin, an attorney with the Seattle-based Discovery
Institute, were made during a press conference with
actor-columnist-speechwriter-gameshow host Ben Stein, who's exhibiting a
documentary in support of the legislation.
The bill was drafted after the state Board of Education voted last month to
include repeated mention of evolution and natural selection in state science
standards for the first time in state history. The bill expressly bans the
teaching of religious theories -- which a federal court has ruled Intelligent
Design is.
But the legislation also repeatedly tells instructors to teach the ''full
range'' of ''scientific information'' about biological and chemical evolution.
So does Intelligent Design constitute scientific information?
''In my personal opinion, I think it does. But the intent of this bill is not
to settle that question,'' said Luskin. 'The intent of this bill is... it
protects the `teaching of scientific information.' It's not trying to inject
itself into the debate over Intelligent Design.''
Luskin said the institute, which advocates Intelligent Design, doesn't want it
''mandated'' in schools.
Church-state separatists say religious groups are trying to use the bill as a
Trojan horse to introduce religion in science classrooms.
''The Intelligent Design movement has embraced this political strategy to
sneak its religious views into the science classroom, and that's what you're
seeing now in Florida,'' said Howard Simon, a Florida director for the ACLU,
which filed the Dover case.
''The strategy is this: Let's call Intelligent Design scientific information,
and let's make sure that teachers can teach that scientific information,''
Simon said, adding that his organization would sue if the bill became law and
teachers began proselytizing in class.
The Discovery Institute vigorously denies that Intelligent Design is a
religious theory and says the definition of the theory holds that life shows
such patterns of design that it's the result of an intelligent cause, rather
than natural selection.
What's that ''intelligent cause?'' The institute's top scientists say God, but
they say that's not part of the theory.
Based on that belief, days of grueling testimony and something called the
Discovery Institute ''Wedge'' document outlining a strategy to make science
more ''consonant with Christian and theistic convictions,'' a federal judge in
a Dover, Penn., case ruled in 2005 that Intelligent Design was too close to
creationism for the science classroom.
Teachers can mention Intelligent Design or biblical creationism now, as long
as it's not in the science classroom. In the science classroom, it's an open
question as to whether teachers can mention these evolution alternatives.
Stein said his documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed shows that the
academic freedom bill is needed.
''If there were complete freedom of speech, I don't think this bill would be
necessary,'' he said. ``There are plenty of people who ask what seem to be
innocent, sensible questions about the flaws and gaps and lacunae in Darwinism
and they get severely punished for it.''
Stein said he didn't think the bill was aimed at ''protecting'' Intelligent
Design. One of the drafters of the legislation, John Stemberger, president of
the evangelical Florida Family Policy Council, said Intelligent Design can't
be taught, though ''criticisms'' of evolution could.
''When asked who would decide what ``scientific information'' is, Stemberger
said the teacher would have to follow the curriculum and only bring up
''relevant'' information about chemical and biological evolution. Stein said
it was the teacher who would decide.
Republican state Sen. Ronda Storms of Brandon and Rep. Alan Hays of Umatilla
say their bill's intent is not to teach alternate theories, but to ensure that
teachers and students will have the ability to freely question and criticize
evolution.
Indeed, natural selection is under active challenge from
evolutionary-developmental biologists, who say multicellular organisms can
dynamically change form under certain environmental conditions, producing
major evolutionary jumps.
Simon and mainstream scientists with the National Academy of Sciences say
that's science, and that Intelligent Design is not because it ultimately rests
on untestable supernatural entities.
Luskin, the Discovery Institute lawyer, said that's an irony: ``One of the
funniest things in my opinion is that many of the people who are claiming
Intelligent Design would be taught under this bill adamantly believe
Intelligent Design is not science. So in their own view, the text of this bill
would not protect the teaching of Intelligent Design.''
Said Simon: ``There is no constitutional right to mis-educate Florida
students. If a science teacher is teaching serious science and is censored,
that's an academic-freedom issue we would defend. But if they're having Sunday
school in science class, that's a problem.''
==
Oklahoma: One Step from Doom

The Oklahoma House of Representatives has passed a bill that says that a
student can receive a passing grade in an Earth Science class if they say that
the Flying Spaghetti Monster created the Earth an hour ago, and then planted
false memories into every single living creature on Earth to make it seem like
theyve been around longer.

Of course, thats not the intent of the bill. The intent is that a student can
say the Earth is 6000 years old and still get a passing grade. The bill itself
says that a student cannot be graded down if they say that what they are being
taught interferes with their religious beliefs.

Specifically, the bill states:

A school district shall treat a students voluntary expression of a religious
viewpoint, if any, on an otherwise permissible subject in the same manner the
district treats a students voluntary expression of a secular or other
viewpoint on an otherwise permissible subject and may not discriminate against
the student based on a religious viewpoint expressed by the student on an
otherwise permissible subject.

Its the "otherwise permissible subject" phrase thats sticky. That can easily
be interpreted as meaning tests, besides just normal classroom discussion.

For a long time, I have been disquieted by the fact that many people want to
give patently ridiculous ideas as much standing as reality. One problem with
this is that once you open the door to fantasy, any and all flavors of it can
walk on through, as in the example above. But it also elevates fantasy to the
same level as reality, and that is simply wrong.

==
Some groups of people seem so afraid of progress - fearful
of the speed at which the world is changing - that they hide within belief
systems that offer comfortable solutions but which lack logic and attack those
institutions which they see do use logic and evidence to determine the truth .
In an ever increasing materialistic world some seem to blame the very science
which has delivered us from many diseases , given us once unimagined luxuries
, has helped feed the hungry and even tempts us with the lure of the stars as
the cause of all evil plaguing modern society.
I fear the fearful . I fear the ignorant. I fear the world these people would
make for my children. I fear a world carved from the darkness of small minds.
We can not win a battle of wits againist the witless but we can teach , share
, vote , and above all openly demonstrate the power of tolerance and
open-mindedness. If the creationists , the ufologists and others can cling so
passionately to their beliefs then why shouldnt those who love reality just
the way it is .
==
Creationists 'peddle lies about fossil record'
A leading scientist accuses creationists of peddling the lie that there is no
fossil evidence of evolution.
Some Christians claim there is a lack of "missing link" fossils, halfway
between two major groups of creatures.
They say this proves Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is a fallacy and
that God created each living species from nothing.
But, in an essay published in the magazine New Scientist today, geologist
Donald Prothero claims that reports of "huge gaps" in the fossil records have
been greatly exaggerated.
Dr Prothero, a professor of geology at Occidental College in Los Angeles,
said: "Life does not progress up a hierarchical ladder from 'low' to 'high'
but is a branching bush with numerous lineages splitting apart and coexisting
simultaneously.
"For example, apes and humans split from a common ancestor seven million years
ago and both lineages are still around.
"For this reason the concept of 'missing link' is a misleading one. A
transitional form does not need to be a perfect halfway house directly linking
one group of organisms to another.
"It merely needs to record aspects of evolutionary change that occurred as one
lineage split from another."
When Darwin first proposed the idea of evolution by natural selection in 1859,
the fossil record offered little support. He even devoted two entire chapters
of the Origin of Species to the imperfection of the geological record, but
predicted that it would eventually support his theories.
Dr Prothero said the creationists are ignoring a wealth of transitional
fossils found since Darwin's era which provide proof of the evolutionary
process.
He said: "The idea still persists that the fossil record is too patchy to
provide good evidence of evolution. One reason for this is the influence of
creationism.
"Foremost among their tactics is to distort or ignore the evidence for
evolution; a favourite lie is 'there are no transitional fossils'.
"This is manifestly untrue. We now have abundant evidence for how all the
major groups of animals are related, much of it in the form of excellent
transitional fossils."
Randall Hardy, the head of the British branch of Creation Research, said last
night: "Any attempt to impose evolution stories onto these fossils is just
speculation. It's all because of the mindset of these people [scientists],
which is pre-disposed towards evolution."
==
On Wednesday, Feb. 27, the Oklahoma House Education Committee passed
HB 2211, "The Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act, identical
to a bill passed in Texas last year. The principal author was changed
from Rep. Mike Reynolds (R) to Sally Kern (R).

The true purpose of HB 2211, the disingenuously named Religious
Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act, is proselytizing in public
schools. Its provisions purportedly aimed at protecting religious
freedom are superfluous  First Amendment Constitutional law already
protects legitimate student expressions of religion. HB 2211 includes
provisions that aim, unconstitutionally, at using state power to
privilege sectarian religious dogma by allowing it to intrude into
public education. An affront to freedom of conscience, HB 2211 would
force school children to listen to sermons, under the auspices of
school administrators. If this bill is passed, Oklahoma will face
First Amendment litigation.

HB 2221 is anti-scientific, seeking the introduction of religious
creationism in science courses. HB 2211 would damage science
education. Students would be allowed to substitute sectarian
religious explanations for scientific and historical explanations
without correction. Non-scientific religious creationist accounts of
natural phenomena could be given as answers on exams without those
answers being corrected by science teachers, making a farce out of
science education in Oklahoma classrooms, ultimately hindering the
economys high-tech and med-tech sectors, sectors vital to the
states prosperity.
==
The evidence for creationism is that actual science has not yet
explained absolutely everything.
==
Philip Johnson, the founder of the ID movement, is on the record as an
HIV-denier who thinks AIDS is caused by "an unhealthy lifestyle".
==
Storms' Evolution Bill Lets Teachers Contradict Theory

TAMPA - Florida Sen. Ronda Storms, a Republican from Valrico, is taking on the theory of evolution.
On Friday she introduced an Academic Freedom Act designed to tweak the state's recently adopted educational standard that calls for science teachers to teach evolution.
Storms said the new bill merely says teachers should have the freedom to teach what they want, including theories that may contradict the prevalent theories of biological and chemical evolution. The bill does not mention creationism or intelligent design.
The basis of her bill came from activists who failed in February to persuade the state Board of Education to allow the leeway. The board voted 4-3 two weeks ago to explicitly require the teaching of evolution.
Storms' bill states that any curriculum presented to Florida's public school students about the origins of life must not be used to promote religious doctrine, even though evolution proponents derided previous similar proposals as religious indoctrination in the guise of scientific inquiry.
The bill, in part, says that if teachers wish to present a teaching plan that doesn't conform to state standards regarding chemical and biological evolution, they could be sanctioned and that the Legislature should adopt measures to protect them.
The bill says that "in many instances educators have experienced or feared discipline, discrimination, or other adverse consequences as a result of presenting the full range of scientific views regarding chemical and biological evolution.
"Every public school teacher in the state's K-12 school system shall have the affirmative right and freedom to objectively present scientific information relevant to the full range of scientific views regarding biological and chemical evolution in connection with teaching any prescribed curriculum regarding chemical or biological origins," Storms' bill states.
The proposed law is modeled after a bill that is has been introduced to legislatures in several states during the past four years.
Backers of teaching evolution say the instruction is needed to keep Florida's students on pace with others across the nation who are being taught about the theory's general support by conventional scientific circles as valid science based on empirical evidence.
According to the state Department of Education Web site, the revised standards were developed by a committee of educators, scientists, business leaders and school administrators who held lengthy discussions about the matter during the past year.
"As part of that process, more than 10,000 individuals provided more than 260,000 ratings and 20,000 comments via a Web-based system," the state's Web site says. "In addition, the Department of Education held five public hearings throughout the state (Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Miramar and two in Orlando) to collect public feedback on the standards."
==
Originally "kind" was synonymous with "species".
But when scientists discovered example after
example after example of one species evolving
into another, creationists decided not to show
some sort of intellectual integrity and admit
that they were wrong. Instead they changed the
definition of "kind" to be something other than
speciation.
==
In regarding to teaching creationism in public school science classes,
when creationists say things like, "It's only fair (to the children)
to teach both theories," what they really mean is that since they
don't like the science, because it contradicts their religious
beliefs, they want to teach their religious beliefs to children. "It's
only fair to teach both viewpoints."
There are two serious problems with this. One is a category problem,
and the other is a serious legal problem.
The category problem has to do with the fact that in science classes
you're supposed to be teaching... well, uh, SCIENCE.
Creationism isn't science. When creationists use the term "both
theories," they're using a false comparison based on a semantic
ambiguity of two different meanings of the word "theory." Look up
"theory" in the dictionary.
A *scientific* theory is "A set of statements or principles devised to
explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been
repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make
predictions about natural phenomena" (American Heritage Dictionary,
4th Ed.). Creationism is only a "theory" in the sense of "An
assumption based on limited information or knowledge; a conjecture,"
and a faith-based conjecture, at that. These two meanings are almost
the opposite of one another. The first is based on extensive
scientific examination and testing. The second is basically an initial
hypothesis, or just a guess.
These are not the same thing at all. There is no comparison. The
scientific theory of evolution has been repeatedly tested,
experimentally refined and verified by scientific research, and is
fruitfully used to guide further scientific investigation. The
"theory" (i.e., the religious doctrines) of creationism is none of
these things. It's religious doctrine believed on faith.
Religious doctrine is not science. Anti-evolution rhetoric based on
religious belief is not science. Pseudoscience claims, motivated by
religious belief, and used to pretend creationism is scientific, are
not science.
Thus, to teach children "both theories" is to seriously confuse them,
even fundamentally mislead them, about science. It is not at all fair
to children to tell them, "We're going to teach you about science,"
and then teach them sectarian religious concepts as if they are
science, or teach them false claims about science based on religious
motivations and call it science. When something isn't science, we
shouldn't be misleading children by pretending it's science.
Creationism doesn't belong in science classes because it isn't
science. Attacks against evolution based on creationist beliefs don't
belong in science classes because they aren't science.
The legal problem has to do with the Establishment Clause of the First
Amendment of the Constitution. In numerous court cases it has been
determined quite consistently that the idea of teaching creationism as
if it's science in public schools is a violation of the First
Amendment. (Because it's sectarian religious belief, not science.)
In particular, in the 2005 case in Pennsylvania (Kitzmiller v. Dover
Area School District), it was determined that the current popular form
of creationism called "intelligent design" is simply another tactic of
the creationist strategy of trying to get religious beliefs into
public school science classes by falsely pretending that sectarian
religious beliefs are science. (The case didn't determine anything we
didn't already know about this creationist tactic, it's just that the
case is an example of arriving at the same conclusion through a formal
legal process.) Again, this is a violation of the First Amendment.
Creationist opposition to the teaching of evolution in public school
science classes is simply one major skirmish of a culture war going on
in the United States between people with conservative religious
beliefs and everyone else. We are where we are at now as the result of
our history, and in this case it's the result of religious traditions
in the United States that have opposed evolution and other areas of
science for over a hundred years. The current threads of
anti-evolution thought began with the backlash against the promotion
of science education that started in the late 1950s, most notably from
the movement started by the young earth creationist Henry M. Morris.
The young earth creationists virtually singled-handedly created the
idea of a "scientific creationism, " by generating a significant body
of literature misrepresenting and distorting science, filled with
false "scientific" information.
To this very day we are still dealing with the false "facts" and
fallacious arguments that young earth creationists put out in the
1960s and 1970s, still dealing with the fallout of a whole generation
(almost two now) of conservative religious people brought up being
taught all these false claims about science that are actually not
scientific at all. In discussions with creationists that are about
specific areas of science, the problem is not what creationists know,
but what they think they know that just ain't so. Creationists will
often say that their disagreement with scientists isn't about the
facts, but about the interpretation of the facts. Yet in actual
discussions with creationists, when dealing with the specific details
about specific areas of science, we find that creationists dispute the
facts all the time. (Most often they're simply unaware of the facts,
but when you bring them to their attention they deliberately ignore them.)
The solution to this particular skirmish in the culture war is to meet
it head on. The reason the problem has become as extensive as it is
right now is precisely because in the past when people with certain
religious beliefs attacked science, we've had the general social
tendency to "turn the other cheek" and give space to them - out of a
misplaced respect for religious belief. If people want to believe
things on the basis of faith, and they do this privately, more power
to them. But when people speak out publicly, attacking science, using
pseudoscientific claims that are factually wrong and using arguments
that are logically fallacious, they need to be confronted head on just
as publicly, specifically addressing their erroneous claims and
explaining why they are wrong. They should not be given undue respect
for publicly proclaiming manifestly false claims about science just
because their false claims are motivated by religious belief.
It's because those who came before us did not meet creationists head
on as openly, forthrightly, and explicitly as should have been done,
that the problem has festered and grown so that we have the even worse
problems we're having now. So now it's up to us to deal with it, and
now we know we cannot shy away from this because we see what shying
away from the problem in the past has led to. If we do not meet these
creationists head on, and deal with them with all the forthright
critical scrutiny they deserve, they really will sabotage science
education in this country, as has been their objective for almost 50
years. And that's the only thing that's fair to the children of this country.
==
The faith of a creationist is a belief not only without physical evidence but
contrary to all objective reality. Even a fundamentalist is able to make that
distinction. He or she might claim out of religious faith that what he
or she thinks the Bible says is true, so reality as discovered by science has
to be wrong, but most understand that physical evidence & scripture are
different bases upon which to draw conclusions. They unfortunately lie, saying
that the Bible isn't at odds with objective reality, when its literal meaning
clearly & plainly is.
==
40 Days and 40 Nights: Darwin, Intelligent Design, God, OxyContin, and Other
Oddities on Trial in Pennsylvania   by Matthew Chapman (Author)
Dover trial
==
Richard Feynman, the physicist, in characterizing the aim of science and the
aim of religion said that science seeks to uncover immutable laws that can
predict events. The inverse square law of gravitation, laws of motion, and the
effect of acceleration on mass, once revealed, changed how the universe is
understood. Scientific method postulates a theory and then tests it, always
open to new facts that will refine it. Oppositely, religion formulates
opinions as dogma that, like conspiracy theory, is not accountable to fact.
Dogma resists information that would compromise its premise. As long as
science could not explain phenomenon, religion took as its providence
superstitious understanding and assigned the mysteries of the world to an
all-knowing God, who spoke to human creatures through inspired texts
interpreted by anointed priests and ministered to the uneducated. Little has
changed in the process of religious knowing, but much has changed in
scientific understanding.
His faith seemed to have given him a confidence unwarranted by the facts.
==
Creationists launch peer reviewed journal

Im not making this up, I swear. Answers in Genesis, the same nonsensical
outlet that has given us Ken Hams Creation Museum, recently launched a peer
reviewed technical journal, called, of course, Answers Research Journal. The
idea, we learn from the About section of the journals web page, is to provide
an outlet for interdisciplinary scientific and other relevant research from
the perspective of the recent Creation and the global Flood within a biblical
framework. See, apparently there has been a pressing need for such a journal,
because people want to know they can trust what is published on the Internet,
and they can give you absolute assurance that the papers we will be publishing
in Answers Research Journal are of the highest scientific and theological
standard. Of course, a high theological standard is a bit of an oxymoron, but
lets not quibble on the details.
The editor of this prestigious new arrival on the scientific scene is Andrew
A. Snelling, who is so unknown and apparently insecure enough that he puts
B.Sc. (Hons) after his name, before Ph.D. (in geology, from the University of
Sidney). The esteemed (by some) Dr. Snelling has published an astounding 24
technical papers in 30 years of research, an average that would not get him
tenure at the local community college. Accordingly, in 1998 Snelling had to
content himself with joining the faculty of the Institute for Creation
Research in California. Nevertheless, in the same year he won a whopping three
(!!) prizes at the Fourth International Conference on Creationism for three
technical papers he submitted (my hunch is that they were only three papers
submitted, but I could be wrong, there may have been four). We are not told
who else is on the editorial board of ARJ, perhaps the distinguished
scientists who agreed to oversee the peer review process were afraid of losing
tenure at their institutions. Damn secularist fascists in charge of American
universities!
I simply couldnt wait to start reading about all these new exciting scientific
discoveries informed by a Christian perspective, and I wasnt disappointed. The
current volume of ARJ features the proceedings of the Microbe Forum, where we
learn that for many years the roles of microbes as part of Gods wonderful
design have been neglected. Perhaps it is because many people associate
microbes as the cause of death, disease, and suffering. I think these many
people have a point: what the hell was god thinking? Well, abstracts presented
at the Forum begin to tell us, as titles include such gems as a Creationist
Model of Bacterial Mutations, Creation Microbiology and the Origin of Disease,
the highly technical-sounding Viral/Bacterial Attenuation and Its Link to
Innate Oncolytic Potential: Implications of the Perfect Original Creation in
the Beginning, and my favorite: Pathogenicity Tools and Mycotoxins: In the
Beginning or after the Fall?
But the rest of the current issue of ARJ is not to be neglected either. For
instance, in Microbes and the Days of Creation, by Alan Gillen (unknown
academic affiliation), we learn that ongoing research, based on the creation
paradigm, appears to provide some answers to puzzling questions such as where
do microbes fit into the creation account? ... Were they created along with
the rest of the plants and animals in the first week of creation, or were they
created later, after the Fall? In a show of pure scientific balance, the author
admits that the answers to these questions are not explicit in Scripture, so
the answers cannot be dogmatic. Gillen ends up postulating that microbes were
created as biological systems with plants, animals, and humans on multiple
days [of creation week] because as we well know God made His creation fully
mature, and complex forms fully formed. Amen.
No need to go any further with this nonsense, as good as it is for a chuckle
or two. The real question is: why? Why do creationists feel compelled to have
a science museum, a peer reviewed journal, or, in the case of the Discovery
Institute Intelligent Design think tank, a recently established (but very
secretive) research laboratory? Could it be science envy? Indeed, even more
broadly, why do creationists feel compelled to argue their case at all? Isnt
faith enough? When I was living in the south of the US it often happened that
someone would engage me in an impromptu debate, where they were sure that I
would see the light of (their) overwhelming reason and convert on the spot.
When, instead, I managed to put them on the defensive, they would play with
evident pride the faith trump card: I believe in spite of evidence. OK, fair
enough (if more than a bit moronic), but then why did you just try to argue
with me? Arguing, teaching, and doing research means that one accepts the rule
of rational, evidence-based discourse. And yet creationists want to have it
both ways, and promptly retreat behind the all-encompassing shield of faith
when things get rough.
I suspect that creationists, deep down, have internalized the much-despised
secular ethos that one has to have reasons for ones positions, and they feel
that they really dont have rationality on their side. They seek respectability
through fake museums and peer review journals because they know that the Middle
Ages are over, and just shouting ones faith in god isnt gonna cut it anymore
(modern society disqualifying stoning and burning at stakes doesnt help
either). Indeed, the very progression that we have seen during the 20th
century, from the Scopes to the Dover trials, from young earth creationism
pretending to keep evolution teaching out of public schools entirely to
so-called intelligent design (which accepts a lot of science, including
natural selection) begging for a bit of classroom time, is a path of constant
retreat, away from silly biblical literalism, inching ever closer to modern
science. The most advanced of the creationist ilk, the ID supporters, have
intellectually advanced all the way into the early 19th century (after Paley,
before Darwin), while young earth creationists are still trying to come to
terms with the Enlightenment. Perhaps if we wait another century or two theyll
enter early 20th century science and make peace with Darwin. Now, that would be
a miracle to behold.
===
Maybe they don't actually desire an uneducated, servile populus, but they 
sure don't seem to have any strong repulsion for the idea.
==
Masters of disguise: Secrets of nature's 'great pretenders' revealed
A gene which helps a harmless African butterfly ward off predators by giving
it wing patterns like those of toxic species, has been identified by
scientists who publish their findings today (20 February 2008).
The mocker swallowtail butterfly, Papilio dardanus, is unusual because it
emerges from its chrysalis with one of a large number of different possible
wing patterns and colours. This is different from most butterfly species which
are identified by a common wing pattern and colour. Furthermore, some of the
different patterns that the mocker swallowtail exhibits mimic those of
poisonous species, which affords this harmless insect a valuable disguise
which scares off predators.
Biologists are interested in finding out exactly how wing pattern is
determined in the mocker swallowtail, because they believe that understanding
how these different mimic patterns evolved may shed new light on whether such
evolutionary changes occur in small gradual steps, or sudden leaps.
In the 1950s scientists realised there must be a genetic 'switch' controlling
which of the numerous possible wing patterns is expressed in each individual
mocker swallowtail, but until now the location and identity of the genes
involved have remained a mystery.
The new study, published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows how a
team of biologists used molecular tags and DNA sequencing in order to pinpoint
the part of its genetic code that determines wing pattern and colour. Their
study suggests that a developmental gene called 'invected', which was already
known to be involved in the early embryonic development of butterflies, is
behind the allocation of different wing patterns in mocker swallowtails.
Professor Alfried Vogler of Imperial College London's Department of Life
Sciences and the Natural History Museum, one of the authors on the paper,
explains, however, that further investigation is needed to figure out exactly
how this gene works.
"We've taken a big step here towards identifying exactly how this fascinating
insect species is endowed with such a wide variety of extremely useful wing
patterns. However, identifying the area of the genome involved in this process
is just the first step - we now need to look in more detail at the differences
in the invected gene, and another gene located next to it, to find out exactly
how they produce the different forms," he said.
He goes on to emphasise the significance of studying the mocker swallowtail,
saying: "You could argue that there would be little point in a species which
slowly evolved to mimic a poisonous butterfly over the course of generations -
the disguise is only useful if full and complete. This could suggest the
possibility of sudden leaps in evolution occurring in this species, which
would be an incredibly exciting discovery - by studying the changes in gene
sequences we will find out if this happened or not."
The mocker swallowtail is found in sub-Saharan Africa and has a wingspan of
between three-and-a-half, and four-and-a-quarter inches. Only females of the
species exhibit the wing patterns that mimic other butterflies. All the males
are yellow, with black markings and have the typical tails of most swallowtail
butterflies.
==
Why Evolution Is Important in the Classroom

It's very important that children be taught the facts about evolution, says a
report released yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences.
The report comes at an opportune time. Evolution is under classroom attack
from intelligent design, a non-scientific explanation of life's origins as
divinely manufactured; if ID-friendly curricula pass in Florida and Texas,
other states will likely follow.
Unfortunately, while the report nicely summarizes the facts of evolution, it
does a poor job explaining why learning about evolution is so important.
The press release quotes Institute of Medicine president Harvey Fineberg, who
said that "understanding evolution is essential to identifying and treating
disease." However, it's possible to disbelieve evolution's bigger picture
while accepting its role in bacterial shifts. The accompanying brochure [pdf]
comes a bit closer to the point, asserting that "teaching non-scientific
concepts in science class will only confuse students about the processes,
nature, and limits of science," but this isn't followed through in the full
report.
The report's conclusion says that understanding evolution is necessary to
making long-term decisions about resource consumption and environmental
protection, but it's hardly difficult to find common ground with a sensible
intelligent design proponent on questions of climate change or deforestation.
In short, there's little to sway a parent contemplating the introduction of
intelligent design to their child's science class.
Finally, buried in the FAQ is the advice that "critical thinking does not mean
that all criticisms are equally valid. Critical thinking has to be based on
reason and evidence. Discussion of critical thinking or controversies does not
mean giving equal weight to ideas that lack essential supporting evidence."
Those words ought to be pulled off page 52 and plastered in big, bold type
across the report's cover, right along with "good luck finding a decent life
science job" and "the rest of the civilized world will laugh at you."
==
If one of our resident creationists can propose a
mechanism for me which produces a hugely high rate of
mutation in the germ cells while excluding it from any
other cells, a Nobel Prize in medicine surely awaits
--- such information would be critically valuable to
cancer researchers. But alas, no such mechanism
exists. The rate of mutations made necessary by
creationist "arguments" would certainly have killed
all of Noah's children before they even had time to
have any kids of their own. In order to produce 400
beneficial alleles in just 4,000 years, humanity would
have been beset with cancers at a rate that would have
wiped them all out millenia ago.
Not only, according to creationists, must these new
alleles have appeared after the Big Boat, but,
according to their, uh, "theory", all of these
mutations must have appeared in the space of just
*4,000 years* -- the period of time since the Big
Flood. That gives a rate of BENEFICIAL MUTATIONS,
which add NEW GENETIC INFORMATION, of one every 10
years, or roughly two every generation ------- a much
higher rate of beneficial mutation than has ever been
recorded anywhere in nature. Nowhere today do we see
such a rate anywhere near so high. So not only would I
like to know (1) what produced this
extraordinarily high rate of non-deleterious
mutations, but (2) what stopped it (indeed, what
stopped it conveniently right before the very time
when we first developed the technological means to
study it).
Since less than 1% of observed mutations are
beneficial (the vast majority of mutations are indeed
deleterious or neutral and have no effect), that means
for every beneficial mutation which added a new
allele, there should have been roughly 99 others which
did not. So to give us roughly 400 beneficial
mutations would require somewhere around 40,000 total
mutations, a rate of approximately 100 mutations in
each locus EVERY YEAR, or 2,000 mutations per locus
for EACH GENERATION. Do you know what we call people
who experience mutation rates that high? We call them
"cancer victims". The only people
with mutation rates even remotely comparable were
victims of Chernobyl.
In order for any of those mutations to be passed on to
the next generation to produce new alleles, they MUST
occur in the germ cells - - sperm or egg. And since
any such high rate of mutation in a somatic cell
(non-sperm or egg) would have quickly produced a fatal
case of cancer, if the creationists are right this
mutation rate could ONLY have occurred in the germ
cells and could NOT have occurred in any of the
somatic cells.
==
John Calvin famously said, "who will venture to place the authority of
Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?"
==
1. Please explain what a "kind" is. Creationists have been using
this term for decades and still can't define it in any testible fashion.
2. Please point out some huge, unbridgeable gap for which we have no
transition fossils. I bet you can't!
3. Please explain how animals that require old-growth forests
survived 200+ years without food while waiting for forests to
redevelop after the flood, and then grow old.
==
http://www.creationism.org
==
VATICAN CITY -- The Vatican newspaper has published an article saying
"intelligent design" is not science and that teaching it alongside
evolutionary theory in school classrooms only creates confusion.
The article in Tuesday's editions of L'Osservatore Romano was the latest in a
series of interventions by Vatican officials -- including the pope -- on the
issue that has dominated headlines in the United States.
The author, Fiorenzo Facchini, a professor of evolutionary biology at the
University of Bologna, laid out the scientific rationale for Darwin's theory
of evolution, saying that in the scientific world, biological evolution
"represents the interpretative key of the history of life on Earth."
He lamented that certain American "creationists" had brought the debate back
to the "dogmatic" 1800s, and said their arguments weren't science but ideology.
"This isn't how science is done," he wrote. "If the model proposed by Darwin
is deemed insufficient, one should look for another, but it's not correct from
a methodological point of view to take oneself away from the scientific field
pretending to do science."
Intelligent design "doesn't belong to science and the pretext that it be
taught as a scientific theory alongside Darwin's explanation is unjustified, "
he wrote.
"It only creates confusion between the scientific and philosophical and
religious planes."
Supporters of "intelligent design" hold that some features of the universe and
living things are so complex they must have been designed by a higher
intelligence. Critics say intelligent design is merely creationism -- a
literal reading of the Bible's story of creation -- camouflaged in scientific
language and say it does not belong in science curriculum.
Facchini said he recognized some Darwin proponents erroneously assume that
evolution explains everything. "Better to recognize that the problem from the
scientific point of view remains open," he said.
But he concluded: "In a vision that goes beyond the empirical horizon, we can
say that we aren't men by chance or by necessity, and that the human
experience has a sense and a direction signaled by a superior design."
The article echoed similar arguments by the Vatican's chief astronomer, the
Rev. George Coyne, who said "intelligent design" wasn't science and had no
place in school classrooms.
Pope Benedict XVI reaffirmed in off-the-cuff comments in November that the
universe was made by an "intelligent project" and criticized those who in the
name of science say its creation was without direction or order.
==
Whatever terms they choose to call it (creationism vs. intelligent design)
the current ideology ultimately shortchanges the country. 
==
Florida lawmaker proudly rejects scientific expertise As Florida gears up to
revise state science standards, they seem insistent on topping the
anti-science nonsense which earned Kansas such mockery. The St. Petersburg
Times education blog reports:
Another key lawmaker says it's likely the Legislature will weigh in on the
evolution controversy. And in this case, the lawmaker, Rep. Joe Pickens,
R-Palatka, says he has concerns about the proposed state standards himself.
"If it becomes a matter for legislative discussion, then I would have opinions
that if it's going to be presented, it's presented  in a manner that is not
potentially exclusive of any other theory," including creationism, said
Pickens, the powerful chair of the House Schools and Learning Council.
Reporter Ron Matus adds:
Among scientists, there is virtually no debate about the fundamental soundness
of Darwin's theory. "But far and away," Pickens said, "most of the people who
are our constituents, and who vote for us, are not scientists."
So, you know, screw the experts, we'll decide what is and isn't science the
same way we pick the next American Idol.
Next, Florida makes a bid for those space tourism dollars by selectively
repealing gravity.
==
In surveys conducted in 2005, people in the United States and 32 European
countries were asked whether to respond true, false or not sure to this
statement: Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of
animals. The same question was posed to Japanese adults in 2001.
The United States had the second-highest percentage of adults who said the
statement was false and the second-lowest percentage who said the statement
was true, researchers reported in the current issue of Science.
Only adults in Turkey expressed more doubts on evolution. In Iceland, 85
percent agreed with the statement.
==
Antievolution resolutions spreading through northern Florida
At least nine county school boards in northern Florida have adopted
resolutions calling for the state board of education "to revise the new
Sunshine State Standards for Science such that evolution is not presented as
fact, but as one of several theories," according to a January 23, 2008, report
from Florida Citizens for Science. These resolutions represent a backlash to a
draft set of new state science standards, which are presently undergoing
revision in response to comments from the public. The state board of education
is expected to consider the revised draft set of standards at its meeting on
February 19, 2008.
Reviewing the draft standards at the request of NCSE and Florida Citizens for
Science, Lawrence S. Lerner described them as "a giant step in the right
direction." He estimated that, evaluated by the same criteria used in the
Fordham Foundation's report The State of State Science Standards 2005, the
draft set of standards would receive a high B, adding, "With a little bit of
extra effort, Florida could bring that up to an A." The previous set of
standards, adopted in 1999, received a grade of F in the Fordham Foundation's
report.
A conspicuous improvement in the draft set of standards is the treatment of
evolution. In the previous set of standards, the e-word -- "evolution" -- was
altogether absent. In the draft set, it is not only used but even featured as
a "big idea" around which the standards are organized. Newspapers around the
state hailed the change, with the Tallahassee Democrat, for example, writing
(October 23, 2007), "For science education in our state to be competitive, it
must include the teaching of evolution and the explicit acknowledgment that
empirical evidence over the past century and a half strongly supports it."
But the county school boards in Baker, Clay, Hamilton, Holmes, Jackson,
Madison, St. Johns, Taylor, and Washington counties -- all in northern Florida
-- have adopted virtually identical resolutions opposing the improvement. Wired
Science's Brandon Keim reports (January 22, 2008), "So far, not a single
superintendent from those ... school boards has been available for comment. At
least Willard Fair, chairman of the state Board of Education, ... was willing
to get on the phone and say that he had no comment whatsoever."

Reporters in Florida were luckier in securing comment from supporters of the
resolutions, however. The Jacksonville Times-Union (January 17, 2008)
reported, "Some school superintendents say the resolutions reflect the
religious nature of their constituents in Northeast Florida," quoting Baker
County Superintendent Paula Barton as saying, "To be honest with you, we are a
strong Christian community here," and reporting Nassau County Superintendent
John Ruis as describing himself as a strong believer in biblical creationism.
Similarly, according to Ron Matus's story in the St. Petersburg Times (January
24, 2008), Dixie County school superintendent Dennis Bennett explained, "We
just wanted to get it on the record that we're a Judeo-Christian community and
we believe in academic freedom," and Ken Hall, a school board member in Madison
County, commented, "We're not asking that evolution not be taught, just that it
be taught as a theory, one of several. I'm a Christian. And I believe I was
created by God, and that I didn't come from an amoeba or a monkey."

In his report, Matus observed that existing case law suggests that the state
board of education "would face an uphill court battle if it were to include
alternative theories" as the resolutions urge. He also noted, "in the
scientific community there is virtually no debate on the fundamental soundness
of Charles Darwin's theory. Scores of scientific societies and organizations
have issued statements in support of evolution, including the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Sciences
and the National Science Teachers Association."

"one of several theories"

Several means... what? Five, six, seven? Ten? I think somebody should ask them
to list these theories.

It can't be said enough about creationist politicians: they're liars. They
have *one* other theory in mind. And they're only asking for it to be taught
alongside evolution because even they know they can't get evolution eliminated
altogether. If they could make it just their theory, they'd do it in a second.
==
a) It is not a "prediction" about the evidence at all, but just a hand-waving
assertion. No experiment or observation is proposed to test the prediction
b) It has a couple of built-in escapes--"unlikely" and "substantial"--so no
matter how much evidence of evolutionary change is found, they can always
insist "that's not substantial enough," or "OK, so maybe it happened in those
cases, but you've got to find a lot more to demonstrate that it is likely."
Creationists don't claim that there are no transitional fossils --
creationists just claim that there are missing links.
Unfortunately, that makes it totally vacuous, since there is no conceivable
mechanism for preserving every single transitional form, so "missing links"
are expected under evolutionary theory. Of course, "no transitional fossils"
would be a prediction (a wrong one, but a prediction nevertheless). But in its
typical horror of saying anything definitve, ID goes for, "There may be
transitional fossils or there may not, and we have no way of saying which will
be missing and which will not."
==
The latest issue of The Skeptic pointed out that the Templeton Foundation has
offered millions of dollars to fund experiements that will demonstrate ID. In
two years there have been no applications for these grants. IDers complain that
they are shut out of scientific research because there is no money, but when
there is money they still don't do any research. Hummm I wonder why? 
==
Mendel.
Actually, he would have counted, except for the fact that the abbot who
succeeded Mendel after his death agreed with church authorities in that
puttering around in a garden with pea plants was behavior unbecoming of a man
of the cloth, and burned all of Mendel's journals and notes. They would have
had Mendel's report destroyed, too, but, it was already published and still in
circulation.
==
ID is a complete dead-end scientifically. It just sits there and does
nothing. For scientists this an even greater defect than being wrong. An
incorrect perspective might still lead you to something useful and
interesting, even if just the discovery that our perspective needs to be
changed. ID doesn't even do that. 
==
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/bios/d_dewitt.asp
==  fundie
"Unraveling The Origins Controversy by David A.DeWitt, an associate professor
of biology at Liberty University and an adjunct professor at the Institute
for Creation Research.
==
"Ultimately, creationism is not just bad science to me, it's bad Christianity,
it's Bible worship," said Mr. Gishlick, 32, a paleontology Ph.D. "There's just
no reason to look at these patterns of layered sediment, or in the fossil
record, or at the stars, and think that what you're seeing isn't what you're
seeing. God doesn't require you to be stupid, to deny what you see, to deny
what you know."
==
Do you think God created the earth just to look old - created it with
all of the geological features that it would have had if it had been
around for millions of years - even though the earth's geological
features were not really produced by geological processes? In other
words, do you think the geologists are right about the geology, but
they're wrong just because they don't take into account that God
created the earth with these geological features in place?
==
"The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "intelligent design,
and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life" are not
science because they cannot be tested by experiment, do not generate any
predictions, and propose no new hypotheses of their own"
==
Total Truth: Liberating Christianity from Its Cultural Captivity (Study
Guide Edition) by Nancy R. Pearcey and Phillip E. Johnson (Hardcover -
Sep 2, 2005) The second section is focused on evolution vs
intelligent design
==
Science, Evolution, and Intelligent Design
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/interference/intelligent-design.html
===
A man full of faith is
simply one who has lost (or never had) the capacity for clear and
realistic thought.  He is not a mere fool: he is actually ill.  Worse,
he is incurable, for disappointment, being essentially an objective
phenomenon, cannot permanently affect his subjective infirmity.  His
faith takes on the virulence of a chronic infection.
==
Huckabee: Amend Constitution to be in 'God's standards'
The United States Constitution never uses the word "God" or makes mention of
any religion, drawing its sole authority from "We the People." However,
Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee thinks it's time to put an end
to that.
"I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,"
Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. "But I believe it's a lot easier
to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living
god. And that's what we need to do -- to amend the Constitution so it's in
God's standards rather than try to change God's standards so it lines up with
some contemporary view."
When Willie Geist reported Huckabee's opinion on MSNBC's Morning Joe, co-host
Mika Brzezinski was almost speechless, and even Joe Scarborough couldn't
immediately find much to say beyond calling it "interesting,"
Scarborough finally suggested that while he believes "evangelicals should be
able to talk politics ... some might find that statement very troubling, that
we're going to change the Constitution to be in line with the Bible. And
that's all I'm going to say."
Geist further noted of Huckabee that if "someone without his charm," said
that, "he'd be dismissed as a crackpot, but he's Mike Huckabee and he's
bascially the front-runner."
==
Strangely, ID  supporters don't seem mention one testable prediction that
follows on from their 'theory' especially since it is frequently explicitly
stated by the IDiots themselves, namely that organisms abruptly appear on
earth with no relationship to existing organisms (presumably poofed out of
this air by 'the designer'. This can easily be checked via genomic DNA
sequence comparisons which will betray any common ancestry relationships.
==
Fundies claim that eaching science, based on well-accepted theories
backed by factual evidence, is somehow promoting a particular religion
in public school. "Imagine them arguing that
the Establishment Clause would be violated by teaching a calculus
class that only expresses the 'worldview' of mathematics without any
sense of the divine."
==
Dr. John Mark Lucas, who has
doctorates in both theology and science. He is opposed to
evolution, and believes in a recent 6 day creation. He
rejects the notion that science must be naturalistic to be
science. He wrote books titled "Recent Creationism:
Biblically Consistent And Scientifically Sound"; "Theistic
Evolution -- A Compromise Mixing Oil With Water"; and
"Evolution: A Threat To Both Faith And Society".
==
Why Intelligent Design is not Science
The intelligent design movement is exceptionally good at creating
false controversies and misconceptions. Yet their basic claims are
easily debunked.

* There is scientific controversy over evolution:
There is no debate about evolution among the vast majority of
scientists, and no credible alternative scientific theory exists.
Debates within the community are about specific mechanisms within
evolution, not whether evolution occurred.

* Structures found in nature are too complex to have evolved
step-by-step through natural selection [the concept of "irreducible
complexity"( 1)]:

Natural selection does not require that all structures have the same
function or even need to be functional at each step in the development
of an organism.

* Intelligent design is a scientific theory (2):
A scientific theory is supported by extensive research and repeated
experimentation and observation in the natural world. Unlike a true
scientific theory, the existence of an "intelligent" agent can not be
tested, nor is it falsifiable.

* Intelligent design is based on the scientific method (3):
Intelligent design might base its ideas on observations in the
natural world, but it does not test them in the natural world, or
attempt to develop mechanisms (such as natural selection) to explain
their observations (4).

* Most scientists are atheists (5) and believe only in the material
world:
Such accusations are neither fair nor true. The scientific method is
limited to using evidence from the natural world to explain phenomena.
It does not preclude the existence of God or other spiritual beliefs
and only states that they are not part of science. Belief in a higher
being is a personal, not a scientific, question.
==
Modern evolutionary theory (1) provides a robust explanation for how life on
earth evolved over timethrough the passing on of traits from one generation to
the next. It is one of the most studied, tested, and accepted theories in
science. Creationist attempts to challenge evolution have been common over the
last 100 years, but recent and dangerous challenges have come mainly from the
intelligent design (2) movement.
Intelligent design is based onthe concept ofirreducible complexity (3): an
idea that some structures found in nature are too complex to be explained by
natural selection and are best explained by some intelligent cause. The focus
of the movement is on mandating that intelligent design be taught as an
alternative to evolution in the science classroom. To do this, it relies on
creating false controversy and misconceptions about scienceespecially
evolution.Themovementhas been successful at gaining support from many
community leaders, including politicians and school board members.
A particularly disturbing element of the intelligent design movement is the
attempt to circumvent laws protecting separation of church and state (4) by
claiming that it is a scientific theory not a religious belief.
==
There is a section of the human brain that allows us
to process new data and incorporate it into our memory. Studies show
that when a person is confronted with "new data" that they "cannot
believe for one reason or another", that section of the brain will
literally not 'fire off" to even begin to process the data. Just more
evidence for my case that Creationism may very well be a mental disorder
==
It's their political influence that I am opposing, not their existence. Once
they lose political influence, I see no more need to bother with
them anymore -- until and unless they gain political influence again . . .
==
Chance or Purpose:Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith
By Christoph Schonborn
==
Biologist Joan Roughgarden's Evolution and Christian Faith,
astronomer Owen Gingerich's God's Universe,
geneticist Francis Collins' The Language of God.
==
I completely
concur with you on your rather scathing appraisal
regarding the YEC theory. I hate to even regard it as
such because it even gives theories a bad name. It's
ludicrous that a thinking person would even consider it
for serious assessment. Like many of the mystical claims
that are deeply rooted in much of creationism, I call it
faith-based pseudoscience.
I always get a kick out of the replies that attempt to
counter an acceptable likely theory with an absurd
rebuttal. I say the moon is likely made of a materials
found on earth and they counter that it "could" have been
made from cheese! Besides idiotic, I can't remember what
the name for that type of statement is. I think it's the
anything is plausible fallback theory. Hey! I think I
just discovered a new law! Well of course anything is
plausible, but not likely.
A standard tactic used in young earth creationist rhetoric is to say,
"Well, just look at the history of science, scientific ideas are
proved wrong all the time." The unspoken argument - which is thus an
argument-by- insinuation - is that "Therefore, my idea might be right."
This is, of course, just another rhetorical trick. It is certainly the
case that scientific ideas a proved wrong all the time - indeed the
whole purpose of science is to increasingly improve our understanding
by revising what we already know by building on it and "tweaking it"
with the additional relevant information about the world that we
acquire through continue scientific investigation and analysis.
The YEC argument-by- insinuation is, of course, quite wrong, and wrong
in two basic ways.
First, it fails to recognize that we learn about the real world by
"degrees of accuracy." In other words, while an idea may not be 100%
the absolute truth about reality, it can be very close. (And this is
what revision is all about, to continually improve ideas that are
already basically correct - correct to a good degree of accuracy, but
a degree that can of course continue to be improved on.) For example,
we learned hundreds of years ago that the earth orbits the sun, rather
than the other way around. Yet at the same time, while we know this
basic idea that the earth orbits the sun is the correct one, there
have been increasingly sophisticated scientific revisions of the basic
idea over the decades and centuries.
Second, it fails to recognize falsification in a coherent manner. In
other words, the YEC argument is actually self-contradictory, because
even while the argument implicitly acknowledges that ideas about the
real world can be and are falsified by scientific investigation of the
real world, young earth creationists turn right around and argue their
belief in young earth creationism from the basis that it is impossible
for science to falsify their belief (even while the rest of us realize
that historically young earth creationism was falsified in geological
science by 200 years ago).
==
Prior to the first vote, 9-7 against, our creationist individual, Kristin
Maguire, the new chairman of the state board of education (an elected post in
SC), or one of her allies, solicited critiques of Miller & Levine's "Biology"
the Raven, Johnson, Losos & Singer's "Biology." As mentioned in a previous
post, parties from Bob Jones U. and ICR submitted screeds.
[Brief, over-simplified digression for context: SC is a slightly more
culturally diverse state than might be apparent at first take. The
Upstate (the mountainous NW corner) is most fundified (although the
rural NASCAR downstate would come in close second). Bob Jones is
here. But so are the NA hq's for BMW and Michelin, which have brought
in a fair share of cosmo dissent. Overall, still very Republican .
==
Tthe old "second law of thermodynamics
prevents increases in information" thingie. Haven't
heard this one for years now. I thought all the
serious anti-evolutioners gave up on it years ago.

Ahhhhh, but I forget -- you are channeling ICR here.
And nobody HAS taken ICR seriously for years now . . .

Anyway . . . .

According to the creationists, all humans alive today
are descended from 8 people who got off a Really Big
Boat. Anyone who understands junior high genetics will
know that 8 people have between them a maximum
possible of 16 different alleles for each genetic
locus (in reality, the 8 people on the Big Boat would
have had even FEWER, since some of them were descended
from others and thus shared alleles, but for the sake
of argument we will give the creationists every
possible benefit of the doubt and assume that they
were ALL heterozygous and shared no alleles at all in
common). That means, if the creationists are correct
that "most mutations are deleterious" and that "no new
genetic information can appear through mutation",
there can not be any human genetic locus anywhere
today with more than 16 alleles, since that is the
MAXIMUM that could have gotten off the Big Boat.

But wait ---------- today we find human genetic loci
(such as hemoglobin or the HLA complex) that have well
over *400* different alleles (indeed some have over
*700* different alleles). Hmmmm. Since there could
have only been 16 possible on the Big Boat, and since
there are over 400 now, and since 400 is more than 16,
that means that somehow the GENETIC INFORMATION
INCREASED from the time they got off the Big Boat
until now.

That raises a few questions ----- (1) if genetic
mutations always produce a LOSS in information, like
the creationists keep telling us, then how did we go
from 16 alleles to over 400 alleles (perhaps in
creationist mathematics, 400 is not larger than 16).
(2) if these new alleles did not appear through
mutations, then how DID they get here.

But wait -- there's more:

Not only, according to creationists, must these new
alleles have appeared after the Big Boat, but,
according to their, uh, "theory", all of these
mutations must have appeared in the space of just
*4,000 years* -- the period of time since the Big
Flood. That gives a rate of BENEFICIAL MUTATIONS,
which add NEW GENETIC INFORMATION, of one every 10
years, or roughly two every generation ------- a much
higher rate of beneficial mutation than has ever been
recorded anywhere in nature. Nowhere today do we see
such a rate anywhere near so high. So not only would I
like to know (1) what produced this
extraordinarily high rate of non-deleterious
mutations, but (2) what stopped it (indeed, what
stopped it conveniently right before the very time
when we first developed the technological means to
study it).

But wait --- we're not done YET . . . . . .

Since less than 1% of observed mutations are
beneficial (the vast majority of mutations are indeed
deleterious or neutral and have no effect), that means
for every beneficial mutation which added a new
allele, there should have been roughly 99 others which
did not. So to give us roughly 400 beneficial
mutations would require somewhere around 40,000 total
mutations, a rate of approximately 100 mutations in
each locus EVERY YEAR, or 2,000 mutations per locus
for EACH GENERATION. Do you know what we call people
who experience mutation rates that high? We call them
"cancer victims". The only people
with mutation rates even remotely comparable were
victims of Chernobyl.

But wait, we're STILL not finished . . . . . .

In order for any of those mutations to be passed on to
the next generation to produce new alleles, they MUST
occur in the germ cells - - sperm or egg. And since
any such high rate of mutation in a somatic cell
(non-sperm or egg) would have quickly produced a fatal
case of cancer, if the creationists are right this
mutation rate could ONLY have occurred in the germ
cells and could NOT have occurred in any of the
somatic cells.

If one of our resident creationists can propose a
mechanism for me which produces a hugely high rate of
mutation in the germ cells while excluding it from any
other cells, a Nobel Prize in medicine surely awaits
--- such information would be critically valuable to
cancer researchers. But alas, no such mechanism
exists. The rate of mutations made necessary by
creationist "arguments" would certainly have killed
all of Noah's children before they even had time to
have any kids of their own. In order to produce 400
beneficial alleles in just 4,000 years, humanity would
have been beset with cancers at a rate that would have
wiped them all out millenia ago.
==
The Christian fundamentalists are almost all evangelicals who think it
is their duty to preach and convert people. They think they are
everyone's moral superior as well. Most of them are not very bright, either.
==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedge_Strategy
==
The public schools are not to be used to as a stomping ground for those who
hope to indoctrinate children with their preferred religious ideology.
==
If Creationism is true, then it is true regardless of whether the
Bible exists or not. The Bible could be false, and creationism could
still be true (Vedic Creationism, or Aboriginal Dreamtime, perhaps).
==
Many Christians are going through a struggle over evolution. Their
faith in human dignity rests on a literal belief in Genesis. To them,
evolution isn't just another fact; it's a threat to their whole value system.
As William Jennings Bryan put it during the Scopes trial, evolution meant
elevating "supposedly superior intellects," "eliminating the weak,"
"paralyzing the hope of reform," jeopardizing "the doctrine of brotherhood,"
and undermining "the sympathetic activities of a civilized society."
==
Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological,
and Scientific Perspectives (Paperback)
by Robert T. Pennock (Editor)

==
Headline: Panel says U.S. is losing ground in math, science
"If we as a nation have to ask ourselves why our kids aren't studying science
and math and engineering and whether or not they ought to, a little bit of me
is afraid that we're already lost," said Michael Griffin, NASA's chief
administrator.
==
Ok then, show us the science behind Intelligent Design.
1. Where is the scientific theory of intelligent design and how has
it been successfully tested by the scientific method.
2. Show us a list of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals on
the subject.
3. Show us how and when it has been tested in the courts, using
expert witnesses, and under oath and shown to be science.
4. Show is the names of commercial companies that are applying it in
biotechnology, medicine, stock breeding and pharmaceuticals.
5. Show us any contribution ID has made to mainstream science.
6. Show us where the Discovery Institute has claimed that intelligent
design involves a single intelligent being.
7. What is the nature of that intelligent being?
8. What method did it use to change DNA?
9. When did this happen?
10. Where can we see that process happening today?
==
Any testible scientific theory of intelligent design
should be able to give testible answers to other
questions: (1) what exactly did the Intelligent
Designer(s) do, (2) what mechanisms did the
Designer(s) use to do whatever it is you think it did,
(3) where can we see these mechanisms in action today,
and (4) what objective criteria can we use to
determine what entities are "intelligently designed"
and what entities aren't (please illustrate this by
pointing to something that you think IS designed,
something you think is NOT designed, and explain how
to tell the difference).
If your, uh, "scientific theory" isn't able to answer
any of these questions yet, then please feel free to
tell me how you propose to scientifically answer them.
What experiments or tests can we perform, in
principle, to answer these questions.
Also, since one of the criteria of "science" is
falsifiability, I'd like you to tell me how your
scientific theory, whatever it is, can be falsified.
What experimental results or observations would
conclusively prove that creation/intelligent design
did not happen.
==
Creator Reminder
An Algonquin myth tells of when Nanahbozho, creator of the Earth, had finished
his task of the creation, he traveled to the north, where he remained. He built
large fires, of which the northern lights are the reflections, to remind his
people that he still thinks of them.
==
The proposed revision to Florida State's science education standards
(rated "F" by the Fordham study group) is broad and inclusive - a fine effort
The proposals are now up for public review. Here is the result of one Florida
county's school board's reaction:
"A majority of Polk County School Board members say they support teaching
intelligent design in addition to evolution in public schools.
Board members Tim Harris, Margaret Lofton and Hazel Sellers said they oppose
proposed science standards for Florida schools that lists evolution and
biological diversity as one of the "big ideas" that students need to know for
a well-grounded science education."
What does the article prove about the education and intellects, let alone
qualifications, of these elected officials? Considering the large negative
response to the statements made by all the board members favoring intelligent
design, it would surprise me if any of them are re-elected.
==
Right now, America's true believers are locking down its laws along
with its Bible. They are fighting the science of evolution because
it accepts that things change over timeand such change is
incompatible with static, everlasting truths.
==
Rio Rancho school board rescinds policy on intelligent design
RIO RANCHO - The Rio Rancho school board has repealed a policy allowing
alternative theories of evolution to be discussed in public school science
classes.
The board's 3-2 vote Monday night reversed an Aug. 22, 2005, board decision to
adopt the policy.
The earlier board vote also was 3-2. Only two of those board members who
supported the policy - Don Schlichte and Marty Scharfglass - are still on the
board, and they voted against rescinding it.
Board members Divyesh Patel, Margaret Terry and Lisa Cour voted in favor of
dissolving the policy.
Opponents have said the policy was a tactic to teach intelligent design - a
theory that life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution,
implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation.
Nearly all scientists dismiss it as a scientific theory, and critics say it's
nothing more than religion masquerading as science.
Schlichte, head pastor at Rio West Community Church, said in a slide show
presentation that most laws come from a system of beliefs, and that Nazis and
communists used their belief in evolution to pass harmful laws.
But Cour said, "Just because evolution is embraced by evil and unethical
people, it does not mean evolution is evil."
==
"This country is in serious trouble because we believe false
teachings like evolution." He said some more, then said it's clear evolution
cannot be true because, "For instance, it's obvious there are no such
things as dinosaurs. Dinosaurs couldn't have existed, because they
would have existed before there was an earth, so clearly it's impossible
for there to be dinosaurs."
==
Texas state science curriculum director resigns
Move comes months before comprehensive curriculum review.
The Texas state's director of science curriculum has resigned after being
accused of creating the appearance of bias against teaching intelligent design.
Chris Comer, who has been the Texas Education Agency's director of science
curriculum for more than nine years, offered her resignation this month
The real scoop on the Texas science curriculum director's resignation
Texas Citizens for Science has posted a summary of the political pressures:
TEA has a new policy, one of neutrality between biological evolution and
Intelligent Design Creationism. This new policy was put in place when Dr. Don
McLeroy--an outspoken Creationist and activist for Intelligent Design
Creationism and its marketing campaign--was appointed the new Chair of the
State Board of Education (SBOE). By publicizing a lecture by a Louisiana State
University professor of the philosophy of science that supported evolution--as
required by the state's science standards--and opposed Intelligent Design
Creationism, Chris Comer ran afoul of the new policy and was asked to resign
or be fired immediately. The memo to her from the TEA contained several other
excuses, all of which were bogus, trumped-up, or common among employees.
Amazingly, this memo is now available for the public to read thanks to the
American-Statesman (see below), and it reveals the lengths to which the top
administrators of our state's public education agency will go to silence
dissent from their new policy of not criticizing Creationism.
The real reason she was forced to resign is because the top TEA administrators
and some SBOE members wanted her out of the picture before the state science
standards--the science TEKS--were reviewed, revised, and rewritten next year.
Plans are underway by some SBOE members and TEA administrators to diminish the
requirement to teach about evolutionary biology in the Biology TEKS and to
require instead that biology instructors "Teach the Controversy" about the
"weaknesses" of evolution, that is, teach the Creationist-inspired and
-created bogus controversy about evolution that doesn't exist within
legitimate science. There are no scientific weaknesses with biological
evolution as the natural process is understood by scientists. At the level at
which it is taught in high school, evolutionary biology has no weaknesses,
gaps, or problems. Therefore, it is duplicitous to pretend such "weaknesses"
and "controversy" exist.
I knew McLeroy was trouble from the very beginning.

Evolution and Texas
Is Texas about to become the next state to undermine the teaching of
evolution? That is the scary implication of the abrupt ousting of Christine
Comer, the states top expert on science education. Her transgression:
forwarding an e-mail message about a talk by a distinguished professor who
debunks intelligent design and creationism as legitimate alternatives to
evolution in the science curriculum.
In most states, we hope, the state department of education would take the lead
in ensuring that students receive a sound scientific education. But it was the
Texas Education Agency that pushed out Ms. Comer after 27 years as a science
teacher and 9 years as the agencys director of science.
As Ralph Blumenthal reported in The Times yesterday, Ms. Comer forwarded to a
local online community an e-mail message from a pro-evolution group announcing
a talk by Barbara Forrest, a professor of philosophy at Southeastern Louisiana
University. Professor Forrest testified as an expert witness in a 2005 Dover,
Pa., case that found intelligent design supernatural and theological and
definitely not part of a scientific education.
An hour later, Ms. Comer was called in by superiors, pressured to send out a
retraction and ultimately forced to resign. Her departure was instigated by a
new deputy commissioner who had served as an adviser to George Bush when he
was governor of Texas and more recently worked in the federal Department of
Education.
It was especially disturbing that the agency accused Ms. Comer by forwarding
the e-mail message of taking a position on a subject on which the agency must
remain neutral. Surely the agency should not remain neutral on the central
struggle between science and religion in the public schools. It should take a
stand in favor of evolution as a central theory in modern biology. Texass own
education standards require the teaching of evolution.
Those standards are scheduled to be reviewed next year. Ms. Comers dismissal
and comments in favor of intelligent design by the chairman of the state board
of education do not augur well for that review. We can only hope that adherents
of a sound science education can save Texas from a retreat into the darker
ages.
==
Human links may be seen in gorillas' tools
Wild gorillas have been seen using "weapons" for the first time, giving a new
insight into how early man learned to use sticks and stones for fighting and
hunting millions of years ago.
Researchers observed gorillas in the Cross River area of Cameroon throwing
sticks, clumps of earth and stones at human "invaders".
It is the first time that the largest of the great apes has been seen to use
tools in an aggressive way.
Experts believe that our ancestors may have learned to use sticks and stones
in a similar way to frighten away predators.
The scientists noticed the unusual behaviour during a three-year study. They
believe the animals might have learned to throw objects from humans who were
seen throwing stones at the gorillas.
Jacqueline Sunderland Groves, from the University of Sussex in Brighton, a
member of the Wildlife Conservation Society team, said: "The area is largely
isolated from other gorilla groups, but there are herdsmen on the mountain.
"In one encounter a group of gorillas threw clumps of grass and soil at the
researchers while acting aggressively. Another gorilla threw a branch. A third
encounter saw the gorillas throwing soil at a local man who was throwing stones
at the apes."
A gorilla was seen to use tools once before in the Congo, using sticks to test
the depth of water and to cross swampy areas.
The findings suggest that the use of tools may predate the evolutionary split
between apes and humans six million years ago.
==
The introduction to Biology for Christian Schools (2nd Edition, BJU Press)
clearly states, for instance, that students' conclusions must conform to the
Bible and that scientific material and methods are secondary: "The people who
have prepared this book have tried consistently to put the Word of God first
and science second. To the best of the author's knowledge, the conclusions
drawn from observable facts that are presented in this book agree with the
Scriptures. If a mistake has been made (which is probable since this book was
prepared by humans) and at any point God's Word is not put first, the author
apologizes."
==
Part of the reason why the US is such an environmental
disaster, is because for decades now, most of the
people who have been in charge of environmental
protection have been fundamentalist Christian nutjobs
who believe, quite literally, that there's no point in
protecting the environment, since Jesus will be coming
back soon and the world will end anyway.
==
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/ anti-creation
==
Creation is not a matter of education. Despite the
verbiage, creationism is not really about science, not
really about evolution, and it's not even really about
religion either. It is a POLITICAL movement.
Creationism is a wholly-owned subsidiary of theb
Religious Right, and the aim of the Religious Right is
to gain political control and install a version of
theocracy, with themsleves as theo. The most radical
of the Religious Right are the Christian
Reconstructionists, who, quite literally, want to
reconstruct American society along fundamentalist
Christian grounds. They want to abandon the
Constitution, disband the entuire US govewrnment, and
rule the US directly under "Biblical law", to include
things such as stoning sinners, executing heretics,
and criminalizing other religions. They are, quite
literally, Taliban-wanna- be's. One of the leading
Reconstructionists for 20 years was Howard Ahmanson, a
California savings-and- loan billionnaire. He put up
the seed money to start the Center for Science and
Culture, the branch of the Discovery Institute which
runs the Intelligent Design movement -- he still sits
on its board ofn directors and still provides a large
chunck of its operating expenses. A few years ago, an
internal Discovery Institute planing document, called
"the wedge document" was leaked to the Internet -- it
spells out all the ID movement's theocratic political
goals, and lays out a 20-year plan to achieve them.

"This is something that the State Board, the Governor's Office and members of
the Legislature would be extremely upset to see because it assumes this is a
subject that the agency supports."
Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science
Education, which sent the original e-mail to Comer announcing the event, said
Comer's situation seems to be a warning to agency employees.
"This just underscores the politicization of science education in Texas,"
Scott said. "In most states, the department of education takes a leadership
role in fostering sound science education. Apparently TEA employees are
supposed to be kept in the closet and only let out to do the bidding of the
board."
Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, an advocacy group that
monitors state textbook content, said the group wants to know more about the
case. The network has raised questions about past comments made by State Board
of Education Chairman Don McLeroy about teaching creationism.
"It's important to know whether politics and ideology are standing in the way
of Texas kids getting a 21st century science education," Miller said. "We've
already seen a faction of the State Board of Education try to politicize and
censor what our schoolchildren learn. It would be even more alarming if the
same thing is now happening inside TEA itself."

==
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/day1am.html whole trial transcript
==
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/ anti-creation
==
Church row evolves over fossil boy

Rob Crilly in Nairobi
Turkana Boy, considered the most complete early human fossil, is being removed
from his bomb-proof vault to take centre stage at an exhibition that curators
say will provide the most complete record of the evolution of Man.
However, the collection, to be show-cased for the first time at the Nairobi
National Museum after a 5 million renovation financed by the European Union,
has drawn sharp criticism from evangelical Christians who deny the theory of
evolution.
They, in turn, are being opposed vociferously by scientists eager to study the
specimens and to explore the role of Kenya as the cradle of humankind.
Bishop Boniface Adoyo, the head of the 35 Kenyan evangelical denominations, is
leading opposition to the exhibition. I do not dispute that as humans we have a
history, but my family most certainly did not descend from the apes, he said.
The bishop was invited to view the new Human Origins gallery before it opened
this month, and said that he would call on his flock to demonstrate outside
the museum if evolution was described as anything other than merely a theory.
Bits of it are being disproved by scientists every day, he said. Yet its being
taught in our schools to children - a theory being taught as fact.
His argument echoes a similar dispute in America, where creationists have
developed the theory of intelligent design as a rival to Darwins natural
selection.
Among the exhibits at the museum are remains of primitive apes dating back 25
million years and evidence that primates have been walking upright for 4
million years.
The star of the show will be Turkana Boy, a 5ft 3in (1.62m) skeleton of a
human who died 1.5 million years ago, aged about 12. It is the best-preserved
example of Homo erectus, the species that set out from Africa to conquer the
world.
Lining up against the evangelical movement is the countrys most famous
fossil-hunting family.
Richard Leakey, who led the team that unearthed the skeleton in the far north
in 1984, dismissed the creationist argument. He said: Science is at the very
foundation of our ability to deal with the new century, so if we bring it down
to the idea that science may be unChristian . . . well, how stupid can you get?
Much of the museums collection is based on finds made by his parents, Louis
and Mary Leakey, in the 1920s.
Dr Leakey has his own concerns about displaying the skeleton, arguing that it
would prevent access for scientists, who still have a lot to learn from
Turkana Boy.
Fredrick Manthi, senior research scientist at the museum, said that he had no
problem reconciling evolution with his Christian faith. The gallery, he added,
was an attempt to show the world that Kenya could be considered the birthplace
of humanity.
We do not want to tell people what to believe. What we are doing is displaying
the fossil record, he said.
==
Ken Ham states that carbon dating isn't accurate beyond a hundred thousand
years, but states again and again that the world is only
six thousand years old.
==
Creationists should heed the wise words of Augustine,
who, in On the Literal Interpretation of Genesis,
wrote over 1600 years ago that Christians shouldn't
advocate beliefs plainly contrary to facts of nature,
at the risk of subjecting the faith to ridicule, when
the unscientific belief wasn't essential to
propagating doctrine or achieving salvation. The
issue in his day was the shape of the earth, which
educated pagans (& uneducated sailors) knew to be
spherical but many Early Church Fathers, citing the
Bible, insisted was flat.
==
http://www.DetectingDesign.com/
==
It's an historical fact that the geological column was devised *before*
evolutionary science was developed. William Smith published his
geological map of Great Britain - which set out the basis for the
geological column - in 1815, when Charles Darwin was only 6 years old.
==
Darwin on p. 32 about the eye (The Origin of Species, published in whole on
the talk.origins web site):

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for
adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of
light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have
been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the
highest possible degree.

Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and
complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its
possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so
slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if
any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under
changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect
and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by
our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be
sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first
originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any
sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those
coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.
==
We are trying to
INSURE that American Children are never allowed to gain intellegence. We'd
rather muddle their heads with dogma and bible studies while shipping jobs
overseas. Soon the only thing Americans exiting school will be qualified for
will be agriculture or the seminary. Forget science. We gave up that ground to
Europe and Asia long ago.
==
Eccl.3:19,20 "There is an eventuality as respects the sons of mankind and an
eventuality as respects the beast, and they have the same eventuality. As one
dies, so the other dies; and they all have but one spirit, so that there can
be no superiority of the man over the beast, for everything is vanity. All are
going to one place. They have all come to be from the dust, and they are all
returning to the dust."
==
The conflict between religion and science will continue forever, until we, as
evolving sentient beings, bury primitive superstitions, or until we eliminate
all religous fanatics who want us to believe in fluff and not in facts.
==
The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism (Paperback)
by Ronald L. Numbers
==
If biology shows no sign of intelligent creation, then where is God?
==
Any assailant of evolutionary theory is forced also to attack most major
branches of modern science in order to remain self-consistent.
==
People seem to want to believe in things that thay
can understand with a minimum of rational thought, and Creationism certainly
fits the bill in that regard. Part of the problem with common or garden
creationists is that they know almost nothing about biology or science and are
very vocal in their ignorance. They can throw out a dozen half-truths, urban
myths and sheer nonsense very rapidly.
==
Kenneth Miller
But Miller examines the fossil record of several
interesting species, showing how they merge into each other, chronologically
and geographically. Considering the sheer number of species throughout
geologic history that follow the same pattern of chronological and geographic
progression, the conclusion is inescapable. Arguing that God individually
created each one of the millions upon millions of species and just happened to
put every last one of them in a chronological and geographic order consistent
with common descent is more than a little hard to believe!

Johnson also argues that evolution lacks an adequate mechanism to make the
punctuated changes found in the fossil record. For example, the fossil
sequences for horses show a rate of change of .04 darwins, and the fossil
sequences for Triceratops show a rate of change of .06 darwins. A darwin is
a rate of change of 2.718 in 1,000,000 years, and .04 or .06 darwins is a very
high rate of change to be found in the fossil record But
Miller points out that rates of up to 45,000 darwins are routinely observed in
living species, making Johnson's argument wrong by a factor of up to
10 million!

Chapter 5 examines Michael Behe's irreducible complexity (IC). Behe says IC
systems could not possibly have evolved step-by-step, because if a single
piece is missing from an IC system, the system will not function at all. Behe
identifies several allegedly IC systems, such as the bacterial flagellum and
the cilia, which he says will not function at all without all of their parts;
but Miller very effectively points out that every single one of Behe's
allegedly IC systems is found in nature in a reduced form, and that every
single one of those reduced forms still functions just fine. So what doesn't
function here is Behe's IC.

If I met the author, the first question I would ask is You spend five
chapters defending science and four chapters defining your religion to survive
that science yet not a single word to suggest your religion has any truth. Why
is that?
==
Behe is certainly not unsure of the identity of the designer:

"I'm still not against Darwinian evolution on theological grounds. I'm
against it on scientific grounds. I think God could have made life
using apparently random mutation and natural selection. But my reading
of the scientific evidence is that he did not do it that way, that
there was a more active guiding. I think that we are all descended
from some single cell in the distant past but that that cell and later
parts of life were intentionally produced as the result of intelligent
activity. As a Christian, I say that intelligence is very likely to be
God." - Can You Believe in God and Evolution?, Time, 2005
==
The Problem: While it is a fact that Pythagoras2 correctly described our solar
system in 500 BC, it is also a fact that this idea was not widely accepted for
almost 2000 years. Many ancient Greek thinkers thought that the spherical3
earth is surrounded by a hard spherical shell (or shells) and that beyond this
was a reservoir of water. Several Scriptures seem to endorse this erroneous
cosmology.

"And God said: let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it
divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the
waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the
firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven. Genesis 1:6-8
KJV

What exactly is this "firmament" which God "called heaven" and what are the
waters "above the firmament"? Psalm 148:3,4 is another passage which indicates
that there are waters above the heavens:

"Praise him ye sun and moon; praise him ye stars of light. Praise him ye
heaven of heavens, and ye waters that are above the heavens."

Some conservative writers have suggested that these passages may be referring
to water in the earth's atmosphere, or to a vapor canopy surrounding the
primordial earth. This explanation seems inadequate because the sun, moon and
even the stars are "in" the firmament, while the water is "above" the
firmament. Two passages make this point:

"And God made two great lights, the greater to rule the day and the lesser to
rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of
the heaven to give light upon the earth." Genesis 1:16-17 KJV

"The heavens declare the Glory of God and the firmament showeth his
handiwork... in them he hath set a tabernacle for the sun" Psalm 19:1,4 KJV

To this point we have seen that there is water above and below the firmament
and that the sun, moon, and stars are in the firmament. The problem, for the
conservative Christian, is further exacerbated by the fact that the idea of
hardness or firmness seems to be inherent in the word "firmament". Job 37:18
(NIV) also seems to support this idea that the sky is hard:

"Can you join him in spreading out the skies, hard as a mirror of cast bronze?"
==
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2007/08/03/
creation-scientists-teachers-comment
fundies
==
Yes, folks, every typical creationist/ID argument you've heard in the
past 40 years, is in here. "Cambrian Explosion". "Abrupt Appearence
(yes, they were indeed stupid enough to use ***that very phrase***,
repeatedly)". "Fossil Gaps". "Created Kinds". "Microevolution and
Macroevolution". "Bats have no fossil ancestors". "Flowering plants
appear suddenly". "Common structures are the result of common
function". "Common structures are just convergence". "Haeckel's
drawings show that darwinists are liars". "Mutation and natural
selection can't produce new structures". "Peppered moths were
faked". "DNA can only change within fixed limits". "Evolution is just
an assumption". "Biological information cannot increase". "No new
genetic information". "No beneficial mutations". "Goldschmidt's
monster". "Behe and the flagellum". "Irreducible complexity".
"Evolution is a tautology". "The big bad scientific establishment
crushes dissent".
==
Behe conceded that "there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating
for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations
which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any
biological system occurred".

"Darwinian processes have been demonstrated to not be able to make
sophisticated molecular machinary, have been demonstrated not to do
anything other than make little tweaks in the shapes or properties of
molecules they already have." Behe
==
Behe is richly "rewarded" for his views.
From his web site:
Official Disclaimer"

"My ideas about irreducible complexity and intelligent
design are entirely my own. They certainly are not
in any sense endorsed by either Lehigh University
in general or the Department of Biological Sciences
in particular. In fact, most of my colleagues in the
Department strongly disagree with them."
==
Intelligent design, or ID, is a modern form of creationism cleverly
constructed to circumvent the many court decisions that have banned, on First
Amendment grounds, the teaching of religious views in the science classroom.
ID has shed many of the trappings that once cost creationists scientific and
legal credibility, including explicit reference to God and the ludicrous idea
that the Earth is only about ten thousand years old. Instead, God has been
replaced by an unspecified "intelligent designer." Besides making the usual
shopworn criticisms of evolutionary theory, IDers contend that some features
of life are too complex to have evolved, and so required celestial
intervention.
==
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is generally given in English as:
"The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase
over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium." (Clausius) or
"A transformation whose only final result is to convert heat, extracted from
a source at constant temperature, into work, is impossible" (Kelvin)
==
Some people say that we should discuss creationism in science
classes in schools because such a large percentage of the
population believes in a literal Bible. If we accept that
argument then, based on the comparable numbers that we see
regarding astrology, we should clearly also teach astrology
in any astronomy class.
==
http://www.cretaceousfossils.com/stratigraphy/stratigraphic_correlation_ae.htm

About two meters below the Caryocorbula zone is the level that contains
the famous Paluxy River dinosaur trackway near Glen Rose, TX in Somervell
County.
The Paluxy Sands are a mixture of marine and nonmarine beds, and contain
both dinosaur material and hybodont shark teeth (Welton & Farish, 1993). It
wedges out just south of the area.
==
The timeline is continuous.
The Cambrian is not a single week. It's all 53 million years. The
Ordovician starts as soon as the Cambrian ends. So there's no need for
Cambrian sediments to sit around, uncovered, for millions of years
waiting for the Ordovician to come. There are many places in the world
that show continuous deposition across the Cambrian/Ordovician boundary.
Of course deposition need not be continuous even within a period, and
generally isn't. There can be many episodes of deposition and many
episodes of erosion within a period. And any given site is generally
undergoing one or the other at any given moment.
==
"Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True
Nature and Goals" by Barbara Forrest, Ph.D.
==
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District

http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf
---
Dover case
Baksa provided highly pertinent information concerning the position
of the teachers throughout this process. He testified that the
teachers did not support Pandas in any way, but that they made
compromises to insure the purchase of the biology book entitled
Biology. Also, he testified that any suggestion the teachers
supported any part of the curriculum change must be soundly rejected.
The unrebuted evidence reveals that the teachers had to make
unnecessary sacrifices and compromises advantageous toward Board
members, who were steadfastly working to inject religion in the
classroom, so that their students would have a biology textbook that
should have been approved as a matter of course.
Remarkably, the 6-3 vote at the October 18, 2004 meeting to approve
the curriculum change occurred with absolutely no discussion of the
concept of ID, no discussion of how presenting it to students would
improve science education, and no justification was offered by any
Board member for the curriculum change. Furthermore, Board members
somewhat candidly conceded that they lacked sufficient background in
science to evaluate ID, and several of them testified with equal
frankness that they failed to understand the substance of the
curriculum change adopted on October 18, 2004.
In fact, one unfortunate theme in this case is the striking ignorance
concerning the concept of ID amongst Board members. Conspicuously,
Board members who voted for the curriculum change testified at trial
that they had utterly no grasp of ID. To illustrate, consider that
Geesey testified she did not understand the substance of the
curriculum change, yet she voted for it. Moreover, as she indicated
on multiple occasions, in voting for the curriculum change, Geesy
deferred completely to Bonsell and Buckingham. Second, Buckingham,
Chair of the Curriculum Committee at the time, admitted that he had
no basis to know whether ID amounted to good science as of the time
of his first deposition, which was two and a half months after the ID
Policy was approved, yet he voted for the curriculum change. Third,
Cleaver voted for the curriculum change despite the teachers'
objections, based upon assurances from Bonsell. Cleaver admittedly
knew nothing about ID, including the words comprising the phrase, as
she consistently referred to ID as "intelligence design" throughout
her testimony. In addition, Cleaver was bereft of any understanding
of Pandas except that Spahr had said it was not a good science book
which should not be used in high school. In addition, Superintendent
Nilsen's entire understanding of ID was that "evolution has a design."
Despite this collective failure to understand the concept of ID,
which six Board members nonetheless felt was appropriate to add to
ninth grade biology class to improve science education, the Board
never heard from any person or organization with scientific expertise
about the curriculum change, save for consistent but unwelcome
advices from the District's science teachers who uniformly opposed
the change. In disregarding the teachers' views, the Board ignored
undeviating opposition to the curriculum change by the one resource
with scientific expertise immediately at its disposal. The only
outside organizations which the Board consulted prior to the vote
were the Discovery Institute and TMLC, and it is clear that the
purpose of these contacts was to obtain legal advice, as opposed to
science education information. The Board received no materials, other
than Pandas, to assist them in making their vote. Nor did anyone on
the Board or in the administration ever contact the NAS, the AAAS,
the National Science Teachers' Association, the National Association
of Biology Teachers, or any other organization for information about
ID or science education before or after voting for the curriculum
change. While there is no requirement that a school board contact any
of the afore-referenced organizations prior to enacting a curriculum
change, in this case a simple glance at any one of their websites for
additional information about ID and any potential it may have to
improve science education would have provided helpful information to
Board members who admittedly had no comprehension whatsoever of ID.
As Dr. Alters' expert testimony demonstrated, all of these
organizations have information about teaching evolution readily
available on the internet and they include statements opposing the
teaching of ID.
==
Brownback on Evolution

Meanwhile, writing in The New York Times, Senator Sam Brownback clarifies his
views on evolution. Recall that Brownback was one of three Republican
candidates to admit to rejecting evolution in a recent debate. He writes:

The premise behind the question seems to be that if one does not
unhesitatingly assert belief in evolution, then one must necessarily believe
that God created the world and everything in it in six 24-hour days. But
limiting this question to a stark choice between evolution and creationism
does a disservice to the complexity of the interaction between science, faith
and reason.
Actually, I think the premise behind the question was that if one does not
unhesitatingly assert an acceptance of evolution, then you are either a
scientific ignoramus or are pandering to scientific ignoramusses. And let's
cut the pretense that there was any vagueness in the question. The issue is
whether you think human beings evolved from ape-like ancestors.
So how should science, faith and reason interact?
The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and
reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction
between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover
truths about the nature of the created order and how it operates, whereas
faith deals with spiritual truths. The truths of science and faith are
complementary: they deal with very different questions, but they do not
contradict each other because the spiritual order and the material order were
created by the same God.
Translation: Science is based on evidence, faith is based on making stuff up.
Doesn't seem very complicated to me!
As for whether science and faith can contradict each other, that's going to
depend on what it is that you believe by faith. It is all well and good for
Brownback to take for granted that God created both the material and the
spiritual, but the fact remains that science has a way of undercutting the
need to hypothesize that God created anything. What Brownback really means
here is that when discoveries of science (i.e. evolution) contradict his
preconceived notions of God (that he exists, is all-loving, and created the
world with humans in mind), it is the science that goes out the window.
Moving on:
People of faith should be rational, using the gift of reason that God has
given us. At the same time, reason itself cannot answer every question. Faith
seeks to purify reason so that we might be able to see more clearly, not less.
Faith supplements the scientific method by providing an understanding of
values, meaning and purpose. More than that, faith -- not science -- can help
us understand the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love. Faith
and science should go together, not be driven apart.
I have no doubt that these sentiments were crafted by one of Brownback's
advisors; it is the standard gibberish that gets trotted out by those seeking
to reconcile faith and reason. I have no idea what it means to say that faith
purifies reason, and it is simply an abuse of language to say that there is
anything we understand by faith. And I haven't noticed atheists having much
trouble discerning the breadth of human suffering or the depth of human love.
The question of evolution goes to the heart of this issue. If belief in
evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time
within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it
to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively
materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a
guiding intelligence, then I reject it.
Translation: I'm a creationist.
Biologists will have their debates about man's origins, but people of faith
can also bring a great deal to the table. For this reason, I oppose the
exclusion of either faith or reason from the discussion. An attempt by either
to seek a monopoly on these questions would be wrong-headed. As science
continues to explore the details of man's origin, faith can do its part as
well. The fundamental question for me is how these theories affect our
understanding of the human person.
Translation: I think creationism should be taught in schools.
Brownback has quite a few more talking point to throw at you. He even whipes
out the old canard about punctuated equilibrium: There is no one single
theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical
Darwinism continue to feud today. A golden oldie! Haven't heard that one in a
while. Read at your own risk. One of these days maybe he'll tell us what he
thinks of the common ancestry of human beings with apes.
==
Thank God the fundies are so utterly and irretrievably
stupid. It makes it SOOOOOOOOO much easier to beat
their asses in court. Again and again and again and again.
==
Gallup Poll asked people about their views on the subject in March, 47 percent
of Americans polled said that God created humans pretty much in their present
form some time in the past 10,000 years. That belief was strongest among those
with less education, regular churchgoers, people 65 and older, and Republicans.
==
Deception By Design:

The Intelligent Design Movement in America

Frequently-Asked Questions; A Mini-Interview With the Author

Q. Why did you write Deception by Design?

Lenny Flank:When I first started posting on the Internet about creation
"science" and, later, intelligent design "theory", all of the discussion was
about the anti-evolution movement's science, or the lack of it. Everyone was
talking about "transitional fossils" and "genetic mutations" and "irreducible
complexity" and "information theory". But nobody was talking about the
political agenda behind the anti-evolution movement -- nobody was talking
about Howard Ahmanson or the Christian Reconstructionists or Tim LaHaye. That
has now changed, and I hope that I have helped to play at least a small role in
that.

There have been a number of very good books published recently that discuss
and dismantle all of the silly "scientific" claims made by creation
"scientists" and intelligent design "theorists". Deception by Design is
unique because it does not focus on all the "scientific arguments" -- instead
it takes aim at the political agenda behind the anti-evolution movement. The
ID movement does not like to talk about its political agenda. It does not
like to talk about who funds the Discovery Institute and why. It does not
like to talk about its close ties to political extremists like the Christian
Reconstructionists. In Deception by Design, I do talk about these things.

Q. Doesn't basic fairness require that both sides of the evolution
controversy be taught in schools?

Lenny Flank: No. There is no scientific controversy over evolution. No
serious biologist doubts that life evolved through natural selection. Neither
the creation "scientists" nor the intelligent design "theorists" have ever put
forth any supportable scientific alternative to evolution, nor have they
offered any scientifically valid criticisms of evolutionary biology. They do
no scientific research of any sort, they have never presented any scientific
data or experimental results in any peer-reviewed science journal, and they
simply have nothing scientifically useful to say. The only controversy that
does exist is the political controversy, and that was entirely created by the
anti-evolution movement itself. There is no reason at all to present to
students a "scientific controversy" that simply does not exist in reality. I
am, of course, all in favor of presenting students with the political
controversy and how it came about, but I doubt very much that the
fundamentalists themselves would be very comfortable with that.

Q. The intelligent design movement has said that it does have scientific
evidence against evolution, but it can't present it because they are unfairly
denied funding, and scientific journals refuse to accept their articles. Is
science being unfair to people who are anti-evolution?

Lenny Flank: Well, the notion that the big bad scientists are all engaged in
a global conspiracy to prevent "the truth" from being known, is a standard cry
for any lunatic-fringe pseudo-science. I've heard that very same claim from
flying saucer enthusiasts, from "psychic powers" proponents, from Bigfoot
"researchers", from alien-abduction "victims", from "moon-landing-was-faked"
believers, you name it. IDers are no different. I hear that flat-earthers
also have a hard time getting funding, or getting their "findings" published
in science journals. And I suspect it's for much the same reasons.

Q. Isn't evolution based on atheism or a rejection of God?

Lenny Flank: No. Evolution is no more "atheistic" than is weather
forecasting or accident investigation or the rules of baseball. The vast
majority of religious organizations, worldwide, have no problem with evolution
or with any other part of modern science, and many scientists and biologists
are themselves Christian or Jewish or Muslim or practitioners of other
religions. The fundamentalist claim that science is "atheistic" is simply
part of their strategy for taking over science, along with the rest of
society, and forcing it to live within their religious restrictions. There
was, of course, a time when science was forced to conform to prevailing
religious opinions. We call those times "The Dark Ages". They are not
remembered fondly by most people. They are remembered fondly by the
fundamentalists, however. And they would like to return us to those times.
The anti-evolution movement is not really a religious movement -- it is a
political movement.

Q. Why do you say that the intelligent design movement is a political, rather
than a scientific or religious, movement?

Lenny Flank: Well, it is a religious movement, but religion is one of its
methods, not its purpose.And as far as science, that too is just a means to
an end for them, not an end in itself. The anti-evolution movement doesn't
really care about science. They're not concerned about any scientific
questions, they don't care about correctly interpreting any scientific data,
and they're not interested in forming better explanations or understanding of
the natural world. Their goal is entirely and totally political -- they want,
quite literally, to change all of society -- science, law, art -- to bring it
into line with their fundamentalist religious opinions. In their own words,
they want to "see design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and
political life". They are theocrat wanna-be's. Nothing more, nothing less,
nothing else.

Q. How did the fundamentalists first appear?

Lenny Flank: One of the things that the fundamentalist Christian movement
would have everyone believe is that it represents "the true Christianity", the
traditional way in which Christianity has always been interpreted. And that is
flat-out not true. Fundamentalism didn't appear as a theological movement
until 1910, when a series of booklets were published under the title The
Fundamentals. This was in reaction and opposition to progressive Christian
support for social goals like women's suffrage and the labor movement, and
also opposition to new scientific discoveries which, the fundamentalists felt,
undermined Biblical authority -- including evolution. Throughout the 1910's,
the fundamentalist movement attempted to win other Christians to its view by
publishing Biblical commentaries and by taking over as many churches and
theological institutes as they could to purge them of "liberals" -- just as
they do today.

Q. When did the fundamentalists first begin to gain political influence?

Lenny Flank: In its early history, fundamentalism specifically rejected the
idea of getting involved with politics. In fact, one of the reasons the
fundamentalist movement was formed was in reaction to the progressive "social
gospel", the idea that churches should get involved with social programs to
help the poor and make life better for everyone. So, although the early
fundamentalists did become involved with politics to some extent -- they
helped pass all the anti-evolution "monkey laws" in the 1920's, and had ties
to right-wing politicians and organizations like Joe McCarthy and the John
Birch Society in the 50's -- for the most part they avoided active involvement
in politics for religious goals.

That changed in the in the 1960's. Not only were the fundamentalists
vehemently opposed to the entire 1960's "peace and love" generation and all of
its social goals, but there were a number of Supreme Court decisions during
this time that specifically motivated the fundamentalists to form political
movements to counter them. The first of these was the 1954 Brown v Board of
Education decision, which outlawed segregated schools. While a large number
of churches supported and encouraged the civil rights movement, the
fundamentalist wing actively opposed it -- and indeed many of the private
"Christian schools" that appeared in the South at this time were a direct
response to the Brown ruling (since the Supreme Court's ruling did not apply
to private schools, the fundamentalists were free to continue to have
segregated schools). Another decision that galvanized the fundamentalists was
the 1962 Engel v Vitale ruling that outlawed sponsored prayer in schools. And
finally in 1973 came the Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortions. It was
at that point that the fundamentalists realized that if they wanted to fight
back, they had to gain a significant level of political influence.

Q. And how did they go about doing that?

Lenny Flank: It began as a part of Richard Nixon's "southern strategy".
During the 1960's, the most active opposition to things like the civil rights
movement were the Democratic politicians in the South, the so-called
"Dixiecrats". Nixon's political strategy for the 1968 election was to
deliberately appeal to the Dixiecrat supporters -- and that included the
fundamentalists -- to leave the Democratic Party and join the Republicans,
where they would receive more support. And that is why the South today is
solidly Red States.

The fundamentalists did make a brief overture to the Democratic Party, though,
and that was when Jimmy Carter announced his candidacy in the 1976 election.
Carter, remember, was not only a Southern Baptist, but was one of the first
Presidential candidates to talk openly about his religious feelings and about
being "born again". The national press, who had never heard of these things
before, thought it a bit odd, but these were things that had always been a
part of evangelical religion, and the fundamentalists made the assumption that
Carter was "one of them", and that he might be their ticket to national
political influence. Unfortunately for the fundamentalists, Carter was a
deeply-committed practitioner of the "Social Gospel", and he and the radical
evangelicals were entirely incompatible. So after the 1976 elections, the
fundamentalists turned to the Republican Party instead.

As it happened, the far-right wing of the Republican Party, represented by
Ronald Reagan, was at that very time looking for political allies.And the
fundamentalist Christian movement fit the bill perfectly.

Q. What role does the Religious Right play within the Republican Party?

Lenny Flank: The Religious Right is essentially a vote-delivery machine for
the Republican Party. There is no other political constituency in the United
States that is as well-organized, as well-funded, as loyally devoted, or as
highly motivated as the fundamentalist Christians are. The fundamentalist
movement is capable of raising massive amounts of money for Republican
coffers, it has a very well-run media and communications system that can reach
every one of its members with a specific political message, and it can insure
that every one of its members votes for all the approved "godly" Republican
candidates. There have been estimates that the fundamentalist Christian
network delivers about one-third of the total votes cast for Republican
candidates.

It should be noted, though, that the fundamentalists are not universally
accepted within the Republican Party. The neoconservative faction, which rose
to prominence in the Bush Administration, thinks quite frankly that the
fundamentalists are nutty. Corporate and big business interests, who have
always been the Republican's primary constituent, are also wary of the
fundamentalist agenda, because theocracy is very bad for business. Because of
this internal opposition, the fundamentalists have never been able to actually
get any of their social and political agenda passed in legislation, even
during six years of virtual single-party rule when the Republicans controlled
the House, the Senate, the White House, and most of the Federal judiciary. The
fundamentalists have become very frustrated over that, and they will be pulling
out all the stops in order to increase their power and control within the
Republican Party.

Q. Can you give a brief history of the anti-evolution movement?

Lenny Flank: The anti-evolution movement has basically gone through three
different stages. In the first stage, fundamentalist churches and their
political supporters attempted to simply blot out evolution by making it
illegal to teach. That strategy resulted in the Scopes trial in 1925, but
anti-evolution laws remained on the books until the 1969 Epperson v Arkansas
case, when the Supreme Court struck down all such laws. As a direct response
to that court case, the creation "science" movement was born, which tried to
argue that creationism was science and not religion, and that any teaching of
evolution should therefore be "balanced" by teaching creation "science". That
strategy was killed by the 1981 Maclean v Arkansas decision and the 1987
Supreme Court ruling in the Edwards v Aguillard case. And as a direct
response to those court cases, the "intelligent design movement" was born.
The ID movement not only tried to argue that their anti-evolution religious
views were really science, but also tried to argue that those views were not
creationism (creationism, of course, had already been ruled illegal to
teach). That strategy was killed by the Dover ruling in the Kitzmiller v
Dover case, which concluded that ID is nothing but creationism with a
different name. Most recently, the ID movement has invented something they
call "teach the controversy", where they are taking the very same
anti-evolution arguments they have always used, but instead of calling them
"intelligent design theory", they are now trying to argue that these are just
"scientific criticisms of evolution" that don't really have anything to do
with either creationism or intelligent design "theory". That argument hasn't
made it to court yet, and given the fact that it's been handily rejected by a
number of school districts and school boards, it probably never will get that
far.

Q. What do you see as the objective of the conservative fundamentalist
movement?

Lenny Flank: Let me interrupt to point out something important ----- the
fundamentalist Christians are not "conservatives". Conservatives want to
"conserve"; they want to return society to some previous condition or
circumstances. And indeed, the fundamentalist Christians do want to undo all
of the social changes brought about in the 60's and 70's -- the civil rights
movement, the feminist mmovement, the environmental movement. And because of
that, the fundamentalists receive the political support of conservatives who
want to re-create the United States of the 1950's. The fundamentalist
Christians, however, are not"conservative" in that sense -- they are
radicals. They do not simply want to dismantle the progressive social changes
of the past four decades and return the US to the idyllic days of Eisenhower --
they want to completely rebuild American society in their own image. They
don't want to get government off our backs -- they want to get government into
our bedrooms. And indeed, the most extremist of them want to do away
completely with the US Constitution and all American law, and transform the
United States into a Christian theocracy under Biblical law, with themselves
as the unquestioned divinely-appointed rulers. After all, a police state is
wonderful -- if you get to be the police.

A major goal of that extremist agenda is to dismantle the Constitutional wall
between church and state, to make it possible for religious authority to rule
directly and to use the power of the government to enforce religious
opinions. To accomplish that goal, the fundamentalists have begun to re-write
American history, by making the claim that the United States was founded as a
"Christian Nation" under Biblical authority, and that it was the evil godless
liberals who captured the Supreme Court in the 1960's and hijacked the US away
from its divine destiny. Dismantling the separation of church and state is one
of the first steps that must be undertaken by the fundamentalists, and the
anti-evolution movement is at the forefront of that effort.

Q. What is Christian Reconstructionism, and what ties does it have to the
anti-evolution movement?

Lenny Flank: Christian Reconstructionism is a radical extremist movement
within Christian fundamentalism. Simply put, the goal of the
Reconstructionist movement is to do away with the current structure of the US
government, and to replace the Constitution directly with a theocratic state
that would impose "Biblical law" onto the US and would rule by religious
authority. That would include implementing all of the Old Testament laws,
including such things as criminalizing religious offenses like heresy or
blasphemy, and executing sinners such as adulterers, disobedient children,
gays, and anyone else who is "un-Biblical" -- and of course the
fundamentalist's preferred method of execution would be stoning, just like in
the Bible. In essence, the Christian Reconstructionists are the exact
equivalent of the Muslim extremists who want to set up "Islamic Republics"
under "sharia law" . The Christian Reconstructionists want to do for the US
exactly what the Taliban did for Afghanistan and the Ayatollahs have done for
Iran.

Within the Reconstructionist movement, there is an even more extremist faction
called "Dominionists". Not only do they advocate turning the United States
into a theocracy to make it godly, but they then want that godly United States
to invade and conquer the rest of the world to make it godly too.

Q. How influential are the Reconstructionists in the US?

Lenny Flank: In numbers, the Reconstructionist movement has never been very
large, and most fundamentalists would repudiate some of its more extreme ideas
(such as stoning disobedient children). But the ideological and political
influence of the Reconstructionist agenda has been pervasive, throughout the
entire Religious Right political movement. Some of the most well-known and
powerful figures in the Religious Right have been openly sympathetic to the
Reconstructionist agenda, including Randall Terry (the founder of the
anti-abortion group Operation Rescue), Gary North (head of the Institute for
Christian Economics), David Barton (founder of Wallbuilders), Larry Pratt
(founder of Gun Owners of America), Pat Robertson (founder of the Christian
Coalition), Tim LaHaye (author of the Left Behind series and a co-founder of
Moral Majority), and his wife Beverly LaHaye ( founder of Concerned Women of
America). The basic idea of the Reconstructionist outlook -- that the United
States should use political power to enforce "Biblical" outlooks -- is the
very core of the fundamentalist Christian movement. Whenever you hear a
fundamentalist arguing that the US should be a "Christian Nation", or that
certain social or economic or education programs are "un-Christian", or that
laws should be passed or denied based upon their "Biblical morality", or that
the United States should actively oppose cultures or people that hold other
religious opinions -- you are hearing the direct influence of the Christian
Reconstructionist agenda.

For most of its history, the fundamentalists have always defined themselves in
terms of what they were against -- they were against evolution, they were
against abortion, they were against civil rights. Reconstructionism, and in
particular the derivative idea that the US should dismantle the wall between
church and state and become a "Christian Nation", finally gave them something
they could be for. It was a key reason why fundamentalism was able to unify
all its "anti" factions and effectively turn political, back in the early 80's.

Q. Where do the Reconstructionists get their money?

Lenny Flank: For decades, most of it came from just one man, a California
savings-and-loan bigwig named Howard Ahmanson. In the 70's and 80's, Ahmanson
was a leading supporter of the Chalcedon Foundation, which was formed by Rousas
J Rushdooney, the theologian who founded the Christian Reconstructionist
movement. Ahmanson was a member of Chalcedon's board of directors, and
donated almost three-quarters of a million dollars of his own money to the
foundation. Ahmanson also gave substantial donations to various
fundamentalist programs, including Republican political campaigns, various
anti-gay groups, and organizations that were dedicated to opposing an increase
in the minimum wage.

One of the primary beneficiaries of Ahmanson's largesse, however, is the
Discovery Institute, the primary advocate of intelligent design "theory" in
the US. In 1995, Ahmanson left the Chalcedon Foundation and put up $1.5
million of his own money to form the Center for the Renewal of Science and
Culture, the branch of the Discovery Institute that runs the ID campaign. He
donated another $2.8 million in 2004. He now sits on the Discovery
Institute's board of directors.

Ahmanson prefers to work quietly behind the scenes, but by 2002 his extremist
views were becoming so well-known that politicians were beginning to return
contributions from him once they learned who he was. As a result, Ahmanson
went on a media blitz to convince everyone that he was no longer as nutty as
he was in his Chalcedon days. Despite his "kinder and gentler" image, though,
Ahmanson could not bring himself to publicly repudiate such extremist views as
stoning sinners.

The Discovery Institute does not like to talk about Ahmanson or his extremist
views, and has, in several interviews with the press, flatly refused to answer
such questions.

Q. How does the anti-evolution movement fit within Reconstructionist and
fundamentalist goals?

Lenny Flank: The creation "science" and intelligent design movements
accomplish two goals for the extremists, and they have openly acknowledged
both of those. One goal is to enable the fundamentalists to convert an entire
new generation to their goals and ideas. In the public schools, the
fundamentalists have a captive audience of impressionable children who have
not yet learned any of the critical thinking skills that would allow them to
really look at the argument and effectively evaluate both sides. The
anti-evolution "debate" depends very heavily on the audience's lack of
knowledge about the topic, which enables the creationists to make all sorts of
scientific-sounding arguments that are in fact full of baloney and wouldn't
fool a first year university student. That is why the anti-evolution movement
has always, throughout its entire history, focused exclusively on using the
public schools to reach schoolchildren, rather than on presenting its
so-called "science" to university students or to scientific researchers. The
anti-evolutionists don't want to reach audiences that actually understand
science and can actually evaluate their arguments -- they want audiences who
are utterly ignorant of the whole matter, and who therefore are more likely to
be swayed by the essentially religious and emotional nature of the
anti-evolution arguments. That's why most creationist "debates" take place
before church audiences, and why the fundamentalists would prefer those
debates to take place in middle school classrooms instead of in professional
science conferences.

It is very important to realize that creationists and ID proponents do not
want to capture the public schools in order to proselytize their kids -- what
they want is the opportunity to proselytize your kids. Their kids are already
thoroughly indoctrinated at home, every day. That's why fundamentalist
Christians are the leading force behind the "homeschooling" movement, which
removes their kids from the corrupting influence of public schools and allows
fundamentalist parents to indoctrinate them to their heart's content. But
they want the opportunity to indoctrinate your kids to their heart's content,
as well.

Even more importantly, however, the creation/evolution issue is the "wedge"
that the fundamentalists themselves have chosen in order to begin to force
their way into decision-making power and to begin dismantling the wall between
church and state. And that strategy has been openly described, by the
intelligent design movement itself, in the Wedge Document.

Q. What is the "Wedge Document" and why it is important?

Lenny Flank:The Wedge Document is an internal document prepared in 1998 by
the Discovery Institute, a conservative think-tank in Seattle that is the
primary proponent of intelligent design "theory". It was written as a secret
internal planning document, but it was leaked to the Internet in 1999. The
Wedge Document appears as an appendix to Deception by Design, which is, I
believe, the first time it has ever been published.

The Wedge Document is important because it spells out, in considerable detail,
in the IDers' own words, what their specific goals are and what methods they
plan to use in order to reach those goals. It lays out, specifically and in
order, a series of five year goals and twenty year goals to, in effect, undo
the entire enlightenment, and place all of American society under the sway of
fundamentalist religious authority. And the Wedge Document makes clear that
the first step on this path is to use intelligent design "theory" as a method
of using public schools to advance their religious and political goals --
precisely what the US Constitution says they can not do.

Q. Is there any difference between "creation science" and "intelligent design
theory"?

Lenny Flank: The only differences are minor and cosmetic, and are there
specifically to try to get around the Supreme Court's 1987 ruling that
outlawed creation "science". Creationism and the ID movement have the same
goals, use the same arguments, and in many cases even consist of the same
people.Intelligent design "theory" was, if you'll pardon the pun,
intelligently designed, specifically to get around the Supreme Court's 1987
decision outlawing creation "science". And creation "science" was itself
designed specifically to get around the Supreme Court's 1969 decision striking
down laws that made it illegal to teach evolution. It is all the same fight,
with the same goals. Nothing has changed except the name adopted by the
movement.

Q. Why do you think there is such widespread opposition to evolution?

Lenny Flank: Part of the reason is that the United States has one of the
worst education systems in the industrialized world, and much of the US
population is absolutely ignorant of nearly everything going on around it.
According to recent surveys, most Americans don't know even the most basic
elements of science. Most don't know what a "molecule" is; most don't know
how long it takes for the earth to revolve once around the sun -- many
Americans don't even know that the earth revolves around the sun. And not
just science -- most Americans can't find Iraq or Afghanistan on a world map.
Many can't even find the United States on a map.

The fundamentalist movement takes full advantage of this widespread scientific
ignorance. They know that, in a political debate where the vast majority don't
know anything about the subject, facts and data simply do not matter. What
matters is "truthiness" -- any argument will be accepted on purely emotional
and ideological grounds, provided that it tells people what they want to
believe the truth is anyway. For the most part, the only organized opposition
to the ID movement has come from scientists, and they have tended to treat the
matter solely as a scientific debate -- scientists tend to think that if they
can just sit everyone down and show them some scientific facts and data
supporting evolution, everyone will slap themselves in the forehead, exclaim
"My goodness! I've been wrong all these many years!!" and that will end the
matter. It's why most scientists tend to make very poor
creationist-fighters. The simple fact is that people are not won to
creationism through scientific arguments, and they will not be won away from
it by scientific arguments, either.

And the mainstream Christian churches also deserve a large part of the blame.
Science and religion made peace with each other over a century ago, and the
vast majority of Christians, worldwide, have no gripe at all with evolution or
any other part of modern science, and see no conflict whatsoever between faith
and science. Unfortunately, these mainstream churches have for the most part
stayed far away from the evolution/creation conflict, and have instead allowed
the fundamentalists to wrap themselves in the flag of piety and loudly declare
themselves to be the only True Christians, painting any and all opposition as
"anti-God", "atheist" and "anti-Christian" -- and few people in the United
States want to consider themselves as "anti-Christian". Nearly all of the
mainstream churches actually view the fundamentalists as doing tremendous harm
to Christianity, by making all "Christians" look silly, stupid, uneducated, and
medieval-minded. It's time more of these mainstream churches say so, out loud.

Q. Do you think that science is under attack in the United States?

Lenny Flank: Absolutely. Science itself, as a way of learning about the
world around us, is under massive attack, from two different factions with two
different agendas, both of which have found a home within the Republican
Party. The first anti-science faction is, of course, the fundamentalists.
Their goal is to discredit science as "just another religion", one that is no
better than their own Biblical views and which therefore should be given no
better treatment than their own anti-science views. That is why the IDers
continuously refer to evolution as "darwinism" -- they want people to view it
as just anothher ideology, no different than "Marxism". The other
anti-science faction are the corporate big-business sector, which has
discovered that it can utilize criticism of science as a weapon against all
sorts of social regulations and controls that the corporate sector doesn't
want. By attacking the science behind such things as global warming,
pollution, endangered species, and other issues, big business can deflect,
delay and sometimes eliminate governmental oversight or regulations. As a
result of these separate but compatible factions, the Republican Party has,
particularly under the Bush Administration, launched a full-fledged
multi-front war on science.

Ultimately, of course, such a strategy is self-defeating, since scientific and
technological discoveries are the very source of economic strength, and by
weakening science and science education, the US is only weakening itself and
its position in the world.

Q. What direction do you think the anti-evolution movement will take in the
future?

Lenny Flank: Within the United States right now, the fundamentalist movement
is in serious trouble. The wedge issue which they hoped would help them force
their way into power, the intelligent design movement, was crushed at the 2005
Dover trial, and is now all but dead. The Republican Party took a horrific
mangling in the 2006 elections -- and without the active political support of
the Republican Party, the anti-evolution movement has no more political
influence than the flat-earthers or flying saucer fans do. The corporate
sector is beginning to voice active opposition to some of the Republican
Party's agenda -- for example, recently the Walmart company, the largest
employer in the US, announced its support for government-provided universal
health care. That is a measure that will bring the big business supporters
in direct conflict with the fundamentalist ideologues, and it may weaken the
Republican Party enough to guarantee Democratic Party domination for some
years to come. So I look for the anti-evolution movement to lay low for a few
years. It will raise money from its base, it will set up new "think tanks" and
new organizations, it will change its name to something else, and it will be
back (with the same old arguments) as soon as the political climate allows.

One thing the anti-evolutioners have already done is to redirect their aim
away from the US and towards other nations, particularly Europe. In the
United Kingdom, several groups of creation "scientists" have attracted
financial support from the US by adopting "intelligent design" verbiage, and
they are attempting to use political strength to force their beliefs into
science classrooms. In the Islamic world, a group known as Harun Yahya is
attempting to remove evolution from science education, by using recycled
arguments from the American creation "science" movement. Ironically, the
Islamic creationists are receiving printed literature and financial support
from the American creationists, thus demonstrating that Islamic extremists and
Christian extremists have far more in common than either of them would like to
admit.

Q. What can people do to help stop the fundamentalist political movement?

Lenny Flank: The ID/creationist movement is a political movement with
political goals, and it must be beaten the same way that every other political
movement is beaten -- by out-organizing it. The only thing that will beat
ID/creationism (and all its future derivatives) is an informed public that
makes it clear to everyone that it does not want a fundamentalist Christian
theocracy, wont support it, wont allow it, and will do whatever it takes to
prevent it.
==
http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/07-05-23.html#feature creation museum
==
Ken Ham, who holds a B.S. in applied science from the University of
Queensland, is author of titles such as The Lie: Evolution, and
Walking Through Shadows: Finding Hope in a World of Pain.
==
Intellectual Diversity and Inerrancy of the Bible
The Missouri State House of representatives has passed an
"intellectual diversity" act designed to preserve "intellectual
diversity" at state universities and colleges. This certainly sounds
like a laudable goal.
That is, until one reads the actual language of the act, which
mandates that schools take steps to "include intellectual diversity
concerns in the institution' s guidelines on teaching and program
development and such concerns shall include but not be limited to the
protection of religious freedom including the viewpoint that the Bible
is inerrant." The bill provides that schools disseminate "best
practices to ensure that conflicts between personal beliefs and
classroom assignments that may contradict such beliefs can be resolved
in a manner that achieves educational objectives without requiring a
student to act against his or her conscience" or students and faculty
may be able to take legal action.
Think about this. It means that a biology professor who teaches
evolution could be sued if he does not also teach "creationism. " How
about the astronomy professor who teaches that the universe is more
than six thousand years old? Same story. How about the women's
studies professor who teaches about discrimination against women?
That would doubtless offend the belief that the husband is the head of
the woman ("But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of
every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of
Christ." 1 Corinthians 11:3). Thus political science classes must
give equal time to the inerrancy of this particular scriptural passage.
Unsurprisingly, this whole mess arose from a student feeling that her
homophobic beliefs were disrespected in a social work class. While the
particular school of social work in question has been exposed for
having systemic problems independent of this student complaint, the
base issue that the legislature is addressing will add the requirement
that homophobia and non-scientific, religious views of gender and
sexual orientation be taught in all university classes regardless of
scientific evidence or opposing personal, non-religious viewpoints of
other students.
The Inside Higher Education article includes comments from the
American Association of University Professors that correctly observes
that this law, if passed, would convert the system of secular
education in Missouri into religious schools:
[Cary] Nelson, of the AAUP, said that it was "particularly remarkable
that the bill includes belief in the literal truth of the Bible under
the heading of intellectual diversity." He added that "requirements
for balance in the curriculum and respect for intellectual diversity,
in hiring, and in public speeches on the campus coupled with
reporting requirements effectively mean that Missouri would no
longer have any system of secular public higher education. Missouri's
fine universities would become religious schools if this bill were to
be approved by the Senate."
Similar laws are reported to be pending several states. They are part
of David Horowitz' pernicious attack on universities that has the goal
of injecting political control over scientific and academic inquiry.
Thinly disguised as "academic diversity" these initiatives in fact are
designed to prevent free academic inquiry and discussion. They are
part of the continuing, coordinated right-wing attack on free
expression and science.
==
Upton Sinclair said, When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in
a flag and carrying a cross.
==
Michael Weinstein With God on Our Side:
One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in the US Military
==
http://wiki.cotch.net/index.php/Fossil_Sorting
==
Not to "believe" in evolution you have to believe:

1) that genetic traits aren't heritable (which even
you must know is false, since you got your hair & eye
color from your parents through Mendelian
inheritance) ;

2) that populations of reproducing organisms of the
same species don't have a variety of different traits
(also obviously false, since you can see that humans
for instance have different hair & eye colors, are
taller, shorter, etc & that these characteristics are
at least partly heritable);

3) that in each generation of this population some of
these differing heritable traits don't affect the
relative survival & reproduction success rate of
individuals in the population (again plainly false
since it's obvious that the fastest cheetahs will
probably catch more gazelles & that speed is a
heritable trait passed on to the better fed young
cheetahs).

Why should inherited changes stop at some artificial
barrier? Even creationists admit that evolution
transforms species into new species, genera &
families. The "baraminologist" quoted here suggests
the biblical barrier of "kinds" may be as high as the
level of Orders, except for Man. That means that he
would allow for evolution within the rest of the Order
Primates, for instance.

But in fact no such barrier exists or can exist. The
relative frequencies of genes & alleles in an evolving
genome doesn't stop changing with each generation when
the changes accumulate enough to reach an Order
boundary. To the genome of organisms, there are no
barriers except what's physically possible & various
kinds of mutations & other changes (such as borrowing
genetic material from viruses & bacteria) keep
happening all the time.

The reservoir of genetic variation is available for
environmental changes to make previously neutral or
even unbeneficial traits suddenly favorable.
==
Presidential candidates Brownback, former
Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Colorado Rep.
Tom Tancredo do not believe in evolution.
==
There are actually two separate and different stories of
creation contained in Genesis. The first is given in
Genesis 1: 1-2:4 while the second is given in Genesis
2: 4-24. That these two stories are actually different
(mutually exclusive accounts) we will show below:

According to the first creation story the whole
universe was made in six days, while on the seventh
day, God rested. The table below gives the order of
creation as described in those verses:

Day Relevant Verses Things Created

One: Genesis 1:1-5 Light
Two: Genesis 1:6-8 Firmament (the sky)
Three: Genesis 1:9-13 Dry Land, Seas, Plants
Four: Genesis 1:14-19 Sun, Moon and the stars also
Five: Genesis 1: 20-23 Fish, sea monsters, winged
bird
Six: Genesis 1:24-31 Cattle, creeping things, beasts
and finally man

Given below is the second story.

Genesis 2:4-9, 18-19
In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the
heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the
earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up, for
the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth,
and there was no man to till the ground; but a mist
went up from the earth and watered the whole face of
the ground, then the LORD God formed man of dust from
the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath
of life; and man became a living being. And the LORD
God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there
he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the
ground the LORD God made to grow every tree that is
pleasant to the sight and good for food...
...
Then the LORD God said, "It is not good that the man
should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for
him." So out of the ground the LORD God formed every
beast of the field and every bird of the air, and
brought them to the man to see what he would call
them; and whatever the man called every living
creature, that was its name.

The two stories contradict each other in many areas:

* The order of creation: The reader will notice
that the order of creation is completely different
from the first story in Genesis (Note the wording
italicized). Man, according to Genesis chapter two,
was made before any plants and animals were created.
There is no ambiguity with the wording. It is clearly
stated that there were no plants of any kind when man
was first created. It was also clearly stated that
animals were created after man was created as helpers
for the human! According to Genesis chapter one,
plants created in day three and animals in day five
and six with man being the last item of creation on
the sixth day.

* The creation of man and woman. According to
Genesis 1:27 man and woman were created
simultaneously.

Genesis 1:27
So God created man in his own image, in the
image of God he created him; male and female he
created them.
Yet the story in Genesis 2 was that woman was
created as an afterthought; only after God was unable
to find a suitable helper for Adam among the animals:

Genesis 2:20-22
The man gave names to all cattle, and to the
birds of the air, and to every beast of the field; but
for the man there was not found a helper fit for him.
So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the
man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and
closed up its place with flesh; and the rib which the
LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman

* Other contradictions. There are other
contradictions[ 1] between the two stories which we
will simply list down here:

o In the first account, water first covered
the earth and dry land was not made until the third
day (Genesis 1:9-13). In the second account, the earth
was dry land before a mist came up from the earth and
watered the whole earth (Genesis 2:5-6)
o The first story tells of the creation of
the universe in seven days. Yet the second story
implies that all was created in a single day[2]
(Genesis 2:4 In the day that the Lord God made the
earth and the heavens)
o In the first story, the man and woman was
allowed to eat any fruit (Genesis 1:29 and every tree
with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food),
yet in the second story he is prohibited from eating
the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil (Genesis 2:17 & 3:3).
o The reference to God in the first account
was simply Elohim (normally translated as God) while
in the second account the creator is always referred
to as Yahweh Elohim (usually translated as Lord God).[3]
==
If today you can take a thing like evolution and make it a crime to teach it
in the public school, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the
private schools, and the next year you can make it a crime to teach it to the
hustings or in the church. At the next session you may ban books and the
newspapers. Soon you may set Catholic against Protestant and Protestant
against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the minds of men.
If you can do one you can do the other. Ignorance and fanaticism is ever busy
and needs feeding. Always it is feeding and gloating for more. Today it is the
public school teachers, tomorrow the private. The next day the preachers and
the lectures, the magazines, the books, the newspapers. After a while, your
honor, it is the setting of man against man and creed against creed until with
flying banners and beating drums we are marching backward to the glorious ages
of the sixteenth century when bigots lighted fagots to burn the men who dared
to bring any intelligence and enlightenment and culture to the human mind.
-- Clarence Darrow, "Scopes Trial" courtroom speech, July 13, 1925
==
Unintelligent Design by Mark Perakh anticreation
==
Mo. State Bill Could Force Religion into College
Apr. 18, 2007
The Missouri House of Representatives recently passed a bill to protect
intellectual diversity in college classrooms. But the bill gives special
protection for Christian fundamentalism.
The Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act (HB 213) purports to defend the
academic freedom of college students and professors who wish to present
different viewpoints than those commonly espoused on campus without fear of
discrimination.
Protected viewpoints include religious beliefs, as the bill states
institutions must take steps to "include intellectual diversity concerns in
the institution's guidelines on teaching and program development and such
concerns shall include but not be limited to the protection of religious
freedom including the viewpoint that the Bible is inerrant." (emphasis added)
Professors must develop "methods for disseminating best practices to ensure
that conflicts between personal beliefs and classroom assignments that may
contradict such beliefs can be resolved in a manner that achieves educational
objectives without requiring a student to act against his or her conscience"
or students and faculty may be able to take legal action.
The bill was inspired by Emily Brooker, a Missouri State University student
who sued the school for alleged violations of her First Amendment rights.
According to the Columbia Missourian, Brooker, a Christian, was assigned a
project in a social work class to draft a letter to the Missouri General
Assembly in support of gay adoption. She refused based on her beliefs and sued
the university with help from the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal
group. The college reached an out-of-court settlement with Brooker last
November.
Coincidentally, the complaint was prompted by a visit to Missouri University
by David Horowitz, an ultra-conservative pundit who fights against what he
calls the "liberal bias" of the majority of professors teaching today. He has
championed an Academic Bill of Rights to promote "an academic environment
where decisions are made irrespective of one's personal political or religious
beliefs."
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has strongly
criticized HB 213. In fact, "There is a coalition of groups working against
this bill and others like it in other states. It is called the Free Exchange
on Campus Coalition," stated Nicole M. Byrd, AAUP Government Relations
Associate, in an interview with Humanist Network News.
Byrd explained that for the bill to become law, it must be approved by the
Missouri Senate and governor. "So far there is no word on the bill in the MO
Senate. The procedure is that it goes to the education committee first. It
could die in committee, it could make it to a floor vote.... [It's] too soon
to tell."
"All of these 'Academic Bill of Rights' seem to use the language of
'diversity' to favor views that lack academic support," said Matt Cherry,
executive director of the Institute for Humanist Studies. "But this is the
first piece of legislation I've seen that specifically singles out Biblical
inerrancy for special protection from intellectual challenge."
Many professors at Missouri State University are opposed to the bill. In a
column she published in the University News, Patricia Brodsky, professor of
foreign languages and literature at the University of Missouri-Kansas City,
wrote: "All higher education institutions in Missouri have policies and
procedures that deal effectively with alleged faculty misconduct. In Missouri
and throughout the United States, proven cases of faculty political misconduct
are rare or non-existent. There is no widespread problem which legislation
needs to 'solve.'"
Brodsky goes on to state that almost identical legislation has been introduced
in Virginia, Georgia, Montana and South Dakota, while similar bills have been
defeated in two dozen states
==
Accurate statement of ID?
"An unknown thing did an unknown thing using unknown
methods at an unknown time."
==
THE authoritative "Scientific Creationist" . Henry Morris, in 1995 said:
"Since the earth rotates on its axis, the sun could only
be made to 'stand still' relative to earth by stopping
earth's rotation." ... "This was surely a unique miracle,
but not beyond the capabilities of the Creator of the
sun and moon and planets. He started their motions, has
maintained them through the ages, and is able to change
them at will."
==
Twenty states are considering changing the way evolution is taught in order
to include creationism or intelligent design. Only 13 percent of Americans in
a 2004 Gallup poll, when asked for their views on human origins, said life
arose from the strictly natural process of evolution. More than 38 percent
said they believed God guided evolution, and 45 percent said the Genesis
account of creation was a true story.
==
NASHVILLE - Sen. Raymond Finney proposes to use the legislative process
to get an answer to the question of whether the universe was created by a
"Supreme Being."
Under Senate Resolution 17, introduced by the Maryville Republican, the
answer would come from state Education Commissioner Lana Seivers "in
report form" no later than Jan. 15, 2008.
==
In this case, of the trace fossils of raindrops in various geologic strata,
the creationist basically says, "Don't bother me with the observational
facts, I've already made up my mind based on my religious doctrine."
==
Wikipedia
"Vertebrate animals that dominated terrestrial ecosystems for over 160m years,
first appearing approximately 230m years ago."

Conservapedia
"They are mentioned in numerous places throughout the Good Book. For example,
the behemoth in Job and the leviathan [in Isaiah are [almost certainly
references to dinosaurs."
==
Constitutionality of creationism resolution questioned 3/2007
Nashville, Tenn. A Democratic state senator wants to know whether a
Republican colleague's questions to the state education commissioner about
creationism are unconstitutional.
Sen. Shea Flinn, D-Memphis, has asked Attorney General Bob Cooper whether the
request violates a provision in the Tennessee Constitution that bans religious
tests for public office holders.
''The resolution in question requests our commissioner of the Department of
Education to opine 'conclusively' on the origin of our universe and the
existence of a Supreme Being,'' Flinn said in his request to the attorney
general.
Sen. Raymond Finney, R-Maryville, has sponsored a resolution to ask Education
Commissioner Lana Seivers whether the universe ''has been created or has
merely happened by random, unplanned, and purposeless occurrences.''
Finney said he wants the department to say there's no scientific proof for the
theory of evolution and to let schools teach creationism or intelligent design.
''Is there a creator? If yes, why are we afraid to teach creationism?'' Finney
said earlier this week. ''And if the answer is 'well, we can't tell,' then why
are we prohibiting an alternative theory?''
Flinn asked whether the resolution would violate the U.S. Constitution or the
Tennessee Constitution.
Article 1 of the state constitution holds that ''no political or religious
test ... shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public
trust under this State.''
Flinn didn't immediately return a phone call Thursday seeking elaboration on
why he's challenging the resolution. However, Finney said he didn't know if
the legislation is constitutional and is unsure about trying to pass it this
year.
''Everybody is jumping the gun on this and getting upset for nothing. I have
it in there ... but I probably don't have time this year,'' said Finney, a
65-year-old retired physician who said he has found no scientific proof of
evolution.
Finney's resolution would not need approval from the Democratic-controlled
House or the governor. Republicans hold a one-seat advantage in the Senate.
Education Department spokeswoman Rachel Woods has said the department would
work to formulate answers to Finney's resolution if it passes the Senate.
Creationism is not part of the state's biology curriculum but schools can
include it in elective religious studies, social studies and humanities
courses.
The state Board of Education not the Department of Education oversees any
changes to the curriculum, Woods said.
The East Tennessee town of Dayton was the home of the 1925 Tennessee ''Monkey
Trial'' that pitted evolution against the biblical creation story and resulted
in the conviction of biology teacher John T. Scopes for teaching evolution.
Scopes, a Dayton teacher, was convicted of violating a state law that forbade
teaching evolution and was fined $100. The Tennessee Supreme Court reversed
the conviction on the narrow ground that only a jury trial could impose a fine
of more than $50. It did not rule on the constitutionality of the law. The
state repealed the law more than 40 years later, in 1967.
Senate Minority Leader Jim Kyle, D-Memphis, speculated that Finney is using
the measure to gain political traction in advance of his 2008 re-election bid.
''This to me is an effort directed to a niche political group that he's trying
to ingratiate himself to as he starts his re-election campaign,'' Kyle said.
Kyle said he will defer to the attorney general on constitutional questions
about the resolution.
Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey disagreed with Kyle suggestion of political
motivations.
''Raymond doesn't do it like that, he just does what's in his heart,'' Ramsey
said.
Ramsey, R-Blountville, said he agrees with Finney's objectives.
''Obviously I believe in the supreme being: I believe in God and I believe
Jesus is my savior,'' Ramsey said.
''He's just trying to make the point that creationism is an alternative to
evolution, that there's two different views out there,'' he said.
==
http://csharp.com/starlight.html creation and astronomy
==
Hedges' "American Fascists:
The Christian Right and the war on America"
==
> First I will apologize for giving the wong impression to those of
> you who took my intro wrong. I thought I would just do a basic
> intro of who I was,and where I stood on the issue,

Have you done this yet? What *do* you think is a true and accurate
accounting of the world's history? How old is the Earth? How much
diversity do you accept as descended from a common ancestor? As far
as I can recall, and admittedly, I've been away a few days and rushed
through the backlog, all you've presented so far is a litany of
objections to evolution. That's what you disbelieve, not where you stand.

> I will briefly outline the why I fell off the evolution wagon,
> especially calling it "fact"

Funny, given by your own admission, you're not educated on relevant
matters, why would you take a position on or off the bandwagon? When
I don't understand a topic, I prefer to remain neutral on it. I would
never be so arrogant as to discount the opinions of professional
scientists on a subject I hadn't studied thoroughly.

> Abiogenesis- This Hypothesis has no more proof than creationist
> have proof of God.

If there was "proof" (as if that was even a legitimate scientific
concept), would you know? Again, you admit you're not educated on
these matters, but you're certain that no such evidence exists? How
would you know if there was support for the idea or not? How do you
justify to yourself declaring that there is no support when you
haven't even looked?

> It is not testable in my opinion as we cannot recreate the Earths
> climate and atmospheric conditions of 2-3 billion years back if
> that is the case. What tests have been tried have been nothing
> short of failed. Even Millers experiment.

Three outright false statements.

1. We DO know what the conditions were like 2-3 billion years ago.
Not that this is relevant to abiogenesis which took place over 4
billion years ago, but that's just more examples of how you haven't
looked in the matter enough to even have decided. We also know what
conditions were like at the time of abiogenesis by examining the
chemistry of rocks that were formed during that time. For instance,
the lowest and oldest geological layers contain unoxidized metals that
couldn't possibly have formed under an oxygen containing atmosphere.
Above these are layers of partially oxidized materials, as the
atmosphere slowly developed more oxygen, at the same time (by purest
coincidence, I must assume creationists believe) as the oxygen
producing cyanobacteria first appear in the fossil record. Layers of
cyanobacteria miles wide appear in the fossil record. They have to be
near the surface, they're photosynthetic, but there's not a trace of
anything other than bacteria in these layers as the world oxidizes.
No fish bones. No bird footprints. No pollen. Not so much as a
stray hair or feather. What is the creationist explanation of this?
Do they have one? Apparently not because I've been asking for one for
over two decades with no response yet.

2. What is a "failed" experiment? Experiments are designed to tell
us something, regardless of their result. No result from an
experiment can be considered a failure. The only "failure" that an
experiment can have is if it turns out to be poorly designed.
Abiogenesis experiments have been remarkably successful. Sometimes
they tell us how life might have formed. Sometimes they eliminate
possibilities. Either is successful.

To date, we've found much experimental evidence of how life could
form. We know the RNA can act as a catalyst and genetic code at the
same time, opening the possibility of the RNA world scenario. We've
experimented with numerous potential RNA precursors. Some have been
eliminated, others remain viable candidates.

You, of course, know none of this, but don't mind lying by claiming
all the experiments "failed".

3. Ah, the Miller experiment, a failure. Sure, if you're completely
ignorant of history. At the time of the Miller, the creationists were
loudly proclaiming Vitalism as an ongoing concept. In particular,
some chemicals simply could not be made naturally, they had to have
been made by God. The Miller-Urey experiment showed that those
chemicals could, in fact, form naturally. The creationists did what
they always do, moved the goalposts, declared "That doesn't show cells
could form!" and declared their defeat a victory.

Creationists have been wrong at every step of the process of
investigating the history of life. It is the one and only 100%
successful correleation in the business! The Millery-Urey experiment
showed that they were wrong in what they claimed then. There is no
conceivable standard by which it could be called a failure.

> Evolution- First the fossil record. It is a case of fill in the
> gaps,

Is it? Funny, we seem to have LOTS of filled gaps. Here's a short
list of a very few of the more notable transitions creationists like
to pretend we're still searching for:

http://www.talkorig ins.org/faqs/ faq-transitional .html

Note that this is just vertebrates, which aren't the best fossilizing
group of animals around. Mollusks make this record look pathetic indeed.

Tell me, how many more transitions do we need before you decide it's
not full of gaps? Is there a number of transitions that will do it or
is this just an empty denial on your part?

> The fossil record I do not believe backs Darwins theory at all.

That's nice. Since you've admitted you don't actually know much about
it, why does your not believing it have any relevance?

> Too many gaps, not enough intermediate or transitional fossils,
> what fossils science says are transitional, need transitional
> fossils them selves.

How many intermediates and transitions is enough? And the last part
is pretty meaningless. Anytime you find a fossil M filling a gap
between A and Z, you're going to make two gaps instead of one and
"need" more transitions. If this is you're standard, you will NEVER
be satisified until every thing that has ever lived on earth has a
fossil for us, which is, of course, impossible since most animals do
not fossilize. You've set yourself up an unassailable position, but
also a meaningless one.

Look at the link I presented earlier. Just look at the
reptilian/mammal transition. It's one of the best documented
transitions in the fossil record. Tell me, do we have enough links?
How many more do we need? Where is the huge gap between mammals and
reptiles?

Don't tell me there are too many gaps, POINT TO SOME!

If you can't point to some gaps, how do you know there are too many?

> Now I am watching as science is starting to go to the hypothesis
> of punctuated Equilibrium to explain these gaps.

Nope. Punctuated equilibrium address species/species gaps.
Creationists have long accepted that species/species transitions do
occur. Well, most of them do. There are some holdouts still
pretending that they don't. After all, they need massive, MASSIVE
amounts of speciation to make a few of the smaller problems in the Ark
nonsense go away. They need more, faster, and more diverse speciation
than science does, hows that for irony?

Back to PE, as I said, it doesn't even apply to the large type of gaps
that creationists make a big deal about. While scientists claim it
applies only to the kind of gaps creationists admit are crossed
regularly, creationists attack it as if it were meant to cover large
gaps scientists have never applied it to (and, indeed, couldn't).
Creationists do like to lie about it, though. Probably because they
have nothing accurate to say.

> I will appreciate learning how this was testable.

Real PE or the fake PE creationists complain about? Real PE ha been
tested by observing geneflow in living populations and seeing how
small populations develop faster than large. Thus, speciation events
are more likely to occur in small, isolated populations. Since
individuals from small populations are less likely to fossilize than
individuals from large, it shows that species/species transitions are
unlikely to fossilize.

Larger transitions take longer, so PE is of no help in explaining,
say, a gap between mammals and reptiles. If there was such a gap.
Which there isn't.

So, your objection to evolution doesn't even apply. Doesn't it bother
you that the people you've been getting information from have been
lying through their teeth?

> The Cambrian explosion itself makes stretch's Darwins theory to
> its limit.

Darwin's been dead for over a century. Why keep bringing his name
into it? Science isn't an exercise in authority.

> The Cambrian explosion was actually 500+ million years ago,
> (correct me if have this date wrong) and the fossil evidence of
> most of todays major animal phyla suddenly appears here,

About then. Note that it's the first appearance of hard-parts, not
the first appearance of animal life, though. Trace fossils show that
animals existed much earlier than that. It's hard to judge what
animals made those trace fossils, but the diversity of traces shows
that animals were quite common before the sudden development of hard
parts.

> How do we explain this,

What seems to have happened is a sudden influx of dissolved calcium
gave animals a new resource to exploit. Once it was available, hard
parts became easy to evolve and they were grafted on numerous,
pre-existing body plans. There are several possible sources of
calcium, including the end of Snowball Earth...

> and why is there not more evolutionary change in these animals in
> the last 500 million years?

More? MORE?

There is NOTHING from the Cambrian explosion alive today. NOTHING.
The oldest existant genus on earth are the /Lingula/ Brachiopods and
they don't show up until millions of years later.

Insects are the most diverse group of life on the planet and they
weren't present. All insect life, every beetle, every moth, every fly
and bee and ant, evolved later. That's not much evolutionary change
in your book?

The chordates (proto-vertebrates) alive then were hardly more than
worms with stiffened nerve chords. There were no amphibians, no
reptiles, certainly no mammals or birds. There weren't even any fish!
Is the development of all vertebrate life between agnatha and
giraffes not much change in your book?

EVERYTHING has changed since then. Not a single modern mollusk,
vertebrate, arthropod, brachiopod, or even sponge alive today is found
in the Cambrian explosion.

So, if the entire diversity of modern life "isn't much change", then
sure, there hasn't been much change and, gee, I can't explain why
giraffes are nearly identical to Cambrian worms with stiff spinal
nerves. Evolution is clearly doomed.

> As for dating fossils. Do we not date fossils by the strata it is
> found in,

Not if we can help it. We date strata independently if at all
possible. Sometimes it isn't and we have to engage in relative
dating. Funny how that always works anyway.

There is a consistent pattern to the fossil record. We can date
things relatively because of this. If creationism were true, if
dating things by their strata were impossible, we wouldn't be able to
recover that pattern to begin with. Why do we never find dolphins and
icthyosaurs together? If we find a layer with ichthyosaurs in it, we
know what kinds of fossils were going to find (middle and late
dinosaurs, highly developed ammonites, very few, undiverse nautilus,
etc.) and what we're not going to find (anything like a modern mammal,
any Cambrian explosion species, etc.).

Why do these patterns exist? Why don't we find dolphins and
ichthyosaurs together? Ever? They're nearly identical in body shape.
They lived in the same habitat (unless you can explain how an
air-breathing animal can live anywhere but the surface of the ocean).
Every single creationist explanation ever offered for fossil sorting
demands that dolphins and ichthyosaurs be found in the same layers all
the time.

Funny, it hasn't happened even once.

For more information on the complete and total failure of creationists
to deal with fossil sorting issues, see:

http://wiki. cotch.net/ index.php/ Fossil_Sorting

So, no, we don't date fossils that way much, and if we did, funny how
it keeps working.

> and date the strata by how old we think the rock should be to be
> at that level?

Nope. Ages of layers are determined by numerous different dating
methods, all of which creationists reject by reflex, but none of which
can they find any real problem with. (Usually, all they can be
bothered to do is attack carbon dating, a method not even used on
actual fossils.)

Worse for creationists, even if they could explain how all the
different dating methods were wrong, how is it they are all
identically wrong and a sample dated using three different applicable
methods produces dates in the same range? The level of coincidence
this would require is staggering, but creationists ignore the problem
totally.

> Is this circular reasoning to a degree.

It would be if we used it, but it's a creationists strawman, a lie
they tell because they have no truth.

> I know I am going to hear about the different dating methods,

Ah, so you knew your statement was a lie! If there are methods, at
all, your earlier statement becomes false. Even if you don't like or
disagree with the methods, the mere fact that they exist prevents
dating from being circular, so your earlier complaint is, what, a
knowing falsehood on your part or simply a truely horrible case of
double-think?

> and we discuss that also in more depth too, but I think there is
> sufficent reason to be honest that even they are suspect at worst,

Um, yeah. Let's discuss this in depth. Because they aren't at all
suspect and they give consistent results between them.

> and based off again a predetermined setting.

Yes, we look at reality and let it predetermine the settings.

We didn't decide how old the Earth was and work out how to calibrate
our dating methods to account for it. Quite the opposite. We
calibrated the methods using known constants and then determined how
old the earth was from them.

But feel free to bring up all kinds of flaws that mean we can't trust
numerous dating systems.

> Such as presuming the Carbon level of the ewarth has always been
> constant and the same as today. That is to me a fairly big
> assumption

No, it's a big creationist lie!

First of all, carbon dating requires unfossilized material. It is
never used on fossils. I repeat NEVER USED ON FOSSILS. It is only
used on relatively recent, unfossilized material. As such, it is
utterly irrelevant to dating the age of the earth. Funny how
creationists lie about it all the time and claim otherwise. Almost
like the have no truth.

Second, we do not assume Carbon 14 is produced at the same rate
through history. In fact, scientists have long known that this is not
the case. So, creationists are lying by telling you we just assume
it. Another lie from the self-appointed purveyors of truth.

Keep in mind, these are not controversial lies. This is not something
on which you can have a legitimate difference of opinion. We DO NOT
ASSUME THE RATE OF PRODUCTION IS CONSTANT. WE DO NOT DATE FOSSILS
WITH RADIOCARBON. WE DO NOT MOSTLY DATE FOSSILS FROM THEIR STRATA.

All of what you have presented is a string of non-controversial lies.
It's what we call attacking a strawman. The creationists lie about
what evolution claims, show flaws in their false "evolution", then
declare victory.

Why don't they talk about what science actually claims? Well, now
there's a good question.

We do not assume that the rate of Carbon 14 production has been
constant. Quite the opposite, we know it has varied considerably. We
have spent many years callibrating Carbon-14 dating (it's one of the
few radioactive dating systems that does need callibration) . We take
events of known dates, examine material associated with them, and then
we know the picture of carbon-14 production at that time.

One of the methods of callibration we use is to check organic
materials caught in ice. Since ice is deposited in a regular pattern,
this gives us a nice picture of the past 10,000 years at least. let
us know why this callibration doesn't work. Let us know why the
carbon dating method you are so sure is wrong nonetheless always gives
us older dates as we get further down the record of ice.

> Next- Biology,Chemistry- This is admittedly a weak area of
> knowledge for me,

Um...

Given you've done nothing so far but reveal total ignorance of the
subjects you've brought up, I shudder at the thought of an area you
consider particularly weak.

> but I will try and let you guys have at me.

I'd rather play in areas you feel confidant in, though seemingly you
have no reason to be confidant in anything relevant.

> I am not a great fan of Behe's theory of irreducable complexity

Good, as it's nonsense.

> as I believe that he assumed too much in stating none of this
> could have happened through natural selection.

Under oath, he testified that he'd made a computer program to show how
impossible it was for IC systems to evolve, but even stacking the deck
against natural selection, he couldn't delay his own simulation from
doing what he claimed was impossible in a very short space of time.
Ooops.

> I believe it is a theory worth looking at in places.

It was looked at seriously and rejected 150 years ago. Framing it in
terms of biochemistry instead of gross anatomy hasn't removed any of
the flaws that led to it being rejected back then. Behe certainly
hasn't dealt with any of the flaws. Looking at it further is a waste
of time until he does.

> I do however think that specified compelexity is much harder
> for evolutionist to deal with.

I'd say it's even easier to sleep through, actually. Other than
proclaiming life has this mysterious specified complexity, he still
can't define it in any method that is simultaneously:

1. Testible
2. Not already known to be false.

Do let us know how we can tell specified complexity from ordinary
complexity and why it should be hard to evolve.

> And I would like to hear your explanations of how this could
> happen through Darwins theory of evolution.

How about the modern theory of evolution instead of Darwins? I mean,
nobody's used Darwins since the 50's...

But until you tell us what it actually is, we can't tell you how it
evolved.

Dembski's definitions are all circular. He says it's what can't
evolve naturally, then says life has it, so can't evolve naturally,
but that's what he was trying to prove, not a given.

> Similarity shows relationship or common ancestory?

Nope, specific types of similarity show relationship and descent. For
instance, the marsupial mole is very similar to the European and
American moles, as is the mole-rat. They aren't closely related and
their gross morphological similarity is the result of parallel
environments. Again, you make a strawman of evolution and attack it
instead of the real thing.

> This one I buy and don't buy.

That clears everything up.

> Traits a which I have dicussed some with Bradcap, who was
> decent enough to email me and explain what I had done to come off
> wrong, and give me a second chance to try this. I believe in
> inherited traits, to the extent that obviously we can see them
> every day between parents and offspring, even cousins. But to take
> that all the way back to say that it shows all creatures have one
> common ancestor is stretching things.

If that was the argument, I'd agree. It isn't.

We're talking about a specific pattern of genetic similarity
paralleling phylogeny and the total failure of cross-taxa hybrids to
occur. In a created world, there's no reason why gryphons and pegasus
couldn't exist. In an evolved world, they cannot, because they share
features derived from unrelated groups.

It's called the twin-nested heirarchy and it's the most powerful
evidence of common descent there is. I can discuss it at length, but
I've been writing this email for over three hours and I'm sick, so
rapidly running out of steam. If you want to discuss it, it would be
better to start a new thread.

> Example man and Chimps. Our DNA or genetics are 98% identical, and
> the other 2% have little to do anatomy, and are considered fairly
> trivial.

Kind of like the differences between humans and chimps have little to
do with anatomy and are fairly trivial. Really, it mostly comes down
to some timing in the development process (Chimps shut off fetal
development at birth, humans have a genetic parasite stuck in the gene
that's supposed to shut off fetal development at that point, so the
development continues well after birth, resulting in relatively larger
brains, larger size, etc.) and darker hair. We just aren't that
different. Let me know what huge, unbridgeable gap you see here.

> I did ask Bradcap this, but feel free to jump me where I am wrong,
> Chimps have very predictible scripted tendencies

Ever looked at a girl and felt your pulse race? Welcome to the world
of having very predictible, scripted tendencies. Chimps also have
unpredictible, learning-based tendencies. Just like us. Our larger
brains give us more of the latter, which lets us override the former
(should we choose to do so, most of us just keep looking at the girl),
but that's not a huge difference.

> and responses that supposedly evoled along with their physical
> characteristics, Humans do not.

Humans have tons of them. Your emotions are all pre-scripted physical
responses. All of them. Every single one of them. Ever backed up in
fear from an angry dog? We have instincts. Lots of them. We just
like to pretend that they're rational.

> While I believe Chimps can think and even reason to a degree, it
> is obvious to even a casual observer that they cnnot reflect on
> their thoughts or past actions, plan for the future, have not
> really developed much in the use of tools.

Uh huh. Obvious if you're not paying any attention, perhaps. Have
you so much as read any Jane Goodall?

> Most of their actions are instinctive and for the most part
> predictible in almost any given situation.

An expert in chimps, are you? Even a cat's actions aren't
particularly predictible in more than extreme situations, chimps far
less so. Sure, present an angry dog to a chimp or cat and you're
going to get the same fear reaction each time (same as we'd get from
you!), but in most situations, less extreme, the reactions are open to
intelligent consideration.

> If our Genetics are that close, how did we evolve so different,
> where did the ability to reason, analyze, plan ahead, etc.. etc..

We got lucky and had a parasite shatter one of our intelligently
designed genes that would have kept us stupid. Do creationists have
an explanation for why we have a gene that doesn't work because it's
infected with a parasite, but which if it did work, would make us as
stupid as chimps? I've been asking for a long time with no hint of an
answer from them...
==
Tails tell us we've evolved
Even though it seems humans born with tails would throw a kink in evolutionary
theory, they're the exception that proves the rule.
HUMAN BABIES BORN with tails? That may sound like a headline from the Weekly
World News, but it was the respected New Scientist magazine that recently
published a cover story about the phenomenon of evolution "running backward."
Entertainment value aside, the article represents a new twist in the
politically charged debate about evolution.
The author of "The Ancestor Within," Michael Le Page, cited the babies with
tails as a likely example of atavism, a phenomenon in which ancestral traits
suddenly reappear after thousands or even millions of years. Another example,
one remarked on by Charles Darwin, is the appearance in some human mouths of
large, ape-like canine teeth. (Stephen King, call your office.)
It's not just humans who experience these altered states. Le Page also cites
the less cringe-making example of a humpback whale with leg-like appendages
that was caught off Canada's Vancouver Island in 1919.
These and other throwbacks might seem to call into question the validity of
evolution, which has been on something of a roll lately, with a federal
judge's decision last year against a Pennsylvania school district that wanted
to teach "intelligent design" and, only this week, the decision by the Kansas
State Board of Education to repeal guidelines that said there was
"considerable scientific and public controversy" over human origins.
In fact, Le Page suggests, atavisms like tails on humans are the exceptions
that prove the evolutionary rule. Atavisms are possible, he says, because
genes for primitive traits haven't disappeared from the genome; they simply
have been switched off. In rare cases, they are switched back on (and then the
tails are promptly snipped off). Sometimes, Le Page adds, so-called reverse
evolution serves the cause of improving a species by allowing it to adapt to a
changed environment.
Atavism isn't the only explanation for the reappearance of a seemingly extinct
trait or body part. It's also possible that some life forms that have lost a
certain trait evolve it again "from scratch," through the same mutations that
produced it in the first place. After all, different species sometimes develop
similar features separately a process known as "convergent evolution."
But the existence of atavism complicates the case against evolution. Far from
undermining Darwinism, throwbacks challenge the creationist idea that every
living species emerged full-blown in its present form. Atavism is impossible
unless there's something to throw back to like an ancestor with a tail that
nobody wanted to snip off.
==
Edward Humes is the author, most recently, of "Monkey Girl: Evolution,
Education, Religion and the Battle for America's Soul" (www.edwardhumes.com).
==
Dawkins notes that earth is dominated by feats of engineering
and works of art that humans have made. Humans have thereby become
entirely accustomed to the idea that complex elegance is an
indicator of premeditated, crafted design. This is probably the
most powerful reason for the belief, held by the vast majority of
people that have ever lived, in some kind of supernatural deity.
==
"Deception by Design; The Intelligent Design Movement
in America", by Lenny Flank
==
Personally, I think engineers are more apt to see design when
there is none simply because they think in terms of design. It's
like the man who is obsessed with his hammer. Everything becomes
a nail. Well, to some engineers, every fit to the environment
becomes a design, even when the design is really not evident in
the physical evidence.
==
Unscientific American: US Almost Last in Understanding Evolution
Americans rank next-to-last on a survey of 34 nations' acceptance of evolution
as a scientific fact. (See the chart, below.) Our awareness of this scientific
reality has actually gone down over the past 20 years, no doubt as a result of
the so-called "intelligent design" movement and other Christian fundamentalist
campaigns. In fact, frequent churchgoers in the US are most likely to doubt
evolution. How will their children - and ours - become the great scientists,
doctors, and engineers of tomorrow?
The US scores well behind nine European countries in its acceptance of
scientific fact. Jon Miller, the primary author of the survey on evolution,
notes one likely cause:
"The biblical literalist focus of fundamentalism in the United States sees
Genesis as a true and accurate account of the creation of human life that
supersedes any scientific finding or interpretation. In contrast, mainstream
Protestant faiths in Europe (and their U.S. counterparts) have viewed Genesis
as metaphorical and--like the Catholic Church--have not seen a major
contradiction between their faith and the work of Darwin and other scientists."
A country that doesn't believe in evolution doesn't respect rational thought
or the scientific process. It can't produce the scientists and leaders it
needs to face the problems of the 21st Century. This is even a national
security problem, since a nation that won't face and study reality can't
defend itself. It situation should be of concern to every American.
Evolution is not a "theory" in the way that fundamentalists claim. It's
verified scientific fact, developed through a rigorous method of observation,
hypothesis, and confirmation. Some people believe things that science can't
prove. Others believe things that science has disproved. They can do that, but
they should be prepared to be challenged in an open society. (That's
particularly true if there's an extensive scientific record demonstrating that
a belief - say, that the earth was created 6,000 years ago - is false.)
As has been said often in the political debate: "You're entitled to your own
opinion, but not your own facts." A secular society must rigorously teach
facts to its children, so that it can have an educated workforce and
contribute to scientific advancement.
The Catholic Church rejects the "intelligent design" movement and
unequivocally supports the teaching of evolution. The National Council of
Churches is a progressive association that represents 55 million American
Christians, and it has taken a leadership role in resisting "ID" and other
impositions of private belief onto the public sphere. (For some reason, the
mainstream media have ignored this organization so thoroughly that I've
described them as "America's Secret Christians.")
Unfortunately, their efforts have been more than offset in this country by an
activist coalition of fundamentalists and conservative politicians. The result
is an all-out war on science that has caused scientific fact to be banned from
IMAX theaters, and resulted in a museum exhibit failing to find a corporate
sponsor.
The impact on the scientific climate in the U.S. has been so extreme that one
scientific journal, Nature, unfavorably compared the U.S. attitude toward
science with that of Islamic fundamentalists in Ahmadinejad's Iran.
It's true that literalist Islam doesn't challenge proven scientific fact the
way its Christian equivalent does. That should trouble Christian conservatives
like Gary Bauer who believe that fighting something they call "Islamofascism"
is "the defining cause of our time." But don't expect to hear from them soon,
despite the fact that Al Qaeda's ranks include a number of engineers and
doctors who spend their time thinking of ways to use science to create terror.
I support religious tolerance and respect religious expression and have my own
spiritual beliefs, but no group has the right to interfere with the common good
and our shared freedoms. Religious organizations such as the Catholic Church
and the NCC are on the right side of this debate. Perhaps that's why heavily
Catholic countries like Italy and Spain perform so much better in this survey.
Americans who are concerned about the Constitution and our social advancement
should be concerned about any attempt by a religious group to control the
public discourse, or interfere with individual freedoms, based on sectarian
belief. That includes access to medications in pharmacies or access to
scientific knowledge in schools or homes.
One last thought: Science isn't just the truth, although it deserves a
vigorous defense for that reason alone. It's also beautiful. It's tragic to
deny schoolchildren and other Americans the right to appreciate its wonders.

==
Phillip Johnson was asked the following question:
Question: You're often called the father of the intelligent design movement,
could you give us a simple definition of intelligent design?
And this was his answer:
Answer: I will give you a simple definition, because it can be defined simply.
Intelligent design is a proposition that is contrary to the officially
described neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, which Richard Dawkins was
promoting. That theory says that the entire history of life from the ultimate
origin of life on earth up through all the plants and animals, human beings,
right up to the greatest geniuses on earth today, take your choice, Bill
Clinton, John Kerry, George W. Bush, these are all products of a combination
of chance and physical or chemical law that is purely natural which is to say
unintelligent causes. There is no creator, no designer, no intelligence behind
the whole thing. That is the claim, that as far as the evidence shows, that
that is the case, that is an undesigned system operating on the basis of
chance and physical law with no intelligence whatever. The intelligent design
position, which I began to advance in the book I started in England in 1987,
that came out later as Darwin on Trial, now pretty well known, was that no,
that doesn't work. To adequately explain the origin of life and the different
kinds of living things that we see on earth today and throughout earth's
history, to adequately explain how these things came about you have to go
beyond the unintelligent physical causes that the Darwinian theory allows,
that's all that that theory allows, and acknowledge that there had to be some
intelligent cause operating in the system. If I could rename the whole thing
now I would probably call it the intelligent cause theory rather than
intelligent design, but that's alright, we've got that name and we'll stick
with it. So that's what it is, there is an intelligent cause operating in the
history of life or we wouldn't have the things that we have today. That's a
scientific proposition, it's based on the scientific evidence and nothing else.

I'm sure glad he gave a simple definition. All those words just to say "ID
means not evolution." Which is what we all knew anyway.
==
Allow intelligent design into science textbooks, lecture halls, and
laboratories, and the cost to the frontier of scientific discovery--the
frontier that drives the economies of the future--would be incalculable. I
don't want students who could make the next major breakthrough in renewable
energy sources or space travel to have been taught that anything they don't
understand, and that nobody yet understands, is divinely constructed and
therefore beyond their intellectual capacity. The day that happens, Americans
will just sit in awe of what we don't understand, while we watch the rest of
the world boldly go where no mortal has gone before.
==
Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools by
Eugenie C. Scott and Glenn Branch (Paperback
==
Although many may
not realize it, we are in the midst of a struggle to preserve sound science
education. A recent survey by the National Science Teachers Assoication
found that 30 percent of responding members had felt pressure to omit
evolution and related topics from their teaching, while 31 percent had felt
pressure to include nonscientific alternatives to evolution. It is crucial
to resist such pressure, whether it comes from parents, community groups,
administrators, or school board members.
==
In the last few years, four antievolution bills were introduced in the
Missouri legislature. In 2003, House Bills 911 and 1722 called for equal
time for "intelligent design"; in 2004, House Bill 35 called for biology
textbooks used in the state to contain "a critical analysis of origins";
and in 2006, House Bill 1266 called for "critical analysis" of any "theory
or hypothesis of biological origins" to be presented in a science
class. All of these bills died, but HB 35 received a committee hearing,
and HB 1266 was passed by a 7-6 vote by committee.
==
At Jerry Falwell's Liberty University hall
with both students and 'science' faculty. Dawkins made mince meat out
of their questions and arguments, especially his comment about
Liberty's museum having 3,000-year-old dinosaur bones. He told them they
should leave and go to a proper university!
==
1. Why do cave fish and cave salamanders have eyes, but the eyes don't work?
2. Why are there flightless bird with wings?
3. Why is so much of the DNA non-coding?
4. Why is that same non-coding DNA found in
closely related organisms?
==
A simple method for rating potentially revolutionary contributions to biology.
1. A -5 point starting credit.
2. 1 point for every statement that is widely agreed on to be false.
3. 2 points for every statement that is clearly vacuous.
4. 3 points for every statement that is logically inconsistent.
5. 5 points for each such statement that is adhered to despite careful
correction.
6. 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a
widely accepted real experiment.
7. 5 points for each word in all capital letters (except for those with
defective keyboards).
8. 5 points for each mention of "Heackel", "Dawkin", "Steven Gould" or
"Eldridge".
9. 10 points for each claim that genetics or evolution is fundamentally
misguided (without good evidence).
10. 10 points for pointing out that you have gone to school, as if this were
evidence of sanity. An extra 5 points for citing your engineering, dentistry,
medical or computing degree as authoritative in biology. An extra 5 points for
a pseudomedical qualification (such as homeopathy or holistic massage).
11. 10 points for beginning the description of your theory by saying how long
you have been working on it.
12. 10 points for mailing your theory to someone you don't know personally and
asking them not to tell anyone else about it, for fear that your ideas will be
stolen.
13. 10 points for offering prize money to anyone who proves and/or finds any
flaws in your theory, or to anyone who can prove evolution is true.
14. 10 points for each statement along the lines of "I'm not good at genetics,
but my theory is conceptually right, so all I need is for someone to express it
in terms of equations".
15. 10 points for arguing that a current well-established theory is "only a
theory", as if this were somehow a point against it.
16. 10 points for arguing that while a current well-established theory
predicts phenomena correctly, it doesn't explain "why" they occur, or fails to
provide a "mechanism".
17. 10 points for each claim that Punctuated Equilibrium Theory, or some
similar recent view in biology, is evidence of creationism (or some similar
view such as Intelligent Design), or claim that modern biology is
fundamentally misguided (without good evidence).
18. 10 points for claiming that your work is on the cutting edge of a
"paradigm shift" and that we need to go beyond Darwinism.
19. 20 points for suggesting that you or your hero deserve a Nobel prize.
20. 20 points for every use of religious or science fiction works or myths as
if they were fact.
21. 20 points for defending yourself by bringing up (real or imagined)
ridicule accorded to your past theories.
22. 20 points for each use of the phrase "hidebound reactionary" or "Darwinist
establishment" or cognates.
23. 20 points for each use of the phrase "self-appointed defender of the
orthodoxy" or cognates.
24. 30 points for suggesting that a famous figure secretly disbelieved in a
theory which he or she publicly supported (e.g., that Darwin recanted on his
deathbed).
25. 30 points for suggesting that some major scientist, in his later years,
was groping his way towards the ideas you now advocate.
26. 30 points for claiming that your theories were developed by a
pre-industrial culture (without good evidence).
27. 40 points for comparing those who argue against your ideas to Nazis,
eugenicists, stormtroopers, or brownshirts.
28. 40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged in a
"conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or
suchlike.
29. 40 points for comparing yourself to Galileo, suggesting that a modern-day
Inquisition is hard at work on your case, and so on.
30. 40 points for claiming that when your theory is finally appreciated,
present-day science will be seen for the sham it truly is. (30 more points for
fantasizing about show trials in which scientists who mocked your theories will
be forced to recant, especially after their death, or for announcing the "death
of Darwinism".)
31. 50 points for claiming you have a revolutionary theory but giving no
concrete testable predictions, formal models, or exact hypotheses.
32. 10 points for every claim of lurker e-mail support.
33. 100 points for asserting that molecular evolution of complex proteins is
impossible because of the large neutral gaps that selection would have to
cross, or that there are boundaries between species or other groups of
organisms that evolution cannot breach.
==
November 8, 2006
Biologists Respond to Kansas Board of Education Election Results
Washington, DC (November 8, 2006) On Tuesday, November 7, 2006, voters in
Kansas sent a strong message when they placed control of the state Board of
Education back in the hands of members who support teaching evolution. It is
expected that the new Board will reverse a 2005 policy that permits the
teaching of intelligent design/creationism in public school science classes.
"This is great news," said AIBS president Kent Holsinger. "I know that my
colleagues in Kansas are eager to see this policy reversed." Holsinger,
acting-head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the
University of Connecticut, continued: "Intelligent design is not science and
does not belong in the science classroom. It is sad to see how much money and
time have been spent on this issue, when these resources could more
effectively have been invested in students and teachers."
Scientists and theologians recognize the intelligent design movement for what
it is; an attempt by a small group of politically motivated individuals to
mandate that their personal religious beliefs be taught in public schools.
"Evolutionary biology is not an arcane academic concept. Evolution is central
to modern science and has important real world implications. Evolutionary
biology is vitally important to biomedical research. For example, without an
understanding of evolution, doctors would not have effective antibiotics to
prescribe." Said Holsinger.
==
Answers In Genesis
However, when the interpretation of scientific data contradicts the true
history of the world as revealed in the Bible, then its the interpretation of
the data that is at fault. Its important to remember that we have limited
data, and new discoveries have often overturned previous hard facts.
==
Evolution in schools argued at candidates forum, Maryland
October, 2006
County school board candidate Thomas Dill on Thursday blasted the teaching of
evolution in schools, adding that the vast majority of adults deny the
validity of the theory.
It all adds up to the best description of evolution that Ive ever heard that
we went from goo to you via the zoo, he said.
Speaking at the Pleasant View Baptist Church, the 46-year-old carpentry
teacher appealed to a largely Christian audience, refusing to back a concept
fusing evolutionist theories with creationist beliefs.
The candidate, campaigning for the seat representing western Cecil County, was
one of three school board hopefuls to appear Thursday at a candidates forum at
the church near Port Deposit.
State candidates and county hopefuls also spoke at the forum.
Drawing applause and cheers, Dill labeled science a religion and accused
schools of discriminating against Christian beliefs.
What the deal with this is faith vs. faith, he said. Science is almost deified
in our day as a religion.
Last year, the school board approved a 10th-grade biology textbook promoting
evolution but not intelligent design, a controversial theory that living
beings are too complex to have solely evolved on their own from primitive
forms.
When asked about intelligent design, the other two candidates, Tony Wong and
Thomas McWilliams, were less forthright with their views.
McWilliams did not directly answer the question but appeared to express some
support for the theory.
I do not see an inconsistency between creationism and evolutionism, said
McWilliams, a candidate in the Elkton area. I believe the Creator has created
things in a very complex way.
But Wong, who is running in the northern county, refused to answer the
question, saying it is not his place to take a public stance on the issue.
What my personal feeling is has nothing to do with this. I have to follow the
law, he said.
==
Kristen Laird wrote on October 13, 2006 10:21 AM:"I cannot believe in this day
and age people are so blind and ignorant. I am sorry, but science is not a
religion. Science is based on theorys that are proved by living, breathing, in
your face facts. Religions are beliefs but in no way are able to be completely
proven by living breathing facts. I believe when we teach our children
science, we should be teaching them anything based on proven facts. It is the
churches job to teach religious beliefs. It is our right in this country to
make our own decisions and establish our own beliefs. We deserve access to
both the scientific facts as well as the theorys and beliefs."
Joe M. wrote on October 13, 2006 10:00 AM:"How typical and indicative of the
the country bumpkin stereotype. How do the people of Cecil County expect to
prosper economically, if the local government undermines the foundation of
math and science education. Development of Bainbridge to bring jobs into the
area? Yeah right. Intelligent people don't want their children to be taught in
a school that teaches pseudoscience and superstition as science. What a joke.
Yeah, A long haired hippie lookingwhite guy who lives in the sky, looking down
on all of us, whom is responsible for all of our accomplishments and failures,
whom has always been and always will be is more plausible and reasonable, and
from a scientific point of view, more testable and supportable via
observations, then the idea that we are evolutionary cousins of chimpanzees. "
==
CINCINNATI 7/06 - Americans who question evolution are testing a new tactic in
Ohio, arguing that schools should be required to discuss all controversial
issues from creation to stem cell research and global warming.
In what critics on Wednesday called a new attempt to bring religion into the
classroom, the Ohio State Board of Education will consider a proposal next
week that would oblige schools to teach critical thinking in all subjects.
The proposal, to be discussed on Monday by a school board subcommittee in
Columbus, is the latest gambit by those who believe Darwin's theory of
evolution should be taught as only one disputed explanation for the origin of
humankind.
==
Dembski argues that nature is rife with examples of non-random patterns of
information that he calls "complex specified information," or CSI for short.
==
The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Francis S.
Collins
Here's an excerpt from Collins new book:(Human genome project leader)
As believers, you are right to hold fast to the concept of God as Creator; you
are right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible; you are right to hold fast
to the conclusion that science offers no answers to the most pressing
questions of human existence; and you are right to hold fast to the certainty
that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.
What truths of the Bible does he mean? All of them or just some?
==
The Aztecs believed man sprouted from an ear of corn.
==
MIKE MCGAVICK Intelligent Politics?
McGavick Caters to Religious Conservatives, Backs Teaching Intelligent Design
in Public Schools
During GOP U.S. Senate candidate Mike McGavick's campaign stop in Redmond last
week, someone in the crowd asked: "If you are in the U.S. Senate, will you vote
to support the teaching of intelligent design in public schools?"
As first reported on Slog, The Stranger's blog (www.thestranger.com/blog),
McGavick did a lot of qualifying: He thinks Darwinism has more scientific
weight than intelligent design; he's not running for school board; curriculum
should be set at the state, not the federal, level. Finally, however, McGavick
stated that, yes, intelligent design should be taught in public schools. And
it's okay if it's taught in science class, he added.
"I want students to have available to them all the different theories that
could be," McGavick told the crowd at Marymoor Park on August 3. "I do believe
we should teach all theories. Education is all about different beliefs and how
they compete for our mind, and so I would never want to see limiting ideas
being taught. I want [students] to be fully informed about different views or
comparative support or lack of support. That's what being a student is all
about."
In the abstract, McGavick's rap seems reasonable, even wise; and it's probably
appealing to the highly educated types on the Eastside. Certainly, students
should be "fully informed" about different theories. However, in the context
of a question about intelligent design, McGavick's answer is deceptively naive
and faux-idealistic. While there may be some germane scientific questions about
Darwin's The Origin of Species, ID is simply a kitchen-sink attempt to raise
questionsand then offer an explanation that is shorthand for creationism.
Indeed, in throwing out the infamous Dover School District requirement that
intelligent design be provided as an alternative to evolution, Pennsylvania
U.S. District Court Judge John Jones (a Bush appointee) ruled that teaching
intelligent design in public school biology classes "violates the
Establishment Clause [of the First Amendment]...and cannot uncouple itself
from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents."
Even a red state like Kansas was uncomfortable with teaching ID. Just last
week, voters in Kansas held a de facto referendum on intelligent design by
voting out the state school-board members who passed a curriculum last year
that challenged evolution and encouraged intelligent design.
So it would seem that McGavick is more amenable to the agenda of the Christian
right than voters in Kansas and Bush-appointed judges. More precisely, McGavick
seems amenable to the agenda of the Discovery Institute, the Seattle-based
conservative think tank that developed intelligent design and stoked the
"teach the controversy" movement. McGavick's campaign contributors include a
crew that's associated with the Discovery Institute. Discovery Institute board
members Tom Alberg, Christopher Bayley, former U.S. Senator Slade Gorton, and
Michael Vaska have given a combined total of $7,300 to McGavick. (Discovery
Institute founder Bruce Chapman's wife also kicked in $250.)
When The Stranger asked McGavick's rival, incumbent Democratic Senator Maria
Cantwell, if she thought intelligent design should be taught in the public
schools, she didn't dilly-dally. She said she, "believes that intelligent
design has no place in the science curriculum of our public schools."
McGavick did not return a follow-up call. I wanted to ask him if his impulse
to err on the side of making "all the different theories" available in the
classroom came with any sort of criteria for which theories made the cut.
==
1981 Creationism Trial (McLean v. Arkansas)

McLean v. Arkansas Documentation Project
http://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/new_site/

In 1981, a remarkable court case in Arkansas pitted creationists
against pastors, priests, teachers, and scientists. "McLean et
al. vs. Arkansas" sought relief from Arkansas' Act 590, which
mandated that evolutionary biology instruction be balanced
with "creation science". Unlike the 1925 Scopes trial in
Tennessee, the Arkansas court heard testimony from a large
number of witnesses on both sides of the case. Judge Overton
ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and Act 590 was deemed
unconstitutional.

McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education
Decision by U.S. District Judge William R. Overton (1/5/1982)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html
==
CRS Statement of Belief
All members must subscribe to the following statement of belief:
1. The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is inspired
throughout, all its assertions are historically and scientifically
true in the original autographs. To the student of nature this means
that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of
simple historical truths.
2. All basic types of living things, including man, were made by
direct creative acts of God during the Creation Week described in
Genesis. Whatever biological changes have occurred since Creation
Week have accomplished only changes within the original created
kinds.
3. The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the
Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent and
effect.
|
[snip]

This is religious dogma, not science.

These are just a few examples from the most prominent YEC
organizations. It's amazing that young earth creationist try to ignore or deny
the
blatantly obvious fact that they are the ones espousing views about
science based on the distorting bias of their religious dogma, while at the
same time complaining about some alleged bias (which is quite false)
about evolution pervading geology (and astronomy).
==
It's hard to tell satire from reality. Fundamentalism is often so moronic it's
hard to satirise because it's hard to find anything that makes it more
ridiculous than it is.
==
1981 Creationism Trial (McLean v. Arkansas)

McLean v. Arkansas Documentation Project
http://www.antievolution.org/projects/mclean/new_site/

In 1981, a remarkable court case in Arkansas pitted creationists
against pastors, priests, teachers, and scientists. "McLean et
al. vs. Arkansas" sought relief from Arkansas' Act 590, which
mandated that evolutionary biology instruction be balanced
with "creation science". Unlike the 1925 Scopes trial in
Tennessee, the Arkansas court heard testimony from a large
number of witnesses on both sides of the case. Judge Overton
ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and Act 590 was deemed
unconstitutional.

McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education
Decision by U.S. District Judge William R. Overton (1/5/1982)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/mclean-v-arkansas.html
==
ICR Tenets on Creationism

The Institute for Creation Research Graduate School has a unique
statement of faith for its faculty and students, incorporating most
of the basic Christian doctrines in a creationist framework,
organized in terms of two parallel sets of tenets, related to God's
created world and God's inspired Word, respectively. Reproduced below
are the ICR Educational Philosophy and its Tenets of Scientific
Creationism and Biblical Creationism.

All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six
literal days of the creation week described in Genesis 1:1-2:3, and
confirmed in Exodus 20:8-11.

The Biblical record of primeval earth history in Genesis 1-11 is
fully historical and perspicuous, including the creation and fall of
man, the curse on the creation and its subjection to the bondage of
decay, the promised Redeemer, the worldwide cataclysmic deluge in the
days of Noah, the post-diluvian renewal of man's commission to subdue
the earth (now augmented by the institution of human govemment) and
the origin of nations and languages at the tower of Babel.

This is religious dogma, not science.

From:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/about/faith.asp
==
Grand Canyon and creation
http://home.austarnet.com.au/stear/bibliolatry_revisited_elders.htm

" in the creationist's view, the carving of the Canyon would have taken place
when the sedimentary layers were still soft, allowing the catastrophic erosion
process to quickly and easily cut through the layers".

"The evidence from the layers is consistent with their having been laid down
catastrophically, by hydrodynamic action of water - exactly as we would expect
from the global Flood of Noah."

Austin (1994, p.147) concurred with this view, stating -

"It is not clear whether the order of appearance of organisms in Grand Canyon,
or anywhere else on Earth, for that matter, is necessarily any different than a
random order which a flood might produce".

According to Austin, the time elapsed between the six days of creation and
Noah's flood was only 1,656 years (Austin, 1994, p. 65). These numbers require
that all of the billions of fossils in each of the layers of the Grand Canyon
(and, for that matter, all other fossils in so-called "flood rocks" throughout
the world) would have to have lived together during this postulated 1,656
years. This requires that the carrying capacity of the ecological niches
occupied by these organisms in the YEC "pre-flood" world would have to have
been many orders of magnitude greater than is possible in the geologist's
evolutionary world.
This raises additional problems for the YEC position. According to the Book of
Genesis, 1:1-31, the firmament (rocks?) was created on Day 2 of creation, dry
land (rocks again?) and plants on Day 3, marine animals and birds on Day 5,
and land animals, including man, on Day 6. The sources of the sediments
supposed to have been deposited by Noah's flood could have been both "created"
and "post-creation week" rocks. However "created" rocks could not be the source
of the fossils found in the "flood" rocks as all organisms should have been
created later and presumably were living in the postulated 1,656 years that
elapsed between creation and flood. According to Austin (1994, p. 57) the
Great Unconformity at the base of Grand Canyon's Paleozoic section marks the
onset Noah's flood. If the sedimentary rocks below this unconformity,the Late
Proterozoic Grand Canyon Supergroup, formed during and after Day 3 of creation
week, they should carry a record of the abundant life between creation and the
flood.

Given the requirements for the carrying capacity of the pre-flood world
discussed above, the Grand Canyon Supergroup should therefore contain a most
diverse fauna and flora and be among the most fossiliferous on Earth.
Unfortunately for the YEC position this is not the case. The only fossils
reported from the sediments of the Grand Canyon Supergroup are algal
stromatolites and scattered occurrences of obscure micro-organisms (Beus and
Morales, 2002, p. 66.). CGDV disagrees with Austin (1994) on where to place
the base of Noah's flood in the geological record of the strata of Grand
Canyon. Tasman Walker states -

"Most creation scientists place the Flood's commencement either within, or at
the base of the Grand Canyon Supergroup." (GCDV, p. 36-27.)

What were the conditions under which the "flood" rocks of Austin and Walker
were laid down?
GCDV actually illustrates some excellent evidence about the environment of
deposition of some of the Paleozoic rocks. GCDV ( pp. 48-49) has photographs
of trace fossils in the Cambrian Bright Angel Shale that Vail calls
"fossilized worm tubes". These are the products of marine animals that were
filter feeders and deposit feeders that burrowed in the mud of the Cambrian
sea and were living in place, just as their counterparts do in modern seas
today (Beus and Morales, 2003, p. 98). Many other horizons within the strata
of the Grand Canyon are replete with examples of bioturbation and animal
tracks. A well-known example is the abundant invertebrate and vertebrate trace
fossils, in the eolian deposits of the Permian Coconino Sandstone. These
dune-bedded desert sands even have well-preserved raindrop impressions (Beus
and Morales, 2003, p. 173). These occurrences all indicate that animals lived
and died in, or on, the sediments in which we now find their traces, rather
than having been transported there by catastrophic flooding, as is repeatedly
asserted by GCDV.

Tasman Walker writes -
"Before we can properly understand geology, we need to know the earth's
history. Unlike secular geologists, creationists don't need to speculate about
history because we accept the eyewitness accounts of past events, preserved in
a reliable written record the Bible." (GCDV, p. 36)

Austin SA (editor). Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe. Santee (CA):
Institute for Creation Research, 1994.

Austin SA. Trivializing creationist scholarship: A reply to Dr. W.A. Elders.
Reports of the National Center for Science Education. 1999, 19 (2): 11-14.

Austin SA and Wise KP. Nautiloid mass-kill event at a hydrothermal mound
within the Redwall Limestone (Mississippian), Grand Canyon. Abstracts with
Programs - Geological Society of America, 1995; 27 (6): 369.

Austin SA, Snelling AA and Wise KP. Canyon-length mass kill of orthocone
nautiloids, Redwall Limestone (Mississippian), Grand Canyon, Arizona.
Abstracts with Programs - Geological Society of America, 1999; 31 (7): 421.

Beus SS and Morales M (editors). Grand Canyon Geology. London and New York:
Oxford University Press, 2nd Edition, 2002.

Elders WA. Bibliolatry in the Grand Canyon. Reports of the National Center for
Science Education 1998; 18 (4): 8-15.

Elders WA Creationist Scholarship and the Grand Canyon of Arizona Reports of
the National Center for Science Education. 1999; 19 (2): 15-19.

Ferretti A and Kriz. Cephalopod Limestone Biofacies in the Silurian of the
Prague Basin, Bohemia. Palaios, (Research Letters of the Society for
Sedimentary Geology). 1995, 10:240-253.

Gish D Evolution, The Fossils STILL Say No! Green Forest (AR): Master Books,
1990.

Nicolson A. Gods Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. New York:,
Harper Collins Publishers. 2003.

Parker GF. Dry Bones and Other Fossils. Green Forest (AR): Master Books, 1997.

Powell JW. The Exploration of the Colorado River and its Canyons. Flood &
Vincent, 1895 (facsimile edition, New York, Dover, 1961).

Vail T. (Compiler) Grand Canyon: a Different View. Green Forest, (AR): Master
Books, 2003.

Vardiman L. Over the Edge. Green Forest, (AR): Master Books, 1999.

Whitcomb JC and Morris HM The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its
Scientific Implications. Grand Rapids, (MI): Baker Book House, 1961.
==
ANTIEVOLUTION INITIATIVE PETITION IN NEVADA FAILS
The proposed voter initiative to amend the Nevada constitution to require
the teaching of the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution is dead, after
its petition failed to garner enough signatures for the initiative to
qualify for the 2006 ballot by the June 20, 2006, deadline. The "Truth in
Science" initiative called for students to be informed that "although most
scientists agree that Darwin's theory of evolution is well supported, a
small minority of scientists do not agree," and listed five specific "areas
of disagreement" to be discussed: the origin of life, the complexity of
DNA, the existence of "complex biological systems," the absence of any
"transitional specie" (sic) in the fossil record, and the origin of sexual
reproduction ("or sex drive"). The author of the petition, Las Vegas
masonry contractor Steve Brown, told the Las Vegas Sun (June 20, 2006) that
he did not think that it would have passed even if it had been included on
the ballot.
==
Jerry Falwell boasted about the loyalty oaths addressing both creation and
eschatology that Liberty faculty are expected to sign. He was proud that
Liberty had maintained its ideological purity despite their growth over the
years. Which is amusing, since he and people like him routinely lambaste
mainstream universities for being ideologically rigid.
==
Fundy Think For Beginners
* That translation is incorrect - in the original texts a different
word is used, so it is not a contradiction.
* He is taking the verses out of context, so there is no contradiction.
* Satan has blinded him to the truth. There is no contradiction, and
he should pray to be shown the correct meaning.
* This is only an apparent contradiction. That is not the same as an
actual contradiction.
* If the verses are interpreted correctly, it is obvious that there is
no contradiction.
* There are no contradictions in the Bible, so this is not a contradiction.
* The contradiction is caused by his anachronistic thinking. The word
[insert word here] had a different meaning back then.
Having just demonstrated that the supposed contradictions do not
exist, you have now proved that there are no contradictions in the
Bible, reinforcing your claim that it is truly the unsullied Holy Word of God.
2) Science
There is but one measuring stick required to determine the truth of
any claim - how it compares with Holy Scripture. More precisely, how
it compares with your personal reading of Scripture. So, if some
secular humanist scientists dare to dream up a theory (or "wild
guess", as it is more accurately known) that apparently conflicts with
the teachings of the Bible, clearly these egg-head mad professors have
made yet another idiotic mistake, possibly under demonic influence.
How do we know they are mistaken? See "1 Inerrancy".
Conversely, when science agrees with the Bible we should applaud the
brave, Bible-believing investigators for supporting the Holy Word and
showing the glory of Creation. But usually they are wrong.
Never forget, the atheists are quick to use the findings of science as
"evidence" in their arguments, but this is because materialism and
science are their god and religion. They want the men in white coats
to save them from the God they know will judge them.
There are many things which science cannot explain. However, you can
explain these things instantly and simply by saying "God did it".
Perhaps the atheist will say "Well, we don't yet know how the Big Bang
happened, and maybe never will, but we're working on it". Easy
solution - God did it. Problem solved. However, some atheists are
stubborn in their evil ways and you may have to repeat this scientific
explanation to them many times before they accept it. Of course, when
scientists eventually do come up with an answers for such problems, be
prepared to patiently explain to them that this is what your religion
taught all along, if interpreted correctly.
3) Debating techniques
==
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/354/21/2277.pdf antievolution laws
==
Gish continued to use the phoney story about exploding bombadier beetles and
expanded it by claiming the DRAGONS of myth were really dinosaurs that used the
bombadiier beetle stuff to breathe fire.
==
People ask me, Why pour so much energy into protecting science
education? Why not fight for literacy generally or any of a thousand
other educational issues? I have two answers. One is easy: I know
about evolution, so it makes sense that I would work on what I know
best. The second is harder to grasp. And that is that freedom of
religion is the bedrock foundation of liberty in this country. If we
allow certain special-interest religious groups to co-opt the public
school science classroom, to use it as a vehicle for converting
children to religious views their parents don't hold, if we allow
them to spout outright lies about the nature and content of science,
what do we really have left? If you can lie about science and get
away with it, you can lie about anything.
Evolution is just the tip of the iceberg or, as the creationists put
it, the leading edge of "the wedge." The wedge they are seeking to
drive through the heart of American democracy. The lies about
science are not limited to evolution. Every day more lies about
science seep into public consciousness. Lies about stem cell
biology, lies about global warming, about clean air and water, lies
about sexuality, about conception and contraception, lies about the
effects of hurricanes on metropolitan infrastructure.
The war on science is a war on democracy itself. And the special
weapons and tactics are rhetorical. The enemies of democracy use the
language of tolerance to attack it from inside. Why, they ask, are
we "censoring" the evidence for "intelligent design"? Why do we deny
our teachers the "right" to use their "academic freedom" to
teach "critical analysis" of evolution. Isn't it only fair to teach
both the evidence for and against evolution? All these clever ploys
play well in the media on this issue and many, many others, and we
will see these word games more and more in coming years. I call it
the "orange is the new pink" strategy; every time the public cottons
on to a catch term like "creation science" or "intelligent design,"
they change to a more neutral-sounding term like "critical analysis"
or "evidence against." But defenders of American freedom are
learning to stand up and say no, it really is fair to forbid
teachers to lie to students, to prohibit school boards from using
the power of the state to convert children to other peoples'
religions. Tolerance requires judgment.
So the rhetorical battle is pitched and the enemy is well armed. But
it turns out that standing up for freedom and democracy is a lot
like doing science. You start with noble principles and do the best you can.
==
Religious arguments have permeated debates on the role of the
law in medical practice at the beginning and the end of life. But nowhere has
religion played so prominent a role as in the century-old quest to banish or
marginalize the teaching of evolution in science classes. Nor has new genetics
research that supports evolutionary theory at the molecular level dampened
antievolution sentiment.1 Requiring public-school science teachers to teach
specific religion-based alternatives to Darwin's theory of evolution is just
as bad, in the words of political comedian Bill Maher, as requiring
obstetricians to teach medical students the alternative theory that storks
deliver babies. Nonetheless, stork lore is not religious lore, and the central
constitutional objection to banning evolution from the public-school curriculum
or marginalizing it is that this would violate the "establishment clause" of
the First Amendment, which provides that "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise
thereof." The United States has had two waves of religion-inspired
antievolution activism, and a decision by U.S. District Court Judge John E.
Jones III made just before Christmas 2005 marks the end of the third wave.2
The First Wave Outlawing Education about Evolution
In 1925, Tennessee adopted a law that made it a crime for any public-school
teacher to "teach any theory that denies the story of divine creation of man
as taught in the Bible and to teach instead that man has descended from a
lower order of animals." In that same year, John Thomas Scopes was tried and
convicted of violating this law in one of the most famous trials of the 20th
century, dramatized in the play Inherit the Wind (1955) and the film based on
the play (1960). Scopes was prosecuted by the eloquent three-time presidential
candidate William Jennings Bryan and defended by Clarence Darrow. The
journalist H.L. Mencken described the prosecution as a religious attack on an
alleged "conspiracy of scientists ... to break down religion, propagate
immorality, and reduce mankind to the level of the brute." On appeal of the
conviction, the Tennessee Supreme Court concluded that the statute was
constitutional, because it could find "no unanimity among the members of any
religious establishment" about evolution. The court nevertheless reversed
Scopes's conviction on a technicality and instructed the state attorney
general not to try Scopes again, saying, "We see nothing to be gained by
prolonging the life of this bizarre case."
==
Fundies passed a law they believed would better
withstand a First Amendment challenge. The Arkansas law simply made it a crime
"to teach the theory or doctrine that mankind ascended or descended from a
lower order of animals." This "monkey law" was challenged in the mid-1960s by
a young high-school biology teacher, who had obtained an injunction against
its enforcement. On appeal, the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed and lifted the
injunction in a two-sentence opinion, finding the law "a valid exercise of the
state's power." The case then went to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the
Arkansas law was declared unconstitutional as a violation of the First
Amendment, because it furthered no secular purpose, only a religious one:

The overriding fact is that Arkansas law selects from the body of knowledge a
particular segment when it proscribes for the sole reason that it is deemed to
conflict with a particular religious doctrine: that is, with a particular
interpretation of the Book of Genesis by a particular religious group. ...
Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of
religious theory, doctrine, and practice.4

The Second Wave Creationism

The First Amendment prohibits the state from establishing religion. To
withstand a First Amendment challenge on this basis, the state must satisfy
three tests: the law must have a secular purpose, have a primarily secular
effect, and not require excessive government entanglement in religion.5
Arkansas attempted to meet these tests when it enacted a 1981 law that did not
require any direct teaching of the Bible, but only that "public schools ...
give balanced treatment to creation-science and to evolution-science."6 The
Arkansas statute defined creation science as the following:
the scientific evidence and related inferences that indicate: (1) sudden
creation of the universe, energy, and life from nothing; (2) the insufficiency
of mutation and natural selection in bringing about development of all living
kinds from a single organism; (3) changes only within fixed limits of
originally created kinds of plants and animals; (4) separate ancestry for man
and apes; (5) explanation of the earth's geology by catastrophism, including
the occurrence of a world wide flood; and (6) a relatively recent inception of
the earth and living kinds.7
Federal judge William R. Overton, in a detailed opinion, concluded in 1982
that this definition was based on the Bible and that the ideas in the
definition "are not similar to the literal interpretation of Genesis; they are
identical and parallel to no other story of creation."7 Those challenging the
law also argued that creation science was not science at all in that it lacked
all the essential characteristics of science its conclusions had to be taken
on faith and were not tentative, testable, or falsifiable. Overton found the
law unconstitutional because its purpose was religious, not secular.7
Shortly thereafter, a similar law, the 1982 Louisiana "Creationism Act,"
reached the Supreme Court in the case of Edwards v. Aguillard.8 The act
forbade the teaching of evolution in public schools unless accompanied by
instruction in "creation science." The Court struck down the law, because it
had a religious purpose: "to advance the religious viewpoint that a
supernatural creator was responsible for the creation of humankind." The Court
concluded:
The Louisiana Creationism Act advances a religious doctrine by requiring
either the banishment of the theory of evolution from public school classrooms
or the presentation of a religious viewpoint that rejects evolution in its
entirety. The Act violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment
because it seeks to employ the symbolic and financial support of government to
achieve a religious purpose.8
This decision ended the short life of teaching creationism in the public
schools and ushered in the third wave of antievolution sentiment: intelligent
design.
==
In Minnesota, Senate File 2994 was passed by both the House of
Representatives and the Senate on May 20, 2006, but without the provision
that would have prohibited the state department of education and local
school districts from "utilizing a nonscientifically based curriculum, such
as intelligent design, to meet the required science academic standards under
this section."
The Senate approved a version of the omnibus education bill with that
provision, proposed by Senator Lawrence J. Pogemiller (DFL-District 59), on
May 15. The House, however, substituted its own version of the bill without
Pogemiller's provision and approved it by a vote of 131-1, with the Senate
following suit with a vote of 66-0. The legislature adjourned sine die on
May 21.
SF 2994 was the second bill that would have banned the teaching of
"intelligent design" to be introduced in a state legislature during 2006;
the other, Wisconsin's Assembly Bill 1143, died in committee on May 4, 2006.
==
"...."Science offers us an explanation of how
complexity (the difficult) arose out of simplicity (the easy). The
hypothesis of God offers no worthwhile explanation for anything, for
it simply postulates what we are trying to explain. It postulates the
difficult to explain, and leaves it at that..."
Richard Dawkins...from a lecture in the Nullifidian. (Dec. 1994)
==
It is no surprise that two different people, entirely independant of each
other, came to the same conclusions. If Darwin had not been around, it might
be called Wallacism, and he would be the hero/demon of the story.
--
Nonsense. As is well known, Wallace repented on his death bed.
==
A giant raft was crowded with desperate animals, when the cleverest, the Great
Hare, said that a piece of land could be created from a grain of sand. The
animals searched frantically until the muskrat found a pearl. The Great Hare
blew on this until it formed a piece of land, with valleys, rivers and forests.
The animals could then spread across this new land, and from the animals which
had died, humans grew.
This is the Algonquin view of how life began, and should be taught in school
science lessons.
==
The entire Reasons To Believe testable creation model will appear in
Ross new book, Creation As Science scheduled for release September, 2006.
==
What is the difference between atheists and believers. From the perspective of
most atheists, the question is not only not the "biggest" question, the
question is totally irrelevant. If the answer to that question, in a believer's
mind, leads to a specific set of moral choices based on some sort of
answer to Pascal's wager, that just in case there is someone
watching we should be good, indicates to me moral immaturity in an
individual who chooses to be good in his adulthood for the same
reasons he choose to be good as a child: Want of reward, fear of punishment.
If I can reduce the struggle of atheists against our faithful
compatriots in our fair and secular nation, it would be to this end:
we seek to minimize the social, political and environmental harm
that the impact of a majority population with values that are not
based in any sort of objective reality has on our person, our
children, our community and our future.
Our policy must be based upon sound civil agreements, backed up by the
methodology of science and consonant with the wisdom of history. All appeals to
religion for this purpose are inadequate.
Truth does not grow or diminish based on authority, or the lack thereof.
If we quash that potential with dogmatic fear and instill the need for faith
and teach them to distrust their intellect we are training them to be slaves
and charity cases. We are training them to not be responsible for themselves.
If we critically examined the methods and practices used in mediating religious
ideology to a congregation, we find many functional similarities between clergy
and how a shepherd tends his sheep, an apropos comparison to many religions.
Why is it not often mentioned that ultimately sheep are kept not for the
sheep's well being but for their master's? Why is that logical conclusion of
the analogy never spoken?
Clergy have a vested interest in invalidating affronts to their theology
because once the seeds of doubt are sewn and our intrinsic need of answers
outweighs our fear of the unknown, so begins the search for truth and not even
the first basic steps to truth align with the claims of religious ideology.
And non-believers don't leave much in the collection plates.
==
There is another hurdle standing in the way of any 'scientific
creationist theory.' They wish to claim that God is both omniscient
(all-knowing) and omnipotent (all-powerful). However, to make
specific predictions, they must assume that God is of a specific
nature, that he is limited. Thus for example, when they claim that
the reasons for the genetic similarities between different species is
due to the fact that once God 'found something which worked,' he
'didn't want to reinvent the wheel,' they are assuming, at least
implicitly, that God is limited in his powers of thought and action.
He couldn't 'waste his time' or 'resources' on the 'discovery' of some
alternate way of doing things and then implementing that approach.
Thus if they attempt to create a genuine scientific theory of
creationism, their God becomes finite. But they would find this
entirely unacceptable."
==
Abeka 'science' books are used by Pentecostals, and
they are quite wierd. They feature a section where when God
was blueprinting the 6-day creation, Jesus Christ was the one
who decided the balance of the chemical elements in the
atmosphere to cause life. "
==
"Is the Bible the word of God or is it not? If you're going to reinterpret
it from ideas outside the Bible, which continue to change, then it's not,"
said Ham, 54, a former high school biology teacher from Australia, who leads
Answers in Genesis' 12-year-old U.S. branch. "The point I make is the
Bible's account of creation is so black and white and has not changed, but
man's ideas have changed."
==
As Plaintiffs meticulously and effectively presented to the Court, Pandas
went through many drafts, several of which were completed prior to and some
after the Supreme Court's decision in Edwards, which held that the
Constitution forbids teaching creationism as science. By comparing the pre
and post Edwards drafts of Pandas, three astonishing points emerge:
(1) the definition for creation science in early drafts is identical to the
definition of ID;
(2) cognates of the word creation (creationism and creationist), which
appeared approximately 150 times were deliberately and systematically
replaced with the phrase ID; and
(3) the changes occurred shortly after the Supreme Court held that creation
science is religious and cannot be taught in public school science classes
in Edwards. This word substitution is telling, significant, and reveals that
a purposeful change of words was effected without any corresponding change
in content...

Statements by movement leaders such as this one by Phillip Johnson:

"My colleagues and I speak of theistic realism, or sometimes mere creation,
as the defining concept of our movement. This means that we affirm that God
is objectively real as creator, and that the reality of God is tangibly
recorded in evidence accessible to science, particularly in biology."

Perhaps even more damning, Forrest analyzed 7,000 pages from successive
drafts on the intelligent design textbook, Of Pandas and People -- produced
under subpoena by the publisher, The Foundation for Thought and Ethics --
that clearly demonstrated the movement's roots in creation "science."

A 1986 draft of Pandas, for example, then titled Biology and Creation said,
"Creation means that the various forms of life began abruptly through the
agency of an intelligent creator with their distinctive features already
intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings,
etc."

A later edition, written in 1987 after the Edwards v. Aguillard decision
said, "Intelligent design means that various forms of life began abruptly
through an intelligent agency, with their distinctive features already
intact. Fish with fins and scales, birds with feathers, beaks, wings, etc."

In fact, as Forrest's testimony clearly demonstrated, following the Edwards
v. Aguillard decision the Pandas textbook authors simply did a search and
replace where they substituted the words "intelligent design" for
"creationism" in the text.
==
Fundamentalist opposition to the teaching of evolution in the United States
goes back to the 1925 Scopes "Monkey" Trial when creationists, those who
believe the biblical story told in Genesis to be literally true, tried to
ban Darwin's theory from the public schools in Tennessee.

The popular film based on the Scopes Trial, "Inherit the Wind," leaves the
impression that creationist champion William Jennings Bryant was badly
beaten by Clarence Darrow and the forces of reason. In fact, the jury
returned a guilty verdict against Scopes after just eight minutes of
deliberation, and the judge fined him $100.
It wasn't until 1968, when the Supreme Court, ruling in Epperson v.
Arkansas, invalidated an Arkansas statute that prohibited the teaching of
evolution, that creationists switched tactics to demand equal time for the
Genesis story in science classrooms.
The short-lived equal time tactic was dealt a death blow in 1987. To the
creationist's utter dismay, The Supreme Court ruled, in Edwards v.
Aguillard, that Louisiana's Creationism Act, a statute that prohibited
teaching evolution in public schools except when it was accompanied by
instruction in creation science, was unconstitutional.
==
It was very nice of our loving Designer to design an immune
system to protect us from the deadly diseases He designed.
ID is not creationism, and can be perfectly compatible with
evolution. This is why we're asking schools to teach the "evidence
against evolution".
We're not creationists, except for those of us who are, but
the rest of us won't confirm that we're not. But if you call us
creationists, we'll complain to no end.
ID is a scientific theory for detecting purpose and teleology
in nature. But don't ask us what that purpose is, because that's a
religious question that's separate from ID.
The Designer could be anything from God to a space alien. But
the Raelians, who believe it was a space alien, are being illogical.
Darwinism can't explain the evolution of life in every single
detail, therefore it's wrong. But don't ask IDists to explain these
things, because that's not the kind of theory ID is.
Absolutely everything wrong in society is caused by dogmatic
Darwinian atheistic materialists. Including stereotyping, demonizing,
and scapegoating.
Philosophers cannot agree on exactly where the line between
science and non-science lies. Therefore, anything can be considered
science if we say so.
If a living system looks well designed, it's evidence for ID.
If it looks poorly designed, that's just because we have no way of
knowing what constitutes good and bad design.
Afterall, we can't tell that it's bad design because we have
no way of knowing what the Designer really intends. But we do know
that ID will revolutionize culture, society, and law, according to
what the Designer intends.
A good scientific theory like ID should be vague and
ambiguous, and refuse to propose any specific details about mechanism
or history. Some unspecified being "designed" something, somewhere,
at some point in time, somehow, is a perfectly good explanation.
The argument from design is not a theological argument,
because we aren't necessarily talking about God. But any rebuttal of
the design argument is theological, because it requires us to say
"God wouldn't do it this way", and this is not legitimate.
Evolution can't produce novel information, because any change
to an enzyme that increases substrate specificity reduces the
reactivity of the enzyme with other compounds, which is a loss of
information. Similarly, any change which increases the enzyme's
generality is a loss of information because the enzyme has lost some
specificity.
==
The correct stance on issues like an ancient Earth, the
common ancestry of organisms, and natural selection can be worked out
later, after we've convinced the public that they should be rejecting
at least one of these.
Missouri Senator Ashcroft, who explored a presidential race in 1997-98, got
much of his funding from Robertson and other evangelicals. Picked as Attorney
General by Bush after the 2000 election, Ashcroft was the choice of the
religious right. Earlier in his career Ashcroft had decried the wall between
church and state as "a wall of religious oppression," and his memoir describes
each of his many electoral defeats as a crucifixion and every important
political victory as a resurrection, and recounts scenes in which he had
friends and family anoint him with oil in the manner "of the ancient kings of
Israel."
More telling still, in the years since 1988 dozens of reports have quoted Bush
the Younger telling ministers, supporters and foreign officials that God wanted
him to run for President and that God speaks through him. In mid-2004 one
Pennsylvania newspaper reported his telling a local Amish audience, "I trust
God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn't do my job.
==
"There is no observational fact imaginable that cannot, one way or
another, be made to fit the creation model." - Henry Morris, from
Scientific Creationism, Creation-Life Publishers, San Diego 1974, p. 10
==
Creationism and ID are built around the *necessity* of divine intervention
after the creation of the universe. There is no evidence of this.
==
Fundie claims
http://library.thinkquest.org/27407/creation/youngargu.htm
[1] Comets disintegrate too quickly.
Comets lose material as they near the sun. If the solar system were very old,
comets would long ago have evaporated.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE261.html
[2] Not enough mud on the sea floor.
Young-earth "proof" #16: Topsoil takes only a few thousand years to form. The
present thickness of topsoil indicates a young earth.
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/hovind/howgood-yea2.html
The Misguided Erosion Argument
by Glenn R. Morton
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/erosion.htm
[3] Not enough sodium in the sea
Known processes to remove sodium from the oceans account for only 27 percent
of the sodium that is added. Given the accumulation of sodium this implies,
the oceans could not be more than 62 million years old
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CD/CD221_1.html
4. Accumulation of metals into the oceans
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html#ocean
[4] Earth's magnetic field is decaying too fast.
On Creation Science and the Alleged Decay of the Earth's Magnetic Field
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/magfields.html
2. Decay of the Earth's magnetic field
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html#magnetic
[5] Many strata are too tightly bent.
Why Clastic Dykes Don't Indicate a Global Flood
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/clasdyke.htm
==
Read "American Theocracy," a new book by former
Republican strategist Kevin Phillips. In foreign affairs, environmental and
science policies, and economic decisions, Phillips argues, the growing
influence of what he calls "radical religion" on government threatens the
future of American democracy.
At times Phillips indulges in hyperbole and overuses the "theocrat" label. The
dangers he cites are nonetheless real. When leading politicians and some
televangelists rail against the principle of church-state separation, claiming
that it isn't in the Constitution, they undermine public support for a secular
nation that guarantees religious freedom for everyone.
The irony is inescapable. Some of the same American evangelicals who demand
separation of mosque and state in Afghanistan and Iraq have repeatedly
condemned the "myth" of "separation of church and state" at home. And some
political leaders, like former Alabama Supreme Court justice and current
gubernatorial candidate Roy Moore, call for a "Christian America" where the
U.S. Constitution is interpreted in light of biblical law (their
interpretation, of course).
==
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster ($13.95, Villard)
==
In Kansas, the religious motives behind the "teach the controversy"
policy are explicit and obvious. The Chairman of the education
board, Steve Abrams, who played a pivotal role in getting the "teach
the controversy" policy adopted, has made open statements to the
press pointing out his religious motivations: "At some point in
time, if you compare evolution and the Bible, you have to decide
which one you believe. Thats the bottom line. (Lawrence Journal-
World, Sept 24, 2005) Board member Kathy Martin, when asked if ID
had a religious agenda, Martin declared, "Of course this is a
Christian agenda. We are a Christian nation. Our country is made up
of Christian conservatives. We don't often speak up, but we need to
stand up and let our voices be heard. (Pitch.Com, May 5, 2005) Prior
to the hearings, Board member Connie Morris asked for a list of
witnesses that those opposing the policy planned to call, explaining
that she would be "praying over" the witness list. (Kansas Star,
April 20,2005)
==
"Polonium Haloes" Refuted
A Review of "Radioactive Halos in a Radio-Chronological and
Cosmological Perspective" by Robert V. Gentry
(http://www.halos.com/book01/book.htm)
by Tom Bailleul
Copyright 2001
==
The fundie attack on science was central to their aim. Defeat them there
and you have won a very big battle in history. It's the battle between reason,
rationality, the age of Englightenment, progess, democracy....with bigotory and
the mediaeval world.
the ID movement is very strongly influenced by a small but loud subdivision of
fundies known as the Reconstructionists/Dominionists. The Reconstructionists
favor doing away with the US Constitution and placing the country under
"Biblical law", to include such Biblical edicts as stoning sinners and
heretics. The Dominionists not only want to place the US under
Biblical law, but want the US to then invade the rest of the world to
make it all godly, too. The idea is that Jesus won't come back until
the True Christians have taken over the world -- hence, the
intent of the Reconstructionist/Dominionists is, quite literally, to
bring about the end of the world.
==
In a study published last year, Randy Moore, a professor of biology at the
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, reported that 20 percent of the biology
teachers he surveyed in Minnesota include creationism in their classes and
believe that it is scientifically valid.
Last year Ms. Froschauer's organization polled more than 1,000 science
teachers, asking whether they felt pressure to teach alternatives to evolution.
About 30 percent reported that they did get pressure, mainly from parents and
students.
==
"Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the
Intelligent Design Movement," consists of 18 essays honoring Johnson's work
according to the publisher, InterVarsity Press. It was edited by
William A. Dembski, and is available in April.2006
==
Feb, 06, Texas Governor Rick Perry said he thinks intelligent
design should be taught in public schools.
==
Creationism By Any Other Name
The California State Board of Education (CSBE) is currently discussing a very
controversial issue. In keeping with precedent, the CSBE has asked the
community for suggestions in regard to the updating of school textbooks. As a
result of the suggestions it received, unscientific, religious-based materials
may be presented to public school children as historical facts. Unlike the
recent controversies in Kansas, Pennsylvania and Ohio, what the CSBE finds
itself involved in does not concern the Christian fundamentalists and
intelligent design proponents one might expect. The religious fundamentalists
in this case are Hindu.
Initially, the goals of these pressure groups, known as Hindutva, seem benign
and even righteous. They aim to rectify culturally biased and insensitive
depictions of India and Hinduism in public school textbooks. Hindutva groups
would like Hinduism - one of the worlds oldest major religions, with
approximately 800 million adherents worldwide, to be treated with the same
consideration and respect as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism. Their
organizers have managed to obtain a few thousand signatures from the 1.6
million South Asians in the US for support of petitions circulated through
Hindu temples across the United States.
If these reasonable changes comprised the full extent of the amendments being
proposed by the Hindutva groups, there would be no controversy at all.
However, many of the Hindu Americans that signed these petitions would be
shocked to learn about other agendas being pushed - and the manner in which
they are being pushed - by the Hindutva lobby, in their name. Some examples of
outlandish published beliefs of these Hindutva groups include putting the age
of the universe 155 trillion years ago, dating the first Indian civilizations
to 1900 million years ago, the claim that all of modern human civilization
began in India around 8000 BC, and that important cultural texts such as the
Ramayana and Mahabharata -- which depict wars between humans and the
incarnations of deities -- are historical texts to be understood literally
rather than as stories with moral and religious truths to impart. Other claims
pretend to be science such as the citation of satellite imagery of ancient
riverbeds as proof of the existence of a mighty Sarasvati river in Vedic
times, and that ancient Hindu scriptures contain precise calculations of the
speed of light and exact distances between planets in the solar system. The
figures used in these equations were derived from totaling the number of
poetic verses in scriptural texts.
This brings to mind the equally improbable claims of several Christian
fundamentalist groups who believe NASA has evidence of the Earth completely
stopping its rotation, corroborating the "Missing Day of Joshua" story in the
Bible. Interestingly, the Hindutva lobby agenda being put forward contradicts
"young earth creationism", in which Christian fundamentalists believe the
origins of life on earth to be as described in the Bible and earth to be 6,000
years old. Coincidently, intelligent design and "young earth creationism" were
being taught at a high school in Lebec, California, just north of Los Angeles,
until public scrutiny of this effort was brought to bear last month and the
school board of Lebec reversed this initiative.
The American Hindutva lobby disguises its divisive political agenda in the
language of inclusion, seeming to intend only to redress historical inequities
by demanding the accurate representation of Hinduism in the American classroom.
This is quite ironic in that the Hindutva movement in India is predicated on
the subjugation of minorities and pluralism in society.

==
CARSON CITY, Nev.- A proposed constitutional amendment would require
Nevada teachers to instruct students that there are many questions about
evolution - a method viewed by critics as an opening to teach intelligent
design.
Las Vegas masonry contractor Steve Brown filed his initiative petition with
the secretary of state's office, and must collect 83,184 signatures by June 20
to get the plan on the November ballot. To amend the Nevada Constitution, he'd
have to win voter approval this year and again in the 2008 elections.
Brown said Tuesday that he hopes that volunteers will help him collect the
signatures, but at this point has no name-gathering organization set up. A
Democrat and member of a nondenominational church, he said he hoped for broad
support from people who share his views.
"I just want them to start telling the truth about evolution," Brown said.
"Evolution has occurred, but parts of it are flat-out unproven theories.
They're not telling students that in school."
Brown, who has three school-age children, said he's been interested in
evolution for years. He added that if people take time to read his proposal
"how can this not pass?"
The petition says students must be informed before the end of the 10th grade
that "although most scientists agree that Darwin's theory of evolution is well
supported, a small minority of scientists do not agree."
The plan says several "areas of disagreement" would have to be covered by
teachers, including the view by some scientists that "it is mathematically
impossible for the first cell to have evolved by itself."
Students also would have to be told some scientists argue "that nowhere in the
fossil record is there an indisputable skeleton of a transitional species, or a
'missing link,'" the proposal says.
Also, the proposal says students "must be informed that the origin of sex, or
sex drive, is one of biology's mysteries" and that some scientists contend
that sexual reproduction "would require an unbelievable series of chance
events that would have had xxx
Brown commented on his plan following a decision Monday by the Utah House to
scuttle a bill that would have required public school students to be told that
evolution isn't empirically proven.
Last month, the Ohio Board of Education deleted a science standard and lesson
plan encouraging students to seek evidence for and against evolution - another
setback for intelligent design advocates who maintain that life is so complex
it must have been created by a higher authority.
==
One cannot defeat a Christian in debate. They will fall back on all the
Christian cliches that they were brainwashed with. It is impossible to
debate someone who is irrational and mentally disturbed.
==
Perhaps the strongest rebuke to ID in the Dover case concerned the
claim by Behe and others that it would be impossible for evolution to
produce the immune system. Miller testified that since Behe wrote his
1996 book, evolutionary biologists have built a rich account of the
immune system--a point Judge Jones highlighted in his ruling.
"[Behe] was presented with fifty-eight peer-reviewed publications,
nine books, and several immunology textbook chapters about the
evolution of the immune system," Jones wrote, "however, he simply
insisted ... that it was not `good enough.'"
==
Some of them are "tame" creationist "scientists" whose career has consisted
almost entirely of writing creationist tracts, often using clever
pseudoscientific arguments CLEARLY designed to deceive the ignorant, not to
correct any real errors by real scientists.
==
Biblical Creationists have a low threshold for
scepticism and no sense of humor.
==
There are, in fact, at least 10 different creationisms. These include:
Flat Earthers, Geocentrists, Young-Earth Creationism, Old Earth
Creationism, Gap Creationism (in reference to a large temporal gap between
Genesis chapter I:1 and chapter I:2, allowing an old earth), Day-Age
Creationism (a adaya? may be a geological epoch, allowing an old earth),
Progressive Creationism (blending Special Creation with modern science),
Intelligent Design Creationism (order and design in the world is proof of
an intelligent designer), Evolutionary Creationism (God uses evolution to
bring about the universe and life), and Theistic Evolution (nature creates
bodies, God creates souls).
==
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Disputed teaching material used by Ohio public school
students that questions evolutionary theory is headed back to the state
committee that wrote the first version.
The Ohio Board of Education voted 11-4 Tuesday to delete a science standard
and correlating lesson plan that encourages students to seek evidence for and
against evolution. Critics had called the material an opening to teach
intelligent design, which holds that life is so complex it must have been
created by a higher authority.
"It is deeply unfair to the children of this state to mislead them about
science," said board member Martha Wise, who pushed to eliminate the material.
The 2002 science standards said students should be able to "describe how
scientists continue to investigate and critically analyze aspects of
evolutionary theory." The standards included a disclaimer that they do not
require the teaching of intelligent design.
The board vote represents the latest setback for the intelligent design
movement.
==
Retro viruses insert themselves randomly. How did chimps and
humans get so many (hundreds) of the same insertions in the same
places in two genomes that look so suspiciously alike.
==
Talk about science to these people, and they don't have a clue.
Why? Because our artificial civilized environment no longer
necessitates a constant grounding in physical reality, so one's own
personal fantasies can be given free rein as long as one follows the
social norms on auto-pilot (most do). We no longer have to depend on
the constant "reality check" to maintain our survival. We no longer, or
so we are told, need to concern ourselves with those mundane matters.
==
Fundamentalist religious organizations formed alliances with
conservative lawmakers to pass "monkey laws" -- laws which made it
illegal to teach evolution -- in almost half of the states. In 1928,
for instance, the state of Arkansas passed a law (by referendum)
making it illegal to teach "the theory or doctrine that mankind
ascended or descended from a lower order of animals." (Arkansas
Initiated Act 1, 1928, cited in Eldredge 1982, p. 15 and LaFollette,
1983, p. 5) Another such law was the Butler Act, approved by the
Tennessee state legislature in March 1925. The Butler act stated:
"It shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities,
Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported
in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach
any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as
taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from
a lower order of animals." (Butler Act, Tennessee State Legislature, 1925)
==
In essence, the fundamentalists and their creationist allies want to
do for the United States what the fundamentalist Taliban did for
Afghanistan and the Ayatollahs have done for Iran--they want to run
the country in accordance with their interpretation of "God's will".
As they make clear, they are perfectly willing to dismantle most of
American democracy in order to save us all from Satan. Rev. James
Robison put it like this, "Let me tell you something else about the
character of God. If necessary, God would raise up a tyrant--a man
who might not have the best ethics--to protect the freedom and the
interests of the ethical and the godly." (cited in Vetter 1982, p. 6)
And there seem to be no dearth of fundamentalists willing to
volunteer to become that "tyrant".
==
Republicans in Congress selected John Boehner to replace the infamous Tom
DeLay as the new House Majority Leader. Despite all of the talk about a change
of direction for the Republican Party, Boehners selection is a step back in
terms of science policy, due to his support for teaching intelligent design in
science classrooms.
==
"Science does not offer equal opportunity choices: like it or not,
apples fall, continents move around and species evolve, all according
to natural law that is the subject matter of scientific investigation.
Resistance to evolutionism may indeed supply the motive, but the fight
is always over the veracity of the scientific evidence for evolution
itself."

Of course, I myself would argue that resistance to "evolutionism"
plays a role in the opposition to evolutionary biology, but it is a
fairly minor role, and is largely used for recruitment purposes. In
my own view, the opposition ultimately derives from opposition to
modernity and anything else which comes into conflict with a
fundamentalism which many wish to impose upon society.
==
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/
AR2006020300822.html

"Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the
strangled snakes beside that of Hercules," Huxley declared in an 1860 essay
about The Origin of Species. "And history records that whenever science and
orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter have been forced to retire from
the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated."

The basic tenet of all religions is that everything will work out in the end,
In an indifferent universe, however, everything is not going to turn out okay
in the end.

If a lack of scientific explanation is proof of God's existence, the
counterlogic is unimpeachable: A successful scientific explanation is an
argument against God. That's why this reasoning, ultimately, is much more
dangerous to religion than it is to science."

Nancey Murphy, a religious scholar at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena,
Calif., said she faced a campaign to get her fired because she expressed the
view that intelligent design was not only poor theology, but "so stupid, I
don't want to give them my time."

Darwin always reached out to people with different opinions. In his books, he
strove mightily to represent the best arguments against his own theory, a
fair-mindedness that has sometimes been abused by critics who selectively use
quotes to suggest the naturalist himself had doubts. Pearn said Darwin
welcomed debate because he believed that, eventually, the better ideas would
win.

Peter Lipton, a University of Cambridge historian and philosopher, said the
only way he has found to reconcile the factual evidence for evolution with
religious faith is to think of religious texts as novels, texts in which
believers can emotionally immerse themselves, while still knowing, at another
level, that the truth claims being made are not literally true.
==
In October 2005, for example, George Deutsch, a presidential appointee in
NASA headquarters, told a Web designer working for the agency to add
the word "theory" after every mention of the Big Bang, according to an e-mail
message from Mr. Deutsch that another NASA employee forwarded to The Times.
The Big Bang memo came from Mr. Deutsch, a 24-year-old presidential
appointee in the press office at NASA headquarters whose resume says he was
an intern in the "war room" of the 2004 Bush-Cheney re-election campaign. A
2003 journalism graduate of Texas A&M, he was also the public-affairs officer
who sought more control over Dr. Hansen's public statements. In October 2005,
Mr. Deutsch sent an e-mail message to Flint Wild, a NASA contractor working on
a set of Web presentations about Einstein for middle-school students. The
message said the word "theory" needed to be added after every mention of the
Big Bang.
The Big Bang is "not proven fact; it is opinion," Mr. Deutsch wrote, adding,
"It is not NASA's place, nor should it be to make a declaration such as this
about the existence of the universe that discounts intelligent design by a
creator."
It continued: "This is more than a science issue, it is a religious issue. And
I would hate to think that young people would only be getting one-half of this
debate from NASA. That would mean we had failed to properly educate the very
people who rely on us for factual information the most."
Mr. Wild declined to be interviewed; Mr. Deutsch did not respond to e-mail or
phone messages. Repeated queries were made to the White
House about how a young presidential appointee with no science background came
to be supervising Web presentations on cosmology and interview requests to
senior NASA scientists.
He has since resigned due to a fake claim of a college degree.
==
"As we know, intelligent design "theory" has no content save the claim that
something or other designed something or other sometime, and somehow
or other manufactured whatever was designed without leaving any traces of the
existence of the designer, the manufacturer, or the manufacturing process.
It is no more than recycled creation science relabeled with a few
new terms. For example, Behe's "irreducible complexity" replaced Henry Morris'
"organized complexity".
Having nothing to teach, ID advocates had to come up with something.
Essentially, "teach the controversy" repackages old-time creation science
- distortions and flawed criticisms of evolutionary theory, singling it out for
disparagement - but now calls it "critically evaluate evolution" or "critical
analysis of evolution". It pushes the same canards that have characterized
creationism since the 1970s and earlier - our librarian has traced some of the
content back into the 1920s.
==
ICR Tenets on Creationism
|
The Institute for Creation Research Graduate School has a unique
statement of faith for its faculty and students, incorporating most
of the basic Christian doctrines in a creationist framework,
organized in terms of two parallel sets of tenets, related to God's
created world and God's inspired Word, respectively. Reproduced below
are the ICR Educational Philosophy and its Tenets of Scientific
Creationism and Biblical Creationism.
|
All things in the universe were created and made by God in the six
literal days of the creation week described in Genesis 1:1-2:3, and
confirmed in Exodus 20:8-11.
|
The Biblical record of primeval earth history in Genesis 1-11 is
fully historical and perspicuous, including the creation and fall of
man, the curse on the creation and its subjection to the bondage of
decay, the promised Redeemer, the worldwide cataclysmic deluge in the
days of Noah, the post-diluvian renewal of man's commission to subdue
the earth (now augmented by the institution of human govemment) and
the origin of nations and languages at the tower of Babel.
|
This is religious dogma, not science.

From:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/about/faith.asp
[as of 2/2/2006]

Statement of Faith [Answers in Genesis]
|
3. The account of origins presented in Genesis is a simple but
factual presentation of actual events and therefore provides a
reliable framework for scientific research into the question of the
origin and history of life, mankind, the Earth and the universe.
|
5. The great Flood of Genesis was an actual historic event, worldwide
(global) in its extent and effect.
|
6. The special creation of Adam (the first man) and Eve (the first
woman), and their subsequent fall into sin, is the basis for the
necessity of salvation for mankind.
|
7. Death (both physical and spiritual) and bloodshed entered into
this world subsequent to, and as a direct consequence of, mans sin.
|
The following are held by members of the Board of Answers in Genesis
to be either consistent with Scripture or implied by Scripture:
|
1. Scripture teaches a recent origin for man and the whole creation.
|
2. The days in Genesis do not correspond to geologic ages, but are
six [6] consecutive twenty-four [24] hour days of Creation.
|
3. The Noachian Flood was a significant geological event and much
(but not all) fossiliferous sediment originated at that time.
|
6. By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any
field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it
contradicts the Scriptural record. Of primary importance is the fact
that evidence is always subject to interpretation by fallible people
who do not possess all information.

This is religious dogma, not science.

CRS Statement of Belief
|
All members must subscribe to the following statement of belief:
1. The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is inspired
throughout, all its assertions are historically and scientifically
true in the original autographs. To the student of nature this means
that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual presentation of
simple historical truths.
|
2. All basic types of living things, including man, were made by
direct creative acts of God during the Creation Week described in
Genesis. Whatever biological changes have occurred since Creation
Week have accomplished only changes within the original created
kinds.
|
3. The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to as the
Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent and
effect.

This is religious dogma, not science.
==
Intelligent Design as a scientific theory is an impossibility. Science
requires any theory to be subject to one rule: it must be falsifiable,
in other words to be science a theory may be wrong. Intelligent
Design, with its reliance on magic, miracles and supernatural
intervention cannot be proven false. . . .

As a scientific theory, intelligent design lacks certain basics.
For one, science requires data and makes predictions. These predictions
may lead to theories, which provide tentative, though not absolute,
explanations. Another requirement is that science does not rely on
supernatural or miraculous processes, but with natural phenomena.
==
The Salt Lake Tribune
Sen. Chris Buttars on Friday said he is not trying to promote
religious teaching in schools. The Senate preliminarily approved his
bill that would require teachers to discuss alternatives to evolution.
==
Monkey Trial, Take Two
Evolution vs. creationism made Hollywood courtroom drama in
Inherit the Wind: what might the Intelligent Design sequel look like?
Word is, Hollywood is thinking about doing a movie about the recently
concluded Intelligent Design trial in Pennsylvania. Why not? Courtroom dramas
are popular and this case was a hum-dinger. Plus, it'd be like that movie they
did in 1960 about the Great Monkey Trial, only this time it'd be Inherit the
Wind 2 . Wasn't Spencer Tracy great back in that old movie?

On December 20, 2005 Judge John Jones III handed down his decision in
Kitzmiller v.
Dover Area School Board , ending a closely watched trial that saw 21 days of
testimony in front of a courtroom packed with reporters. The case was brought
by a number of parents of students in the Dover schools who objected to a
pro-Intelligent Design policy enacted by the school board. Although the
lawyers for the school board argued that Intelligent Design was a legitimate
scientific theory and was not tied to any specific religion, Judge Jones held
for the plaintiffs. In his ruling, Jones said the defense failed to prove
there was significant scientific evidence for Intelligent Design and that
despite their protestations, Intelligent Design was merely a cover for a
creationist dissent against Darwinism and that it failed the Constitutional
test for the separation of church and state.

Going in, the Kitzmiller case had been billed as the next coming of the 1925
Scopes Trial, known as the "trial of the century" and the "Great Monkey
Trial." Hollywood took note. In fact, Paramount Pictures had an observer
taking notes in the courtroom. They smelled zeitgeist.

Thing is, what with the court deciding against Intelligent Design, the film
would be more of a George Clooney / Good Night, and Good Luck -type project
than a Mel Gibson / Passion of the Christ one. But Inherit the Wind still
pisses off the fundamentalists, so maybe the film could score some free
publicity a la Passion of the Christ . Think of the marketing possibilities: a
campaign with catch phrases like "watch the controversy" could subtly piggyback
on the pro-Intelligent Design Discovery Institute's "teach the controversy"
language to put butts in the seats.

On the other hand, relying on Hollywood for your history is a bad idea. Not
because reducing a complicated historical event to its mythic essentials
doesn't provide some service: it does. Films can illuminate a topic and
generate interest. But they can also do your thinking for you, if you let
them. With that in mind, let's play the game and imagine what cinematic
potential this trial of the young new century may have.

The trial, held in Pennsylvania's capital of Harrisburg, has many of the
hallmarks of a great courtroom drama. Some scenes just call out for cinematic
treatment. Want one of those classic cross-examination scenes? There's Prof.
Michael Behe on the stand, as expert witness for Intelligent Design, being
cross-examined by plaintiff's attorney Eric Rothschild. Behe, who is a
biochemist at Lehigh University, is a prominent advocate of Intelligent
Design, arguing for it in his writings, most notably in his book, Darwins
Black Box .

Behe and Rothschild go back and forth over Intelligent Design and Behe's
definition of what constitutes a scientific theory, different from the one
proposed by major scientific organizations. This exchange ensues:

Rothschild: "But you are clear [that], under your definition, the definition
that sweeps in Intelligent Design, astrology is also a scientific theory,
correct?"

Behe: "Yes, that's correct. And let me explain under my definition of the word
"theory,' it is--a sense of the word "theory' does not include the theory being
true, it means a proposition based on physical evidence to explain some facts
by logical inferences. There have been many theories throughout the history of
science which looked good at the time which further progress has shown to be
incorrect. Nonetheless, we can't go back and say that because they were
incorrect they were not theories. So many, many things that we now realize to
be incorrect--incorrect theories--are nonetheless theories."

Rothschild: "Has there ever been a time when astrology has been accepted as a
correct or valid scientific theory, Professor Behe?"

Behe: "Well, I am not a historian of science. And certainly nobody--well, not
nobody, but certainly the educated community, has not accepted astrology as a
science for a long, long time. But if you go back, you know, Middle Ages and
before that, when people were struggling to describe the natural world, some
people might indeed think that E motions in the earth could affect things on
the earth, or motions in the sky could affect things on the earth."

Perhaps in a flashback sequence, we can go back to a school board meeting
recounted in testimony at the trial. At that meeting, it had become clear that
the purchasing of new biology textbooks--necessary because there weren't enough
books for the students to take them home--was being held up because board
members had reservations about the prevalence of Darwinism in the textbooks
proposed by the biology faculty. At that point, a former school board member
(Barrie Callahan, but she might be unnamed in the movie) stands up and asks
why. Bill Buckingham, the board member in charge of curriculum, says, "That
book is laced with Darwinism."

That prompts a college student and recent graduate of Dover Area High School,
Max Pell, to stand up and share what he has learned at Penn State about
evolutionary science and how it was overwhelmingly accepted among scientists.
Buckingham replies that creationism should be taught alongside evolution. The
young man persists, talking about the scientific method. Then Buckingham
blurts out, "Well, you're a perfect example of what happens to students when
they go to college. They get brainwashed."

A key to doing the movie right might be the casting of Tammy Kitzmiller, the
woman whose name has become synonymous with the trial, like the biology
teacher John Scopes's name did with the 1925 test of the Tennessee
anti-evolution law. Kitzmiller is an office manager of a landscaping company,
a woman without a college education who tells the court she gets involved in
the case because her defiant daughter "opted out" of the Intelligent Design
statement that the school board had required to be read in front of the
biology class. Her daughter's reason? Well, the science teachers had refused
to participate, so the statement was read by an administrator. Kitzmiller's
daughter figured if her teacher didn't have to be there, why should she?
Kitzmiller's role in the trial is short on dialogue, but important in setting
the tone. Despite all the implied clash of Red State/Blue State cultures in
the trial, Kitzmiller was a rather ordinary woman struggling with being a
mother of a teenager in the public school system.

I f it's true that the winners write the history, then the storyline of the
trial is as the anti-Intelligent Design plaintiffs presented it. And that was
that school board members were itching to supplant Darwinian evolution with
something more nakedly Christian in its worldview'creationism. But when they
learned that creationism would cause legal problems, they were convinced to
try a slicker-sounding alternative, Intelligent Design. The problem was, the
only thing they knew about Intelligent Design was that it was more
God-friendly than Darwinian evolution. This came out in the trial, as the
board members, who originally tried to hide their fundamentalist motivations,
were later shown to have lied on the stand about key events leading up to the
approval of the controversial statement on Intelligent Design.

Also, the trial has plot twists galore. In testimony there was the revelation
of the Discovery Institute's Wedge Document, which laid out a strategy for the
Intelligent Design movement. The Discovery Institute is a pro-ID think tank
based in Seattle. As spelled out in the document, the movement's goal is to
"reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview and replace it
with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions."

There is also what we might call the Of Pandas and People snafu. Using
donations from a local evangelical church, the pro-ID school board members
bought the textbook Of Pandas and People for the school library. The textbooks
were not for the classrooms, but in the statement read to the biology class,
students with questions about Intelligent Design were referred to them. In the
trial, the plaintiff's lawyers showed that the Pandas textbook predated the
1987 Supreme Court decision precluding the teaching of creation science in
schools, and that early drafts still referred to creationism. In fact, certain
passages in that early draft that describe what creation science was are
verbatim duplications of passages describing Intelligent Design in the present
version. Only the name of the theory has changed (to protect the innocent, we
presume).

The Thomas More Law Center, a conservative advocacy law firm which volunteered
to represent the school board pro bono, calls to the stand as one of its expert
witnesses a professor at the University of Warwick in England named Steve
Fuller. Fuller's specialty is to look at science from a sociological
perspective, and he's kind of a tweedy eccentric with big ideas, who talks
fast enough that the judge keeps asking him to slow down. He talks about how
science views itself and how scientific ideas are propagated and critiques
science's own view of itself. In Fuller's view, the scientific consensus
behind neo-Darwinism is self-policing and potentially stifling to the
development of new scientific theories. Moreover, he thinks methodological
naturalism--the idea that science should concern itself only with natural,
rather than supernatural, phenomena--is essentially a metaphysical, and
non-scientific, gatekeeper that is keeping Intelligent Design out of the
scientific conversation.

As a free-thinking philosopher, a Fuller character could be an interesting
(perhaps even humorous) counterpoint to the more down-to-earth Doverites he is
testifying on behalf of.

Eric Rothschild's closing remarks contain flourishes of rhetoric that will
have Oscar written all over them. In summing up the quality of science put
forward by leading Intelligent Design advocates, he says, "Their model of
science is, we've brought an idea, sit back, do no research, and challenge
evolutionists to shoot it down. That's not how science works."

He mentions one of the witnesses whose 7-year-old son was fascinated by
science, then turns to the school board's determination to truncate the
science curriculum. "How dare they stifle these children's education?"
Rothschild says. "How dare they restrict their opportunities? How dare they
place a ceiling on their aspirations and on their dreams?"

In concluding, Rothschild points to William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania
(perhaps an earlier scene could show a bronze statue of Penn to foreshadow
this). Pennsylvania, he said, was "the only place under British rule where
Catholics could legally worship in public" for much of the 18th century.
Rothschild then quotes from Penn's declaration of rights on the freedom of
individuals to believe and think as their conscience dictates, free from the
control of the government. "No human authority can, in any case whatever,
control or interfere with the rights of conscience," Rothschild quotes from
Penn. "And no preference shall ever be given by law to any religious
establishment or modes of worship." That is the line that Rothschild says the
school board in Dover was crossing.

Judge John Jones III, a Bush appointee and a protege of Pennsylvania's Tom
Ridge, is an odd hero for the liberal cause, but there he is. His ruling is
universally praised by those who oppose the teaching of Intelligent Design as
science in the classroom. Jones not only declared that ID is not science, but
gave the Dover School Board (at least its pre-election incarnation) a solid
smack on the wrists for bad form. Even Rush Limbaugh is calling him an
activist judge, as if he should occupy a space on the wall of infamy right
next to our own Massachusetts gay marriage justice herself, Margaret Marshall.

Jones, in his decision, saw a different lineage for Intelligent Design than
the fast-talking Fuller. Instead of a potential scientific revolution a la
Isaac Newton and his theory of gravity, Jones saw a political history for
Intelligent Design. Jones posited that the Intelligent Design movement,
despite its scientist friends, is actually the latest iteration of a steady
evolution of legal gambits in opposition to Darwinism.

The process began with Tennessee's Butler Law--the law that spawned the 1925
Scopes Trial--and similar laws in other states. Although Scopes attracted a
lot of attention, those anti-evolution laws didn't actually fall until the
1960s, when they were finally struck down by the Supreme Court. Interestingly,
it wasn't so much the ACLU that put evolution in textbooks as it was America's
anxiety over Sputnik. Fearing that the U.S. would fall behind the Soviets in
science, the government fostered a movement to get serious scientists to write
textbooks with high standards, eschewing political concerns. That led to the
eventual Supreme Court cases.

As Jones documented, citing the relevant court cases, when the anti-evolution
laws were struck down, the fundamentalists came back with the idea of equal
time for the Biblical creation story. The courts found against that, too. Then
came creation science. Each time the courts found against them, a new
generation of anti-Darwinism would come forward. When creation science failed,
conveniently, there was Intelligent Design to take its place.

Jones' character could have a very interesting part in a film. It would be
hard not to do some speculating into the behind-the-scenes aspects of the
trial: why is it that a Bush appointee is so willing to strike against the
party line of the religious Right on this issue? Perhaps some thoughtful
moments in chambers, or maybe just some of his wit on the stand could
illustrate this.

I f Hollywood were to head for quick release of a film based on the Kitzmiller
trial, it would be markedly different from its treatment of Scopes. Inherit the
Wind , the play, was written 30 years after the Scopes Trial and the movie
didn't hit the silver screen until 1960.

The Scopes Trial took place at the height of Modernism. Ezra Pound published
the first volume of his Cantos in 1925, Prohibition was the law of the land,
and a year later, the Savoy Ballroom would open in Harlem. The Scopes Trial
stood on a cultural divide. On one side, you had Clarence Darrow, the
pre-eminent labor and criminal defense lawyer of the day; H.L. Mencken, a
representative of the Eastern media elite; and the ACLU. On the other side,
you had William Jennings Bryan, the "prairie populist" and one of the last of
the old-school Democrats. Bryan stood for old-time religion, but he also stood
for rural America.

Rural America today is not what it was in Bryan's day. Eighty years after the
Scopes Trial, America is not divided into industrial cities and bucolic farm
country anymore. Instead, there is a spreading suburban post-industrial
sameness. People in Dover can do Google searches on the Internet and shop at
Wal-Mart. They just happen to do it in the hills of central Pennsylvania.

What's different between the trials of 1925 and 2005? A lot. In 1925, the
question was whether the state of Tennessee could outlaw the teaching of
evolution. In Scopes, in fact, the court held that the state could do that. In
2005, the battle lines were in very different positions: the creationists here
were fighting a counterattack to try to gain a foothold in the classroom. They
didn't want to stop the teaching of evolution, just to suggest that evolution
is controversial, opening the door to the amorphous (but God-friendly) idea of
Intelligent Design.

In some ways the two cases are mirror images, recognizably similar but also
opposite. In Scopes, the trial judge didn't allow Darrow to bring scientists
to testify about the merits of Darwin's theory, causing him to go to Plan B,
which was to call Bryan to the stand and quiz him on the literal
interpretation of the Bible. But as correspondent Margaret Talbot wrote in the
New Yorker , the Kitzmiller trial took days of scientific testimony and "turned
out to be rather like the biology class you wish you could have taken."

In Scopes, the defendant was a biology teacher, John Scopes, who had broken
Tennessee law by teaching evolution to his students. But Scopes was not a
daring iconoclast so much as a willing pawn in a court case that the ACLU was
interested in trying. In Kitzmiller, the defendant was the school board of
Dover, Penn. The board had been taken over by anti-evolution members who
crafted a statement to be read to students; the statement cast doubt on
evolution and opened a door for Intelligent Design. The board members
themselves knew little about Intelligent Design, an idea sponsored by a think
tank in Seattle called the Discovery Institute. But the ringleaders of the
board, Alan Bonsell and Bill Buckingham, were instead out-and-out
creationists, who considered Darwinism to be an affront to their religion.
Intelligent Design seemed like the most legally acceptable idea out there, so
they signed on.

The problem of making a movie out of the Dover trial is to predict its
lasting relevance. Although Intelligent Design has not been very successful as
a scientific proposition (peer-reviewed papers to date: zero) and Kitzmiller
certainly dealt a setback to the teaching of it in public schools as a legal
proposition, Intelligent Design has always had its greatest success as a
political proposition.

The real reason for Hollywood to stay away from a film version of the Dover
trial is that it may not turn out to be the big one. Although certainly hyped
as a battle royal, the signals in the political landscape are that the Dover
case was not as decisive as the pro-evolution side would like to believe.
Since the school board won't appeal, Judge Jones' decision, as clear and
convincing as it is, won't be legally binding as precedent outside his circuit.

Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, one of Intelligent Design's biggest
proponents on Capitol Hill, has been conducting damage control to his image.
In a National Public Radio interview in August, he said he was "not
comfortable with Intelligent Design being taught in the science classroom."
After the trial, he criticized the Thomas More Law Center (even though he sits
on the group's advisory board), telling the Philadelphia Inquirer the center
"made a huge mistake" in pushing the Dover case, which was a weak case.

Santorum's waffling aside, the decision doesn't seem to scare conservatives
outside of Pennsylvania. After the decision, Republican Gov. Rick Perry of
Texas has said he supports teaching Intelligent Design in the classroom.
Kansas already has ID in its state education standards and Ohio is considering
it. Why? Because Darwinism is down in the polls against creationism. In a
Gallup Poll taken in 2004, 45 percent of respondents believed God created
humans in their present form. Only 35 percent believed that Darwinism was
supported by the scientific evidence.

What does that mean? In Inherit the Wind , the moral of the story is that
reason must stand on guard against religious demagoguery and the mob. But the
sentiment in Inherit is owing partly to the post-McCarthy era when the play
was written and the subsequent movie was made. That post-McCarthy mood colored
the film's interpretation of Scopes. At the end of Inherit the Wind , Spencer
Tracy takes a Bible in one hand and a book on Darwin's theory in the other,
and puts both side by side in his briefcase as he walks out of the courtroom.
But 80 years after Scopes, with the battle still raging, such a happy ending
seems to ring hollow. That doesn't mean Hollywood won't try it.

Let's face it, the problem with making this movie is the problem of judging
the worthiness of Intelligent Design for the classroom. It's the problem of
confronting recalcitrant board members who deny that their true motives are
religious in nature. As Rothschild said in his closing arguments, "What I am
about to say is not easy to say, and there's no way to say it subtly." What
did Rothschild say? In essence, that the defendants lied. Similarly, one must
separate out Intelligent Design as an interesting philosophical debate from
the brute force momentum that is propelling it into the classroom. The
Intelligent Design movement is a politically --not scientifically--motivated
proposition. In fact, Intelligent Design is specifically aimed to undermine
the core foundations of science and make room for the appeal to an ultimate
authority. And if we peer into the facts of the case, it's not just science
that is under threat here, it's another pillar of the enlightenment project:
democracy.

In the trial it was revealed that the Dover school board wasn't just
interested in making room for God in the science classroom, but in the whole
school. After Of Pandas and People , the next textbook to be introduced was
The Myth of Separation by David Barton, a neat little civics primer that
arm-twists the Constitution until it reads that America is an explicitly
Christian nation. At this point, we go from a courtroom drama to a horror
flick. Barton's idea of America as an explicitly Christian nation could
re-introduce the pre-Enlightenment idea of the divine right of kings. Does
power derive from the consent of the governed? Not in a theocracy. It derives
from God.

After the citizens of Dover voted out the pro-ID school board members and
replaced them with members who said they would abide by the court's decision,
Pat Robertson threatened Dover with God's vengeance. If you believe Robertson,
this God is not a passive "Intelligent Designer." This God is one who cares how
you vote in the local school board election, and who wreaks havoc on you if you
vote the wrong way.

Then again, film fans, perhaps an Inherit the Wind sequel would merely be a
bridge film to the final chapter of a trilogy. The end could be deliberately
uncertain, a la Empire Strikes Back , with a small victory packaged inside a
potentially menacing landscape. Unanswered questions would beg for another
film. Will Santorum fall to a Democrat in the 2006 elections? Will
conservative Republican Judge Jones become a target of the next Christian
right-sponsored Justice Sunday? And will the Discovery Institute find a
better, slicker test case for its Creationism 3.0?
==
Excerpts from:
Q&A on Evolution and Intelligent Design
(American Association for the Advancement of Science)
http://www.aaas.org/news/press_room/evolution/qanda.shtml

Is evolution "just a theory?"

In detective novels, a "theory" is little more than an
educated guess, often based on a few circumstantial facts. In
science, the word "theory" means much more. A scientific
theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of
the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been
repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such
fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable
accounts of the real world. The theory of biological evolution
is more than "just a theory." It is as factual an explanation
of the universe as the atomic theory of matter or the germ
theory of disease. Our understanding of gravity is still a
work in progress. But the phenomenon of gravity, like
evolution, is an accepted fact.
|
Is there "evidence against" contemporary evolutionary theory?
|
No. There are still many puzzles in biology about the
particular pathways of the evolutionary process and how
various species are related to one another. However, these
puzzles neither invalidate nor challenge Darwin's basic theory
of "descent with modification" nor the theory's present form
that incorporates and is supported by the genetic sciences.
Contemporary evolutionary theory provides the conceptual
framework in which these puzzles can be addressed and points
toward ways to solve them.
|
Is there a growing body of scientists who doubt that evolution
happened?
|
No. The consensus among scientists in many fields, and
especially those who study the subject, is that contemporary
evolutionary theory provides a robust, well-tested explanation
for the history of life on earth and for the similarity within
the diversity of existing organisms. Very few scientists doubt
that evolution happened, although there is lively ongoing
inquiry about the details of how it happened. Of the few
scientists who criticize contemporary evolutionary theory,
most do no research in the field, and so their opinions have
little significance for scientists who do.

Is intelligent design a scientific alternative to contemporary
evolutionary theory?
|
No. Intelligent design proponents may use the language of
science, but they do not use its methodology. They have yet to
propose meaningful tests for their claims, there are no
reports of current research on these hypotheses at relevant
scientific society meetings, and there is no body of research
on these hypotheses published in relevant scientific journals.
So, intelligent design has not been demonstrated to be a
scientific theory. While living things are remarkably complex,
scientists have shown that careful, systematic study of them
can yield tremendous insights about their functions and
origins (as it has in the past).

Aren't scientists really just afraid to debate proponents of
intelligent design?
|
No, scientists actually thrive on debate, but only according
to the norms and standards of scientific investigation and
discourse. Scientists are bound by existing facts while the
opponents are not constrained by sticking to the verifiable
evidence and data.

Doesn't fairness require that alternatives to contemporary
evolutionary theory be taught in the public schools?
|
No. This is not about fairness. Science requires adherence to
standards of research conduct and process. Intelligent design
has not met those standards and should not be taught in
science classrooms. If anything, it is unfair for proponents
of a non-scientific claim to try to force their views into
science classrooms.

Are scientists trying to stifle discussion of intelligent
design?
|
We do not want to censor discussion of intelligent design in
the proper setting but the school science classroom is not
that setting. Nor do we want to portray evolution as some
carved-in-stone dogma. Science is an ongoing process, with new
evidence accepted and weighed constantly. Intelligent design
advocates have yet to contribute in a scientifically rigorous
manner to that process.
==
William A. Dembski is the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science
at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, where he heads its Center for
Science and Theology. He is also a senior fellow with the Discovery
Institute's Center for Science and Culture in Seattle.
==
Indeed, if it wasn't that way, evolution would be falsified. If
modern birds appeared all at once in the fossil record, with entirely
avian skeletal structure and feathers and fully adapted for powered
flight, there would be no way to link them to reptiles, and the same
is true of every other major animal group. But they don't appear that
way, and the order in which they do appear is precisely what
evolution predicts.

This is called "biostratigraphy". As you go up the geologic column,
from older strata to more recent strata, the types of plants and
animals that you find fossilized within them change rather
dramatically, but they change in a very specific pattern. In the
oldest rocks you find nothing but bacteria and the chemical traces
thereof, and that continues for over 2 billion years of the earth's
history. Then you find simple multi-celled organisms in the form of
algal stromatolites. Then in the late Precambrian, more complex life
forms begin to appear, all marine invertebrates. The pattern
continues in this basic order: hemichordates --> chordates -->jawless
fishes --> jawed fishes --> amphibians --> reptiles --> birds and
mammals. That's a very rough overview, of course, and there is a lot
of detail to be filled in. But the important fact here is that the
order of appearance is exactly what one would predict if evolution is
true, and within each of those major animal groups we find the same
predicted order.
==
Genesis
Pre-existing: Water
Day 1: Light created, night and day seperated.
Day 2: Firmament and waters seperated (kinda problematic at the best
of times for people trying to make something unusually accurate out of
Genesis).
Day 3: Land! Grass, seed bearing plants, fruit bearing plants are
all mentioned together.
Day 4: Sun, moon and stars made.
Day 5: Birds and sea life.
Day 6: Land life, including humans.
---
Science
Light
stars
Sun
Land simultaneous with Night and Day seperated
moon
sea life
Land life
seed bearing plants
Birds
fruit bearing plants
Grass
Humans
==
Topeka State Board of Education member John Bacon has charged
taxpayers for his expenses to attend a church-school sponsored event
that featured leaders of the movement to make the Bible the foundation
of public life.
The conference brought together leading Christian activists, including
David Barton, founder and president of WallBuilders; Tim Wildmon,
president of American Family Assn., and the American Family Radio
network; Ken Ham, leader of Answers in Genesis; and Ron Carlson, a
minister and anti-evolution speaker.
Kathy Martin, a Clay Center Republican and among six of the 10
board members who voted for the new science standards last month, said
Wednesday she wanted more information about materials that deal with
critical analysis of evolution.
The board took no action on Martins suggestion, which caught those who
oppose the revised science standards off guard.
==
Kansas
The board's chairman, Steven Abrams, is a middle-aged veterinarian who
says he is a man who knows science. He insists the guidelines will not
damage science teaching in the state. "Eventually people will have to
choose between the Bible's explanation for life on Earth or evolution,
which is just dogma."
==
Creation medicine." Let's just put some moldy orange rinds on it, drain some
blood to balance the humours, then light some incense to clear the bad spirits
out of the air, apply holy oil pray and hope for the best.
==
"In 2004, ID theoretician Paul Nelson wrote in Touchstone, a Christian
magazine: 'We dont have such a theory right now, and that's a problem. Without
a theory, it's very hard to know where to direct your research focus. Right
now, weve got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of notions such as
'irreducible complexity' and 'specified complexity' but, as yet, no general
theory of biological design.'"
==
"God, the Devil, and Darwin", by Niall Shanks (Oxford Univ Press)
==
Behe
His response might seem like a minor concession, but is very significant. The
old meaning of irreducible complexity was, It doesnt have any function when a
part is removed. Evidently, the new meaning of irreducible complexity is
It doesnt have the same function when a part is removed.

The new definition renders irreducible complexity irrelevant to evolution,
because complex adaptations are widely thought to have evolved through natural
selection co-opting existing structures for new functions, in opportunistic
fashion.
==
Astrology would be considered a scientific theory if judged by the
same criteria used by a well-known advocate of Intelligent Design to
justify his claim that ID is science, a landmark US trial,
Under cross examination, ID proponent Michael Behe, a biochemist at
Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, admitted his definition
of "theory" was so broad it would also include astrology.
==
In a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll released last week, 53 percent of
adults surveyed said "God created humans in their present form
exactly the way the Bible describes it." Thirty-one percent said
humans evolved from other species with God's guidance and 12 percent
said humans evolved without divine intervention. Although Gallup
specified the Bible for the first time in this poll, the results
closely paralleled those in polls taken over the last 20 years, in
which nearly half of all Americans consistently agreed that "God
created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time
within the last 10,000 years or so."
==
Hitler was a creationist:
"Even a superficial glance is sufficient to show that all the innumerable
forms in which the life-urge of Nature manifests itself are subject to a
fundamental law - one may call it an iron law of Nature - which compels the
various species to keep within the definite limits of their own life-forms
when propagating and multiplying their kind. Each animal mates only with one
of its own species. The titmouse cohabits only with the titmouse, the finch
with the finch, the stork with the stork, the field-mouse with the field-mouse,
the house-mouse with the house-mouse, the wolf with the she-wolf, etc."

and a Christian:
"The folkish-minded man has the sacred duty, each in his own enomination,
of making people stop just talking superficially of God's will, and actually
fulfil God's will, and not let God's word be desecrated. For God's will
gave men their form, their essence and their abilities. Anyone who destroys
His work is declaring war on the Lord's creation, the divine will."

Compare this from arch-creationist Henry Morris:
"Yet the prophecy [about the Hamites] again has its obverse side.
Somehow they have only
gone so far and no farther. The Japhethites and Semites have, sooner
or later, taken over their territories, and their inventions, and
then developed them and utilized them for their own enlargement.
Often the Hamites, especially the Negroes, have become actual
personal servants or even slaves to the others. Possessed of a
genetic character concerned mainly with mundane matters, they have
eventually been displaced by the intellectual and philosophical
acumen of the Japhethites and the religious zeal of the Semites."

To this from Herr Hitler:
"The goal of the "folkish government" is to finally to put an end to the
constant and continuous original sin of racial poisoning, and to give the
Almighty Creator beings such as He Himself created."
==
A brief history of the creationist/ID movement in the US:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/whoare.htm

A brief history of creationist/ID legal maneuvering
and court cases:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/legal.htm
==
2005
A quarter of Americans would replace the teaching of evolution with creationism
in public schools, but the idea of including the teaching of creationism in
addition to evolution was supported by 64 percent of those responding to
survey results released in August by the Pew Research Center for the People and
the Press.
==
Just have a look at the people teaching creationism.
They lie, they cheat, they misrepresent, they deny reality, they
resort to invective when faced with questions they can't answer, they
denigrate the faith of other christians as well as members of other
religions, they misrepresent science, they accuse their opponents of
genocide, racism, fascism and paedophilia. They even dodge their
taxes.
Now ask yourself: are these people whose word you can trust?
==
Phil Johnson said he and most others in the intelligent design
movement believe the designer is the God of the Bible.
-Tacoma News Tribune, May 7, 2002
"Our strategy has been to change the subject a bit so that we can
get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the
reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."
==
I never say that the creationists are generally stupid.
I say that stupid people are generally creationists.
==
http://www.plesiosaur.com/creationism/kangaroos_and_the_flood/kangaoos.htm
Great anti-flood reference.
==
One could use the following argument:
I see design in nature (design = pattern)
Design implies a Designer (one of the other definitions of design)
Therefore a Designer exists. (False conclusion because of equivocation)
Design is a stultifying dead end. We're supposed to accept the 'evidence' for
design (as if there were any) as if that was the end. Speculate about
mechanisms behind the design? Can't do that. The only mechanism is a designer
of some sort, and talking about It is theology. Speculating about the how of
design isn't allowed. How uninteresting!
==
Glenn Morton went to college and studied geology. He'd had a most thorough
creationist education. He almost stopped being a Christian.
http://home.entouch.net/dmd/gstory.htm
"But eventually, by 1994 I was through with young-earth creationISM. Nothing
that young-earth creationists had taught me about geology turned out to be
true. I took a poll of my ICR graduate friends who have worked in the oil
industry. I asked them one question.
"From your oil industry experience, did any fact that you were taught at
ICR, which challenged current geological thinking, turn out in the long run
to be true? ,"
That is a very simple question. One man, Steve Robertson, who worked for
Shell grew real silent on the phone, sighed and softly said 'No!' A very
close friend that I had hired at Arco, after hearing the question,
exclaimed, "Wait a minute. There has to be one!" But he could not name
one. I can not name one. No one else could either. One man I could not
reach, to ask that question, had a crisis of faith about two years after
coming into the oil industry. I do not know what his spiritual state is
now but he was in bad shape the last time I talked to him."
==
Intelligent design replaces the basic concepts of science -
observation, analysis and hypothesis - with speculation.
Proponents of intelligent design tend to base their writings in
pseudo-scientific terms. The problem is that intelligent design has
no basis in any physical science; it is religious dogma masquerading
as science in order to fool people. Make no mistake: Not only is
there no controversy regarding the fact of evolution - including
observed instances of speciation - any more than there is regarding
the idea that the Earth is spherical, but there also is no scientific
test to show that intelligent design is valid.
Evolution can be falsified - for example, modern human fossils in the
Triassic period would be a problem. Evolution can be tested - for
example, we can work out the transitions between a related set of
species and see if we find the fossils for the transitions; many have
been found.
Intelligent design has no such falsifiability or testability. It's
literalist biblical creationism posing as legitimate science. It
presumes design where there is none, based on "complexity," and
proposes "god" for the solution. "Complexity" does not imply design,
nor is "god" a valid scientific explanation.
==
A year ago, Paul Nelson, a fellow at the Center for Science and
Culture where Meyer is the prgram director was quoted as saying:
"Right now, we've got a bag of powerful intuitions, and a handful of
notions such as 'irreducible complexity' and 'specified
complexity' but, as yet, no general theory of biological design."
==
Let's look at "Dr." Kent Hovind. He is one of the most ubiquitous of
creationists.
Hovind claims to possess a master's degree and a doctorate in education
from Patriot University in Colorado. According to Hovind, his 250-page
dissertation was on the topic of the dangers of teaching evolution in the
public schools. Formerly affiliated with Hilltop Baptist Church in
Colorado Springs, Colorado, Patriot University is accredited only by the
American Accrediting Association of Theological Institutions, an
accreditation mill that provides accreditation for a $100 charge. (For
$100 you can have your own "accredited" university.) Patriot University
has moved to Alamosa, Colorado and continues to offer correspondence
courses for $15 to $32 per credit. The school's catalog contains course
descriptions but no listing of the school's faculty or their credentials.
==
I've been in this conversation with dozens, possibly hundreds of
creationists in the last 15 years. I've been literally told "it doesn't
matter if it's not true, it's still true."
==
Another ironic result of this argument is that many creationists argue that
one of the strongest evidences for the existence of God is how perfectly
all of the physical constants of the universe - including the speed of
light - fit together. Yet, in order to support one of their wild
hypotheses - such as their idea of a young earth - they are willing to
suggest that those very same physical constants change all of the time!
==
When it comes to teaching evolution, minority rules in the Kansas State
Board of Education. While 17 scientists and science educators have
revised and updated Kansas science education standards, the conservative
majority seated on the Board would prefer to approve the Minority
Report submitted by eight proponents of Intelligent Design Theory.
"We are not going to give up until the standards say what we want them
to say," said Kathy Martin, District 6 Board member. "Some naturalistic
[evolutionary] opinion is correct, but not all of it is."
George Griffith, Program Consultant for Science at the Kansas State
Department of Education, said that when the Board is revising any set of
education standards, they first gather a group of professionals and
educators from the university level to form an education standards
writing committee. The committee reviews the standards and reaches a
consensus about what needs to be changed. The committee then sends their
recommendations back to the Board for approval. Approval is dictated by
majority vote.

The Board appears to be making an exception in the case of science
standards. A standards writing committee has been assembled, but rather
than reaching a consensus, the group has submitted two distinctly
different reports. In a committee comprised of 25 scientists, eight
members are Intelligent Design (ID) proponents. Those eight members
prepared a separate set of recommendations, known as the "Minority
Report," in addition to the standards changes already prepared by the
seventeen in favor of teaching evolution as defined by the scientific
community at large.
Martin said, "Evolution has been proven false. ID is science-based and
strong in facts."
While Martin was unable to provide examples of scientific facts that
back up Intelligent Design Theory, she did explain that ID believes in
"microevolution," but not "macroevolution."
"Microevolution is change within the species: there are adaptations that
make it easier for the species to live. Macroevolution is change between
the classes: reptiles turning into birds, for example. Man has changed
and evolved, but we are not going to change back into monkeys," said Martin.
Kathy Martin maintains that the Board does not intend that ID or
creationism be taught in Kansas science classrooms. Rather, Martin said,
"We want to allow evolution to be critically analyzed and challenged."
However, the Minority Report opens the school floor to discuss
alternative theories to evolution, such as Intelligent Design (ID).
"It should be up to the student to find an alternative to evolution
theory," said Martin. "Permitting discussion about ID would allow
students to form unbiased opinions. We would be allowing challenges to
evolution that are not allowed now."
According to the Intelligent Design Network, the theory of intelligent
design (ID) holds that certain features of the universe and of living
things are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an
undirected process such as natural selection. ID proponents believe
science should be conducted objectively, even if the findings imply that
there is a "Master Designer" behind the design.
And there is the controversy: Intelligent Design theory unavoidably
impacts religion and religious philosophy.
Martin said, "ID has theological implications. ID is not strictly
Christian, but it is theistic."
Some scientists claim that ID is thinly disguised creationism with a
hidden Christian agenda at its root. Martin agrees that the agenda is
not well disguised.
"Of course this is a Christian agenda. We are a Christian Nation," said
Martin. "Our country is made up of Christian conservatives. We don't
often speak up but we need to stand up and let our voices be heard,"
said Martin.
While introducing ID into the evolution cirriculum might blur the lines
between theology, philosophy, and science, Martin sees no difficulty in
teaching morals or ethics in the science classroom.
"Why shouldn't theology be taught in the classroom? Morality ought to be
taught in every class. Prayer ought to be allowed. Whenever a child
wanted to pray in class, I prayed with them," said Martin. "All children
believe in God. Even little children whose parents don't take them to
church believe in God."
Martin said these are philosophical differences that will become a
non-issue if discussion is allowed.
"Most high school students don't care where they came from. They are
more worried about where they are going on Saturday night," said Martin.
"There are some who say that Kansas won't have a good educational system
if we change the standards. That is just scare tactics. My children's
education didn't suffer under the old standards."
==
http://www.creationresearch.org/hisaims.html
"The Creation Research Society (CRS), a scientific society with
worldwide membership, is recognized internationally for its firm
commitment to scientific special creation."
and, in case you don't like one-liners, from the same page:
"A number of principles were established from the beginning. First,
members of the Society, which include research scientists from various
fields of scientific accomplishment, are committed to full belief in
the Biblical record of creation and early history. Thus, they advocate
the concept of special creation (as opposed to evolution), both of the
universe and of the earth with its complexity of living forms. All
members must subscribe to the following statement of belief:
1. The Bible is the written Word of God, and because it is
inspired throughout, all its assertions are historically and
scientifically true in the original autographs. To the student of
nature this means that the account of origins in Genesis is a factual
presentation of simple historical truths.
2. All basic types of living things, including man, were made
by direct creative acts of God during the Creation Week described in
Genesis. Whatever biological changes have occurred since Creation Week
have been accomplished only changes within the original created kinds.
3. The great flood described in Genesis, commonly referred to
as the Noachian Flood, was an historic event worldwide in its extent
and effect.
4. We are an organization of Christian men and women of
science who accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior. The account of
the special creation of Adam and Eve as one man and one woman and
their subsequent fall into sin is the basis for our belief in the
necessity of a Savior for all mankind. Therefore, salvation can come
only through accepting Jesus Christ as our Savior."
Ok, so try again. Where could we find creation *science*?
Could you explain what, if anything, you creationist beliefs has to do
with your work? Do you ever, for example, attribute the failure of a
test to be the work of God?
Interesting, yet the CRS accepts Bible as truth because they were told
it. Seems like you use a higher standard of "proof" for science than
for religion. Maybe that suggests something.
Yet they are unable to provide any papers they submitted to
peer-review journals.
==
Again, if God made the universe 6,000 years ago and did not fiddle
with the evidence, than all ages would point to that 6,000 year age.
We would not have stars too far away, we would not have layers of
sediment that showed ancient age, we would not have ice layers showing
an older Earth, we would not have eroded lava flows sitting on
sediment buried by sediment. If God did not fiddle with the evidence,
the universe would look how old it is.
==
Being a creationist means that you live in some warm, fuzzy place where you
never ask questions about your own beliefs; you never really try to answer
questions; you never consider the implications of your beliefs. Instead
you simply have a perpetual smile. Creationists are happy. That's all that
is important. Facts are SURELY not important.
==
For the details of the problems
with Mr. Gentry's halo ideas, a person should go to the
Talk.Origins archives" search page at:
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/search.html .

Specific discussions of radiohaloes can be found at:
1. http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos.html
"Evolution's Tiny Violences: The Po-Halo Mystery"
2. http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/wood.html
"ARE POLONIUM 210Po) HALOS IN COALIFIED WOOD
EVIDENCE FOR THE NOACHIAN FLOOD? "
3. http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/revised8.htm
"POLONIUM HALOS AND MYRMEKITE IN PEGMATITE AND
GRANITE"
4. http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/review.htm
"REVIEW OF THE ARTICLE: "THE THERMAL ERASURE OF
RADIOHALOS IN BIOTITE" BY MARK ARMITAGE AND ED
BACK (CREATION EX NIHILO TECH. J., VOL. 8, NO. 2,
1994, PP. 212-222)"
5. http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/gentry/tiny.htm
"Geology of Gentry's 'Tiny Mystery'" by J. Richard
Wakefield May 1988 Issue of the Journal of Geological
Education) (Name is changed for modern issues)
Articles about polonium haloes are:
Collins, L. G. (1996) Are polonium (210 Po) haloes in
coalified wood evidence for the Noachian Flood?
Creation/Evolution. Issue 38, pp. 10-15.
Wakefield, Jeffrey Richard (1988a) The Geology of
Gentry's 'Tiny Mystery.' Journal of Geological
Education. vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 161-175.
Wakefield, J Richard (1988b) Gentry's Tiny Mystery:
Unsupported by Geology. Creation/Evolution.
issue XXII, pp. 13-33.
"Creation/Evolution" is published by the National
Center for Science Education; P.O. Box 9477;
Berkley, CA 94709-0477 (800) 290-6006.
http://www.natcenscied.org
Collins (1996) specifically discusses the topic
of radiohaloes in coal. This is also discussed at:
http://www.csun.edu/~vcgeo005/wood.html
A. Evolution 2, Creationist debunkings, science P
The Skeptic Tank
http://www.linkline.com/personal/frice/FLIST016.HTM
B. EVOLUTION AND THEISTIC ANTI EVOLUTION FILES P
The Skeptic Tank
http://www.linkline.com/personal/frice/flist017.htm
Hashemi-Nezhad, S.R.; Fremlin, J.H.; and Durrani, S.A., 1979. Polonium
halos in mica. Nature, v.278, p.333-335. [Experimental data on diffusion "
rates of lead in mica at higher temperatures -
==
I would like to suggest the following Biblical quote that so aptly
addresses K. Hovind, C. Baugh, D. Patton, J. Morris, S. Austin, K. Ham,
G. Parker (and all the other pro-creationists) and what they do, namely
duping the credulous.

Will you speak unjustly on God's behalf?
Will you speak deceitfully for Him?...
What will happen when He examines you?
Will you fool Him as one fools men?
[Job 13:7-9]
==
Non-creationists simply believe that scientific
hyptotheses should be testable and the results of those tests should not
falsify that hypothesis. Creationists seem to believe that people should
accept a hypothesis if it confirms their preconceptions; if they feel good
about believing that hypothesis.
==
April, 2005
MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The age-old debate over evolution versus creation
began again in Alabama's state House on Wednesday.
Some lawmakers want the theory of creationism to be more freely
taught in science classes, while critics said the belief has no place
in textbooks.
The bill is called the Academic Freedom Act and was created to allow
classroom discussions of creationism.
But when lawmakers in Montgomery discussed the issue in the state
House on Wednesday, they were met with an outcry from critics who
believe it incorrectly redefines science. The creationism versus
evolution debate has become one of the most contentious issues in
this legislative session.=
Supporters of the bill want to give teachers the right to discuss
creationism as a scientific alternative to teaching evolution.
However, opponents believe it masks religious beliefs as a science
lesson.
"This bill says that teachers must teach the state course of study,
but then they can bring in any other information they want to," said
Susan Lockwood, a spokesperson for school superintendents. "We don't
believe that's appropriate for children."
Many educators worry that the "freedom" in the bill would allow
teachers to use unapproved class curricula to teach theories of life.
On college campuses like the University of Alabama at Birmingham,
education majors hoping to be teachers are divided about what the
measure could mean for their future in the classroom.
Julanda Sandlin wants lawmakers to stay out of her lessons to children.
"I just want to be an educator, you know. I want to make a difference
in their lives, so their lives can be better than ours," said Sandlin.
But Lindsey Cunningham worries that without a legal limit, some
teachers will push their own personal beliefs about the origin of life.
"I think there should be a law. I think you're going to have to draw
a line on everything you teach, and so I think it's important they
step in and take charge," said Cunningham.
A similar academic freedom act has failed before, and this one has
little time left for a vote this year. It comes up for a committee
vote next week then heads to the full house with only six meeting
days left this session.
==
Niall Shanks, the author of a book opposing the concept of
intelligent design, has been appointed to a new history and
philosophy of science professorship at Wichita State University.
Shanks, author of "God, The Devil and Darwin: A Critique of
Intelligent Design Theory," will be the first professor in the
Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences hired with a faculty
of distinction gift. He will start in the fall.
==
In the case of the Discovery Institute, one of its biggest benefactors is
The Fieldstead Charitable Trust, a foundation run by Christian conservatives.
==
There is a very large private school in Cary, NC, not 15 miles from Chapel
Hill, that teaches creationism and also that african slavery was a Good Thing.
http://www.theocracywatch.org/schools_slavery_booklet.htm
==
Creationists don't want equal time. They want all the time there is.
- Isaac Asimov
==
One of the more ubiquitous creationists is Kent Hovind.
At his Pensacola, FL headquarters Hovind sells anti-Semitic books titled "
Fourth Reich of the Rich" and has recommended "The Protocols of the Elders
of Zion", a book blaming the world's problems on a Jewish conspiracy.
Hovind also had said: "Democracy, is evil and contrary to God's law."
==
Creaionists are mad at "materialism" because it doesn't notice their God.
Naturally their God wants to be noticed, so something must be wrong somewhere
- and it's not God who's wrong.
--
If God uses natural selection to create, how can He be benevolent?
If all possible outcomes are consistent with an omnipotent, omniscient Creator
and we can have no way of knowing His character and intent towards us, what
difference does it make whether or not He exists?
--
It might also be interesting to ask about some of the central issues for ID.
The human body is not distinguishable, from the point of view of design
(purpose, materials, methods), from that of chimps and other apes
==
In science, unlike in common usage, a successful theory is an overarching
explanation that accounts for all known facts, hypotheses, and observations.
It is a fact, supported by millions of observations over at least 150
years that life has evolved on this planet. This fact of evolution did not have
a scientifically satisfactory overarching explanationa theoryuntil Charles
Darwin developed his complex ideas. His explanation rapidly convinced the
scientific minds of his own age and of every generation since then.
No scientifically supported theory of why life on this planet evolved
rivals basic Darwinian theory. If there was a legitimate alternative,
scientists would go to great lengths to win prestige by testing and developing
the alternative.
The surest evidence that the Cobb School Board was using the sticker
to mollify a religious minority in the county, rather than to improve science
education or to encourage critical thinking, is the much better sticker they
rejected. While no sticker at all is needed, the board was presented with one
that encouraged students to reflect critically and thoughtfully on all
scientific theories in all fields, and that acknowledged that, while most
scientists realize that Darwinian theory is well supported, some people do not.
The board rejected that broader and more accurate advice to students.
Evolutionary theory is not the only part of science subject to
religious dispute and controversy. The germ theory of disease, while
overwhelmingly supported by scientists--as is evolution theory--is not accepted
by Christian Scientists or by some other religious groups. The board did not
put a sticker in high school health texts about this, for good reason.
Tempting as the solution presented by a local letter writer may seem
to some, avoiding all the controversy by not teaching about evolution at all,
or only in elective courses, would seriously cheat students. Almost everything
in modern biology and much of astronomy, geology, chemistry, and other
scientific disciplines cannot be well understood except in light of
evolutionary theory. Young people would suffer greatly in colleges and
universities, including in most religious schools, if their education was so
inadequate. Their understanding of life itself would be severely hampered.
Science classes and textbooks should be restricted to scientific
inquiry. There is much that evolutionary theory cannot explain, and the
compatibility or conflict of science and religion, while controversial, cannot
be determined by science.
The case is not part of the ongoing controversy between atheists and
Christians. Many scientists, including the Cobb high school science department
chair and the textbook author who both testified eloquently against the
sticker, describe themselves as deeply religious. Some Christians may be
threatened by science, but most are not.
The court held that the sticker is unconstitutional because it conveys an
impermissible message of endorsement and tells some citizens that they are
political outsiders while telling others that they are political insiders and
because it violates the Georgia constitutional provision regarding Separation
of Church and State (yes those words are in the Georgia Constitution).
==
Dorit, Robert. Sept-Oct 1997. _American Scientist_, 474-5.
This is a review of _Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical
Challenge to Evolution_ (1996), by Michael J. Behe.
I've often wondered why the argument from design so appeals to engineers and
chemists. I suspect that the problem derives from the day-to-day experience of
these professions. Engineers and chemists know that they do not get a desired
outcome-- stable bridge or purified compound-- from random inputs, time and a
statistical principle for differential representation. In these professions,
there is no design without a designer, no desired outcome without careful and
intelligent planning. But personal experience is not always the best guide.
==
Jonathan Wells --- Author of Icons of Evolution. Wells has been a
member of the Sun Myung Moonie's Unification Church cult since the
1970's. In his own words, Wells recently described why he decided to
take up "Father Moon's" offer to finance his education at both Yale
and Berkeley: "Father encouraged us to set our sights high and
accomplish great things. He also spoke out against the evils in the
world; among them, he frequently criticized Darwin's theory that
living things originated without God's purposeful, creative activity.
My studies included modern theologians who took Darwinism for granted
and thus saw no room for God's involvement in nature or history; in
the process, they re- interpreted the fall, the incarnation, and even
God as products of human imagination. Father's words, my studies, and
my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying
Darwinism, just as many of my fellow Unificationists had already
devoted their lives to destroying Marxism.
==
Well, a Jack Chick tract claims that gluons are "a made-up dream"
and don't exist. They should "teach the controversy" by allowing equal time
for the alternate theory: An unknown Intelligent Atom-Binder (who may or
may not be God, wink wink) holds atoms together...
==
It is as respectable to be modified monkey as modified dirt.
-- Thomas Henry Huxley --
==
Harkins said the curriculum committee recommended the curriculum
change in order to have students presented with other theories of
evolution, because if you only present one theory, you are
presenting that as fact.
"And the only other theory anyone was aware of was intelligent
design," Harkins said. "But they would have liked to have presented
other theories, but no one could think of any of them."
Harkins said she wanted the science curriculum to include more than
one theory in order to "encourage critical thinking" and encourage
questioning.
Now, I wonder what effect the Discovery Institute's statement had on their
assessment of how many theories there were? The irony being that the origin of
life is one area where they could legitimately plead a lack of scientific
knowledge. And isn't it lovely that they want to teach about the "gaps" in
"Darwin's Theory", given that it is obvious they are just trying to find some
to shove their god in?
==
A school district that attracted national attention by requiring the reading of
a statement about "intelligent design" as an alternative to the theory of
evolution in high-school biology classes made the mandate optional for
teachers and students who object to it. The Dover, PA Area School District
agreed to temporarily exempt science "
teachers from having to read the statement, after seven of them signed a letter
objecting to the policy on grounds that it would violate Pennsylvania's
professional standards and practices code for teachers. Instead, administrators
will read the statement Thursday, when ninth-graders at Dover High School are
expected to learn about evolution in their biology classes. Students can also
be excused from hearing the statement being read if their parents object,
according to a letter to parents that the district posted on its Web site
Nearly three dozen University of Pennsylvania professors, as well as
open letter Wednesday asking the Dover school board to "alter the
misguided policy of teaching intelligent design creationism" and give
students "real, dependable scientific knowledge."
Paul Sniegowski, Penn associate professor of biology, said on Friday
the 32 teachers and the associate dean sent the letter because he felt
any discussion on "intelligent design" reduces the quality of a
science education.

Dover teachers refuse to read antievolution disclaimer
those science teachers...
Jennifer Miller
Robert Linker
Robert Eshbach
Leslie Prall
Brian Bahn
David Taylor
Vickie Davis
Re: Reading Statement on Intelligent Design
We have individually reviewed the statement you presented yesterday for
presentation to our students at the beginning of the Biology unit
dealing with evolution. You have indicated that students may "opt-out"
of this portion of the class and that they will be excused and
monitored by an administrator. We respectfully exercise our right to
"opt-out" of the statement portion of the class. We will relinquish the
classroom to an administrator and we will monitor our own students.
This request is based upon our considered opinion that reading the
statement violates our responsibilities as professional educators as
set forth in the Code of Professional Practice and Conduct for
Educators promulgated by the Professional Standards and Practices
Commission and found at 22 Pa. Code section 235.1 et.seq. As noted in
the introductory paragraph of the Code, section 235.2 (a): "Generally,
the responsibility for professional conduct rests with the individual
professional educator." Further, the Code provides in section 235.2
(b): "This chapter makes explicit the values of the education
profession. When individuals become educators in this Commonwealth,
they make a moral commitment to uphold these values."
Central to the teaching act and our ethical obligation is the solemn
responsibility to teach the truth. Section 235.10 (2) guides our
relationships with students and provides that "The professional
educator may not Knowingly and intentionally misrepresent subject
matter or curriculum."
INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT SCIENCE. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT BIOLOGY.
INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS NOT AN ACCEPTED SCIENTIFIC THEORY.
I believe that if I as the classroom teacher read the required
statement, my students will inevitably (and understandably) believe
that Intelligent Design is a valid scientific theory, perhaps on par
with the theory of evolution. That is not true. To refer the students
to "Of Pandas and People" as if it is a scientific resource breaches my
ethical obligation to provide them with scientific knowledge that is
supported by recognized scientific proof or theory.
Reading the statement places us in violation of the following ethical
obligations. Section 235.3 of the Code requires Professional educators
to develop "sound educational policy" and obligates us "to implement
that policy." Section 235.3 (b) makes it explicit that "Professional
educators recognize their primary responsibility to the student and the
development of the student's potential. Central to that development is
the professional educator's valuing the pursuit of truth; devotion to
excellence; acquisition of knowledge; and democratic principles." The
same section goes on to provide: "Educators encourage and support the
use of resources that best serve the interests and needs of students.
Within the context of professional experience, the educator and the
student together explore the challenge and the dignity of the human
experience." Section 235.4 (b) (2) provides: "Professional educators
shall be prepared, and legally certified, in their areas of assignment.
Educators may not be assigned or willingly accept assignments they are
not certified to fulfill." Section 235.5(b) (8) provides: "Professional
educators shall be open-minded, knowledgeable and use appropriate
judgement and communication skills when responding to an issue within
the educational environment." Section 235.4 (b) (10) provides:
"Professional educators shall exert reasonable effort to protect the
student from conditions which interfere with learning or are harmful to
the student's health and safety."

In the Dover Area School District, the American Civil Liberties Union has filed
a federal lawsuit against the school district for requiring ninth graders to be
taught the intelligent design theory.
---
It is carefully-argued, dignified and stands foursquare
on the ground of a teacher's responsibility to provide students with
the best available knowledge of a subject and the tools with which to
examine it. Like others here, I hope that Intelligent Design is put
to the test in court where its claims can be exposed for what they are
and other teachers can be spared the need to defend the values of
science from religious zealots.
--
I'd like them to teach Lamarkism and Lysenkoism, to show what a real
'problems with the theory' look like. Both have more published
references in support of their assertions than ID, and it would
provide an opportunity to demonstrate how scientific error-checking works.
--
The relevant section is extremely small and tucked away on pp.22:
'Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin's Theory and of
other theories of evolution including, but not limited to Intelligent
Design'
Am I missing something - exactly how many theories of evolution are there?
Is one day really enough to accomodate all of them and why aren't these
'other' theories listed with appropriate reference material?
And why just evolution? Why not put an obligation to make students
aware of gaps/problems in physics, chemistry, and math ? How can they justify
concentrating on this one aspect of the science curriculum?
==
Scientists can't presently do a lot of things in the lab. To the creationist,
that means 'God did it'. To a scientist that means 'I don't know yet'.
==
In the specific case of arguments from design, I observe that complex objects
(q) come from intelligent human designers (p)
Therefore, if I see another complex object (q), I conclude that it came from
another intelligent designer (p).
But the above construct is logically incorrect; given Statement 1, statement 2
does not logically follow.
You can find the proof in an introductory text in logic (or probably on the
internet as well). To make this argument work logically, it must be written
in the following way:
Statement 1: If and only if p, then q
Statement 2: Therefore, if q, then p.
In other words, if we can show that the *only* time that "q" (complex objects)
occurs is when we have (intelligent designers), then the argument is valid
Note that this is not a matter of opinion; it is a logical fact.
==
Has Science Got Rid of God? (Paperback) by John Blanchard
==
"Not by Chance" by Lee Spetner (1996)
In his book, Lee Spetner seeks to disprove Neo-Darwinian Theory (NDT) by the
use of mathematical analysis, notably statistics. The author cannot be
considered a dispassionate seeker after truth; he refers to "evolutionists
[who] claim to know how it all began" (p. 23) and "if the neo-Darwinian agenda
had worked out, there would be no place for a creator" (p. 24). Rather from the
outset he has a mission, that can be stated simply as a religious Jew's attempt
to destroy the opposition, namely the concept that evolution of biological
species could have occurred without the need to evoke a creator.
One thing is clear, NDT is hardly likely to be defended by any modern
biologist. Consequently Spetner has erected a massive "straw man" to beat and
berate with such determination.
We now know that point mutations are only one of many ways that changes occur
in the genetic material to give rise to variation (see above), and these are
not taken into account in Spetner's analysis. Clearly a book written in 1996
should not be focusing on an outdated theory from the 1940s!
That the evolution of animal species has occurred over eons is an indisputable
fact. Now, it appears that Spetner has his own theory of evolution that must
include a deity. In his epilogue, he approvingly quotes Rabbi Luria (1789-1855)
who interpreted the holy books and came to the conclusion that 365 beasts and
an equal number of birds were created (presumably by God) and the rest evolved
from these. This is a theory of evolution that does not accord with the known
facts! In my understanding, God is considered by believers to be supernatural
I cannot understand why it is thought necessary to invoke a supernatural being
to account for a natural process. Overall "facts speak louder than statistics."
==
"The argument that the literal story of Genesis can qualify as
science collapses on three major grounds: the creationists' need to
invoke miracles in order to compress the events of the earth's history
into the biblical span of a few thousand years; their unwillingness to
abandon claims clearly disproved, including the assertion that all
fossils are products of Noah's flood; and their reliance upon
distortion, misquote, half-quote, and citation out of context to
characterize the ideas of their opponents." -- Stephen Jay Gould,
"The Verdict on Creationism," The Skeptical Inquirer, Winter 1987-88,p. 186
==
"... a new kind of phobia which is now widely prevalent among the American
public ... pithecophobia, or the dread of apes - especially the dread of apes
as relatives or ancestors. ... this phobia has become almost pandemic ..."
William K. Gregory, Two Views of the Origin of Man, Science: June 24, 1927
==
"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and
then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so
as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry
on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that
sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually
on a battlefield." --George Orwell, 1946, "Under Your Nose"
==
The skeptics annotated bible
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com
is a good source for lots of things from the Bible,.including many
contradictions:
http://www.skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/christianity/errancy.shtml
In complete fairness, some scholars have criticized *some* of the
contradictions as being due to improper translation, but by no means all.
As for the two stories of creation, the one people usually quote is Genesis
1:1-2:3, in which creation took six days, all animals were created on the
fifth day, Man and Woman were created on the sixth, and God rested on the
Seventh. However, immediately after that, Genesis tells the creation story
*again* (2:4-25), only this time creation of heaven and earth only take ONE
day (2:4) as opposed to three. After that, no time scale is given, but Man is
is clearly created *before* the animals (Man is created in 2:7 and the animals
are created in 2:19). Also, in the first version, Man and Woman are created
together on the sixth day (1:27); however, in the second, he creates Man
first, and then only creates Woman after Man *has named all of the animals of
the Earth*!! (2:19-20). Only after finding that Adam had no taste for
bestiality did he drug him, take a rib, and make Eve (2:21-22). I don't know
how long it took Adam to name all the animals of the Earth, but it certainly
took more than a day! Of course, none of this is a problem if you view
the Bible as an allegorical tool. It's only when people try to interpret
individual lines literally that it's important to point this out.
It's clear to any sane mind that Genesis is the result of one or more creation
stories dating back to an oral tradition.
==
Rep backs intelligent design
, April 9, 2005
In October, the Dover Area School Board voted to require high school biology
teachers to teach alternatives to the theory of evolution, including
intelligent design.
What is intelligent design?: Intelligent design holds that all living organisms
are so complex, that they must have been created by an unspecified divine
being. The reason: Board members who support the change say students should
learn about alternative theories to evolution. The other side: Critics argue
"intelligent design" is merely an attempt to get creationism and religion into
the classroom.
A state lawmaker wants all Pennsylvania public schools to have the option of
including intelligent design in their science curriculums.
So last month, Rep. Tom Creighton, R-Manheim, introduced a bill to the House
Education Committee to insert the concept into the Public School Code.
Current Pennsylvania education standards dont prevent school districts
fromteaching alternatives to evolutionary theory, but they do not specify that
districts may do so.
The bill, which has not yet come up for debate, says a school district may
include the concept of intelligent design in any school instruction concerning
the theories of the origin of man and the earth which includes the theory
commonly known as evolution.
Intelligent design, which is the subject of a legal battle being fought in
Dover, is the idea that life is too complex to have evolved randomly and
therefore must have been created by an intelligent designer.
The Dover school board argues that it was trying to present alternatives to
evolutionary theory when it voted to add intelligent design to its biology
curriculum. But intelligent designs critics, including 11 parents suing the
district over the decision, say officials are trying to get religion
intoscience class.
Creightons bill states that when providing supporting evidence on the theory
of intelligent design, no teacher in a public school may stress any particular
denominational, sectarian or religious belief.
While Creighton thinks inserting intelligent design into the state school code
could help the Dover Area School Board in its court battle, he said that wasnt
the reason he proposed the legislation. Rather, he said, its long been his
hobby to study issues of creation and Darwinism.
And now, schools are the battleground for debating this issue, he said.
The Pennsylvania bill is the 10th piece of legislation critical of evolutionary
theory introduced this year in state legislatures across the country, according
to the National Center for Science Education. Similar bills are pending in
Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia, Kansas and Missouri. Creighton
is also the primary sponsor of a bill that would require the phrase, In God We
Trust, to be displayed in every public school classroom in the state.
Creighton, in supporting intelligent design, compared the complexities of the
DNA molecule to Mount Rushmore. Both show elements of design, he said.
Creighton said an intelligent designer doesnt necessarily mean God, but
ultimately it does get back to religion.
It could be aliens from Mars who started life here as an experiment, he said.
But who then created the universe?
State Rep. Ron Miller, R-Jacobus, who also sits on the House Education
Committee, said its hard to predict how the committee will respond to the bill
Miller said he is inclined to support it. He believes intelligent design fits
into classes on history or world culture because it is about why some people
believe certain things and why other people believe other things.
State Rep. Bev Mackereth, R-Spring Grove, whose district covers the Dover
school district and who also sits on the Education Committee, said she wants to
find out what the court has to say on the Dover issue before deciding whether
to support the bill. Why would we pass something just have the courts overturn
it? Mackereth said. So for now, shes staying out of the debate and would not
comment on her feelings on the subject.I dont believe (Dover officials) want
me to get involved in their issue, she said. Mackereth said she has studied
the issue and has read Of Pandas and People, the pro-intelligent design
textbook on the shelves of the Dover high school library.
But she said she doesnt know whether Dovers decision to make intelligent
design part of the issue crosses the First Amendment line prohibiting the
establishment of religion. But one of the bills co-sponsors, Rep. Art Hershey,
R-Cochranville, said he felt the legislation was worthy of his signature.
If were going to flirt with idea that we came from a monkey, we should
include other ideas, Hershey said.
I know who my creator is.
--
Although much of the scientific community views Intelligent Design with
disdain, according to Dembski, as many as 90 percent of Americans "are
favorably disposed" to the idea.
==
ID consists entirely of negative arguments against evolutionary biology.
Science requires more than just making critiques of theories.
==
School boards would be allowed to require the teaching of "intelligent design"
_ a concept that is the subject of a federal lawsuit in Pennsylvania _ as part
of science lessons under a bill that has been introduced in the state House of
Representatives.
It's unclear whether the measure, sponsored by only a dozen lawmakers, will go
anywhere as the Legislature prepares for state budget negotiations with Gov. Ed
Rendell over the next two months.
Rep. Thomas C. Creighton, the prime sponsor, said it would encourage school
boards to broaden the discussion of biological origins to include concepts
besides the theory of evolution. Intelligent design holds that the universe
must have been created by an unspecified guiding force because it is so
complex.
"To say we're smart enough to know that there isn't an intelligent designer,
we're being very arrogant in our thinking," said Creighton, R-Lancaster.
Opponents argue that intelligent design is merely a secular variation of
creationism, the biblical-based view that regards God as the creator of life.
They say teaching it in public schools violates the separation of church and
state.
A federal lawsuit is pending against the Dover Area School District school
board, which adopted a policy in October requiring ninth-grade students to hear
a statement about the concept during evolution lessons in biology class.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit along with the nonprofit
Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and it is monitoring the
legislation closely.
A legislative endorsement of intelligent design would conflict with
Pennsylvania's science standards, which specifically call for the teaching of
evolution, said Larry Frankel, the ACLU's legislative director in Pennsylvania
"You can't teach religion as science," he said.
Pennsylvania is one of at least nine states where lawmakers have introduced
bills this year concerning the teaching of evolution in public schools,
according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Neither the Pennsylvania School Boards Association nor the state Education
Department has taken a position on Creighton's bill.
==
If intelligent design is not science, then what is it? One of its originators,
Phillip Johnson, a law professor at UC Berkeley, wrote in a 1999 article:
The objective is to convince people that Darwinism is inherently atheistic,
thus shifting the debate from creationism versus evolution to the existence of
God versus the nonexistence of God. From there people are introduced to 'the
truth' of the Bible and then 'the question of sin' and finally 'introduced to
Jesus.' On March 9, I(Michael Shermer) debated ID scholar Stephen Meyer at
Westminster College in
Fulton, Mo. After two hours of debate over the scientific merits (or lack
thereof) of IDT, Meyer admitted in the question-and-answer period that he
thinks that the intelligent designer is the Judeo-Christian God and that
suboptimal designs and deadly diseases are not examples of an unintelligent or
malevolent designer, but instead were caused by the fall in the Garden of
Eden. Dembski has also told me privately that he believes the intelligent
designer is the God of Abraham.
Creationism (and its latest avatar as ID "theory" is a POLITICAL movement. It
has very little to do with science, and EVERYTHING to do with using political
power to force a certain set of religious opinions onto everyone else, whether
everyone else likes it or not. Creationists/IDers, and the larger Religious
Right of which they are a wholly-owned subsidiary, are ayatollah-wanna-be's.
Nothing more, nothing less, nothing else.
==
When we look at the Earth's various
lifeforms, we see lots of things which just don't make sense if those
lifeforms were lovingly crafted by an Intelligent Designer, but *do*
make sense if those lifeforms arose thru a process involving
descent-with-random-modification. What's the point of giving wings to
flightless birds such as ostriches and emus? Or what about the
plantaris muscle, a hunk of meat in the human calf which not only
doesn't *do* much of anything, but which some humans get along quite
well without having been born with it? Standard evolutionary theory
can explain such oddities quite nicely; any theory of Creation which
can follow suit would be equally nice.
One that fulfills the requirements of a testable hypothesis.
==
The argument for teaching ID goes:

1. We think there is an Intelligent Designer
2. We don't know what it is (wink, wink)
3. We don't know what it does,
4. We don't know how it does it, and
5. We don't know how to go about scientifically answering any of
these questions, but
6. We want you to teach about it anyway.
==
The state science standards needs the word'evolution' after the Kentucky
Department of Education dropped it to avoid offending some in the state.
==
"Intelligent design" legislation is introduced in the Pennsylvania
legislature, while the boycott of the "kangaroo court" in Kansas seems to
be working, and the creationism/evolution controversy arrives on PBS's
NewsHour.
"INTELLIGENT DESIGN" LEGISLATION IN PENNSYLVANIA
On March 16, 2005, a bill -- HB 1007 -- promoting "intelligent design"
creationism was introduced in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives and
referred to the Education Committee. If enacted, HB 1007 would add a
section ("Teaching Theories on the Origin of Man and Earth") to the Public
School Code of 1949. That new section would allow school boards to include
"intelligent design" in any curriculum containing evolution and allow
teachers to use, subject to the approval of the board, "supporting evidence
deemed necessary for instruction on the theory of intelligent design." The
term "intelligent design" is not defined in the bill. Presumably
attempting to prevent a challenge to its constitutionality, HB 1007
explicitly states, "When providing supporting evidence on the theory of
intelligent design, no teacher in a public school may stress any particular
denominational, sectarian or religious belief."
Reaction from Pennsylvania scientists is so far uniformly negative. Colin
Purrington, a biology professor at Swarthmore College, commented that the
bill "would encourage local school districts to promote the teaching of
intelligent design creationism alongside the well-accepted theory of
evolution," and Randy Bennett, a biology professor at Juniata College,
quipped, "Next we will be asked to teach the revolutionary idea that there
are four elements in the universe: Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water." Looking
on the bright side, Larry Frankel, the legislative director for the ACLU of
Pennsylvania, remarked, "While this bill seeks to advance an anti-science
agenda, we should view the introduction of this legislation as a golden
opportunity to remind our legislators why it is so important that all
Pennsylvania's public school students learn good science.
==
Evolution is the cornerstone of modern biology, yet many teachers
face disapproval and even anger for teaching it, more so than for any
other lesson plan. Nearly one-third of science teachers say they feel
pressured to teach creationism or other nonscience-based alternatives
along with evolution in their classrooms, according to a new study by
the National Science Teachers Association.
How to face that pressure - and defuse it - is the topic of several
major lectures at the group's annual convention, which starts
Thursday at the Dallas Convention Center and downtown hotels.
Among the 12,000 attendees will be Luciana Lang, a biology teacher at
Lake Highlands High School in the Richardson school district. One
student recently called her un-Christian for trying to teach
evolution.
"I get a lot of, `Why are we learning this, that's not what my pastor
told me, this is wrong, this is of the devil,'" says Lang. "You hear
it all before you actually get into the topic."
Her classes are a microcosm of daily discussions - and a few battles -
that take place in classrooms nationwide. Like many teachers, Lang
doesn't fear talking about evolution but knows she has to prepare
herself for potential confrontations with students or parents who
question the topic.
Surveys indicate that many teachers give short shrift to evolution
because they worry about provoking such reactions. But the state
science curriculum, as required by the Texas Education Agency,
includes direct reference to evolution, and students must learn it in
order to pass the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
"Whether or not you use the E-word, you're inevitably teaching
evolution if you teach biology," says Kimberly Bilica, a science
education specialist at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Bilica is one of the few researchers to study the factors that affect
teachers' attitudes toward evolution. For her 2001 doctoral
dissertation at Texas Tech University, she surveyed 175 high school
biology teachers in the state.
More than half of the teachers reported substituting the words
"change over time" - an incomplete description of evolution - in the
classroom to lessen conflicts. One-quarter reported that parents
pressured them to avoid some evolution topics.
Teachers also said they devoted less time to each of the seven
concepts about evolution than they would have done if they had
unlimited freedom to teach.
"In every single category, we found that teachers would prefer to
teach evolution to a greater extent but they can't," says Bilica.
The pressure to downplay evolution generally came from parents, her
survey found. Strong support from principals and other teachers
helped counteract that pressure.
The National Science Teachers Association survey also found that 30
percent of teachers said they felt "pushed to de-emphasize or omit
evolution or evolution-related topics from their curriculum." Again,
the teachers felt most of the pressure coming from students or
parents, not administrators or principals.
In general, teachers say, evolution suffers from a stigma that no
other aspect of biology does.
"There is considerable evidence that evolution often is not
emphasized in a manner commensurate with its importance in explaining
the natural world," says Gerald Skoog, a noted Texas Tech expert on
science education.
The most successful teachers address the controversy head-on, says
Leslie Jones, a science education researcher at Valdosta State
University in Georgia. They begin by clarifying what evolution is and
what it is not.
At its most basic, evolution is descent with modification - the
notion that new species emerge over generations as their genetic
makeup changes, so that all life forms on Earth share a common
ancestor. Many different lines of evidence support biological
evolution.
But students often enter the classroom with powerful misconceptions
about evolution - that Charles Darwin said that man comes from
monkeys, or that evolution is a pitch to deny God, says Jones.
Experts sometimes advise teachers to begin by talking about these
misperceptions.
One commonly heard idea is that evolution is "just a theory." In
popular terms, "theory" is used to describe a hunch, or something
someone suspects might be true. In science, a theory is a well-
developed, well-tested explanation that describes observations of the
natural world. Evolution may be "just a theory," but so is gravity.
Evolution's newest challenge comes in the form of "intelligent
design," which holds that certain features of living organisms are
best explained by the existence of an intelligent designer rather
than by the process of natural selection. Proponents stop short of
naming who or what that designer might be, but say that intelligent
design provides an alternative explanation for the diversity of life
on Earth.
Although intelligent design is not scientific, it has staked new
ground in the long-simmering feud between scientists and
creationists.
==
Many Christians have a problem with death before original sin and the
fall of man so they exclude evolution from the creation process.
==
"Once you allow yourself to say God did it, you stop looking for naturalistic
explanations. If you stop looking, you won't find them.".
==
The term "intelligent design" is nothing more than a linguistic place-filler
for something unexplained by science. It is saying, in essence, that if there
is no natural explanation for X, then the explanation must be a supernatural
one. Proponents of intelligent design cannot imagine, for example, how the
bacterial flagellum (such as the little tail that propels sperm cells) could
have evolved; ergo, they conclude, it was intelligently designed. But saying
"intelligent design did it" does not explain anything. Scientists would want to
know how and when ID did it, and what forces ID used.
In fact, invoking intelligent design as God's place-filler can only result in
the naturalization of the deity. God becomes just another part of the natural
world, and thereby loses the transcendent mystery and divinity that define the
boundary between religion and science.
==
One of the many ways in which creationists try to explain away evidence of
evolution is by saying that homologies and other common traits, including
genetic commonalities, is to say that they are the result of common design, not
of evolution. In applying this to whales, we get some interesting results,
because whales have "legs," leg bones, *buried* inside their bodies, where they
are guaranteed to be useless.
==
I have noticed a problem many times with the fundies. Their problem
isn't that they are too fanatical about their faith. Their problem is
that they don't actually have any faith. They can't find the divine in their
own hearts, so now they're looking for it in the science lab, and get all angry
when scientists tell them they won't find it there.
==
"As in 1925, creationists are not battling for religion. They have
been disowned by leading church men of all persuasions, for they
debase religion even more than they misconstrue science."
--Stephen Jay Gould
==
Creationist groups operate like tobacco companies ------ deny all the
science, and target everyone as young as possible.
==
It is because creationists are, for the very most part, WAY too
credulous. They have not developed their capacities (some might call it
intuitions) for detecting and rejecting IMMEDIATELY the most egregious
pseudo-science. Instead it is debated among them FOR YEARS instead of
being dismissed in minutes.
If there is ever to develop a genuine creation science, its practitioners (and
followers) will have to develop their capacities to hunt for and expose
ruthlessly the pseudoscientific nonsense that regular filters into creationist
circles.
==
Of the more than 1,050 teachers who participated in
the National Science Teachers Association survey, 31
percent said they felt pressured by either students or
parents when teaching evolution to include
creationism, intelligent design and other concepts
that are not supported as valid scientific theories.
Only 5 percent or less said they felt the pressure was
being exerted by school administrators or principals.
"Something is not right when science educators feel
pressure to teach a variety of religious or
non-science viewpoints. It's not fair to our students
to give them anything less than good science," said
Gerry Wheeler, NSTA executive director.
==
Creationism professes to be the absolute Truth, not a provisional assessment
of data which can change when new information is discovered. When you believe
that you already have the Truth, there is simply no possibility of future
correction. The only real changes which have occurred in the creationist
movement is to try and push the biblical arguments further and further into
the background in order to make creationism look more and more scientific.
==
If you look at legislation, read the papers, watch the news, you'll
have a darned hard time finding atheists trying to convert, harm,
disrespect and limit the freedoms of others by invading government.
==
Paluxky foot prints
Indications that the "human" footprints were made by dinosaurs comes
from the following additional observations:
1) The footprints are too far apart to have been made by humans. They
fit well, however, the stride of dinosaurs.
(2) Most of the "human" prints are too large to have been made by humans.
(3) Many of the "human" prints show dinosaur features, for example, claw
marks, anterior V-shaped splaying, fissure patterns, and drag or swish
marks from a tail or a snout. The three toes indicate dino origins.
(4) Almost all of the prints have indentations uniquely indicative of
tridactyl dinosaurs.
(5) The "human" prints often form a line that continues as a path of
vK near-perfect tridactyl footprints.
(6) Prints that were claimed to be "human" turn out to be mere erosional
patterns in the strata.
==
Teaching of any "creationist theory" in any publicly-funded school was
outlawed by the 1987 Supreme Court decision in the Edwards v Aguillard case.
==
in the 1982
Maclean v Arkansas case, the federal court listed the characteristics
of what constituted "science". That list consisted of:
"More precisely, the essential characteristics of science are:
(1) It is guided by natural law;
(2) It has to be explanatory by reference to nature law;
(3) It is testable against the empirical world;
(4) Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the final
word; and
(5) Its is falsifiable. (Ruse and other science witnesses)"
Let's see how Intelligent Design "theory" measures up to those
criteria, shall we?
1. "It is guided by natural law." The IDers lose
already. Not only is ID 'theory' NOT "guided by natural law", but ID
"theorists" explicitly, clearly and plainly REJECT the idea that
science SHOULD be based on "natural law". Indeed, their most
fundamental complaint (pardon the pun) is that science in general and
evolution in particular are "philosophical materialism" (their code
word for "atheism") and that this, they say, unfairly rules out the
IDers' NON-materialist or NON-natural "explanations". Hmmm. It sure
seems to ME as if the only entity that is even capable in principle
of using "non-materialistic" or "super-naturalistic" mechanisms is a
deity or god (and if the IDers want to argue with a straight face
that the space aliens are capable of using supernaturalistic methods,
I'd pay good money to sit in court and watch that). Now I'm no
theologian, mind you, but I'm pretty sure that "deities" and "gods"
and other "supernatural entities" are religious in nature. I'm no
lawyer either, mind you, but I'm also pretty sure that arguing that a
supernatural entity or deity designed life using non-materialistic
methods, has the intent and effect of advancing religion. Hence, not
only is ID "theory" NOT based on natural law, it explicitly REJECTS
natural law in favor of supernatural methods. I.e., in favor of
religious doctrine. The IDers lose right out of the starting gate.

2. "It has to be explanatory by reference to nature law". See
above. ID loses again. Not only does it NOT explain anything by
reference to natural law, it tries to argue that it DOESN'T HAVE TO.
Once again, the whole thing that the IDers are *bitching about in the
first place* is that science, they say, unfairly rejects anything BUT
reference to natural law -- i.e., that science rejects religious
explanations. By arguing *against* the need for science to be
"explanatory by reference to natural law", the IDers are doing
nothing more (or less) than arguing that science should be forced by
a court order to accept references to NON-natural or SUPER-natural
mechanisms. I.e., they are arguing that science should be forced to
advance religion. Like I said, I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure
there's a law against that.

3. "It is testible against the empirical world". ID loses again.
ID 'theory' makes NO testible statements. None at all. It can't
tell us what the designer did. It can't tell us what mechanisms the
designer used to do whatever it did. It can't tell us where we can
see these mechanisms in action. And it can't tell us how to go about
testing any of this. ID 'theory' consists simply and solely of
various random arguments against evolution, coupled with the already-
rejected-by-the-courts "two model theory". ID makes no effort at all
to produce any positive arguments on its own that can be tested.
Indeed, ID 'theory' can't (or won't) even make any testible
predictions about how old the earth is, or whether humans evolved
from apelike primates. The best ID can do is declare "evolution
can't explain X, Y or Z, therefore we must be right". I.e., the same
old "two models" bullshit that the courts have already rejected.

4. "Its conclusions are tentative, i.e. are not necessarily the
final word". Well, we don't know whether ID passes this test, since
ID 'theory" refuses to MAKE any conclusions. As I noted before, ID
can't even give a coherent hypothesis, or even tell us how to form
one. What do they think the Intelligent Designer might be? They,
uh, don't know. What do they think it did? They, uh, don't know
that either. What mechanisms did it use? Beats the heck out of
them. <shrug> Heck, ID "theory" can't (or won't) even reach
conclusions on such basic questions as "how old is the earth" ----
billions of years, they say. Or maybe it's just thousands of years.
We, uh, aren't sure. "Did humans evolve from apelike primates?"
Yes. Or, uh, maybe not. Does ID think its conclusions are "the last
word"? Well, I guess we won't know until ID actually MAKES some
conclusions. <shrug>

5. "It is falsifiable". Well, again, we don't know if ID's
conclusions are falsifiable, because they go to great lengths to
avoid MAKING any conclusions that might be capable of being
falsified. I suspect that is deliberate.

However, the core argument of ID 'theory', that God -- er, I mean "An
Unknown Intelligent Designer" -- created life, is inherently
unfalsifiable. After all, if we know nothing about the Designer,
nothing about its nature, nothing about what it can or can't do, then
there is simply no way we can falsify any statement made about it.
If I say that the designer does not have the physical or technical
capability of manipulating biomolecules, how the heck could we know
whether it really did? On the other hand, if I say that the designer
HAS manipulated biochemicals, what sort of evidence could we point to
which would indicate that it DIDN'T? The whole idea of ID is
unfalsifiable. After all, the entire "argument" of ID boils down to
"we think an unknown thing did an unknown thing at an unknown time
using unknown methods". How the hell can anyone falsify THAT? How
the hell can anyone, in principle,demonstrate that an unknown thing
did NOT do an unknown thing at an unknown time using unknown methods?

So there you have it. ID does not meet ANY of the criteria listed by
the federal court in determining what is or isn't "science". In
every conceivable legal sense, ID is not science. Period.
==
Policymakers in 19 states are weighing proposals that question the
science of evolution.
==
The Bush Administration has decided that it will stand by its approval
for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood
rather than by geologic forces, according to internal documents
released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
==
In short, creationists are fraud artists and their faith is
always very weak. God, in their lexicon, must obey all of THEIR orders or He
is not really genuine. So, lacking any real contact with God and not desiring
any, but desiring some semblance of legitimacy for their fraud, they lash out,
targetting whatever they think they can find support from others in a frenzy of
hatred. Morrowitz is a classic example. He hates "evolutionists." Of course
he doesn't have clue one about what evolution actually means, but he knows he
hates it. He hates logic, but doesn't really understand that this is because
logic undermines his worldview, which is inherently logic-free. So he uses
liberal doses of sophistry, principally the argumentum ad hominem fallacy in an
attempt to attack evolution, which he hates. He cannot use logic to do this
because that would fail (which is one reason why he hates logic) so he FAKES
logic with sophistry (which is what sophistry actually is--fake logic).
==
My response:Nature is complex. We don't understand everything about nature.
But every day we understand nature better. It may be very possible that
one day we may understand a lot of things we don't understand today,
so there's no need to jump the the conclusion that a deity did it. But
even if we never understand many things in nature it doesn't mean that
a deity is responsible for those things. It may be that humans may
not be smart enough to figure those things out or lack the tools to
figure those things out.
Resorting to a deity to explain the complexity of nature is
unproductive. There are so many things we wouldn't know if we always
let the "God did it" conclusion stand firmly as a satisfactory answer.
For example, we'd still think the sun revolves around the Earth.
That's one of the simplest examples. But there are many things we
know with a high level of confidence that don't require a deity to be
any part of the explanation. Don't make the mistake of worshipping a
god of the gaps, because that gap is getting smaller every day.
==
South Dakota Senator John Thune is a creationist
==
Extinction? If so, how does Intelligent Design explain extinctions?
An incompetent or "semi-Intelligent" designer?

Lee Strobel's book "The Case for a Creator"
==
False ideas about evolution

1. According to the theory of evolution, life just "poofed" into existence.
2. According to the theory of evolution, evolution is always the
accumulation of information.
3. According to the theory of evolution, later-evolved species are
basically superior to earlier-evolved species.
4. According to the theory of evolution, god does not exist.
5. According to the theory of evolution, evolution proceeds from "lower"
to "higher" life forms (evolution is inherently progressive, in other
words).
6. According to the theory of evolution, evolution is a pure-chance process.
7. According to the theory of evolution, chance is the occurrence of
uncaused events.
8. According to the theory of evolution, there cannot be an objective
basis for morality.
9. According to the theory of evolution, racism and sexism and sexism
are justified.
10. According to the theory of evolution, the second law of
thermodynamics is false
11. According to the theory of evolution, something can come from nothing.
==
As for the Church's previous condemnations of Copernicanism and Galileo, here
are the facts: The Inquisition of 1615 in Rome declared the position of Galileo
to be "scientifically false, and anti-Scriptural or heretical, and that he must
renounce it" (Catholic Encyclopedia, vol 6, p. 344). Following this was a
decree from the Congregation of the Index on March 5, 1616, prohibiting various
heretical works, and among them were those advocating the Copernican system. As
for the Pope at that time, Paul V, "there is no doubt that he fully approved
the decision, having presided at the session of the Inquisition, wherein the
matter was discussed and decided" (Ibid, p. 344). To Galileo's dismay, the next
Pope, Urban VIII, would not annul the judgment of the Inquisition. The
Encyclopedia concludes: "That both these pontiffs [Paul V and Urban VIII] were
convinced anti-Copernicans cannot be doubted, nor that they believed the
Copernican system to be unscriptural and desired its suppression. The question
is, however, whether either of them condemned the doctrine ex cathedra. This,
it is clear, they never did" (Ibid, p. 345). So despite what anyone says, the
Catholic Church has never endorsed the Copernican theory and no pope has ever
annulled the decrees of Paul V or Urban VIII. The only thing the Church has
done is apologized for the treatment of Galileo in a 1992 address by John Paul
II to the Pontifical Academy of Science.

Leo XIII taught in Providentissimus Deus (1893) that, in the first instance,
Scripture MUST be interpreted literally, unless there is some compelling reason
to interpret it otherwise.

Geocentrism permeates Scripture. Here are some of the more salient passages
(Sirach 43:2-5; 43:9-10; 46:4; Psalm 19:5-7; 104:5; 104:19; 119:90;
Ecclesiastes 1:5; 2 Kings 20:9-11; 2 Chronicles 32:24; Isaiah 38:7-8; Joshua
10:12-14; Judges 5:31; Job 9:7; Habakkuk 3:11; (1 Esdras 4:12); James 1:12).
--
Modern geocentrists
Gerardus D. Bouw, Ph.D. Astronomer.. His books are available at: 4527 Wetzel
Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio, 44109. Dr. Bouw also edits the quarterly publication:
The Biblical Astronomer.
Walter van der Kamp, Educator (Deceased early '98). His book De LABORE SOLIS
(The Labor of the Sun)--now out of print--has been a seminal work in the modern
challenge to Copernican heliocentricity.
R.G. Elmendorf, Mechanical Engineer. His book HELIOCENTRIC HUMBUG ..(A Critical
Investigation of the Foucault ..Pendulum) is ..available from: Elmendorf
Engineering, ..Bairdford, PA 15006 ($7)
Jonathan F. Henry, Ph.D., Physics. His 51 page ..monograph -- SOLAR SYSTEM
MODELS -- is ..available from Dr. Henry at Clearwater Christian ..College, 3400
Gulf-to-Bay, Clearwater, FL 34619 ($5)
Martin Gwynne, Essayist, London, England ..(different titles...Write: Box 554,
London W8 6RS)
==
if they are not teaching creationism in science
classes then they should not even be mentioning the subject at all.
If you are making children aware of creationism as an alternative to
evolution, then you are teaching them a falsehood, even if you do
not elaborate on it. There is no scientific alternative to the
theory of evolution & to state otherwise is to state an outright lie.

Intelligent design creationism (IDC), which has superseded its
discredited relative, scientific creationism is an American product
engineered to wedge its way into the mainstream American educational
system by circumventing the regulations that separate Church &
State. IDC's essential features are:

(1) The claim that it is not religion (i.e. "we are not teaching
creationism").

(2) Argument by Incredulity (life is too complex to have arisen by
chance), which was discredited 150 years ago.

(3) Irreducible Complexity (that complex biological systems cannot
arise from a series of simpler ones), which has also been thoroughly
discredited.

(4) A series of negative statements about the scientific validity of
evolution, designed to undermine a child's understanding of it &
to a lesser extent, other scientific disciplines such as cosmology &
geology.

If a teacher refers to another theory that competes with evolution;
even if the do not mention the Bible or go into details, then the
teacher IS teaching creationism. Because the only people who ever
want to talk about a challenge or alternative to evolution are
creationists!

If a teacher claims that evolution is, "only a theory", then
he or she IS teaching creationism. Most scientists consider
evolution to be such a well-established idea, that it is considered
by them to be a fact. It isn't, "only a theory",
suggesting that it is only a guess or a hunch, & the only people who
ever claim otherwise, are creationists.

If a teacher claims that that there is controversy surrounding
evolution (suggesting that evolution may be untrue) then the teacher
is wilfully misleading students. There may well be controversy
surrounding various issues within evolution; however, there is no
controversy amongst scientists over the occurrence of evolution.
Teach the Controversy is a prime tenet of intelligent design
creationism & is a term used exclusively by the creationist
movement. If a teacher teaches, Teach the Controversy, then that
teacher IS teaching creationism.

If a teacher tells students they need to think critically about
evolution, then again, the teacher is wilfully misleading them. Of
course, students need to think critically about all the information
they are presented with; however, creationists always insist on
singling out evolution for this critical thinking treatment when
there is absolutely no justification for doing so. The theory of
evolution has been extensively examined & revised to incorporate new
information as it arises. It has also been repeatedly challenged by
people & groups such as the creationists, yet has survived all these
challenges unscathed. By claiming students need to think critically
about evolution, the teacher is deliberately planting unwarranted
doubt about it in their minds.
==
Ronald Reagan when asked about his thoughts on evolution during an election
campaign "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in
recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in
the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."
==
Kids around the country are being taught religion masquerading as science,
in violation of the law. In Cobb County, before the kooky
textbooks-with-stickers approach, students got specially altered books with
blank pages where the evolution section belonged.
==
A CBS poll in 2004 showed 55% of Americans believe God created
humans, more or less complete, sometime in the last 10,000 years.
==
In Elkton, Md., the school superintendent has blocked use of a new biology
textbook because it doesn't include creationism, the religious doctrine that
all life on Earth was created by God over the course of six 24-hour days about
6,000 years ago.
==
The fight over evolution has reached the big, big screen.
Several Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show
movies that mention the subject - or the Big Bang or the geology of the
earth fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical
descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.
The number of theaters rejecting such films is small, people in the industry
say - perhaps a dozen or fewer, most in the South. But because only a few dozen
Imax theaters routinely show science documentaries, the decisions of a few can
have a big impact on a film's bottom line - or a producer's decision to make a
documentary in the first place.
People who follow trends at commercial and institutional Imax theaters say that
in recent years, religious controversy has adversely affected the distribution
of a number of films, including "Cosmic Voyage," which depicts the universe in
dimensions running from the scale of subatomic particles to clusters of
galaxies; "Galapagos," about the islands where Darwin theorized about
evolution; and "Volcanoes of the Deep Sea," an underwater epic about the
bizarre creatures that flourish in the hot, sulfurous emanations from vents in
the ocean floor.
"Volcanoes," released in 2003 and sponsored in part by the National Science
Foundation and Rutgers University, has been turned down at about a dozen
science centers, mostly in the South, said Dr. Richard Lutz, the Rutgers
oceanographer who was chief scientist for the film. He said theater officials
rejected the film because of its brief references to evolution, in particular
to the possibility that life on Earth originated at the undersea vents.
Carol Murray, director of marketing for the Fort Worth Museum of Science and
History, said the museum decided not to offer the movie after showing it to a
sample audience, a practice often followed by managers of Imax theaters. Ms.
Murray said 137 people participated in the survey, and while some thought it
was well done, "some people said it was blasphemous."
In their written comments, she explained, they made statements like "I really
hate it when the theory of evolution is presented as fact," or "I don't agree
with their presentation of human existence."
On other criteria, like narration and music, the film did not score as well as
other films, Ms. Murray said, and over all, it did not receive high marks, so
she recommended that the museum pass.
"If it's not going to draw a crowd and it is going to create controversy," she
said, "from a marketing standpoint I cannot make a recommendation" to show it.
In interviews, officials at other Imax theaters said they had similarly decided
against the film for fear of offending some audiences.
"We have definitely a lot more creation public than evolution public," said
Lisa Buzzelli, who directs the Charleston Imax Theater in South Carolina, a
commercial theater next to the Charleston Aquarium. Her theater had not ruled
out ever showing "Volcanoes," Ms. Buzzelli said, "but being in the Bible Belt,
the movie does have a lot to do with evolution, and we weigh that carefully."
Pietro Serapiglia, who handles distribution for the producer Stephen Low of
Montreal, whose company made the film, said officials at other theaters told
him they could not book the movie "for religious reasons," because it had
"evolutionary overtones" or "would not go well with the Christian community" or
because "the evolution stuff is a problem."
Hyman Field, who as a science foundation official had a role in the financing
of "Volcanoes," said he understood that theaters must be responsive to their
audiences. But Dr. Field he said he was "furious" that a science museum would
decide not to show a scientifically accurate documentary like "Volcanoes"
because it mentioned evolution.
"It's very alarming," he said, "all of this pressure being put on a lot of the
public institutions by the fundamentalists."
People who follow the issue say it is more likely to arise at science centers
and other public institutions than at commercial theaters. The filmmaker James
Cameron, who was a producer on "Volcanoes," said the commercial film he made on
the same topic, "Aliens of the Deep," had not encountered opposition, except
during post-production, when "it was requested from some theaters that we
change a line of dialogue" relating to sun worship by ancient Egyptians. The
line remained, he said.
Mr. Cameron said he was "surprised and somewhat offended" that people were
sensitive to the references to evolution in "Volcanoes."
"It seems to be a new phenomenon," he said, "obviously symptomatic of our shift
away from empiricism in science to faith-based science."
Some in the industry say they fear that documentary filmmakers will steer clear
of science topics likely to offend religious fundamentalists.
Large-format science documentaries "are generally not big moneymakers," said
Joe DeAmicis, vice president for marketing at the California Science Center in
Los Angeles and formerly the director of its Imax theater. "It's going to be
hard for our filmmakers to continue to make unfettered documentaries when they
know going in that 10 percent of the market" will reject them.
Others who follow the issue say many institutions are not able to resist such
pressure.
"They have to be extremely careful as to how they present anything relating to
evolution," said Bayley Silleck, who wrote and directed "Cosmic Voyage." Mr.
Silleck said he confronted religious objections to that film and predicted
he would face them again with a project he is working on now, about dinosaurs.
Of course, a number of factors affect a theater manager's decision about a
movie. Mr. Silleck said an Imax documentary about oil fires in Kuwait "never
reached its distribution potential" because it had shots of the first Persian
Gulf war. "The theaters decided their patrons would be upset at seeing the
bodies," he said.
"We all have to make films for an audience that is a family audience," he went
on, "when you are talking about Imax, because they are in science centers and
museums."
He added, however, "there are a number of us who are concerned that there is a
kind of tacit overcaution, overprotectedness of the audience on the part of
theater operators."
In any event, censoring films like "Volcanoes" is not an option, said Dr.
Field, who said Mr. Low, the film's producer, got in touch with him when the
evolution issue arose to ask whether the film should be altered.
"I said absolutely not," recalled Dr. Field, who retired from the National
Science Foundation last year.
Mr. Low said that arguments over religion and science disturbed him because of
his own religious faith. In his view, he said, science is "a celebration of
what nature or God has done. So for me, there's no conflict."
Dr. Lutz, the Rutgers oceanographer, recalled a showing of "Volcanoes" he and
Mr. Low attended at the New England Aquarium. When the movie ended, a little
girl stood in the audience to challenge Mr. Low on the film's suggestion that
Earth might have formed billions of years ago in the explosion of a star. "I
thought God created the Earth," she said.
He replied, "Maybe that's how God did it."

==
There is no discernable difference between something that is completely
scientifically indetectable and something that is completely non-existent.
==
You can't maintain a high-tech society on the type of physics Creationism
requires. That's it's eventual price tag.
==
If the Kansas state board adopts creation inspired changes to the standards,
such a change will have a profound effect on our institutions of higher
learning. Colleges and universities that train future science teachers are
required to train them so that they are able to teach using the state K-12
science standards. Kansas universities would be required to teach that science
allows supernatural explanations. Failure to do so would result in the loss of
accreditation. Kansas would be left with no science teacher preparation
programs.
==
Scientific method is the "universal standard" with which to differentiate
opinion from fact. To say it is otherwise is to promote ignorance. To believe
otherwise is to remain intentionally ignorant.
==
Fossilization an extremely rare event. As an example of this consider that
during recorded history passenger pigeons were so numerous that they used
to darken the skies in the North American continent. Yet not a single
fossil of a passenger pigeon has ever been found!
==
The first textbook on the subject, Of Pandas and People: The Central
Question of Biological Origins, hasnt been updated since 1993, and
other publications have moved to the forefront of the intelligent-design
movement.
The books assertions have divided the Dover community and promise to
be a central issue in the May primary. Last week, 18 people, evenly
split on the subject, formally entered the race for Dover school board.
Intelligent designs supporters say they want to expose students to
alternatives to the theory of evolution. But scientists, including
the author of the textbook used in Dover biology classes, say
Pandas is outdated, full of flaws and lacking a position on basic
biological principals such as the age of the Earth.
At issue is whether the concept of intelligent design the idea that
life is too complex to have evolved solely through natural selection
and therefore must have been created by an intelligent designer is
a legitimate scientific theory or simply the latest incarnation of
creation science.
In 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisianas education
requirement that creation science must be taught in science class.
Because it is based on biblical texts, the court ruled, it does not
have a clear secular purpose and therefore violates the First
Amendments establishment clause.
Pandas, written by Percival Davis and Dean H. Kenyon, was released
two years after the Supreme Courts blow to creation science. The
books copyright is held by the Texas-based Foundation for Thought
and Ethics. Incorporated in 1980, the foundation states its purpose
as both religious and educational and seeks to make known the
Christian gospel and understanding of the Bible and the light it
sheds on the academic and social issues of our day.
But Pandas was in the works before the Supreme Court decision, said
Jon Buell, the foundations president, and he disputes the accusation
that the book is revamped creationism.
The book's author, quoted in the press: "Of course my motives were
religious. Theres no question about it.
The word God is never used in the book. Instead, Pandas suggests
Earth is created by an intelligent agent, a personal agent and a
master intellect.
==
What evolutionists usually say is "we know how *humans* design
things." Humans design things in the simplest way possible. No
unneeded extra parts. No redundancies. No blind alleys. No left over
bits from the previous design that don't do anything in this design
and so on. Then, armed with this knowledge they look at nature. What
do they find? Extra parts, redundancies, blind alleys, non-functional
bits left over from older designs and so on. Therefore the
evolutionist says "this doesn't look like any kind of design we know.
It looks *grown* in a haphazard way.
==
If ever there was a moment to re-examine the educational importance
and implications of the evolutionist vs creationist debate, it is
now. Eighty years ago in a small midwestern town called Dayton (pop.
2,000), a young man called John T Scopes was put on trial for
teaching evolution to schoolchildren in contravention of the Butler
Act, state legislation which remained in force until 1968. The
"Tennessee Monkey Trial" was the first court hearing broadcast on
live radio in the United States. Its conclusions are still argued, to
the extent nobody seems quite clear who won, and it has become an
almost mythological moment in American cultural history.
Nothing has reinforced the mythology of the Scopes trial more than
the later play written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E Lee,
subsequently filmed as Inherit the Wind, with Spencer Tracy in the
role of defence attorney Clarence Darrow. The fictional version has
him passionately arguing the case for freedom of thought and the
virtue of scientific method against the conservative traditionalism
of William Jennings Bryan. Filtered by the film, the received view of
the Scopes trial is that the principled young teacher, a Darwin
enthusiast, was found guilty but later acquitted on appeal.
The facts are somewhat different. For a start, Bryan was only an
assistant prosecutor at the trial; his courtroom confrontations with
Darrow are essentially fictional. Secondly, Scopes wasnt a science
teacher, but a football coach who did a bit of substitute teaching
when staff were on sick leave. Far from being a passionate advocate
of The Origin of Species, he was put up for trial by a local mining
engineer called George Rappelyea as a willing stalking-horse in a
deliberate challenge to the Butler Act. Its been suggested that
Scopes only taught evolution after the charges had been drawn up. A
further gloss says that the lessons were conducted in the back of a
car, which also torpedoes the prosecution case, since Butler only
applied to teaching in public schools.
There are a myriad other confusing legal points in the story, but
even the outcome is muddy. Scopes was found guilty but, as the usual
version has it, acquitted on appeal. What happened in fact is that
the conviction was set aside by the Tennessee Supreme Court on the
technical point (not raised by the defence) that the $100 fine had
been set by Judge Raulston instead of by the jury, as Tennessee law
provided for fines over $50.
==
A Gallup survey(2004) on public understanding of evolutionary theory.
Respondents were asked whether they believed that God had created the
world and its inhabitants in pretty much their present form sometime
in the last 10,000 years. An astonishing 45 per cent of Americans
said yes, which means that very nearly half the population of the
most powerful country on earth does not accept the principle of
natural selection. Only 12 per cent of Americans accepted that
species had evolved from earlier forms without the direct
intervention of a deity. Whats disturbing about the figure is that
it hasnt changed by more than a couple of percentage points,
meaningless when statistical error is factored in, since the
identical question was asked in 1982 and on three further occasions
during the 1990s.
==
A brief history of the creationist/ID movement in the
US:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/whoare.htm

A brief history of creationist/ID legal maneuvering
and court cases:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/legal.htm

A brief look at the Discovery Institute's
religious/political agenda:
http://www.geocities.com/lflank/diagenda.html

http://www.geocities.com/lflank/wedge.html

A look at how creationism/ID fits into the larger goals
of the fundamentalist Christian movement in the US:

http://www.geocities.com/lflank/fundies.htm
==
Creationists like to claim that we can't "know" what's happening or what
happened in distant regions of the cosmos or far back in time, yet
physicists have done this from the time of Galileo with greatsuccess.
Newton's theory of gravity was explaining how planets and stars move in empty
space nearly three centuries before machines and humans could travel in space
to test it. Einstein's revision to thattheory was explaining observations in
the distant cosmos years before some of the predictions could be tested in
Earth-based experiments and decades before it's effects were incorporated into
the GlobalPositioning System (GPS). Quantum theory was explaining atomic
behavior in rarefied regions of distant space and the incredible high-density
structure of stellar remnants such as white dwarf andneutron stars decades
before the conditions could be even partially reproduced in the laboratory,
even before it became a key component in the development of microelectronics.
When astrophysicists discovered a deficit in the number of neutrinos emitted
from the Sun in the late 1960s, called the Solar Neutrino Problem,
Creationists touted this as evidence that the Sun was not powered by nuclear
reactions and the 4.5 billion year age of the Sun was not possible. Real
scientists checked their calculations and concluded that a neutrino mass (up
to that time, the neutrino was assumed to be massless), far smaller than was
possible to measure at the time, could explain the deficit. In recent
years, we've been able to confirm this effect in Earth-based experiments.
We've even discovered properties in the atomic nucleus based on cosmological
constraints. Cosmology isn't just something that happens 'out there' - it
has often provided guidance on physical phenomena years before controlled
laboratory experiments were possible. There have been no similar successes
or utility from Creation "science" or "Intelligent Design". Cosmology has
real implications for our technology and life on Earth.
Since the dawn of the atomic age in WWII, science has enjoyed the grateful
generosity of taxpaying public. Scientists have used this generosity to
unlock the tiniest secrets of the atom to the mostdistant regions of the
cosmos and has generated useful products and methodologies in the process.
In spite of all this advancement, the American scientific community has left
behind an intellectual vacuum in the education system that crackpots and
con-artists have been all too willing to fill. Thescientific community has
ignored this growing problem and now it threatens to infect our society.
Our nation would not be the first totake this self destructive path. Stalin
dismissed Darwinian selection in favor of Lysenko's theories on adaptation,
allowing the political process, instead of the scientific process, define
the science. Whenthey applied Lysenko's ideas to Soviet agriculture, crop
failures ensued. This was the reason for the U.S. grain sales to the Soviet
Union in the 1970s. Their resulting inability to feed their own people was
a contributor to their collapse. The Nazis despised "Jewish Physics" and
touted their own "Aryan Physics". The famous "Einstein Letter", advocating
the development of the atomic bomb, was sent to FDR in August of 1939. At
that time, all the research with nuclear energy weren't much more than
tabletop experiments. The only indication that the energy release would
extrapolate to levels necessary for an atomic bomb were the successes at that
time of explaining the energy production in theSun and other stars."Aryan
Physics" touted thesuperiority of experimentalists over the 'extrapolations'
of theorists, and (thankfully) may have hindered their own thinking on such a
weapon. And we don't need to limit the debunking to creationism. There are a
plethora of pseudo science claims with their adherents, many who post
their ramblings on the World Wide Web. A perusal of Crank dot Netyields a
cornucopia of pseudoscientific claims from free-energy scams to "proofs" that
relativity is wrong, with a broad range ofsophistication. Teaching students
how to analyze these claims with real science gives them a valuable tool not
only for their professional future but also for their role as citizens in a
technologically advanced society. I've raised this issue with scientists and
teachers who express reluctance to address debunking pseudo-science in the
classroom. However, the scientific community can no longer afford the luxury
of letting this battle play out in the courts and hoping for the best.Over
the past five years, this problem as grown from a single state to challenges
all over the United States. The approach I propose givesthe scientific
community the chance to take control of the issue rather than continuing in
this guerilla war strategy of the Creationists.
==
New antievolution legislation in Arkansas
House Bill 2607, introduced in the Arkansas House of Representatives as a shell
bill on March 4, 2005, and amended and engrossed on March 10, is intended to
allow the teaching of "intelligent design" as "a parallel to evolutionary
theory" in the public schools of Arkansas. If enacted, the bill would require
the state Department of Education to include "intelligent design" in its
educational frameworks and encourage teachers in the state to include it in
their lesson plans. Attempting to immunize itself against a likely challenge
to its constitutionality, the bill describes "intelligent design" as not
necessarily "attributing the creation of the world or it's [sic] creatures to
any god or gods." Rita Sklar, executive director of the American Civil
Liberties Union of Arkansas, however, commented, "This is a blatant attempt to
push religious dogma into our public schools; I feel confident that the
Arkansas legislature will reject it. We all remember the 1981 creationism
debacle, and we don't want Arkansas to be a national laughingstock again."
The bill also echoes the so-called Santorum language stripped from the No
Child Left Behind Act of 2001, adding, "The prohibition of teaching alternative
scientific theories is the cruelest and most abusive form of censorship because
it prevents the very debate necessary for the scientific proof or disproof of
competing theory." The sole sponsor of HB 2607 is Mike Martin (R-District 87),
a first-term legislator.
March2005

House committee rejects intelligent design bill March 2005
Legislation that would require the state to teach the "theory of intelligent
design" in public schools failed to get any support in an Arkansas House of
Representatives committee on Wednesday.
Rep. Mark Martin, R-Prairie Grove, wants the state to teach, along with the
theory of evolution, the theory that "certain features of the universe and of
living things are best explained by an intelligent cause and not by an
undirected process such as natural selection." Martin, who describes himself
as conservative Christian, said he doesnt want schools to teach children that
God exists or that evolution is wrong. Scientific teaching simply should
take on a more "agnostic" view, he said.
When he presented his House Bill 2608 to the Committee on Rules, the only
discussion was why the bill had been assigned to that committee and not the
Committee on Education, of which Martin is a member. Martin said he was
puzzled, too, and said he can only assume it was a mistake.
After explaining his aims with the legislation, no one on the committee made a
motion to recommend the bill to the House. "What Im trying to do here is not
to deal directly with the existence or non-existence of God, but restore to
science the agnostic viewpoint that there could be or could not be rather than
the dogmatism that actually currently exists... that absolutely precludes the
existence of God," Martin said.
Martin, who is a biomechanical engineer, said hes not sure about the theory
of evolution but that theres enough scientific evidence to show that theres
"a lot of truth" to it. "I dont consider it in conflict with my strict
Christian beliefs, or, quite frankly, my belief in the inerrancy of
Scripture," he said. "I dont believe that they have to be in conflict. I dont
have the answers to that stuff."
Martins own school-aged daughter is taught at home because he wants her
education to be Bible-based, he said.
==
NASHVILLE, Tenn. 3/05)--America's public schools may be teaching evolution, but
a significant number of teenagers aren't buying it, and an overwhelming
majority of them believe that God one way or another was involved in the
creation of humanity, according to a new Gallup poll.The poll of 1,028
teenagers ages 13-17 found that 38 percent don't believe in evolution,
believing instead that "God created human beings pretty much in their present
form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so." Another 43 percent
believe that humans "developed over millions of years from less advanced forms
of life, but God guided" the process. All total, 81 percent believe that God
was somehow involved. Only 18 percent believe that evolution took place
without God playing a role.
The Gallup poll also asked teens their opinion about the evidence behind
Darwin's theory of evolution. Only 37 percent said they thought Darwin's theory
was "well supported by evidence." Thirty percent said it was "just one of many
theories" and one that "has not been well supported by evidence."
Thirty-three percent said they did not yet know enough about Darwin's theory to
answer the question.
==
The intelligent design movement is simply a religious crusade, coupled with a
deliberate attempt to conceal that fact. 'Governing Goals', the Wedge Document
states, "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding
that nature and human beings are created by God."
"There was a time when science had to conform to the opinions of the prevailing
religious authorities," Flank concludes. "We call those times 'The Dark Ages'.
They are not fondly remembered by most people."
==
Scott EC, Cole HP. The elusive scientific basis of creation "science".
Quarterly Review of Biology1985;60(1):21-30.

Scott EC. The struggle for the schools. Natural History 1994 July:10, 12-13.

Scott EC. Antievolution and creationism in the United States. Annual Reviews of
Anthropology 1997; 26:263-289.
==
The problem comes when it in necessary to make controls to prevent special
interest groups , often using stealth politics, to commandeer the curriculum
and insert their agenda or simply create flak to prevent opposing
viewpoints to be taught even at the expense of neglecting basics.
Endless discussions , allowing the students to decide the validity of
certain Theories, will so cloud the process that the real outcome is that
nothing at all is learned about science, except a Skepticism unfounded in
any facts or knowledge about basics.
==
There is the common creationist argument that any uncertainty implies great
gobs of uncertainty. By this reasoning, the fact that Einstein is only
99.999999% accurate means that it's worthless and should be thrown away.
==
Is there a common ground between evolution and creationism? If
so, what is it?
No. One is based on science and evidence. The other is based on religion
and faith. There is no common ground.
==
The Stowers Institute, in KC,MO, was specifically designed to conduct stem-cell
research,, and now a RRR Representative in Missouri is determined to pass a
bill against stem-cell research -- not only against it, but criminalizing it.
==
Gallup's polls show that 46 percent of respondents (on
average) believe "God created man pretty much in his present form at
one time within the last 10,000 years" and another 38 percent believe
"Man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of
life, but God guided this process, including man's creation." Just 10
percent believe "Man has developed over millions of years from less
advanced forms of life. God had no part in this process", while 6
percent don't know.

Only 35 percent of Americans accept Darwin's theory of evolution,
while 45 percent prefer the creationist view" (NYT, Dec 12, 2004).>>
Sixty-one percent of Americans "believe the Biblical story of
creation is literal truth" (ABC, World News Tonight with Peter
Jennings, Jan 18).>>

http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/creation/evol-poll.htm lists a
similar Gallup poll that was done in 2001 on the subject that showed 45% of
americans believe in young earth fundiism. 47% in 1999, 44% in 1982, etc.

Adults actually are somewhat more likely not to believe in evolution. In a
Gallup poll of adults last November, 45 percent said they believed in
creationism while 38 percent believed that God guided the process of evolution.
Only 13 percent of adults said they believed that evolution occurred
without God's guidance.

A CBS News poll in November 04 found an even larger percentage of adults
disagreeing with evolution. In that poll, a majority of adults, 55 percent,
believed that God created humans in their present form.
Twenty-seven percent believed that God guided the process of evolution, while
13 percent believed in a God-less evolution. Sixty-five percent of adults in
the CBS poll favored schools teaching both creationism and evolution, while 37
percent said creationism should be taught instead of evolution.

"Education has changed considerably since the famous 'Scopes Monkey Trial,' but
the debate about teaching evolution hasn't ended," Gallup's Heather Mason wrote
in an online article. "... Data from Gallup Youth Surveys and adult surveys
alike reinforce the notion that evolution is far from a foregone conclusion
among large numbers of Americans."
==
The percentage of Kansas biology teachers who believed creationism had a valid
scientific basis was 25 percent. Ohio was 38 percent, and South Dakota was 39
percent).Georgia (30 percent), Illinois (30 percent), Kentucky (69 percent) and
Louisiana (29 percent), and U.S.-wide surveys range from 39 percent to 45
percent.
==
400 years ago they were barely aware of orbits and
could not explain them. 200 years ago they could not explain why
people caught diseases. 100 years ago they had no idea how the
Sun worked. Does our current inability to answer a question mean anything?
==
The Church expressly discouraged the investigation of nature.
Christ had explicitly said the world was imminent, so studying nature
would be pointless, if not outright blasphemous. It was a continuing
theme that one should not tinker with God's mystery. Hence a 12th
Century Papal Bull forbidding the study of physics or the laws of the
world, St. Dominic condemning research by experiment and
observation, the ongoing crackdown on the alchemists, etc. Into the
16th century, scientists were still being charged with heresy. When
science did develop, religion was a retarding influence, never a help.
As the Church lost its stranglehold on European life, it had to make
adjustments to survive. The reconciliation with some scientific facts
is one such adjustment. Fortunately for the Church, it has a bank of
intellect to drawn on, and has always been able to rig sophisms to keep
Church being ahead of fundamentalists, comparing the Church against
the dumbest people you can cite is hardly a ringing endorsement.
--Miles Kington

The Bible says the earth is fallen, sinful, controlled by Satan, corrupt
and will soon pass away. So, why study it?
==
First Rule of Creationism: Lying for the Lord is okay.
Second Rule of Creationism: Change the subject whenever possible.
Third Rule of Creationism: it is moral to threaten 3 million teachers with
prison to limit science education.
==
Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities by I.L. Cohen, (a bad science book)
==
Why do humans and chimps have the same exact vitamin C gene mutation?
Why are human and chimp genes highly syntenic?
Why are ancient retroviral genes present at the exact same loci in
humans as in chimps?
Why are human and chimp genomes >95% similar?
Why does synteny decrease along with decreasing phylogenetic relationships?
Why does homology decrease with decreasing phylogenetic relationships?
==
www.creationism.co.uk anti-creation
www.blackshadow.co.uk anti-creation
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DebunkCreation/
==
Science is equally open to people of all religions -- or no religion--who are
willing to look at the evidence and draw obvious conclusions.
Teaching pseudoscience in place of genuine science is a recipe for disaster in
one generation, for any nation, which tolerates such nonsense.
And what is truly preposterous is the creationist claim that they are "the only
True Christians", when in fact their entire theology is so heretical as to
be inconsistent with *any* form of Christianity, be it Protestant, Catholic, or
Orthodox.
==
This is precisely the circumstance desired by the religious right: a nation of
ill-educated, uncritical followers to whom "evidence" means "what the pastor
said" or "what the Holy Book said".
==
If you're going to ask a scientific question and refuse to accept any
scientific answer, then what's the point of asking?
==
The 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does not state that entropy should increase in
every system. It tells us that the entropy of a system plus its environment
increases when an irreversible process occurs in the system. Nothing prevents a
local decrease of entropy as long as the system can exchange energy with its
environment.A small percentage of the solar energy entering the biosphere is
converted to stored energy, decreasing the entropy. Life processes dissipate
some of the stored energy to the environment, where entropy increases.
The second law does not tell us everything tries to go from a more
complex state to a less complex state when left alone.
==
The cheek teeth of vampire bats are clearly degenerate and serve no function.
Vestigal structures are those that have little or no function. cheek
teeth -molars and premolars in vampire bats - ARE vestigial.
Fossil bats are rare, but we do know that some bats show these teeth as better
developed and actually use them, while vampire bats have no use for them.
That allows us to suggest that both kinds of bats descended from
ancestral forms that had fully-developed cheek teeth and likely used them.
==
Actually the best scientists are the ones willing to accept the evidence
even if this means rejecting their most cherished beliefs. This is where
creationists fail. They believe they already know the answer no matter what
the facts say. Their conclusion, that God made the world in six days as the
Bible says, precedes and is above all observations.
==
While campaigning for the presidency in 1999, then-Governor Bush stroked his
religiously conservative followers by defending the teaching of creationism
alongside evolution and stating, "I believe children ought to be exposed to
different theories about how the world started."
==
Its the arbitrary views of creationists about their religion that causes them
to assert science is atheistic...not the views of science and there is no
'demonstrated correlation of atheism and evolution' except in the fervid
imaginations of the ICR and those who reject science on religious grounds.
==
ICR is accredited by a state agency in california...but it is not
accredited by the national agency which accredits real schools like
Stanford and Harvard...and the state agency also will accredit other
diploma mills in addition to ICR...like California Pacific University
which is PO box...
==
http://members.cox.net/ardipithecus/evol/lies/
creation lies
==
Creation model
God planted the fossils that we find in order to fool diligent
and rational people into thinking that evolution was true and
forcing creationists to rely on blind faith, lies, gross illogic,
and the stuff written by sheepherders thousands of years ago.
Because that was his goal, He was very careful to arrange the
evidence in such a way as to conform to the theory of
evolution. And that's why there appear to be transitionals.
There are intermediate fossils, but they did not come from
corresponding living organisms, but merely from God poofing
them into existence. So, the result is intermediate fossils but
none of them are transitional fossils. They merely *look* like
transitionals because that's what they were *made* to look.
==
The battle cry of the intelligent design movement has been to "teach the
controversy", but in reality, say list members, there is no scientific
controversy over evolution. Michael Brass, a professional archaeologist in
London and author of "The Antiquity of Man", points out, "Recent reviews
of the available anatomical and genetic evidence have convincingly
re-affirmed yet again the theory that apes and anatomically modern
humans share a common ancestry. There is no controversy, amongst
palaeoanthropologists and archaeologists over the validity of
evolutionary processes in human evolution." Rather than being
science, Brass says, intelligent design and creationist advocates
"take their religious text as their starting point and attempt to
force-fit the data into their religious paradigm." Brass concludes,
"Creationist works, and those who support such efforts, have no basis
whatsoever in any scientific procedure and basic plain scientific reality."
The Discovery Institute, the primary force behind the intelligent
design movement, goes to great lengths to claim that it has no
ulterior religious motives. But Flank points to the 'Wedge
Document', an internal Discovery Institute document that was leaked
onto the Internet a few years ago. Under the heading 'Governing
Goals', the Wedge Document states, "To replace materialistic
explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human
beings are created by God." The primary financial backer of the
Discovery Institute is California S&L mogul Howard Ahmanson, a
supporter of the "Christian Reconstructionist" movement, which
advocates placing the United States under "Biblical law". "It
certainly sounds to me," Flank concludes, "as if the Discovery
Institute and its financial backers want to do exactly what the
Supreme Court has already ruled they cannot do --- use the public
schools to advance their religious opinions."
==
Shippensburg professors: Let science be science
February, 2005
With this letter we want to express our deep concern and opposition to the
Dover Area School Boards decision to add the concept of intelligent design to
the biology curriculum.
As professors of biology, we find the teaching of ID in the schools of
Pennsylvania as part of the science curriculum to be inappropriate.
The introduction of the ID concept, taught as if it were a valid alternative
scientific theory to classic evolutionary theory, will do a monumental
disservice to the students in your district.With this change in the curriculum,
instead of science, students are given fringe beliefs and unsubstantiated
speculations.
Administrators or teachers enacting this modification of the curriculum are
presenting students with misinformation about the content and process of
science.
They are eroding the academic preparation of the students and diminishing their
chances for a successful professional and academic future.
The concept of intelligent design is not scientific. ID cannot be investigated
using the scientific method. ID is not based on objective evidence. ID cannot
be falsified through experimentation or realistic predictions. ID is not a
competing theory for evolution. ID has not and is not being taught, as a
biology concept, in any university with objective scientific standards. ID is
not found in any respectable biology textbooks as accepted science. ID is
modern creationism. Intelligent design is a veiled strategy to teach religion
instead of science.
Arguably, ID may be appropriate in a philosophy or comparative theology course
but not as part of the science/biology curriculum.
Theological themes, philosophical arguments, common beliefs, moral points of
view and ethical controversies are a fitting part of a
well-rounded social/cultural curriculum but not part of science education.
Science is based on a strict series of steps widely known as the scientific
method.
The teachers in your district, as good professionals, know this very well. The
scientific method requires falsifiable hypotheses and objective and accepted
testing methodology.
The concept of intelligent design implies by logical inference an intelligent
designer, supreme being, all mighty, deity. These ideals are all various
versions of God. Science cannot investigate the belief in God because a
supernatural force is, by definition, not amenable to experimentation using the
scientific method, and, therefore is not science.
We expect our freshman students to arrive at college with the best possible
academic background, including a solid understanding of the scientific method
and a clear idea of what science is and is not.
In a time of unprecedented discovery and technical advances, from the human
genome to nanotechnology, we should not have to revisit once more these
misrepresentations in science.
We should not be fighting cultural and scientific wars that were resolved, in
legal and experimental grounds, over 60 years ago.
Let science be science.
For the sake of the students, we urge you to reconsider your decision and
return to the original scientific standards of biology in your curriculum.
Pablo Delis is an assistant professor in the Shippensburg University biology
department. This letter was also signed by 15 other professors in the
universitys biology department.
==
In evolution, as in all areas of science, our knowledge is incomplete. But
the entire success of the scientific enterprise has depended on an insistence
that these gaps be filled by natural explanations, logically derived from
confirmable evidence. Because "intelligent design" theories are based on
supernatural explanations, they can have nothing to do with science.
Bruce Alberts
President
National Academy of Sciences
Washington, Feb. 9, 2005
==
The term 'evolution' become such a dirty word? The
US Gallup polls that presented Americans with the same choices ? on Evolution
Vs Creationism ? in 1982, 1993, 1997 and 1999 consistently yielded the same
result. Nearly one-half of America is convinced that "God alone, and not
evolution, produced humans". The divide has deterred schools from including
Charles Darwin's theory of the origin of species in their biology curriculum,
leave alone encouraging any kind of debate and discussion on the subject.
==
1. The natural fission reactor at Oklo (Gabun) burned about 1.5 Gigayrs ago.
The fission products can still be found and their relative abundance agrees
with today's calculations. Those abundances are very sensitive to details of
nuclear physics.
2. The fine structure of spectral lines from distant stars agrees with the
calculations made today, using today's values of the physical constants.
3. The slowing-down rates of rapidly spinning pulsars agree with calculations
although the radiation took several thousand years to reach us.
==
LITTLE ROCK, AR--Following action by the American Civil Liberties Union of
Arkansas, the Beebe School District today agreed to remove stickers it had
placed in science textbooks undermining the validity of evolution and
introducing the religious concept of an "intelligent designer" behind the
origin of life. After receiving complaints about the stickers from community
members, the ACLU wrote a letter to the superintendent of schools.
The Beebe stickers, which carry the headline "A MESSAGE FROM THE BEEBE SCHOOL
BOARD," describe evolution as a "controversial theory" and go on to suggest
that "evolution alone is not adequate to explain the origins of life." The
stickers specifically name an "intelligent designer" as a possible source for
those origins.
==
PHILADELPHIA - Evangelical Christians, buoyed by the re-election of President
Bush, are turning American schools into a battleground over whether evolution
explains the origins of life or whether nature was designed by an all-powerful
force.
In at least 18 states, campaigns have begun to make public schools teach
intelligent design a theory that nature is so complex it could only have
been created by design alongside Charles Darwins theory of evolution.
It's pretty clear that there is a religious movement behind intelligent design,
said Steve Case, chairman of the Science Standards Committee, a group of
educators that advises the Kansas Board of Education. The board will decide
later this year whether to include intelligent design in biology classes.
Those who advocate giving it equal treatment in schools have a different
interpretation. Intelligent design promotes a rational basis for belief in
God, said John Calvert, managing director of the Kansas-based advocacy group
Intelligent Design Network Inc.
One noted proponent of intelligent design complicates the debate by arguing it
should not be taught in high school. John West, a senior fellow at the
Seattle-based Discovery Institute, which pioneered intelligent design research,
said the theory was too complex to teach at high schools and was better-suited
to a college setting.
==
Virginia House Passes Amendment Erasing Church-State Protections In
State Constitution
Wednesday, February 9, 2005
Watchdog Group Says Measure Threatens Religious Liberty Legacy
The Virginia House of Delegates has approved a sweeping amendment
that would erase church-state protections from the state constitution
and allow officially sanctioned prayer in the public schools.
The bill, HJ 537, proposes an amendment to the state's constitution
that would "permit the exercise of religious _expression, including
prayer and 'religious beliefs, heritage, and traditions' on public
property, including public schools...."
The Virginia House passed the proposed amendment by a 69-27 vote
yesterday. It has been submitted to the Senate, which could consider
it before the legislative session concludes on Feb. 26.
(Constitutional amendments must win House and Senate passage in two
sessions before being placed on a statewide ballot for voters.)
"The Virginia delegates who are pushing this scheme have a shockingly
ill-informed understanding of religious freedom," said the Rev. Barry
W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of
Church and State. "This amendment would open a Pandora's box of
religious liberty problems. It is imperative for the Senate to reject
this unwise plan."
Lynn charged that the amendment's broad language could be interpreted
to allow officially sanctioned worship services at public schools and
governmental events, as well as the display of sectarian symbols at
courthouses, schools and other public buildings.
Lynn noted that Virginia legislators are tampering with the religious
liberty legacy of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, two revered
Virginia founders who pioneered the concept of church-state
separation in America.
"I do not believe that today's politicians are likely to improve on
the work of Jefferson and Madison," Lynn continued. "I am certain
that the amendment just approved by the Virginia House does not do
so. This scheme destroys many of the constitutional protections that
Virginians count on."
The amendment's sponsor, Del. Charles W. Carrico Sr., said yesterday
that the amendment was needed because Christians in the nation are
becoming increasingly oppressed.
"America was founded on Christian beliefs," said
Carrico. "Christianity is the majority faith in this country and yet
because the minority has said, 'I'm offended,' we are being told to
keep silent."
Lynn said Carrico is wrong.
"Christianity is not muzzled in this country," Lynn continued. "The
public square is filled with religious and nonreligious voices. And
public school children already have the right to voluntarily pray,
read religious literature and join religious clubs. All of this goes
on without government endorsement or opposition, and that's how it
should be.
"This measure is not needed, and it is an affront to the religious
freedoms this country and the state of Virginia have long
celebrated," Lynn said. "It is imperative that this proposed
amendment be defeated."
The Virginia measure is patterned after a proposed federal
constitutional amendment that U.S. Rep. Ernest Istook (R-Okla.) has
spent years trying to shove through Congress. The Istook proposal has
not fared well. He has introduced the amendment in several
congressional sessions since the late 1990s, but it has always
stalled in the House.
==
A 2004 Gallup poll found only a third of Americans believe Darwin's theory of
evolution is scientifically credible, and that 45 percent believe God created
man in His image, just like the Bible says.
==
Feb 2005
Kansas State Attorney General Phill Kline says he firmly believes that schools
should be allowed to place stickers in school textbooks saying evolution is a
theory, not a fact. State school board chairman Steve Abrams said Kline brought
up the subject Tuesday during meetings with small groups of board members.
Kline told The Associated Press he believes such stickers are reasonable, even
though a federal judge in Georgia ruled last month that similar stickers are an
unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
==
Dr. Sarah Pallas, a biology professor at Georgia State University,
says people forget that facts are what support scientific theory.
There is no evidence against evolution except that concocted by
religious groups, she said.
==
Piltdown Man hoax had little impact
Anti-evolutionists have a habit of distorting the history surrounding the faked
remains. There is no evidence anyone faked the remains to create evidence for
our relationship with other primates. The remains were more than likely created
for press and profit. Piltdown Man was only popular in Britain and hardly
noticed by biology elsewhere. Piltdown Man had very little effect on American
textbooks because it was never popular with American biology. Besides,
evolution was not really taught to American schoolchildren. It still isn't in
many areas of our country, although tougher standards for education are slowly
changing that. Piltdown Man was not exposed as a hoax by creationists, but by
evolutionists who determined it did not fit with the rest of the hominid fossil
record and tested its authenticity using techniques developed after World War
II. Evolution became stronger, not weaker, after the hoax was exposed.
Creationism is rife with hoaxed fossils. The difference is it takes
evolutionists to correct them, and yet creationists continue to use them.
Examples include the Paluxy footprints, the Calaveras skull, Moab Man and
Malachite Man. Unlike creationism, evolution does not need to fake evidence to
find support. Evolution is the grand unifying concept of biology, explaining
the nature of nature, and is supported by centuries of biological research. Its
utility and power can be found in all fields of science dealing with biology
and then some. There is nothing provisional about the foundation of modern
biology that deserves a textbook disclaimer.
==
One of the main attractions of creationism is that it allows creationists to
believe that they speak for God! Only *they* know the true thoughts and
actions of God. It must give them a true sense of power, even omnipotence.
This sounds like a PRIDE problem.
==
1961 book by Canadian creationist Evan Shute,
Flaws in the Theory of Evolution.
==
Argument from ignorance and argument based on a *lack* of relevant data:
"We are ignorant of a scientific explanation, therefore it doesn't have one,
and therefore God is the explanation."
==
Lack of science education or bad science education creates a longer-
term ripple effect, which is why sometimes it's hard to notice.
It can take years for a bad curriculum to start to hurt society, and
even then you usually don't notice when something isn't there. Who
can tell how many of the kids who get bad science educations would
have made a difference? "Johnny would have developed a cure for
Alzheimer's, but he never studied genetics because his school
wouldn't teach it." We'll never know.
Perhaps the most important thing a good science education provides is
the ability to learn from your mistakes. Science does that, which is
why we went from an Aristotelian view of the world to a Newtonian
one, to one based in quantum physics. Science learns.
That's why we develop theories to explain the evidence we have:
Evolutionary theories (steady state, punctuated equilibrium, etc.)
explain all the evidence we have for evolution; gravitational
theories (general relativity, quantum gravity) explain the ton of
evidence we have for gravity.
And when we have new information, we say, "Ah, that theory is wrong."
And science gets better. That's why we can fit the entire Library of
Congress (news - web sites) on a few plastic platters, and why my
father can come home from open-heart surgery after less than a week.
Science learns. Science improves.
(Low-intelligence folks try to twist that, not surprisingly. They
say, "Ha ha! Science has been wrong!" as opposed to "Oh, science
corrects its mistakes.")
So we question our knowledge, refine it, and change it. And that
doesn't mean questioning something for no good reason, it means
questioning something because of new facts (not just old ideas
rehashed or renamed).
A failed school system turns out voters and their school board members carry on
the failed system. They elect other political leaders too, reflecting this
failed systrm,.
==
Two weeks after a federal judge ordered Cobb County to remove
evolution disclaimers from science books, a state lawmaker has
introduced a bill requiring that only "scientific fact" to be taught
in public schools. To Republican State Rep. Ben Bridges of Cleveland,
that rules out the theory of evolution.
A theory can be wrong. If it's wrong, or possibly could be wrong,
don't teach it. Teach it with facts. If you've got facts to back it
up, that's great, Bridges told 11Alive News Reporter Jon Shirek.
Bridges' said he did not consider other evolution controversies when
introducing his bill, which he said is driven by his Christian beliefs.
Bridges Origin of Life says "factual scientific evidence
supporting... evolution theory, and factual scientific evidence not
supporting the theory shall be included in the course of study,"
It goes on to talk about "...Requiring the presentation of a broad
range of scientific evidence regarding theories of the origin of
humans and other living things."
Dr. Sarah Pallas, a biology professor at Georgia State University,
says people forget that facts are what support scientific theory.
There is no evidence against evolution except that concocted by
religious groups, she said.
The idea that matter is made of atoms is a theory. The idea that
there is some kind of force that brings us back to earth if we jump
up is a theory, it's called gravitational theory, She added. If
we're not allowed to talk about one theory, then we shouldn't be
allowed to talk about all other theories.
Bridges is prepared to argue that evolution is a disputed theory. My
motivation is possibly teaching kids something that is not true and
we need to teach it with facts if we teach it, he said.
==
Science is only concerned with what the evidence shows, not what any religious
writing proclaims.
==
Pennock's "Tower of Babel"
Pennock's "Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics"
==
There was a decision a few months ago by the Grantsburg School Board in
northwestern Wisconsin to teach creationism in tandem with evolution in its
schools.
==
BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF GEORGIA:
SECTION 1.
Part 2 of Article 6 of Chapter 2 of Title 20 of the Official Code of Georgia
Annotated, relating to competencies and core curriculum in elementary and
secondary schools, is amended by adding at the end thereof a new Code section,
to be designated as Code Section 20-2-148, to read as follows:?20-2-148.
(a) Whenever any theory of the origin of humans or other living things is
included in a course of study offered by a local unit of administration,
factual scientific evidence supporting or consistent with evolution theory and
factual scientific evidence inconsistent with or not supporting the theory
shall be included in the course of study.
(b) The method of instruction described in subsection (a) of this Code section
is intended to strengthen the analytical skills of students by requiring the
presentation of a broad range of scientific evidence regarding theories of the
origin of humans and other living things. The requirements of subsection (a) of
this Code section are not intended to authorize or promote the presentation of
religious beliefs.?
SECTION 2.
This Act shall become effective on July 1, 2005.
SECTION 3.
All laws and parts of laws in conflict with this Act are repealed.
==
Dr. John Frandsen, a retired zoologist, was at a dinner for teachers in
Birmingham, Ala., recently when he met a young woman who had just begun work
as