"Intelligent Design" battle goes to polls.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051101/ap_on_sc/evolution_debate

Now, that's gotta be interesting.

our system of government.

Just keep in mind that any voting has nothing to do with science and the ideas that science accepts.

It is determined by its context, and its context is social, economic and cultural. So, to that extent, voting has to do with science.

The whole fucking POINT of the scientific method is to have a means by which we can *seperate* actual, testable, factual information from prevailing social/cultural prejudices and political whims.

I think you missed (or deliberately ignored in order to pick bones) the point of the previous poster that what is and is not scientific is not open to a vote.

but, except for the frauds that fake data to keep the grants coming in what the body of international science doesn't reject as chaff is really outside the influence of American partisan politics.

Science is NOT a democracy

There is zero evidence for it.

Citizens For Legitimate Government's Evidence of the 2004 Coup d'Etat, compiled by Lori Price and Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.
http://www.legitgov.org/coup_2004.html

Science is decided by a careful process of review by peers who share the values of intellectual curiousity and a belief in the fucundity of a semi-rigid methodology which has evolved over centuries of careful experimentation and review. It takes years of technical training to understand how all the pieces fit together and how the methods work. Without a PhD, a scientist is not fully trained. The public is uniquely *unqualified* to make these decisions.

It might sound like a good idea to put it to a vote, but no scientist would ever advocate such a thing.

school board elections.

This could be an interesting indicator of the degree we have reached in the, actively promoted, overlap between politics and belief. According to the article, it's about replacing republicans with democrats on a topic which has (excuse the pun) faith value. That's a point where "everyday-life" is at stake, more so than general statements with no real concrete, immediate meaning.

What would you do if 60% of the population voted to wipe out the other 40?

Science is willing to admit that it's wrong. If someone can factually prove the scientific conclusion false, then science will concede.

Organized religion makes no such concessions.

to understand "science."

There are many educated lay people out there who make scientific discoveries (such as the Hale-Bopp comet) and who "get it" as much as many people with doctorates.

Science is not a gleaming ivory tower.

The problem is that most people just don't care enough to educate themselves about issues like evolution, so they are easily swayed by the pseudo-scientific garbage the ID people put out.

that discovery institute sure is clever.

FSM, save us!

why does it have to be 3.14 it makes it hard to work with.

I believe it is in the OT somewhere, really.

Tried to pass legislation making pi = 3.2 Indiana House Bill No. 246, 1897, I read about this in Petr Beckmann's excellent book the History of pi. So we might as well pass a law teaching ID. After all eviloution is *just* a theory. However, I want my version of ID taught....


OH MIGHTY ODIN, did smash the SKULL of THRYM and his BONES became the EARTH and his RED BLOOD did become the SEAS and his SKULL the vault of HEAVEN!!!!!!

ODINNNNNN!

Right after they get done arguing about Daylight Wasting Time, public nativity scenes, and whether or not it's a crime to jerk-off into a turkey baster for that nice Lesbian couple next door who are barred from adopting and SO want a child...

What we have in the state Legislature is just a mirror of the general stupidity rampant in the Great Hoosier State....

Sad to see we haven't changed much in a hundred years.

Of course now I have to go home and watch the vikings.

ODINNNNNNNNNNNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Do you think people would think I'm odd if I ask for a viking funeral?

It's "intelligent" design, not "intelligent design", damn it!

nfm

First we have to decide if to include Alchemy in the Chemistry classes. I am sure students would love to turn lead into gold but the government may frown on this as it devalues gold stocks. Perhaps get the alchemists to turn water into oil?

Then in the Medical classes we have to decide if to have a witchdoctor to discuss how best to perform a bypass surgery, the chicken entrails have raised some concerns about OHS. We tried to get a phrenologist in the neurology classes but they were all doing talk shows.

Then we will have to take a break before fitting in the geo centrists and flat earthers as they claim that a spherical earth is patently absurd and it only "looks" round and demand equal time for their theory. A busy day ahead...

n/t

Yes, Algebra is a heathen belief come to corrupt young minds!

I mean the name 'Al-gebra' and its an Arab development! Teach you children algebra and soon they be getting demonic thoughts of removing tax cuts to balance the budget, stopping massive unsustainable spending! Stop this insidious terraist threat before its too late!

We demand equal time for Voodoo Economics were 1 + 1 = 3 and the stock market is based on complete fantasy...oh wait it already is ;-)

I hate Geometry.

I hate Geometry.

to round pi off to an even 3? It would make everything so much easier. And could we maybe consider making Hubble's Constant a variable?

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evolution says nothing about 'thin soup made everything'. It's not origin specific.

Origin of Universe - Cosmology.
Origin of Life - Ambiogenesis.
Evolution of Life - Evolution.
They are all very different fields.

Anyway...

The primary problem is that there is not one whit of evidence for intelligent design. Saying that something is "too complex and must have been designed" is not an argument in science. You could claim that it was aliens, gods, flying spaghetti monsters, whatever but unless you can provide _positive_ evidence to support ones claim it belongs in a philosophy class, not science.

Trying to freeze the argument at "an unknowable, unseen designer did something at some point" answers absolutely nothing.

Science can be a bloodthirsty field, with people waiting to pounce on the slightest mistake, error or fallacy in someones dissertation. If you show a famous figure to have made an error, you will get accolades from others, prizes and the all important grant money. Very much like the 'fastest gun' ideals. Fraud occurs but, if caught you will never ever be taken seriously again and you hopes for fame will evaporate and fakers will be caught given the scrutiny that people look for errors.

If gods/aliens/FSM's enter into the science area, they are in for it. Science doesn't take 'Aliens did it' for an answer. One can't hide behind dogma, books, metaphysics or philosophy. They will rip the shield apart and tear into what is behind it, and every flaw, every absurdity and blemish will be scrutinized. And I really do not think this is something the proponents of ID want if they think about it.

And the show all arguements also has a nasty sting in the tail. If they wish to insert metaphysics and/or philosophy into a science course, is it not fair to shove science into a metaphysical/philosophy course? I wonder how loud the screams would be if a group of scientists turned up to a Church/Railien meeting and started ripping apart a holy text the same way they do with students thesis papers.

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Catholic 27-
There is a error in your analogy. To wit: Aristotle and Eratosthenes postulated and deduced the world was round, they were more correct than those who stated it was flat. In the 1950's measurements from space showed the Earth was slightly flattened due to the Earth's rotation, however later even further measurements showed the Earth to bulge slightly south of the equator than north of the equator. However, you are wrong to think Aristotle is as incorrect as people who believe the earth to be Flat.
There are many problems with this debate of ID versus Evolution anyway. Even if Evolution was *proved* to be completely false (something very difficult to do) then that DOES NOT prove Creationism true. There is the possibility of some other theories yet undiscovered which may fit our current catalog of evidence.
Lastly, the whole point is that Religion and Theology should not be mixed in with science class, humanities, philosophy fine, but not in science class...


The question is this - Is man an ape or an angel? My Lord, I am on the side of the apes. not Disraeli

No, science as not been proved wrong, as it is a process.

_Scientists_ have been shown wrong, and invariably by other scientists. Other things where scientists were wrong are numerous - (though a round earth was known for millenia by the Greeks, Babylonians, etc before a certain group gained power). But it has also been proven correct on even more occasions, the very fact it can provide medicines even if said medicines have harmful effects (also found out by science) means they have produced a lot more than simply saying "X did it". This X is an unknown factor which can NEVER be determined by evidence, and as such is worthless in any quest to know. As for the current pushers of ID into the science curriculum, its very very obvious who they think the designer is, they are just very careful to not mention it after their last slap down. In wonder how far a group would go if they claimed that Allah made the earth for example?

Science provide a framework of how the universe works - whether people uses that knowledge to produce hydrogen bombs or cancer cures is not the domain of science but ethics and politics. Science wants to know, whereas ID is saying 'It's too hard lets use a cop out'. By your mention of testing - allow me to illustrate.

*A dead body is found at a crime scene
*The police at the front door see a man walking out with a knife
*The knife and the man's shirt are covered in the victims blood.
*The man is yelling "Ha ha ha I killed him! I killed him good!"

Now you cant replicate the crime as the victim is dead, does that mean the man walking out the front door is definitely innocent? Or would his defense of "Well it looks like I did it, and I do have the knife with his blood on it, and I claimed I did it, but it was really done by Elvis" be legitimate or suspect?

I am uncertain what you mean by 'code', but if you are using Behe's bastardized mixing of Shannon and Kolmogorov ideas on information theory, please do not as it as been shown to be a farce. If you are not I apologise. But using this example I can legitimately state the following...

*Life could not have arisen/evolved as it is too complex
*Therefore there must have been a designer
*Question: Who designed the designer?

At this point, you can either have an infinite regress of 'designers of designers' or you escape to the metaphysical. And if the designer was 'always there' why could not the universe have always 'been there'. You could consider ID to be a gross insult in a way - Instead of having a powerful, intelligent being (be it a god or alien) doing this, you have a third rate hack who has to jump in and fiddle every second to keep things working properly, a model-T designer vs The Rolls Royce.

"My point is that the origin of life, universe, and nonlinear evolution are all as unfounded and profless as a creator."

One way of supporting a hypothesis is to deduce the results of that hypothesis, and later, when we are able to, check if those results are, indeed, true.

For example, one of the theorists of the Big Bang predicted a kind of space radiation. If the radiation wasn't there, the Big Bang theory would have been proven wrong. It was finally testable, much later, and discovered to be true.

Conversely, ID makes no testable predictions, and when they have endeavored to do so, they have been proved consistently wrong.

ID predicted that the eye was so complex that a designer was needed. They had to rescind their claims when the functional transitional stages were studied and documented.

ID predicted that blood clotting was so complex a designer was needed. They had to rescind their claims when the functional transitional stages were studied and documented.

The difference between the two (science and faith) is that some kind of evidence exists for scientific theory, but there isn't any real testable evidence for faith.

Edit:spulling

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"I am trying to put forth that life itself can not be created without genetic code. This is scientific fact."

Well, life as some often currently *define* it is based around genetic code, I'll grant that...

"Even in the simplest forms of life genetic code is needed to recreate itself."

This is not entirely true. There are countless chemical reactions which recreate products, even in "living" creatures, that do not depend on DNA. I suggest reading:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob.html

"I reject the primordial soup mixture as a valid definition of the creation of life as it is unfounded and not reproducible."

Amino acids have *already* been reproduced in the soup, as have 4 self-replicating molecules. It is most certainly reproducable, it's just not very simple or easy... it took around 5 billion years of global experimentation the first time around just to get this far (and that's just the first time)! :)

"This is the basis for many theorists belief and faith that we all came from the same single celled organism."

Huh? I haven't seem that claim very much, outside of simple textbooks or TV shows trying to dumb the subject down. More often, I see claims that we all came from lots of different sub-organisms and chemicals which interacted... it wasn't a simple, straight, line.

"I reject yes that I cam from ape, and yes that I have evolved from an amoeba."

As it is currently postulated, humans *didn't* come from apes, they came from something else that split into different hominids. We have a large number of reproducable, observed, instances where one species of life has changed into another, and a long line of observable changes in how various hominids changed into their current state... what more would be required as evidence?

"I believe in the case of schools neither should be taught as even science itself has a faith in certain unprovable theories as a basis for many of their current theories which could stand alone without such inferences on faith as fact."

Well, the difference between "faith" in a religious theory and "faith" in science is that a theory in science can be disproven, wheras a "faith" in a religious theory cannot. All that would be needed to totally disprove evolution would be the sudden terrestial appearance of a totally new species, without any form of ancestors, or related species. Specifically, intelligent life that lacks DNA would be particularly interesting (to get back to an earlier point). That would negate common descent and evolution as the *main* theory quite quickly.

Getting back to faith, though, what would disprove god?

Expecting scientists to reproduce the first life form is like expecting a child with a toy piano to re-compose beethoven's Fifth in about 10 seconds. it took about five hundred million years for nature to do it, with a lab the size of the planet and just about every chemical reaction going on at once somewhere on the planet.

To claim it didn't happen is to claim Beethoven couldn't have composed the fifth because a child with 10 seconds available can't reproduce it.

Furthermore, challenging the evidence about one theory does not add up to proof of a different theory. It would be like saying that because we can prove the events in genesis did not occur, there must not be a God.

You might, theoretically, prove evolution is not correct (bearing in mind Newtonian physics was eventually replaced with relativity), but that doesn't offer any proof that the world was inundated in a flood, or that God made the universe in six days some 6000 years ago, or that woman was created from the rib of a man. If you would fault science because sometimes scientists get it wrong, what of a religion that gets it wrong? Do you apply the same standards to religion as science? Do you demand physical evidence, reproducibility of God as you do for the first life form? If you reject science because it cannot reproduce the first life form yet, do you also reject God because He doesn't come down and reproduce Adam And Eve and the universe?

Or do you apply a double standard and say you'll reject one non-reproduceable theory while embracing a different non-reproduceable theory? if so, what does non-reproduceablity have to do with the strength of a theory in your calculations? If it doesn't bother your ability to believe in God that He doesn't reproduce any of the feats recorded in the bible, why should it bother your ability to accept evolution?

More on this: http://www.opinioneditorials.com/freedomwriters/rcooper_20051005.html

Jesus! You don't even understand the thing you're railing against! How can anyone even take your argument seriously when you have the basic facts so WRONG?

Theory supports the idea that the gibbon branched off first, then the orang, then the African apes as well as us. All of these animals are apes and it is reasonable to claim that the common ancestor between humans and the african apes was also an ape, not a monkey or any other type of animal.

We are no less apes than chimps. It is our vanity that insists on creating a distinct category for ourselves.

"All of these animals"

Does this imply that humans are not an animal?

"it is reasonable to claim that the common ancestor between humans and the african apes was also an ape"

Uhm, that's a taxonomy argument that might be a bit anthrocentric... perhaps I missed the point of your post?

Is it "bad" to be a descendant of a monkey, but good to be descended from an ape?

"Does this imply that humans are not an animal?" Not at all. In the context of my statement "All of these animals" referred to those I'd named: gibbon, orang, african apes. There's nothing in my statement excluding humans from the animal kingdom, nor would I intend such an interpretation.

"Is it "bad" to be a descendant of a monkey, but good to be descended from an ape?" No, there is no "good/bad" aspect to this issue. One of the defining features of monkeys is the existence of a tail where apes lack one. DNA comparison place us much closer to the tail-less chimp and gorilla than any tail-bearing monkey. Since the tail-less gibbons and orangs broke off from the ancestral stock before the tail-less african apes and humans, it would be a reasonable statement to claim that the ancestral stock was also tail-less (ie an ape). Otherwise you have each of these apes independently losing the tail of its ancestoral stock, which is less likely. As I recall, the DNA comparisons between apes also places them much closer to each other (and us) than to the monkeys.

There are a number of distinguishing characteristics between apes and monkeys that would validate the statement.

The evolutionary route led from monkeys to transitional forms where ape-like qualities were developed from monkey-like qualities (such as the loss of the tail). These qualities would have developed prior to the gibbon splitting off, and continued developing as the orang, gorilla and finally the human/chimp split off from their ancestral species. Of course, each of these species went on to develop their own unique characteristics after the split from their ancestral species. For example, chimps went on to split into the common chimp and the bonobo since splitting with the stock that also led to humans.

I really think we'd be at a loss to explain to an alien how we are not "apes". We share so much in common with apes.

EVOLUTION DOES NOT DEAL WITH ABIOGENSIS, THE ORIGIN OF LIFE.

YOUR BULLSHIT MYTHICAL TALES HAVE ZERO EVIDENCE TO PROVE EVEN ONE IOTA OF THEM TO BE TRUE.

You IDiots never learn - you don't even understand the thing you're arguing against!

:grr:

Teachers will no longer be allowed to teach gravity after the voters of (fill-in the blank) decided that gravity does not exist.

... why don't they have a vote on how much 2+2 equals? I mean, if the majority says 5, then who am I to argue?


-P

Why the hell do the VOTERS decide what is valid science?

99% of biologists concur on evolution. Why aren't their opinions, gained over years of study and research, substantially more influential than some fundamentalist nut who is convinced (s)he is being persecuted? Why don't ACTUAL scientists have the authority to say, "Fuck you. Evolution is evolution. It's considered as close to fact as you can get without actually having LIVED hundreds of millions of years ago. Your thinly-veiled attempt to hide creationism is faulty and misleading. We're teaching ACTUAL science, because we're teaching evolution."

"Seems to me that parents, who claim to teach their beliefs to their children at home, would welcome that statement, to support that what they're teaching them isn't a lie."

BONNIE TYREE - LOWER WINDSOR TOWNSHIP
Letter to the Editor: York Daily Record
"Dover trial a waste of time "
Monday, October 24, 2005

Since man was made in the image of God does that mean God has an APPENDIX or WISDOM TEETH or A BLIND SPOT? Are Dinosaurs merely the Behemoths mentioned in the Bible? Are all the scientists who support The Theory of Evolution involved in a "Vast Conspiracy" to foment a Secular Godless World, or merely incorrect and absolutely ignorant of the Truth? Why do men have nipples? Because God likes them? Is all of Astronomy, Geology, Biology incorrect?

Creationism is a peculiar American institution and most creationists can't even agree amongst themselves on basic "facts" of Creationism, Age of the Earth for example. Of course, it almost does no good to point out facts or links on a discussion forum, because the rejoinder will always be show me the facts.
What we are dealing with in this debate are people who will not let go of Dogma. A way of thinking that when Fact and Scripture differ, then the facts must give way...


Cue Ed Vedder---
I'm the first mammal to wear pants, yeah
It's evolution, baby

"Saundra Roldan, a preschool teacher at the YMCA, is planning to vote for the slate of challengers. Even if the courts side with the school board, "we as voters and taxpayers should say, `You put us into this mess and we're not happy about it and we want you out of here.'"

"It should not have come to that point," Roldan said as she took a break from reading her Bible."