Originally Posted By woody "And while they're at it they should get rid of all the outer space garbage. We all know that the moon landing was staged on a Hollywood set anyway." I'm not sure if you believe in any science with this comment.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer <<The exhibit maintains that the ark could accommodate them because it was huge--450 feet long, 75 feet wide and 45 feet high--and only smaller, adolescent dinosaurs were put on board.>> >I have no idea how people can believe this and not be just a little insane.< Exactly. Why would anyone choose to spend 40 days in a boat with a bunch of teenagers?
Originally Posted By TomSawyer You know, I just looked and I didn't see anywhere in Genesis where it said that they brought adolescent dinosaurs on the Ark. Or adolescent anything for that matter. If you're going to base a theory on a particular text, your statements should probably be consistent with that text or you might get accused of making stuff up to fit the evidence.
Originally Posted By RC Collins The Bible doesn't claim to be a science textbook, or a medical textbook. It claims to tell us how to have a relationship with God. That being said, I do not believe that, correctly interpreted and taken in the spirit intended (symbolic poetry as symbolic poetry, perspective from humanity, etc.) that anything in the original texts would violate actual scientific facts. HOWEVER, you don't have to believe in the Bible or any part of the Bible to find ID scientifically credible, or find serious, perhaps insurmountable shortcommings in the concept of macroevolution as the process that brought about the world of living organisms we have today. Mocking those who question "Evolution" and trying to equate their doubting of your chosen outlook with other concepts or pratices you disagree with does NOT do anything to advance the believability of your claims.
Originally Posted By schoolsinger I consider teaching of intelligent design in public schools to be a First Amendment violation. At the same time, I also think that teaching macroevolution (I’m ok with the micro kind) in public schools is also against the First Amendment. Any teaching that gets into pre-human history is getting into a religious matter. The teaching that evolution is the origin of all life and the Big Bang theory, are ideas that promote Secular Humanism. Secular Humanism is recognized by the Supreme Court as a RELIGION! Teaching no view of the origins of life or this world is the most constitutionally proper, and fair thing for the public schools to do.
Originally Posted By StillThePassHolder "It is time to put evolution in its place and out of the public school systems." And that whole earth is flat thing?Let's bring that back. The earth being the center of the universe? You know it's true!
Originally Posted By ecdc I love how critics of evolution rally around their standard: "It's just a theory!" True, it remains a theory. But no evolutionary biologist will tell you the evidence for the theory is weak. I think the opening chapter to a book I once read on evolution and its place in religion said it best. The authors, Bible believing Christians, pointed out that they don't have the luxury of mocking evolution the way other people of faith do. They can't dismiss it with ludicrous arguments about how scientists once thought the world was flat, so what do they know. They see the evidence for evolution everyday in their work, so they have to look elsewhere for how evolution fits into a life of faith, rather than simply dismissing it out of ignorance, as apparently seems to be the road for many.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>does NOT do anything to advance the believability of your claims.<< Casting doubt is what Creationists do. Science has evidence on it's side, and experiments and observations that you can do for yourselves. They aren't asking anyone to believe anything that they can't go out and prove on their own. Or try to disprove as the case may be.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>Secular Humanism is recognized by the Supreme Court as a RELIGION!<< No it isn't. Peloza v. Capistrano School District: "neither the Supreme Court, nor this circuit, has ever held that evolutionism or secular humanism are`religions' for Establishment Clause purposes."
Originally Posted By RC Collins >>Science has evidence on it's side, and experiments and observations that you can do for yourselves. They aren't asking anyone to believe anything that they can't go out and prove on their own. Or try to disprove as the case may be.<< Science yes, Evolution, no. Or were you about to tell us where we can see an animal naturally produce offspring that is clearly evolving into something different, or where we'll see beneficial mutations that have produced a new organ in a single specimen get passed along to living offspring, or where we'll see living organisms arise from nonliving materials without information from another organism, or where we'll see irreducibly complex systems spontaneously assemble? If you conclude from the evidence that there are strictly natural mechanisms that have brought about all of the complexities of living organism on the planet, then fine, but other reasonable conclusions based on the same evidence should not be dismissed as being against science.
Originally Posted By DlandDug Trims 'n Ends: The biblical account of Noah's Ark states that it RAINED for forty days and nights. The ark and its passengers sailed for about a year before the waters lowered enough for it to land on Mt. Ararat. Those who feel that throwing out Evolution is tantamount to teaching the Flat Earth theory or rejecting vaccination betray a fundamental fear that their "faith" in Evolution is being mocked. (P.S. The Bible does not say the earth is flat, and is silent on the subject of vaccination.) From post #29: >>ID is counter intuitive in the light that for 1,000 Man has by trial and error surmised the basic construct of evolution by the development of agriculture and husbandry. It fact that humans have crack the evolutional theory by being able to breed better and better crops, plants and livestock demonstrates the most basic mechanics of nature that describes evolutionary theory.<< Actually, man's use of breeding to improve crops, plants and livestock is a very good example of Intelligent Design. One of the biggest problems with Evolution is the idea that, left to its own devices, nature moves from disorder to order. In actuality, nature moves from order to disorder. Breeding and genetics are all based on an outside intelligence (humans) working against this basic fact of nature. ID proponents believe that on a larger scale, an outside Intelligence had a hand in the creation of the earth and its inhabitants.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>Those who feel that throwing out Evolution is tantamount to teaching the Flat Earth theory or rejecting vaccination betray a fundamental fear that their "faith" in Evolution is being mocked<< Nice try, but no. I don't have faith in evolution - it isn't a matter of faith, because it can be tested. I'm not afraid of my opinion on evolution being mocked. I'm sure people who believed Galileo were mocked as well.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>One of the biggest problems with Evolution is the idea that, left to its own devices, nature moves from disorder to order.<< That isn't indicated by Evolution at all. Evolution merely says that organisms adapt to their environment. A species can become so successful at beating out it's competitors that it winds up destroying it's own environment and ultimately itself.
Originally Posted By TomSawyer >>ID proponents believe that on a larger scale, an outside Intelligence had a hand in the creation of the earth and its inhabitants.<< I do too. I say it every Sunday, as a matter of fact. But until they can establish testable hypotheses that withstand peer scrutiny, ID doesn't belong in a science classroom.
Originally Posted By DlandDug According to Evolutionary Theory, simple, undifferentiated organisms evolve into higher orders, with specialized abilities and recognizable family groups. In other words, Evolution is a natural process that progresses from disorder into order. You may call it adaptation or mutation or natural selection. It flies in the face of the generally accepted theory that nature moves naturally from order to disorder. >>But until they can establish testable hypotheses that withstand peer scrutiny, ID doesn't belong in a science classroom.<< And as long as people mock and dismiss ID out of hand, this is not going to happen.
Originally Posted By schoolsinger Are public schools allowed to say whatever they want as long as there is no mention of the supernatural? Are public schools allowed to say that Jesus was just a normal man that died and stayed dead? The point is that you don’t have to mention the supernatural to get into a religious matter. The belief that there is no supernatural is still a belief about the supernatural. Atheism is just as much a religion as Theism. The government is supposed to treat all religions equal, but that is not the case in government run schools. It seems like if you believe in God you are suppose to shut the heck up. But if you are an atheist you can say whatever the heck you want.
Originally Posted By ElKay RC_Collins post#30: "That all takes an awful lot of faith, considering much of that flies in the face of logic, extensively tested science, human experience, and statistical probabilities. Who would buy it if I said a murder weapon just spontaneously appeared in my hand?" See what you are talking about is magic, that's the whole problem with believers ID their mind set is anti-scientific and imbuned with all things magic. If you come from a faith that believes a god in human form can turn water into an alcoholic beverage then YOUR statement makes perfect sense. Show us where anyone supporting evolutionary science believes your slight- of-hand. I could support the concept that a pseudopod develop into a flipper, then into a leg, then most recently into a boxer's arm. Most jurisdictions consider a boxer's arm as a lethal weapon. Recently a primatologist studying chimp DNA and human DNA found that there's only a 1% difference between the two. So literally we do have a monkey as an uncle. What you neo-Creationists fail to recognize is that the study of evolution biology has only been around less than 150 years and most of the evidence has been identified in the last 50. So as a theory, it is one of the youngest, far younger than chemistry, geology or physics. ID is vastly more of a philosophy, because it is clearly evident that is is IN FACT based upon a religious theology. ID cannot be a science because it is impossible to replicate any part of ID's beliefs or demonstrate physical evidence of ID. As was mentioned before, ID is a philosophy created to discredit evolution, because it runs counter to the belief systems of a certain faith. Fossil records are replete with examples of species that develop usually from a smaller form to a larger form as in the case of the horse. Likewise, other spieces develop from a land mammal into several different spieces from whales, dolphins or seals. Those examples, plus the ability for humans to modify nearly any plant or animal strongly suggests that living organisms do in fact evolve. By just declaring that a deity created every organism without providing tangible evidence makes ID no different than magic. When you first get prestidigitation accepted into high school science course, come back here and I may reconsider ID.
Originally Posted By itsme This site has some interesting looks into the whole debate and includes some theorys from both sides pro and con. <a href="http://www.livescience.com/othernews/050923_ID_science.html" target="_blank">http://www.livescience.com/oth ernews/050923_ID_science.html</a> From the linked article- "If Dembski were right, then a new gene with new information conferring a brand new function on an organism could never come into existence without a designer because a new function requires complex specified information," Miller said. In 1975, Japanese scientists reported the discovery of bacteria that could break down nylon, the material used to make pantyhose and parachutes. Bacteria are known to ingest all sorts of things, everything from crude oil to sulfur, so the discovery of one that could eat nylon would not have been very remarkable if not for one small detail: nylon is synthetic; it didn't exist anywhere in nature until 1935, when it was invented by an organic chemist at the chemical company Dupont. The discovery of nylon-eating bacteria poses a problem for ID proponents. Where did the CSI for nylonase—the actual protein that the bacteria use to break down the nylon—come from? There are three possibilities: The nylonase gene was present in the bacterial genome all along. The CSI for nylonase was inserted into the bacteria by a Supreme Being. The ability to digest nylon arose spontaneously as a result of mutation. Because it allowed the bacteria to take advantage of a new resource, the ability stuck and was eventually passed on to future generations. Apart from simply being the most reasonable explanation, there are two other reasons that most scientists prefer the last option, which is an example of Darwinian natural selection. First, hauling around a nylonase gene before the invention of nylon is at best useless to the bacteria; at worst, it could be harmful or lethal. Secondly, the nylonase enzyme is less efficient than the precursor protein it's believed to have developed from. Thus, if nylonase really was designed by a Supreme Being, it wasn't done very intelligently.
