Tuesday, December 20, 2005

 

Intelligent design, inevitable demise

Thank God for U.S. District Judge John E. Jones, Republican, churchgoer, patriot, for maintaining the integrity of church, and maintaining the integrity of state, by keeping them separate.

"Intelligent design" ruling (requires Acrobat) from the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

--ER

Comments:
Granted, I didn't read the decision in entirety, but I don't see it as a victory for separation of Church and state. The state shouldn't stand for science (or only one theory of science or any one theory of science), and all this seems to do is separate a church-driven theory of the origin of life from some oft-taught corruption of the theory of the origin of species.

First amendment doesn't seem the right basis for this decision.
 
Read some more. The judge was pretty pointed and severe in his criticism of the school board for its pretense of promoting an alternative theory when it was actrually out to promote religion. And, voters in the district have already tossed the board members who were pushing for it.

They wanted the church-driven theory, a religious theoty by definition, taught in a "science" class, not in an "evolution" class. If they had wanted it taught in a religion class, it wo9uld have made more sense. But they didn't: They specifically wantred it taught as "science."
 
Wrong. They specifically wanted an alternative to evolution taught. I hear the arguments that "it's not science, teach it in religion class." That's well and good if everyone is exposed to a "religion" class. Very few are. Everybody is exposed to a biology class.

Regardless, what makes the courts experts in science . . . or religion? This matter should be decided by the local tax payers. If they decide that evolution is what they want taught, and evolution only, then fine.
 
Courts are experts in law. This was a question of law involving science and religion.

Not a question of religion. Not a question of science. A question of law.

I swear (or affirm)! I don't see how you don't see the huge door this would open. Do you want ag classes to teach that cows, as the Hindus believe, are fricking holy? I don't think so.
 
If the local taxpayers wanted that taught, then yes.
 
Evolution, as the beginnings of life, is taught as fact. I have taken biology courses in both high school and college. In high school, my teacher had no problems with presenting the Genesis account of creation with her students - she would be in hot water today. At the college level, evolution is taught as fact. It is not debateable. At least it wasn't at FSU (before I went to eng grad school, I went back to get medical school pre-reqs, but decided better of the whole medicine idea when Rem Jr was conceived and I realized how long it would be until I was a money earning MD). I've had more than just Biology 101 and 102. The biologists I interacted with have more of an agenda than most academics and are not open to debate. The professor that taught my Evolution class openly derided Christians and all who dared to disagree with him on the subject. If you can't debate it at the college level, why can't students debate it at the high school level?
 
The quality of education about evolutuon isn't the question. It may very well suck. But that doesn't mean that teaching a religious belief as science is warranted.

And, I'm sorry, but any community that wants to teach that the earth is flat, as science, should have its schools taken over by the state government, and if the state doesn't have the balls, then the federal government -- for the sake of the nation at large, in national defense against an enemy domestic: Ignorance.

They want to teach that the earth is flat in a religion class, fine.

Besides, Rem, you know that you don't think any SCOTUS decision since 1803 is valid.
 
Rem870 said:
"The professor that taught my Evolution class openly derided Christians and all who dared to disagree with him on the subject."

Rem870's experience is not all that unusual.
I have always been a little more than peeved at "scientist" that violate the tenents of science. One of the biggest violators was a guy named Carl Sagan who blantantly challange relgious belief in his series Comos on Public Television, a great series but problematic. Science neither confirms or denies God, nor does it confirm or deny a creator. Within the Theory of Evolution there are hypotheses that random selection and random mutation are part of the mechanism of evolution. Random selection is coming more and more under scrutiny as a hypothesis, because of social and geogrphic elements involved as causation. Random mutation is not really random either and would be better described as not-on-purpose-by-the-organism mutation. For some in religious circles these are the real choking point, and for some scienctist these have become articles of faith.
True science requires that the cause of evolution be left open until the evidence is all in, say in 10,000 years from now if ever.
However some scientist treat science as their religion, they deny doing so, but their actions and positions fit the definition of 'true believers', when real scientist should be 'true sceptics'.

These "fundamentalist" scientist are no more helpful than the "fundametalist" religiousist when it comes to finding the truth. They both not only block the way, but serve has they have for rem870 and many many others, as a diversion from the truth by their domagtic rhetoric at both ends of the scale.

I believe that God created all things and that God did so under God's Laws and that God does not violate God's Laws. I also hold as true that the Theory of Evolution may be a reasonble facsimily of how part of those Laws work. Under my belief, supernatural intervention or miracles are not necessary, they are simply things not yet seen or understood within God's framework of Law. Scientist have their methodology of trying to understand those Laws and Religion has its methodology. In todays world they may seem to mutually exclusive, but sooner or latter they will both lead to the same place. Any priest of science or religion that interfers with either inquiry does so at their own risk.
 
Ah, but arguing that the earth is flat can be easily refuted. The argument against Creation (at least one of them) is that it is not provable through the scientific method. Neither is evolution as the basis for life (I do not disagree that genetic experiments can prove that mutations occur - I'm talking about the beginning). Both cases take faith. It seems to me to be just another attack by secular forces.
 
Public schools, as units of government, SHOULD be secular forces. ... this is getting in the wasy of my pipe smoking (outdoors) ... just meant to check mail ... ) back to the sncikerdoodle-white burley blend on the front porch...
 
Candy-Cookie tobacco? You are in danger of forfiting the "R" again.
 
That's the effing truth, drlobojo. That's the effing truth
 
I have a firm grasp of my R, which is why I can publicly love on a cat and why I couldn't give a shit-that-came-as-a-bonus-with-a-fart-in-passing what anybody else thought.

:-)
 
Besides that, Rem, re:

"Ah, but arguing that the earth is flat can be easily refuted."

No. No, it can't. Not to people who, rightly or wrongly, believe it to be The Truth as an article of "faith"!
 
You have a firm grasp of your WHUUUUT? ;-)
 
I say as long as he posts kitty porn on his blog and talks about flavored tobacco, he should relinquish his R.
 
John 19:30
"It is finished."

And Linked.
 
I just listened to "Ding fries are done". You can keep your "R".
 
Okay, cribbing from something I blogged about this in regards to the philosophy of science:

Creation Science - or Intelligent Design - is not science. Not because it is wrong, but because it can't be wrong.

It's a mistake to say that a science provides a correct set of statements about the world. A science provides nothing more - and nothing less - than a heuristic, a conceptual framework and method for making predictions about what we're likely to find and where to look. And the glory of science is that these predictions can fail to pan out. One of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories made the point that honesty about failure was the special heroism of science. Karl Popper talked about falsification as the essence of the scientific method. You cannot prove a theory, but you can disprove it OR disprove the offered alternatives. In a later development, Thomas Kuhn described the paradigm shift, that theory yielded to theory not because it was wrong, but because the accretions of minute corrections required to make something square with the data made it more unwieldly and less useful than another alternative. - not because a theory was ever completely "falsified" - not even Flat Earth. This is what makes that brilliant dismissal by Freeman Dyson so biting: "Not even wrong."

Suspended over this from a horsehair is the very sharp razor donated by William of Occam.

Creation "science" can't be disproven, is untestable, because it cannot make a prediction other than, "You will never be able to connect all the dots, and where the dots do not connect, there is God."

Again, this might even be right, say we pious agnostics, but it cannot be wrong.
 
Following the logic of the esteemed court, Evolution should not be taught in science class either.

Evolutionary scientist, Sir Arthur Keith said, "Evolution is unproved and unprovable."

Professor Lewis T More, Evolutionist, said, "The more one studies the paleotological record, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone."

Professor David Allbrook, Professor of Anatomy at the University of Western Australia, said, "Evolution is a time-honored scientific tenet of faith".

And lets be serious. Creation is the impetus behind the ID debate.

It takes more faith to believe in Evolution than it does to believe in Creation.

Therefore, Perhaps the ACLU should sue to have evolution removed as a course of study in the science classrooms of our public schools.

Finally, if you want to believe your ancestors were monkeys, go ahead. I find that idea insulting to my intelligence.I prefer to believe my ancestors were intelligent.
 
Oh, ER Almighty. I thank thee for taking the time to read my inadequate scribblings on your far more superior blog. I shall not rant any longer, for that may take away time from those much more interesting than myself.
 
Count me with Teditor. Apparently, my views "are not in the main stream" and on top of that, "they are not interesting". Yes, thank you ER for lowering your standards and indulging this lesser being. I'm not worthy. Please accept my humble apology for eroding the foundations of your 'E'. At the very least, I hope I have been able to strengthen your 'R'.

Fare thee well, cruel blog world.
 
I suppose I risk the incurrence of ER's wrath when I say that Dr. ER's statement was quite possibly the most elitist condescending rant I've seen in a long time.
 
I think a long, long couple of days behind a computer is the cause of that. I don't know. The doc and I don't always see eye to eye, howefver, so y'all keep in mind who I am, and keep inmind that opiniins are oike buttholes: everybody has one.

Mark, you have met my wrath, but it has nothing to do with this. And I think Tstockmann trumped ou on the evolution deal. But that's just me.
 
For the record, y'all, my comments were not aimed at ER hisself. I do not see him as superior and never will.

My comments were sent in another direction. 'Sides, ER knows I can't stay away
 
Maybe he did, in a more erudite way, but my main point is the schools shouldn't be teaching evolution any more than they should be teaching ID. Both are religions.
 
Both have extreme fundamentalist adherents, yes.

Both both are not religions.
 
Teditor and Mark said what we have wanted to say for a long time. Education, degrees and a knowledge of written and spoken
English do not equal intelligence. One who thinks they do is pompous, self-serving and, in the end, stupid. Those who judge others thusly alienate friends and family.
 
"Education, degrees and a knowledge of written and spoken
English do not equal intelligence. One who thinks they do is pompous, self-serving and, in the end, stupid."

I hate pompous people and some of the most educated people I know are pompous, but people who are anti-education and anti-intelectual are even more pompous. So I'm going to put my pomposity right up there against yours.

You are right education and degrees don't equal intelligence.
They equal being educated. They equal years of effort within the person's life, they equal a whole bunch of money and years of debt. They equal the intellectual sacrifice of cherished personal beliefs in the light of reality.
They equal the sacrifice of Ego to those who you may consider less than you but who are your teachers of the moment.

They equal work, time, and treasure.

Some, after all of that, don't come out any smarter, but the vast majority do. They have learned to learn and that is the pay off.

Those who don't indulge in education my be as smart as those who do, but they will also be more ignorant because they haven't invested that work, time, and treasure.

As an example, a few of those on this blog who, after being told time and again by several people that a scientific theory isn't like one of their personal theories, still persist in not understanding that. You have not learned to learn.
You fail to read, understand, and learn, you fail to listen and understand, you think you are content with where you are and who you are and don't want to work at being more.
That is ignorance compounded by stupidity.
Anti-intellectualism was one of the first tenants of the German Brownshirts. But you know, after the Brown shirts were used for their purpose they were destroyed in mass.
Wearing your ignorance and/or stupidity as a Badge of Honor is not a wise thing to do. Documenting it is even worse.
But it doesn't have to be that way, it is a choice, and in America there is always a way to find education available.
 
Teditor, I'll bet there ain't a whole lot of peple in the world more interesting than you!
 
Read yor damn holly bibble. It says right thar that he made aminals and didn't like them for shit. Cavemen is whut they was. So he kep on trying and trying and a few days (million years) later he had man as we know him today. So EV and ID are one and the same.
 
Darwin didn't come up with the theory of evolution. He espoused an origin of SPECIES, based upon observance of plant and animal life -- AS IT EXITED AT THE TIME OF OBSERVANCE.

I found this on the Web, purported to be a quote from Darwin's "The Origin of Species" : It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Oh, and:

Teditor for POTUS!
 
Anon:12;43 SAID
"So EV and ID are one and the same.
# posted by Anonymous : 12:43 PM

drlobojo said:
"Scientist have their methodology of trying to understand those Laws and Religion has its methodology. In todays world they may seem to mutually exclusive, but sooner or latter they will both lead to the same place."

Amazing, we agree!
 
I woulld not wish the office of POTUS on any human being, much less Teditor.
 
WHACK! Dang, Dr. Lobojo, I felt that'n all the way up here in the Oklahoma Panhandle.

There's only one reason I'd care to be POTUS: The chicks seem to dig it.
 
BTW, I've been thinking about my beloved 3&8's (Dr. ER's) comment all day (she's out of town; I was as surprised to see it as y'all were), and I've decided that:

1. In her effort to defend me, she went on the attack.

2. The notion that ID is "science" really, really, really makes her nuts, as a scientist and a Christian.

3. Most importantly, I think she did the equivalent of the following:

Grown nephew of mine and I were arguing in a bar one night, getting up in each other's faces and literally bumping chests, the way guys do sometimes, arguing about -- you guessed it -- politics. The bar manager came and "separated" us and was going to toss us -- until we hugged and laughed and explained to him that we were kin and that's just how we got along.

I think Dr. ER mistook some of the regular bluster of the Erudite Redneck Roadhouse and, in light of No. 1 and No. 2, came across meaner than she meant to be and more arrogant than she is.

She is not mean. She is not arrogant. Neither of us suffer fools gladly, however. (That is a grand old phrase; I ain't callin' none of y'all fools!)
 
Cyberspeaking and all, since I don't know her, I'd just say she's got more balls than you do -- even if more of 'em are up in the air than yourn.

Oh, and -- since you're going to delete this anyway as being impertinent to her -- Merry Christmas!
 
Teditor, if you want chicks, just shell out the chicken feed. POTUS is to high a price. Those boys go into office clean and green and come out white haired and withered.
Four to eight years of power ain't worth 20 years of your life.
 
ER said,
"She is not mean. She is not arrogant."

Well, I may have ponder that a bit.

OK, enough.
I guess I'll have to agree with you ER otherwise she'll beat me up for not agreeing to her humilty within her greatness.
 
Anonymous : 2:09 PM -- why would I delete a compliment paid to my wife? Besides, I've deleted maybe 5 comments in more than a year of this, so ... so hush already. (intentional bait).

SHEESH.

Drlobo: Yer kidding.
 
Don't pick on Dr. ER. She loves me, and that's the important thing. Just focus on that. :)
 
Tried to send this before, but the computer did not cooperate, so I apologize if it comes twice. Drlo misunderstood my previous post, although I'm sure Teditor did not! I am neither anti-education nor anti-intellectual, as I qualify on both counts (and, yes, I do have the necessary degrees). However, I believe in judging people and arguments individually and by their merit, rather than by how may letters the authors have after their names.
 
Anon 5:08 p.m., here's the funny thing:

The only people who hang out here regularly who judge people by the letters behind their name are a handful of people -- OK, Mark -- who almost always disparage book learnin' as not as valuable as 'sperience.

The rest of us know that both are valuable. Some of us do value one over the other because of our experience! Which is some kind of circular logic oe something.

Anyway, the letters in the name of this blog are there as part of the schtick -- a redneck with a genyoowine edumucation, which some people don't "get" -- and because I was in the throes of my last semester of an M.A. in history, for which I busted my 37-40-year-old ass, and for which I am damn proud.

Y'all should forgive me if I am just a little prouder of that M.A. than the time I spent working in a factory, or hoeing fricking watermelons, ot hauling hay, or working in truck stops, or working in book stores, or any of the other things I've done.

I'm proud of everything I've done and been -- but NOTHING beats earning that mid-career master's. That's just me.
 
Hey Anon X, get a consistant non duplicated name so I'll know who I'm being unreasoanble with.
As far as what I said I stand by, but if it doesn't fit you then it wasn't really ment for you. There are plenty of others that I wish would absorb it.
I do have a lot, that's a LOT, of opinions on education. I have spent too much of my life on the subject however.
 
Note to drlo: My previous posts to this blog were in response to the entry by "dr"ER. They were not directed to the "usual suspects" who frequent this blog and seem to respect each other, despite differences in education and opinion.
 
I think Dr. ER's problem is she was born without "Balls", and that is the root of the problem.
 
I'll check 'er out, RL.
 
Don't waste your time!
 
Post a Comment

<< Home

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?