really glad to know that you discovered fact where there is none. good work, mang

4/15/2008 7:15:31 PM

dude, just because you are ignorant of facts or research doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

4/15/2008 8:09:25 PM

aaronburro believes in unicorns

4/15/2008 8:32:33 PM

Walter believes in unicorns.

Dude. research is not research when you set out to prove your pre-formed conclusions.

4/15/2008 8:34:13 PM

You're right...that's bad science.

Despite what you may think, there aren't very many researchers who are set out to prove a pre-formed conclusion.

I guess the thousands and thousands of scientists who have studied this topic are all in on some kind of conspiracy, huh?

That's why their work is peer-reviewed, and deemed credible/not credible.

If you think their research is bunk, then do your own and get your research published/reviewed.

4/15/2008 8:49:38 PM

aaronburro thinks scientists and researches are just a big boy's club where everyone just sits around and pats each other on the back.

If a scientist has a truly different or revolutionary discovery or find, then it will become known. If it was found properly and can be replicated by other scientists, then it will be disseminated and if it stands up to scrutiny, it will replace previous theories. Science is full of things like this. Theories are overturned every day, and there are of course thousands of questions still yet to be answered that still need research.

And good scientists following the scientific method set out to prove or disprove a hypothesis, not a "pre-formed conclusion". Hypotheses are necessary as starting points, though, because if you don't know what you're looking for, then you can't get started. If an experiment or discovery disproves the hypothesis, then any good scientist will accept that. A scientist has nothing to gain by just conforming to what everybody else says. If a researcher has something truly revolutionary or something that contradicts currently known science, and he can prove it and it can be reproduced, then he has lots to gain by publishing that - noteriety, more grant money, etc.

If a scientist came out with definitive proof against the current theory of evolution and had an airtight case, he would be instantly lauded. And it's not like people don't try - contrary to what creationists would like you to believe, evolution is easily falsifiable. All one would need to do is find, for example, a primate fossil from the Mesozoic Era, a dinosaur fossil from the Paleozoic Era, a mammal fossil from the Proterozoic Era, etc. A working theory of evolution has been available for 150 years. It has only been in the past 50 years, though, that DNA has been analyzed and only recently sequenced. The sequencing of DNA had the potential to completely blow the theory of evolution out of the water and replace it with something else, or with a giant question mark. Instead, DNA analysis has shown that there is hardly any feasible explanation but gradual evolution.

here are the transcripts from a 5 part podcast from a molecular biologist in Texas detailing the molecular evidence
http://evolution-101.blogspot.com/2006/03/molecular-evidence-1-protein.html
http://evolution-101.blogspot.com/2006/04/molecular-evidence-2-dna-functional.html
http://evolution-101.blogspot.com/2006/04/molecular-evidence-3-transposons.html
http://evolution-101.blogspot.com/2006/04/molecular-evidence-4-redundant.html
http://evolution-101.blogspot.com/2006/04/molecular-evidence-5-endogenous.html
(it's probably easier to just listen to the podcast instead of trying to read it all - http://www.drzach.net/podcast.htm )

and of course plenty of other sources, not that I expect you would read any
http://www.gate.net/~rwms/hum_ape_chrom.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section2.html#molecular_vestiges
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/0_0_0/mutations_01
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/search/topicbrowse2.php?topic_id=61

4/15/2008 11:01:22 PM

Read this:

Intelligent Design: The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories
By: Stephen C. Meyer
Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington
May 18, 2007

Quote :

"On August 4th, 2004 an extensive review essay by Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, Director of Discovery Institute's Center for Science & Culture appeared in the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (volume 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239). The Proceedings is a peer-reviewed biology journal published at the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C. In the article, entitled 'The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories', Dr. Meyer argues that no current materialistic theory of evolution can account for the origin of the information necessary to build novel animal forms. He proposes intelligent design as an alternative explanation for the origin of biological information and the higher taxa [emphasis added]. Due to an unusual number of inquiries about the article, Dr. Meyer, the copyright holder, has decided to make the article available now in HTML format on this website. (Off prints are also available from Discovery Institute by writing to Rob Crowther at: cscinfo@discovery.org. Please provide your mailing address and we will dispatch a copy)."

http://www.discovery.org/a/2177

4/15/2008 11:04:35 PM

are you serious?
you're going to come in here and just post links to The Discovery Institute? jesus.....

Quote :

"He proposes intelligent design as an alternative explanation for the origin of biological information and the higher taxa"

right. God of the Gaps. Where ever there is a gap in scientific knowledge, that's what God did!
give me a break

if you want to see the definition of fitting the "research" to support the pre-formed conclusion, read anything from Discovery.org. They are the very definition of fitting the evidence to meet their conclusion. They're not interested in finding out how earth or life was formed - they already "know" God a "designer" did it. All they do is tear down real science and just replace it with "GOD DID IT!"

[Edited on April 15, 2008 at 11:13 PM. Reason : .]

4/15/2008 11:10:34 PM

read this: http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/04cv2688-287.pdf

How does Dr. Meyer have any credibility?

He refused to testify in the Dover evolution trial, but instead attempted to submit a brief, that was struck down on the basis that if he wasn't going to testify, but aide in the cross examining of pro-evolution witnesses (which obviously failed miserably), then his opinion was worthless (because you can't establish the legal expert-ness of an expert if they won't submit to examination).

And the Discovery Institute is a joke. I don't know why you'd cite them. Nothing they've ever produced has stood up to scrutiny.

Quote :

"In their 2003 book Darwinism, Design and Public Education, DI Fellows Stephen Meyer and John Angus Campbell devoted an entire chapter to what they called "The Cambrian Explosion: Biology’s Big Bang". In it, they repeated, almost word for word, all of the "Cambrian explosion" arguments that had been made thirty years earlier by the creation "scientists ... A year later, this ID tract reappeared in shortened form as a peer-reviewed article in The Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a scientific journal that normally devoted itself to routine taxonomic descriptions. The article, by Stephen Meyer, was entitled, "The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories", and it repeated most of the chapter from Darwinism, Design and Public Education, and added a few other standard ID arguments ... The article provoked a storm of protest from scientists, who flooded the journal with letters pointing out that Meyer's piece was not only inaccurate and mistaken, but also simply repeated the same arguments that had been made decades before by creation "scientists". As it turned out, the paper had been accepted for publication by editor Richard von Sternberg, who was himelf on the editorial board of a creation "scientist" organization called the Baraminology Study Group at Bryan College in Tennessee. As we have already seen, "baramin" is the term that creation "scientists" use for "created kind" when they want to sound nice and scientific. In the very next issue of the journal, Meyer's paper was withdrawn: STATEMENT FROM THE COUNCIL OF THE BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON The paper by Stephen C. Meyer, "The origin of biological information and the higher taxonomic categories," in vol. 117, no. 2, pp. 213-239 of the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was published at the discretion of the former editor, Richard v. Sternberg. Contrary to typical editorial practices, the paper was published without review by any associate editor; Sternberg handled the entire review process. The Council, which includes officers, elected councilors, and past presidents, and the associate editors would have deemed the paper inappropriate for the pages of the Proceedings because the subject matter represents such a significant departure from the nearly purely systematic content for which this journal has been known throughout its 122-year history. For the same reason, the journal will not publish a rebuttal to the thesis of the paper, the superiority of intelligent design (ID) over evolution as an explanation of the emergence of Cambrian body-plan diversity. The Council endorses a resolution on ID published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (http://www.aaas.org/news/releases/2002/1106id2.shtml), which observes that there is no credible scientific evidence supporting ID as a testable hypothesis to explain the origin of organic diversity. Accordingly, the Meyer paper does not meet the scientific standards of the Proceedings. We have reviewed and revised editorial policies to ensure that the goals of the Society, as reflected in its journal, are clearly understood by all. Through a web presence (http://www.biolsocwash.org) and improvements in the journal, the Society hopes not only to continue but to increase its service to the world community of systematic biologists. "

http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Hangar/2437/meyer.htm

Also of note is that after it was withdrawn, it was never resubmitted anywhere or reviewed anywhere or published anywhere.

[Edited on April 15, 2008 at 11:22 PM. Reason : ]

4/15/2008 11:19:29 PM

I do just love posting this...

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Scientific American
JOHN RENNIE

June 17, 2002

15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up.

John Rennie is editor in chief of Scientific American.


Image : lAYNE KENNEDY Corbis NAUTILUS SHELL : Designed or evolved?

When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere -- except in the public imagination.

Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.

Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.

To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.

1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law.

Many people learned in elementary school that a theory falls in the middle of a hierarchy of certainty -- above a mere hypothesis but below a law. Scientists do not use the terms that way, however. According to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a scientific theory is "a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natu
Image : PATRICIA J. WYNNE
GALÁPAGOS FINCHES show adaptive beak shapes.
ral world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses." No amount of validation changes a theory into a law, which is a descriptive generalization about nature. So when scientists talk about the theory of evolution -- or the atomic theory or the theory of relativity, for that matter -- they are not expressing reservations about its truth.

In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution. The NAS defines a fact as "an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as 'true.'" The fossil record and abundant other evidence testify that organisms have evolved through time. Although no one observed those transformations, the indirect evidence is clear, unambiguous and compelling.

All sciences frequently rely on indirect evidence. Physicists cannot see subatomic particles directly, for instance, so they verify their existence by watching for telltale tracks that the particles leave in cloud chambers. The absence of direct observation does not make physicists' conclusions less certain.

2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning : the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest.

"Survival of the fittest" is a conversational way to describe natural selection, but a more technical description speaks of differential rates of survival and reproduction. That is, rather than labeling species as more or less fit, one can describe how many offspring they are likely to leave under given circumstances. Drop a fast-breeding pair of small-beaked finches and a slower-breeding pair of large-beaked finches onto an island full of food seeds. Within a few generations the fast breeders may control more of the food resources. Yet if large beaks more easily crush seeds, the advantage may tip to the slow breeders. In a pioneering study of finches on the Galápagos Islands, Peter R. Grant of Princeton University observed these kinds of population shifts in the wild [see his article "Natural Selection and Darwin's Finches"; Scientific American, October 1991].

Image : REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OF WADSWORTH/THOMSON LEARNING FROM BIOLOGY : CONCEPTS AND APPLICATIONS, BY CECIE STARR, © 1991
SKULLS of some hominids predating modern humans (Homo sapiens).

The key is that adaptive fitness can be defined without reference to survival : large beaks are better adapted for crushing seeds, irrespective of whether that trait has survival value under the circumstances.

3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created.

This blanket dismissal of evolution ignores important distinctions that divide the field into at least two broad areas : microevolution and macroevolution. Microevolution looks at changes within species over time -- changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.

These days even most creationists acknowledge that microevolution has been upheld by tests in the laboratory (as in studies of cells, plants and fruit flies) and in the field (as in Grant's studies of evolving beak shapes among Galápagos finches). Natural selection and other mechanisms -- such as chromosomal changes, symbiosis and hybridization -- can drive profound changes in populations over time.

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not -- and does not -- find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (144 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

Evolution could be disproved in other ways, too. If we could document the spontaneous generation of just one complex life-form from inanimate matter, then at least a few creatures seen in the fossil record might have originated this way. If superintelligent aliens appeared and claimed credit for creating life on earth (or even particular species), the purely evolutionary explanation would be cast in doubt. But no one has yet produced such evidence.

It should be noted that the idea of falsifiability as the defining characteristic of science originated with philosopher Karl Popper in the 1930s. More recent elaborations on his thinking have expanded the narrowest interpretation of his principle precisely because it would eliminate too many branches of clearly scientific endeavor.

4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution.

No evidence suggests that evolution is losing adherents. Pick up any issue of a peer-reviewed biological journal and you will find articles that support and extend evolutionary studies or that embrace evolution as a fundamental concept.

Conversely, serious scientific publications disputing evolution are all but nonexistent. In the mid-1990s George W. Gilchrist of the University of Washington surveyed thousands of journals in the primary literature, seeking articles on intelligent design or creation science. Among those hundreds of thousands of scientific reports, he found none. In the past two years, surveys done independently by Barbara Forrest of Southeastern Louisiana University and Lawrence M. Krauss of Case Western Reserve University have been similarly fruitless.

Creationists retort that a closed-minded scientific community rejects their evidence. Yet according to the editors of Nature, Science and other leading journals, few antievolution manuscripts are even submitted. Some antievolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously.


Image : CLEO VILETT

4/15/2008 11:24:41 PM

5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution.


Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics : how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology.

Unfortunately, dishonest creationists have shown a willingness to take scientists' comments out of context to exaggerate and distort the disagreements. Anyone acquainted with the works of paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University knows that in addition to co-authoring the punctuated-equilibrium model, Gould was one of the most eloquent defenders and articulators of evolution. (Punctuated equilibrium explains patterns in the fossil record by suggesting that most evolutionary changes occur within geologically brief intervals -- which may nonetheless amount to hundreds of generations.) Yet creationists delight in dissecting out phrases from Gould's voluminous prose to make him sound as though he had doubted evolution, and they present punctuated equilibrium as though it allows new species to materialize overnight or birds to be born from reptile eggs.

When confronted with a quotation from a scientific authority that seems to question evolution, insist on seeing the statement in context. Almost invariably, the attack on evolution will prove illusory.

6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?

This surprisingly common argument reflects several levels of ignorance about evolution. The first mistake is that evolution does not teach that humans descended from monkeys; it states that both have a common ancestor.

The deeper error is that this objection is tantamount to asking, "If children descended from adults, why are there still adults?" New species evolve by splintering off from established ones, when populations of organisms become isolated from the main branch of their family and acquire sufficient differences to remain forever distinct. The parent species may survive indefinitely thereafter, or it may become extinct.

7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth.

The origin of life remains very much a mystery, but biochemists have learned about how primitive nucleic acids, amino acids and other building blocks of life could have formed and organized themselves into self-replicating, self-sustaining units, laying the foundation for cellular biochemistry. Astrochemical analyses hint that quantities of these compounds might have originated in space and fallen to earth in comets, a scenario that may solve the problem of how those constituents arose under the conditions that prevailed when our planet was young.

Creationists sometimes try to invalidate all of evolution by pointing to science's current inability to explain the origin of life. But even if life on earth turned out to have a nonevolutionary origin (for instance, if aliens introduced the first cells billions of years ago), evolution since then would be robustly confirmed by countless microevolutionary and macroevolutionary studies.

8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance.

Chance plays a part in evolution (for example, in the random mutations that can give rise to new traits), but evolution does not depend on chance to create organisms, proteins or other entities. Quite the opposite : natural selection, the principal known mechanism of evolution, harnesses nonrandom change by preserving "desirable" (adaptive) features and eliminating "undesirable" (nonadaptive) ones. As long as the forces of selection stay constant, natural selection can push evolution in one direction and produce sophisticated structures in surprisingly short times.


Image : CLEO VILETT

As an analogy, consider the 13-letter sequence "TOBEORNOTTOBE." Those hypothetical million monkeys, each pecking out one phrase a second, could take as long as 78,800 years to find it among the 2613 sequences of that length. But in the 1980s Richard Hardison of Glendale College wrote a computer program that generated phrases randomly while preserving the positions of individual letters that happened to be correctly placed (in effect, selecting for phrases more like Hamlet's). On average, the program re-created the phrase in just 336 iterations, less than 90 seconds. Even more amazing, it could reconstruct Shakespeare's entire play in just four and a half days.

9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa.

This argument derives from a misunderstanding of the Second Law. If it were valid, mineral crystals and snowflakes would also be impossible, because they, too, are complex structures that form spontaneously from disordered parts.

The Second Law actually states that the total entropy of a closed system (one that no energy or matter leaves or enters) cannot decrease. Entropy is a physical concept often casually described as disorder, but it differs significantly from the conversational use of the word.

More important, however, the Second Law permits parts of a system to decrease in entropy as long as other parts experience an offsetting increase. Thus, our planet as a whole can grow more complex because the sun pours heat and light onto it, and the greater entropy associated with the sun's nuclear fusion more than rebalances the scales. Simple organisms can fuel their rise toward complexity by consuming other forms of life and nonliving materials.

10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features.


Image : CLEO VILETT
CLOSE-UP of a bacterial flagellum.

On the contrary, biology has catalogued many traits produced by point mutations (changes at precise positions in an organism's DNA)-- bacterial resistance to antibiotics, for example.

Mutations that arise in the homeobox (Hox) family of development-regulating genes in animals can also have complex effects. Hox genes direct where legs, wings, antennae and body segments should grow. In fruit flies, for instance, the mutation called Antennapedia causes legs to sprout where antennae should grow. These abnormal limbs are not functional, but their existence demonstrates that genetic mistakes can produce complex structures, which natural selection can then test for possible uses.

Moreover, molecular biology has discovered mechanisms for genetic change that go beyond point mutations, and these expand the ways in which new traits can appear. Functional modules within genes can be spliced together in novel ways. Whole genes can be accidentally duplicated in an organism's DNA, and the duplicates are free to mutate into genes for new, complex features. Comparisons of the DNA from a wide variety of organisms indicate that this is how the globin family of blood proteins evolved over millions of years.

4/15/2008 11:25:06 PM

11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life.

Evolutionary biologists have written extensively about how natural selection could produce new species. For instance, in the model called allopatry, developed by Ernst Mayr of Harvard University, if a population of organisms were isolated from the rest of its species by geographical boundaries, it might be subjected to different selective pressures. Changes would accumulate in the isolated population. If those changes became so significant that the splinter group could not or routinely would not breed with the original stock, then the splinter group would be reproductively isolated and on its way toward becoming a new species.

Natural selection is the best studied of the evolutionary mechanisms, but biologists are open to other possibilities as well. Biologists are constantly assessing the potential of unusual genetic mechanisms for causing speciation or for producing complex features in organisms. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and others have persuasively argued that some cellular organelles, such as the energy-generating mitochondria, evolved through the symbiotic merger of ancient organisms. Thus, science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet those forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to the actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved.

12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve.

Speciation is probably fairly rare and in many cases might take centuries. Furthermore, recognizing a new species during a formative stage can be difficult, because biologists sometimes disagree about how best to define a species. The most widely used definition, Mayr's Biological Species Concept, recognizes a species as a distinct community of reproductively isolated populations--sets of organisms that normally do not or cannot breed outside their community. In practice, this standard can be difficult to apply to organisms isolated by distance or terrain or to plants (and, of course, fossils do not breed). Biologists therefore usually use organisms' physical and behavioral traits as clues to their species membership.

Nevertheless, the scientific literature does contain reports of apparent speciation events in plants, insects and worms. In most of these experiments, researchers subjected organisms to various types of selection -- for anatomical differences, mating behaviors, habitat preferences and other traits -- and found that they had created populations of organisms that did not breed with outsiders. For example, William R. Rice of the University of New Mexico and George W. Salt of the University of California at Davis demonstrated that if they sorted a group of fruit flies by their preference for certain environments and bred those flies separately over 35 generations, the resulting flies would refuse to breed with those from a very different environment.

13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils -- creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance.

Actually, paleontologists know of many detailed examples of fossils intermediate in form between various taxonomic groups. One of the most famous fossils of all time is Archaeopteryx, which combines feathers and skeletal structures peculiar to birds with features of dinosaurs. A flock's worth of other feathered fossil species, some more avian and some less, has also been found. A sequence of fossils spans the evolution of modern horses from the tiny Eohippus. Whales had four-legged ancestors that walked on land, and creatures known as Ambulocetus and Rodhocetus helped to make that transition [see "The Mammals That Conquered the Seas," by Kate Wong; Scientific American, May]. Fossil seashells trace the evolution of various mollusks through millions of years. Perhaps 20 or more hominids (not all of them our ancestors) fill the gap between Lucy the australopithecine and modern humans.

Creationists, though, dismiss these fossil studies. They argue that Archaeopteryx is not a missing link between reptiles and birds -- it is just an extinct bird with reptilian features . They want evolutionists to produce a weird, chimeric monster that cannot be classified as belonging to any known group. Even if a creationist does accept a fossil as transitional between two species, he or she may then insist on seeing other fossils intermediate between it and the first two. These frustrating requests can proceed ad infinitum and place an unreasonable burden on the always incomplete fossil record.

Nevertheless, evolutionists can cite further supportive evidence from molecular biology. All organisms share most of the same genes, but as evolution predicts, the structures of these genes and their products diverge among species, in keeping with their evolutionary relationships. Geneticists speak of the "molecular clock" that records the passage of time. These molecular data also show how various organisms are transitional within evolution.

14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution.

This "argument from design" is the backbone of most recent attacks on evolution, but it is also one of the oldest. In 1802 theologian William Paley wrote that if one finds a pocket watch in a field, the most reasonable conclusion is that someone dropped it, not that natural forces created it there. By analogy, Paley argued, the complex structures of living things must be the handiwork of direct, divine invention. Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species as an answer to Paley: he explained how natural forces of selection, acting on inherited features, could gradually shape the evolution of ornate organic structures.

Generations of creationists have tried to counter Darwin by citing the example of the eye as a structure that could not have evolved. The eye's ability to provide vision depends on the perfect arrangement of its parts, these critics say. Natural selection could thus never favor the transitional forms needed during the eye's evolution -- what good is half an eye? Anticipating this criticism, Darwin suggested that even "incomplete" eyes might confer benefits (such as helping creatures orient toward light) and thereby survive for further evolutionary refinement. Biology has vindicated Darwin : researchers have identified primitive eyes and light-sensing organs throughout the animal kingdom and have even tracked the evolutionary history of eyes through comparative genetics. (It now appears that in various families of organisms, eyes have evolved independently.)

Today's intelligent-design advocates are more sophisticated than their predecessors, but their arguments and goals are not fundamentally different. They criticize evolution by trying to demonstrate that it could not account for life as we know it and then insist that the only tenable alternative is that life was designed by an unidentified intelligence.

4/15/2008 11:25:39 PM

15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution.

"Irreducible complexity" is the battle cry of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University, author of Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution. As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap -- a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood's clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the entire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells.

The key is that the flagellum's component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel recombination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes. Similarly, the blood-clotting system seems to involve the modification and elaboration of proteins that were originally used in digestion, according to studies by Russell F. Doolittle of the University of California at San Diego. So some of the complexity that Behe calls proof of intelligent design is not irreducible at all.

Complexity of a different kind -- "specified complexity" -- is the cornerstone of the intelligent-design arguments of William A. Dembski of Baylor University in his books The Design Inference and No Free Lunch. Essentially his argument is that living things are complex in a way that undirected, random processes could never produce. The only logical conclusion, Dembski asserts, in an echo of Paley 200 years ago, is that some superhuman intelligence created and shaped life.

Dembski's argument contains several holes. It is wrong to insinuate that the field of explanations consists only of random processes or designing intelligences. Researchers into nonlinear systems and cellular automata at the Santa Fe Institute and elsewhere have demonstrated that simple, undirected processes can yield extraordinarily complex patterns. Some of the complexity seen in organisms may therefore emerge through natural phenomena that we as yet barely understand. But that is far different from saying that the complexity could not have arisen naturally.

"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism -- it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions
A broadcast version of this article will air June 26 on National Geographic Today, a program on the National Geographic Channel. Please check your local listings
experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover -- their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.

In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)

Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion -- that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.

Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.

Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.

http://www.swarthmore.edu/NatSci/cpurrin1/textbookdisclaimers/wackononsense.pdf

4/15/2008 11:26:14 PM

Quote :

"I guess the thousands and thousands of scientists who have studied this topic are all in on some kind of conspiracy, huh? That's why their work is peer-reviewed, and deemed credible/not credible."

peer review means nothing when it is group-think. Those few scientists who do actually stand out and say "uh, hey, something aint right here" get ostracized. Typical of a religion to ostracize those who don't tow the line of the gospels. Hell, you practically see "scientists" scoff at anyone who dares bring up a new idea. Not that ID is a "new idea," cause it aint. But, I'm saying in general.

But, hey, keep ignoring what I say and paint me out to be a "denier." Claim that I'm a Bible thumper. Because, when you have no ground on which to argue, it's much more fun to sling mud.

4/15/2008 11:29:33 PM

The irony here being that scientists generally avoid the blanket statements that people like you, aaron, throw out on a regular basis when trying to pan science in general.

4/15/2008 11:34:36 PM

Quote :

"Those few scientists who do actually stand out and say "uh, hey, something aint right here" get ostracized. "

do those scientists ever have legitimate concerns or propose anything new or novel?

4/15/2008 11:36:48 PM

Quote :

"Hell, you practically see "scientists" scoff at anyone who dares bring up a new idea. Not that ID is a "new idea," cause it aint. But, I'm saying in general. "

Do you have any proof of this assertion? What ideas do you know of have been scoffed at? ID hasn't been "scoffed" at because it can't logically be correct.

I read a fair amount of science (mostly stuff related to astrophysics and biology) and new ideas are always embraced with open arms, because they are usually provide intriguing questions, which scientists are always fond of.

4/15/2008 11:37:28 PM

^ You have no "proof" of your assertions. So existence exploded from nothing and is rushing toward nowhere? Is that really your position?

And life was animated by lightning? Hey, just like The Flash! Do you actually believe this?

What did Darwin have to say about the beginning of existence? Specifically, everything that existed before our planet?

4/15/2008 11:53:59 PM

Quote :

"What did Darwin have to say about the beginning of existence? Specifically, everything that existed before our planet? "

How is that relevant? Why don't we ask Newton about relativity while we're at it too?

Quote :

"So existence exploded from nothing and is rushing toward nowhere? Is that really your position? And life was animated by lightning? Hey, just like The Flash! Do you actually believe this"

This is too flippant for me to respond to. Scientists don't know exactly how life was started specifically, lightning may or may not have been the cause (it's likely a factor though). There's on-going research in this area.

The same goes with the expansion of the universe. Until recently (the past 5 years or so) it was largely held that the universe was going to eventually collapse again, but new research allowed by new technologies turned this idea completely upside down, where the current consensus is that it will expand indefinitely. The LHC coming online later this year could easily overturn this idea as well (since it's set to shed more light on the issue of dark matter/energy -- no pun intended).

And what's even crazier, that you seem to have forgotten from the beginning of this thread, is that NEITHER of these ideas are exclusive with the existence of a god.

So what exactly do you feel i'm asserting? Is it an assertion to you that we were not actually all created simultaneously 7000 years ago? That the earth we're standing on is not actually only 5000 years old?

4/16/2008 12:05:07 AM

ID =/= Creationism

And your lack of answers gave me all the answers I need. Our planet is a part of the rest of existence and beyond.

4/16/2008 12:13:48 AM

ID is creationism. At least as purported by the Discovery Institute and the various groups out their suing school districts for teaching evolution.

There is a form of ID that's not Creationism, but there's no single multimillion dollar organization supporting this, and these type of people haven't sued anyone (to my knowledge at least), because this type of ID is too vague to be at odds with anything relating to science.

4/16/2008 12:23:30 AM

^ So there's no sign of ID in, say, genetic code?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaKryi3605g&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_2xGIwQfik&feature=related


[Edited on April 16, 2008 at 12:47 AM. Reason : .]

4/16/2008 12:39:59 AM

no

4/16/2008 12:42:30 AM

^^ What rules define something as being a "sign" for "ID"?

Because if you could come up with a way to test for God's mark, not only would you have revolutionized science, but religion as well.

[Edited on April 16, 2008 at 12:45 AM. Reason : ]

4/16/2008 12:44:20 AM

you know, when you counter stupid with stupid, it's not like they cancel each other out

4/16/2008 12:46:59 AM

here ya go

found this at the bottom of "genetic code" in wiki

Quote :

"Theories on the origin of the genetic code Despite the variations that exist, the genetic codes used by all known forms of life on Earth are very similar. Since there are many possible genetic codes that are thought to have similar utility to the one used by Earth life, the theory of evolution suggests that the genetic code was established very early in the history of life and meta-analysis of transfer RNA suggest it was established soon after the formation of earth. One can ask the question: is the genetic code completely random, just one set of codon-amino acid correspondences that happened to establish itself and be "frozen in" early in evolution, although functionally any of the many other possible transcription tables would have done just as well? Already a cursory look at the table shows patterns that suggest that this is not the case. There are three themes running through the many theories that seek to explain the evolution of the genetic code (and hence the origin of these patterns).[7] One is illustrated by recent aptamer experiments which show that some amino acids have a selective chemical affinity for the base triplets that code for them.[8] This suggests that the current, complex translation mechanism involving tRNA and associated enzymes may be a later development, and that originally, protein sequences were directly templated on base sequences. Another is that the standard genetic code that we see today grew from a simpler, earlier code through a process of "biosynthetic expansion". Here the idea is that primordial life 'discovered' new amino acids (e.g. as by-products of metabolism) and later back-incorporated some of these into the machinery of genetic coding. Although much circumstantial evidence has been found to suggest that fewer different amino acids were used in the past than today,[9] precise and detailed hypotheses about exactly which amino acids entered the code in exactly what order has proved far more controversial.[10][11] A third theory is that natural selection has led to codon assignments of the genetic code that minimize the effects of mutations.[12]."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codon

4/16/2008 12:49:25 AM

^^^ So you claim that only rigid science applies to the design of life forms and we know these designs to be mathematical in their nature. Yet, you cannot specify the origin of or the complete function of mathematical formulae that determine these biological forms, right?

^ The secret to life itself was just a wiki away--who knew! STFU.





[Edited on April 16, 2008 at 1:01 AM. Reason : .]

4/16/2008 12:59:21 AM

just because you don't understand what I posted doesn't mean you have to get so angry

lol

4/16/2008 1:03:07 AM

Quote :

"The polyhomeotic (ph) locus in Drosophila melanogaster consists of the two tandemly duplicated genes ph-d (distal) and ph-p (proximal). They code for transcriptional repressors belonging to the Polycomb group proteins, which regulate homeotic genes and hundreds of other loci. Although the duplication of ph occurred at least 25 million to 30 million years ago, both copies are very similar to each other at both the DNA and the protein levels, probably because of the action of frequent gene conversion. Despite this homogenizing force, differential regulation of both transcriptional units suggests that the functions of the duplicates have begun to diverge."

- http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/105/14/5447
Basically, a mutation that resulted in a duplicated gene (ie. NEW genetic material) results in a novel function of the new duplicated region.

Quote :

" Copy number variation (CNV) of DNA sequences is functionally significant but has yet to be fully ascertained. We have constructed a first-generation CNV map of the human genome through the study of 270 individuals from four populations with ancestry in Europe, Africa or Asia (the HapMap collection). DNA from these individuals was screened for CNV using two complementary technologies: single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping arrays, and clone-based comparative genomic hybridization. A total of 1,447 copy number variable regions (CNVRs), which can encompass overlapping or adjacent gains or losses, covering 360 megabases (12% of the genome) were identified in these populations. "

- http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v444/n7118/full/nature05329.html

Copy number variations in our own genome result is changes in gene expression, and a substrate for evolution in our genes (this is actually a very interesting study based on techniques new to the past 3 years, made solely possible by the Internet and "cheap" supercomputers).

Quote :

"Meanwhile, genes involved in amino acid metabolism are also changing rapidly, but none have been deleted, suggesting that the organism may be adapting to making a living using an amino-acid-based metabolism."

- http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2008/03/19/tracking-natural-selection-at-the-functional-level

New functions result from same genes, due to other changes in a genome.

Quote :

"These results show that, at maturity, cells of the thymus epithelium randomly begin to express a very limited set of genes, apparently without making use of any of the regulatory cascades that usually govern the expression of tissue-specific genes. As of yet, there is no clear indication of how this stochastic expression of genes in the thymus is achieved."

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2008/03/11/stochastic-gene-expression-key-to-immune-behavior

Another new study (this past month) about how seemingly random gene expression in our own thyroids are responsible for our highly adaptable immune system. This is not surprising since evolution itself depends on stochastic mechanisms.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/science.ars/2008/03/07/dna-damage-a-normal-part-of-expressing-genes

This link talks about how common mutations are, but that they don't always result in a defective protein.

4/16/2008 1:21:03 AM

^^ Yeah, and I'm sure you grasp it all completely, right? And I'm not angry--your incessant anti-anything position related to even the possibility of an almighty entity is itself a religion. I simply find your position and you tiresome.

I am not advocating any specific dogma here. Furthermore, I am not advocating that religion or "ID science" be taught in classrooms. In my day, the science teacher just gave a brief speech at the beginning of the semester about the possibilities that other theories--including religious theories--might be applicable. But, in the classroom, we went about studying generally accepted science and scientific theories.

What I am saying is that I do not support a silencing and hindering of legitimate scientists that want to examine the possibilities of ID. I mean, I know there is a designer--what, when, who, where, why, and how that designer did all this is the giant question. And aren't these questions worth exploring?

[Edited on April 16, 2008 at 1:26 AM. Reason : .]

4/16/2008 1:26:07 AM

but what is your opinion on the current scientific work done on genetic encoding?

4/16/2008 1:28:42 AM

Quote :

"So you claim that only rigid science applies to the design of life forms and we know these designs to be mathematical in their nature."

I can't tell if you're really this obtuse, or intentionally trying to double-speak your way out of this argument.

Science by its nature must be rigid, because if you allow "maybe god did it" in to a logical reason for something, it no longer is logical. So for the purpose defining an experiment, or even coming up with a hypothesis, something has to be testable in some way, and saying "god did it" is not testable, by the parameters of most religions (certainly Christianity). And as of yet, this hasn't failed us. Pretty much every aspect of science, between gravity, global warming, and evolution, has a means of falsifiability.

Quote :

"Yet, you cannot specify the origin of or the complete function of mathematical formulae that determine these biological forms, right? "

First, nothing about the universe dictates "rigidity" in the equations, since we're pretty sure that randomness factors in to the action of sub-atomic particles. Secondly, the goal of science is to find these equations, which is done on localized scales. And finally, if (or when) such a formula (because it could never literally be an "equation" considering the known randomness) is found, it STILL wouldn't negate the general idea of a god. Merely the idea of god as held by most religions, which can already be negated depending on which set of parameters a particular person is using for god.

The fact of the matter is that ID, the way you seem to perceive it, has no bearing on evolution. You're perfectly allowed to think DNA could have only be designed by God, if you also believe that God would have designed that DNA (or atoms or molecules or whatever) to adapt or organize in changing conditions that allowed life to flourish on earth.

The ID that people want to silence is not this type of ID. The ID that people want to silence is the kind that says the Earth is only 7000 years old, and created by the Christian God in accordance with the Christian Bible, and no other type of god or deity. This is the type of ID that takes a Creationist text book, relabels it ID, and replaces "Creationism" with "ID" in its text, and then tries to get this sold in public schools. Then these same people turn around and sue a school district for not teaching their Christian-based religious creationism in public school science classes.

This is what the scientists have a problem with, not religion in general and not god, but the nutjobs who think that the public needs to be taught their religion in a science class.

Quote :

"What I am saying is that I do not support a silencing and hindering of legitimate scientists that want to examine the possibilities of ID. I mean, I know there is a designer--what, when, who, where, why, and how that designer did all this is the giant question. And aren't these questions worth exploring?"

That's what church or a philosophy class is for. But those questions about the nature of god don't belong in a science class.

Essentially, this silencing of "legitimate" scientists is not happening. Legitimate science can not actually ever be silenced, barring some Gestapo-like secret police going around killing off certain scientists.

[Edited on April 16, 2008 at 1:48 AM. Reason : ]

4/16/2008 1:32:09 AM

nastoute-moron theory:

Quote :

"1. The universe and anything that lies beyond its boundaries came to be (not 'created') in one, big happy-assed accident--we do not know how, we just 'know' (meaning 'cannot prove') God/god did not do it because such an entity does not exist. 2. What came to be may be rushing toward nothing or it may be collapsing in on itself--we do not know, we just 'know' (meaning 'cannot prove') God/god did not do it because such an entity does not exist. 3. We cannot say what existed before existence came to be--we do not know, we just 'know' (meaning 'cannot prove') God/god did not do it because such an entity does not exist. 4. Concerning things that came to be, lightning may or may not have animated mud or some other substance on our planet--we do not know, we just 'know' (meaning 'cannot prove') God/god did not do it because such an entity does not exist. 5. If you do not agree with us, you are an idiot."

[Edited on April 16, 2008 at 2:04 AM. Reason : .]

4/16/2008 2:00:59 AM

hooksaw theory:

Quote :

" - God created the Earth as-is 7000 years ago - The stars were made to look like they are billions of light years away so god could trick us - Life on Earth and the Earth has never been different than it is now - If you do not agree with this you are a liberal elitist trying to silence religious scientists "

[Edited on April 16, 2008 at 2:06 AM. Reason : ]

4/16/2008 2:05:27 AM

Quote :

"And life was animated by lightning? Hey, just like The Flash! Do you actually believe this? What did Darwin have to say about the beginning of existence? Specifically, everything that existed before our planet? "

Anytime anyone mentions the creation of the earth, the universe, or how life initially appeared in relation to Darwin or the theory of evolution, that's a straw man.
Yes - creationism/ID get to wrap all of those topics up into one pretty package - God did it, boom! and in one fell swoop the universe, the earth, and life on earth came into existence.

in science, though, these are very different questions. The origins of the universe is a mathematical/astrophysical question. The origin of the earth is a physics question. The origin of life on earth is some combination of physics and biology. The evolution of species after life existed is a biological question. These questions are all loosely related in one way or another (in that the universe exists in such a way that planets could thrive, which exist in such a way life could form, etc) but knowing the answer to one does not necessarily give you any insights into the answer of another.

Recall Darwin's book was called "On the Origin of Species", not "On the Origin of Life"

4/16/2008 8:05:44 AM

nastoute-moron-agentlion theory:

Abstract

Quote :

"NO SKY DADDY, AM I RIGHT? WELL. . .AM I?"

4/17/2008 8:31:24 AM

And again he dodges answering it...

I really hope you're just trolling.

4/17/2008 8:44:56 AM

Why is it that creationists are always so dishonest?

Could it be the ends-justify-the-means mentality?

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=six-things-ben-stein-doesnt-want-you-to-know

Quote :

"1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust. When the film is building its case that Darwin and the theory of evolution bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Ben Stein's narration quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man thusly: With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. This is how the original passage in The Descent of Man reads (unquoted sections emphasized in italics): With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed. The producers of the film did not mention the very next sentences in the book (emphasis added in italics): The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil. Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil. Those words falsify Expelled's argument. The filmmakers had to be aware of the full Darwin passage, but they chose to quote only the sections that suited their purposes. 3) Scientists in the film thought they were being interviewed for a different movie. As Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer and other proponents of evolution appearing in Expelled have publicly remarked, the producers first arranged to interview them for a film that was to be called Crossroads, which was allegedly a documentary on "the intersection of science and religion." They were subsequently surprised to learn that they were appearing in Expelled, which "exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate, opposing scientific views to the reigning orthodoxy," to quote from the film's press kit. When exactly did Crossroads become Expelled? The producers have said that the shift in the film's title and message occurred after the interviews with the scientists, as the accumulating evidence gradually persuaded them that ID believers were oppressed. Yet as blogger Wesley Elsberry discovered when he searched domain registrations, the producers registered the URL "expelledthemovie.com" on March 1, 2007—more than a month (and in some cases, several months) before the scientists were interviewed. The producers never registered the URL "crossroadsthemovie.com". Those facts raise doubt that Crossroads was still the working title for the movie when the scientists were interviewed. 4) The ID-sympathetic researcher whom the film paints as having lost his job at the Smithsonian Institution was never an employee there. One section of Expelled relates the case of Richard Sternberg, who was a researcher at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History and editor of the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. According to the film, after Sternberg approved the publication of a pro-ID paper by Stephen C. Meyer of the Discovery Institute, he lost his editorship, was demoted at the Smithsonian, was moved to a more remote office, and suffered other professional setbacks. The film mentions a 2006 House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform report prepared for Rep. Mark Souder (R–Ind.), "Intolerance and the Politicization of Science at the Smithsonian," that denounced Sternberg's mistreatment. This selective retelling of the Sternberg affair omits details that are awkward for the movie's case, however. Sternberg was never an employee of the Smithsonian: his term as a research associate always had a limited duration, and when it ended he was offered a new position as a research collaborator. As editor, Sternberg's decision to "peer-review" and approve Meyer's paper by himself was highly questionable on several grounds, which was why the scientific society that published the journal later repudiated it. Sternberg had always been planning to step down as the journal's editor—the issue in which he published the paper was already scheduled to be his last. The report prepared by Rep. Souder, who had previously expressed pro-ID views, was never officially accepted into the Congressional Record. Notwithstanding the report's conclusions, its appendix contains copies of e-mails and other documents in which Sternberg's superiors and others specifically argued against penalizing him for his ID views. (More detailed descriptions of the Sternberg case can be found on Ed Brayton's blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars and on Wikipedia.)"

They can't even admit that it was a Moore-esque film from the get-go.

[Edited on April 17, 2008 at 8:49 AM. Reason : .]

4/17/2008 8:47:58 AM

Quote :

" Abstract Quote : "NO SKY DADDY, AM I RIGHT? WELL. . .AM I?""

seriously, wtf does that even mean?

i don't see how people can be so incurious about this kind of stuff. Is it really intellectually satisfying for you to say "god did it, there's no need to investigate - you're just wasting time and money. let's just let science stagnate and continue to use a 2000 year old book as the only natural history textbook we need".

4/17/2008 9:19:48 AM

^ I never said any of that shit. I want ID investigated--many here and elsewhere do not. Can't you grasp that?

Quote :

"Despite what some of you may think, I do not support teaching religious dogma in science classrooms or other inappropriate settings. My concern is more about the incessant push that God and science are mutually exclusive."

Quote :

"Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I am not advocating the teachings of any specific religion in schools or elsewhere. It does seem, however, that Christians are often the focus of 'special' treatment in a number of arenas--and special isn't good in this context."

Quote :

"Some seem to believe schools should teach that science can explain not only the origin of life but of existence itself. I find this to be preposterous."

hooksaw

[Edited on April 17, 2008 at 9:27 AM. Reason : .]

4/17/2008 9:27:04 AM

Quote :

"I want ID investigated"

What you don't understand though is that religion is NOT set up to be investigated. You can't investigate ID, it has nothing to investigate. Its theories aren't testable, and they can't predict anything. That's what separates religion from science.

[Edited on April 17, 2008 at 10:44 AM. Reason : ]

4/17/2008 10:44:20 AM

I've been a bit distracted lately, sorry to not respond to your (moron and company... ) posts in the other threads.

^Begs a question.

What are the predictions of evolution? I mean specifically?

4/17/2008 11:12:44 AM

the predictions are change. That is all.

4/17/2008 11:13:18 AM

hey hooksaw could you point me in the direction of some peer reviewed, published research that has been conducted on ID?







































didn't think so

4/17/2008 11:14:22 AM

^

Quote :

"I want ID investigated--many here and elsewhere do not. Can't you grasp that?"

Quote :

"What you don't understand though is that religion is NOT set up to be investigated. You can't investigate ID, it has nothing to investigate."

moron

Um. . .what "religion" is ID again?



Yep, no design here ^. Just a big, happy-assed accident--like all of existence! I'm glad you neckbeards are here to sort it all out for me.

Who knows, pretty soon I might start clinging to guns, anti-trade sentiment, and so on.

4/17/2008 11:59:58 AM

I think you need to stick to the pedantry of correcting people's spelling.

If the double helix did not take the shape it does now, but was perhaps completely linear you would argue for design. No matter the result, you will argue design. There is no getting around that. Your argument is based upon the false assumption that there is some empircal platonic vision that our genetics and world are a mimesis of.

[Edited on April 17, 2008 at 12:29 PM. Reason : .]

4/17/2008 12:29:06 PM

4/17/2008 12:40:23 PM

^^ And your theory is that existence exploded from nothingness and is rushing toward nowhere or may be collapsing on itself and lightning animated mud, right?

NO SKY DADDY!!!1

God Particle' Expected To Be Found Soon
Theorizer Of Subatomic 'God Particle' Is Almost Sure Collider Will Find It
GENEVA, Apr. 8, 2008

Quote :

"Nobel laureate Leon Lederman has dubbed the theoretical boson 'the God particle' because its discovery could unify understanding of particle physics and help humans 'know the mind of God.' "

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/08/ap/world/main4000774.shtml

[Edited on April 17, 2008 at 12:53 PM. Reason : .]

4/17/2008 12:51:31 PM

I had this debate with friends the other that also completely missed the crucial point that ID is not falsifiable, does not lead to any new hypothesis, conclusions or observations, and as a resul can't be science.

Should theology be a part of American schools? I think so. Taught properly, it would be a very rich and rewarding class.

Should bible study be allowed on campus if organized by students, after hours? Absolutely.

Should students be allowed to pray in school so long as it isn't an official requirement? Shady area, but it can be argued for.

Should untestable, unverifiable, impossible to observe assertions be taught as a scientific theory with equal footing to an established, accepted, and actually scientific theory? In science class? Absolutely not.

4/17/2008 12:51:43 PM

I am a bit disappointed in Stein's focus on Darwin. This is akin to the headache that economists go through when people want to discredit economics by finding some point on which Adam Smith is incorrect.

There are thousands of research economists working everyday in the US - do people honestly believe they spend their days just parroting Smith. As a trained economist Stein ought to know better.

4/17/2008 12:52:30 PM