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Just send him the transcripts from the McLean v. Arkansas trial. Done.

Cheque please.

As to being despised and feared... well I never have been feared(except at a buffet maybe), but am normally despised because of my faith.

I'm afraid I didn't express that clearly ("So, you would rather be despised and feared instead of being (relatively mildly) disdained and laughed at?"). What I meant was that the latter (which is usually the attitude towards fundamentalist Christians) seems like a much better thing to have than the former (which is the attitude towards fundamentalist Muslims).

The point is that I would rather have my ideological opponents mock me fearlessly rather than fear me and keep quiet. The fear would imply that not only am I wrong (this is only my opponents' opinion and therefore debatable) but I am also so intolerant that you would have to fear for your life before thinking of saying anything against me. The latter attitude is something you would expect in a prison, where "respect" is the incorrect term used for "fear for my life".

This, in my opinion, is something that is constantly misconstrued in social commentary today. Rational people do not waste their breath on those who are truly beyond reason (radical muslims) and who, further, would only reward us with a barbaric death. This is why I said (with utmost sincerity) that I do admire Christians in the US. For all their faults, they understand that words should only be countered with words (or perhaps a lawsuit or two =p). It's unlikely that my head will be chopped off for saying something bad about their religion =) and I appreciate that (I guess I might end up with a bullet if I got really stupid and mouthed off in a bar in the deep South. Good thing I have a fairly evolved (oops) survival instinct).

And you mention that the absence of a religion does not a rational person make, but too often the presence of religion labels us as nuts.

Yes. That is somewhat unfair (well, premature anyway). Personally, I try not to judge people based on their beliefs (I fail sometimes on message boards for obvious reasons), but on how those beliefs enter into their interactions with the universe (that includes people) at large. Besides, there's nothing wrong with being a little nutty if it doesn't hurt anyone =). As for mentioning creationism in science class, it's merely the (publicly stated) thin end of the wedge, which is why it's so important to stop it at the start.

it's not about being right or wrong, it's about the churches losing more and more people who are realizing that this religion stuff is nothing more than control.

so the churches fight back by trying to introduce this stuff into schools.

read about the "wedge document" and see what i mean. it is not now, nor was it ever about scientific anything -- it is religious psyops designed to confuse and mislead the public about science in order to win sheep back to the fold.

http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html

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

Oh, really? I think we should teach the controversy. A couple of days ago in my evolution class we learned about creationism - it was probably the single most interesting class ever.

We got to look at and talk about the Wedge Document (see also Wikipedia's writeup). This stuff is amazing. Their political and social motives are like something beyond the 9/11 conspiracy theorists wildest wet dreams.

So let me ask the creationists here: Do you really want any of this stuff to come up in a science class? Really?

The act allows teachers to "use supplementary textbooks and other instructional materials to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review scientific theories in an objective manner." Teachers cannot teach ID or creationism. In fact, the law "shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion." Additionally, Joe Cook, director of the ACLU for Louisiana has said that the act is constitutional as written. This bill is probably totally unnecessary, but simply promotes objective thinking about all scientific topics. Now that is scientific right?

But what is to stop a teacher, or some backwoods school board, from sneaking in supplementary textbooks and other materials from Answers in Genesis, or the Discovery Institute? Both AiG and the DI would argue that their materials "critically analyze" evolution; but scratch below the surface and you'll see that old time religion being preached. The usual creationist falsehoods and misrepresentations of evolution being presented as fact (eg. "there are no transitional fossils", "evolution can't produce new information in the genome", etc.).

Back in 1981 Arkansas passed Act 590, which required 'balanced treatment' of creationism and evolution in Arkansas public schools. A section of that bill read:

SECTION 6. Legislative Declaration of Purpose. This Legislature enacts this Act for public schools with the purpose of protecting academic freedom for students' differing values and beliefs; ensuring neutrality toward students' diverse religious convictions; ensuring freedom of religious exercise for students and their parents; guaranteeing freedom of belief and speech for students; preventing establishment of Theologically Liberal, Humanist, Nontheist, or Atheist religions; preventing discrimination against students on the basis of their personal beliefs concerning creation and evolution; and assisting students in their search for truth. This Legislature does not have the purpose of causing instruction in religious concepts or making an establishment of religion.

Act 590 made references to 'academic freedom' and religious neutrality. But it was ruled unconstitutional. Any competent judge can see through the language of the law and see what the true intent is.

The plaintiffs just need to get some supporters of the Louisiana law on the stand, sooner or later they will have a "Bill Buckingham moment" and the truth will come out that this law has a religious purpose.

"D. This Section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion."

Back in 1981 the Arkansas state legislature passed an 'equal time' law, Arkansas Act 590, which similarly had all sorts of language in it about 'academic freedom', equal time, etc. The law had a section in it that read:

This Legislature does not have the purpose of causing instruction in religious concepts or making an establishment of religion.

Of course that was a lie. And during the trial the judge saw right through it. He ruled Act 590 unconstitutional.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but Intelligent Design IS Creationism, just renamed to fool people on purpose. I'm sorry you fell for the Dicovery Institute's trick. Read about the Wedge Strategy and the accidentally leaked Wedge Document.

-Don

I'd like to clarify this thing a bit: Discovery Institute does not actively support creationism, it is common institute for advocates of Intelligent Design. This is a common misunderstanding to think that ID == Creationism, but when you study its past a little better, you see that first active proponents had no connection to creationist movement. I admit though that creationists may have used ID material to boost their program, but ID does not rely on Creationism, it's different and focuses on the scientific side of the evolution debate.

Let's see which few these are:
We have Catholocism:

• Archbishop Denounces Evolution as 'Unguided'
• Pope prepares to embrace theory of intelligent design

• Tennessee Evolution Statutes
• Anti-Evolution and the Law

I think the mistake your making though is to assume that most people think about religion at all. So you picked up a few philosophy books, yeah yeah, I got that feather in my cap too. I've even sat down at the table, drank coffee, and chit chat'd philosophical with some of the leaders in Philosophical Religion today, Alviin Plantinga. He was attributed with single handedly reinvigorating the debate in philosophical circles over the rationality of believing in god with his symbolic logic book written in the 90's (long considered a dead horse). Not as impressive as it sounds, he teaches over and Notre Dame and I'm sure you could do the same if you wanted to drop by.

Most people don't think about religion, they believe in it. So what better describes religion as it is? A few intellectuals writing books, investigating possibilities, and chit chatting over coffee or the other 99% of the believing masses? I think the answer is obvious.

Yep, mutations are mostly harmful and as you point out, we have lots of them.

No, most mutations are neutral, not harmful. Harmful mutations are selected against; beneficial mutations are selected for; that's what selection means.

Every mechanism we know of for random mutations is most likely going to destroy not create.

I just outlined mechanisms for random mutations, pointing out that some destroy and some create. Are you paying attention or just repeating yourself?

You postulate that small non destructive changes add up to create new things. You need lots of time for this to even sound reasonable. Oops, now you are talking gradualism.

No, this isn't gradualism. Mutations occur at roughly the same rate whether or not a species is undergoing change (you can breed fast-mutating strains, but that's not the point); the difference is that where in a species at equilibrium any change away from that equilibrium will decrease its fitness, in a species in flux (say, during a migration event), this will not hold true, and the species will change.

I can't find my source for this, and I do apologize--I'm still looking, and I'll post it when I get it--but the average rates of phenotypic change over the long term seen in the fossil record are far, far slower than those seen in the short term when a population migrates into a new region, or when it's subjected to some new strongly selective pressure.

Gradualism is not supported by the fossil record. Punctuated equilibrium drastically reduces the amount of time you have for this to take place, so much so that none of the intermediate species end up in the fossil record.

Yes; that's a darned shame. Of course, there are plenty of fossil transitions above the species level. Luckily we can see what you term "intermediate species" in the wild today in the form of ring species; these cover a span of space rather than time, but the idea is the same--a continuum of organisms reaching from one form that's certainly in one species to a form that's certainly in another.

So your believing in some sort of magical pony (or whatever it is you want to substitute) that comes down and produces a large number of beneficial mutations in a short period of time sounds a lot more like a religious conviction than science.

You're not paying attention. The mutation rate stays largely constant, and whether or not a mutation is beneficial depends on the environment. In a new environment, more novel mutations will be beneficial, but that's a function of the environment, not a function of the way the species works.

[Re: Haeckel's drawings] Read up on Wilhelm His.

The guy who had a feud with Haeckel and called him a fraud? What about him? All I found was a quote in which Haeckel defends his drawings as being diagrammatic rather than strictly representational, and as being a fair representation of the features depicted. Where's the fraud?

And when are you going to find me one of those textbooks which describes the biogenetic law as fact?

The same way you wont accept the word of some guy on slashdot, I'm not going to take the internet as a source over more direct knowledge.

I won't accept the word of some guy on Slashdot because I have no way of verifying it. (I'm seven feet tall and can shoot blue hadoken from my furious fists!) I'm not asking you to take "the internet" as a source, and I ask--again!--what you're disputing. The guy receives significant compensation from ExxonMobil and the Cato Institute, and did not lose his job for being "a heretic".

We are talking about a "heretic" wh

Meh, side note, the building 2 over from me is on fire...again...City of Chicago thought it was better to stop the rehab project due to "permit issues" (lack of bribes) and just leave it abandoned except for squatters. It's cold as hell (taking the Dante view) here and so they start fires to keep warm. Fire Department is here and the building is brick so no real threat to me and mine, but it is a bit smokey. I'll blame my typos on that today ;-)

No, no, not bible-beating rednecks, well-heeled industry shills! And that stereotype exists largely because there's a well-documented conspiracy to debase science and muddy the waters on behalf of said industry. (There's an analogue for creationism as well.)

You're welcome to question global warming, just as you're welcome to question the theory of evolution. It gets old when the same tired crap is thrown out time and again, designed not to advance anyone's understanding of anything, but to sow public confusion and doubt.

People are welcome to believe whatever they want about religion and I don't care. They just can't call it science, and that's where your post goes horribly wrong. Intelligent Design's most recent reincarnation began in 1987. This was the year that teaching "scientific creationism" in public schools was struck down by the courts as unconstitutional in Edwards v. Aguilard. Also in this year, early drafts of the book Of Pandas and People started swapping out references of "creationism" and replacing it with "intelligent design" and "creationist" with "design propent," so at the beginning intelligent design == creationism, using little more than a word processor's search and replace function. This is exemplified by the instance of "cdesign proponentists" in place of "creationist," being found out in the the recent intelligent design lawsuit in Dover.

The Pandas wordswap was not the only piece of evidence in the Dover trial showing that Intelligent Design is just warmed over creationism, or even the most significant. Probably the most damning evidence came from the statements of the defense (Dover school board IDers). Classic bits from the trial transcript include moments where a member of the school board is shown to lie under oath to conceal the role of his church in procuring the alledgedly scientific and entirely non-religious Pandas book. Another is where Michael Behe admits under oath that calling Intelligent Design science requires revising the very definition of science, with the new definition making astrology science as well. Behe also admits that there are no peer reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred. Fellow witnesses for the defense also provided ammunition in Jones' decision against ID. Wikipedia has writeups on both Of Pandas and People as well as on the Kitmiller v. Dover decision, together with links to the trial transcripts, Judge Jones' decision, and other relevant material.

So if ID isn't science, than what is it? It seems clear that it's religion. Besides the Dover trial, here's some supporting evidence ripped from a post I made a while back: 1. The Wedge Document, 2. the Discovery Institute is funded largely by Howard Ahmanson, a person who also funds relgious extremists such as the Chalcedon Foundation, which has the express aim of turning the US into a theocracy, 3. Prominent proponents of ID frequently speak in churches, just like proponents of creation science, 4. the Dover school board was defended by the Thomas Moore Law Center, which is "...a not-for-profit public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. Our purpose is to be the sword and shield for people of faith, providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square." (from their own website, 5. "Of Pandas and People" despite being an ID textbook was written by creationists, 6. Bill Dembski says "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory" (quoted from wikipedia, refering to Touchstone Magazine. Volume 12, Issue4. July/August, 1999, the entire issue being devoted to supporting ID).

So again if someone wants to believe in god or not, that's fine by me. They can even believe that periodically God stops by to bring a flagella or something into existance in a "puff of smoke," to use Behe's view of Intelligent Design. They just can't call it science.

The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a "wedge" that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied at its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy, the "thin edge of the wedge," was Phillip ]ohnson's critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial, and continued in Reason in the Balance and Defeatng Darwinism by Opening Minds. Michael Behe's highly successful Darwin's Black Box followed Johnson's work. We are building on this momentum, broadening the wedge with a positive scientific alternative to materialistic scientific theories, which has come to be called the theory of intelligent design (ID). Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

• Successful takeover of executive branch of federal government.
  
• Positioning of our cadres in government research organizations.
  

I do not entirely understand what the "ID" camp are putting forward

The first thing to note is that the ID movment was established immediately after, and in direct response to, a Supreme Court ruling that it was unconstitutional for government officals to abuse their governmental powers to use the public school system to push their beleif and interpretation of Literal Biblical Creationism. Literal Biblical Creationism as in literal talking snakes, and the non-existance of death prior to Adam&Eve's sin... meaning that all predators were herbovours and that they used their fangs and claws to hunt leaves and fruits... they couldn't have been eating prey animals becuase there was no death yet, remember? So God created fully formed pathers to hunt figs, and fully formed venus flytraps that never actally killed any flies. Oh, and of course there were also immortal flies. Prior to Adam eating the apple and getting cast out of the Garden, all creatures existed in fully formed immortal perfection.

Wikipedia has good coverage.
Intelligent design (ID) is the concept that the universe and living things have features that could only have been designed by an intelligent cause or agent, as opposed to an unguided process such as natural selection. Leading proponents, of which all are affliated with the Discovery Institute, say that intelligent design is a scientific theory that stands on equal footing with, or is superior to, current scientific theories regarding the origin of life.

If you want to get a bit of insight into the Discovery Institute and the driving vison behind the ID movement, I suggest you read their fundraising ducument, the Wedge Strategy. Or you can just Google "Wedge Document". It lays out their 20 year plan to infiltrate the school system and get control of government legislatures and ultimately to reshape all of society in their religo-moral image.

Note that they have a three phase strategy, but they have completely skipped Phase I. Scientific Research, Writing & Publication and gone directly to Phase II. Publicity & Opinion-making and right into the part of phase three where they "pursue possible legal assistance in response to resistance to the integration of design theory into public school science curricula".

As I read the Bible, evolution does not deny faith

These people do not read the Bible the same way you do. These are the same sort of people who wanted to lynch Galileo for saying the sun was at the center of the solar system... because their "literal" reading of the Bible says that "the earth does not move".

The activists behind ID are latched on to two rediculous ideas (or one idea with :
(1) If evolution is true it proves false their idea of God and their limitations on how God could have done things, and of course their idea of God is the only True God and therefore evolution = atheism.
(2) If God exists... and remember their notion of God is the only True God... that if God exists... that is you want to beleive in God at all... that it proves evolution false.

They routinely make statements labeling the majority of Christians as atheists because they accept evolution. That anyone, even the Pope, is an atheist if they do not see a conflict between evolution and God.

And with the PR campaign the activists are running, PR campaigns carefully stripped of overt religious content and carefully crafted to paint themselves as victims of some atheist conspiracy and oppression, they are getting a lot of normal majority Christians like you jumping to side with these fundamentalist nutjobs.

You and I are on the same side. There's no conflict between evolution and God. The fight is whether government schools can or will teach religion. In the US governmen

Some questions for Intelligent Design:

1. What is the scientific theory of intelligent design (ID)?

2. What evidence supports ID and not a competing theory?

3. What predictions does ID make?

4. How might ID be falsified?

The IDers have had since 1987 (when "intelligent design" was first used as a drop-in replacement for "creation science") to come up with answers for these questions and they've failed to not only make any headway, they've failed to even attempt to answer them. So you'll excuse me and fellow research scientists in biological fields for writing them off as a bunch of charlatans after waiting 18 years for them to get off their asses and actually do some research, or maybe, I dunno, formulate a scientific hypothesis in the first place? BTW, theory in science means more than halfassed guess, and putting the term in allcaps is an indication that you don't know this.

But wait, I've got some more questions for you:

5. Why does ID go directly to the courts and political process to try and get their idea accepted, instead of, doing some actual research?

6. If ID is not an entirely religious objection to established science, then can you explain The Wedge Document?

7. Explain why the Discovery Institute is funded largely by Howard Ahmanson, a person who also funds relgious extremists such as the Chalcedon Foundation, which has the express aim of turning the US into a theocracy?

8. Why is it that prominent proponents of ID frequently speak in churches, just like proponents of creation science?

9. Why was the Dover school board defended by the Thomas Moore Law Center, which is "...a not-for-profit public interest law firm dedicated to the defense and promotion of the religious freedom of Christians, time-honored family values, and the sanctity of human life. Our purpose is to be the sword and shield for people of faith, providing legal representation without charge to defend and protect Christians and their religious beliefs in the public square." (from their own website) if ID is not religious?

10. Why was it that "Of Pandas and People," the ID textbook that was a major focus in Dover, written by creationists?

11. Why would Bill Dembski say "Intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John's Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory," (quoted from wikipedia, refering to Touchstone Magazine. Volume 12, Issue4. July/August, 1999)?

12. Why would Touchstone Magazine, a "Journal of Mere Christianity", devote an entire issue to supporting ID?

Or maybe ID really is just a religiously-motivated argument from ignorance like all of us biological scientists think?

The vast majority of the science community is appreciative of the beauty, majesty, and overwhelming complexity of nature - especially in the context of evolution but also in many other fields such as quantum physics. To speculate that there is some sort of "intelligent design" (not capitalized) or divine nature underlying everything is a philosophical/theological issue that doesn't necessarily go against the grain of modern science.

Intelligent Design (capitalized, proper noun), however, is nothing more than (crinkly, noisy, and almost transparent) wrapping paper for literal biblical creationism. This biblical story, literally interpreted, is a full frontal assault on almost the entire field of biology, hence the violent opposition from the science community.

The people trying to shove Intelligent Design down the throats of biology teachers are christian fundamentalists who believe in the literal account of creation detailed in the bible and reject evolution (and apparantly the other parts of science it compliments). By conjuring Intelligent Design - a broader principle which conveniently encompasses their creation beleif and many other beliefs - they have muddied the waters and gained partial support of people outside their religious circle who (like me and many other slashdotters) believe in some sort of "intelligent design" (not capitalized) or divine nature underlying everything.

Intelligent Design is a trojan horse. Read more about it here

ID proponents don't have a theory. They don't even have a hypothesis. They barely qualify as having a conjecture. As someone who's spent some time reading ID literature, I can definitively state that their arguments consist entirely of the idea that somewhere, somehow, there's a biological feature that evolution can't explain. Sadly their mathematical arguments have been debunked by proper mathematicians and, every time they suggest a feature that "must" have been intelligently designed, someone points out either how it could have evolved or how its design isn't particularly intelligent. Sometimes both.

the application of evolution to the origins of life, to which [] it does not apply.

Agreed.

this discussion is about whether it is reasonable to assert that evolution, or anything else, was the origin of life ::Confusion::

I thought we just agreed that it is not reasonable to apply evolution to the origin of life.

The only ones (falsely) trying to tie evolution to the origin of life are the activists trying to insert ID into the public school system after being thwarted in attempting to insert their explicit version of Biblical Creationism into the public school system. A leaked internal fundraising document details how they explicitly built "ID theory" in order to undermine what they view as anti-God science. They also lay out their twenty-year plan to insinuate themselves into the school system, to gain influence and control of the legislature, and ultimately to reshape society in their religo-moral image. If you haven't read it before, you should. The Wedge Strategy." They have raised millions to run a PR campaign and wage a culture war.

Maybe I am not fully grasping what you are trying to say about origins in relation to evolution. You do seem to be discussing them in some relation to each other. If you are saying "life, the universe, and everything" leads you to believe in God, therefore evolution is false, well that is a fallacy. That makes the assumption that there is some sort of exclusive-or relation between God and evolution. That is exactly the false assuption that the ID activists are pushing. Exactly like the people who once tried to push God exclusive-or a sun-centered solarsystem. In both cases the problem is fundamentalists claiming their "literal" interpretation of the Bible that attempts to place limits on how God could have chosen operate. People saying that God could not have done it the way science shows us it happened because their literal reading of their scripture says he didn't.

If God created the universe then the overwhelming evidence we see is that a sun-centered solarsystem was his chosen means of providing the earth with light and creating night and day and the seasons.

If God creted the universe then the overwhelming evidence we see is that evolution was his chosen means of creating the vast array of life we see today.

If anything I would say the far more awe inspiring God is a Perfect God who placed a Perfect Universe in motion that would operate exactly as designed and itself produce exactly what he intended it to produce. That is far more impressive than a god creating an imperfect universe in which he constantly had to meddle to keep it running and manually insert additional creations.

If I'm still not understanding what you mean about origins and evolution, ummmm.... I dunno.

an interesting study by an evolutionary biologist

I read the page. A bit of hard slogging, jumping into the particular jargogn out of context, but I think I pretty well understood what he was saying. It doesn't seem to me that it really said anything that was any sort of problem for evolution.

For one thing it was restricted to linear adaption in a single quantitative trait. While that sort of change is extremely important and effective in adapting to and optimizing some other non-quantitative evolutionary innovation, merely tuning the dial on linear traits isn't really what some people would call "macroevolution". A bird may adapt a bigger or smaller beak, but you don't generally go 10,000 years constantly making that beak biger. The bird wouldn't be able to walk, much less fly. Chuckle. And the increase in human brain size... it could only make just so much of a linear increase befor it ran into the limit of the human birth canal to deliver the infant. Human babies are born with abnormally huge heads for a bigger brain, but the heads got so big that women could not physically deliver them, and mother and infa

I haven't looked too much into what "Inteligent Design" teachings all entail

You can do one better. Forget the PR and what they claim they and and read the central ID activists' Wedge Document. It was one of their fundraising documents and it lays out their Wedge Strategy. They have absolutely no interest in science. In fact they are explicitly attackign and undermining those Evil Materialistic Scientists who are out to destroy our society. They admit their is nothing but a PR scam to hijack the government into pushing their their religious social ideology. They hant to insinuate their BS into schools and get influence and control in congress and remake American society in their religio-moral image. And they admit all of that.

They built up a pseudoscietific ID nonsense for the explicity because their prior efforts to directly teach their Biblical Creationism in public schools was shot down as unconstitutional. They created ID as pure pretense to evade that restriction.

young students should be taught that this theory is the end all, be all, but that there are also other theories.

It is not any "end all be all", but there are currently NO scientific theories other than evolution. Just as there currently are no theories competeing with chemistry. If one comes up and it is better supported than evolution, then that theory will of course replace evolution.

Evolution is has been as extensively tested and conclusively supported as any other major field of science. The most overwhelming evidence conclusively confirming all of evolutions predictions has been genetic analysis in the last few years. It has conclusivly confirmed and pinned down the entire tree of common descent. Each gene we sequence of each species is yet another test of common descent. Evolution predicts a complex and STRICT pattern for the relationships between the genes and genetic quirks inherited in various species. Each test is a potential chance to refute evolution, and every single test has come up in support of evolution and the huge numbers of ongoing tests continue to support evolution.

The scientific controversy over the fundamentals of evolution ended decades ago. The only controversy is deliberate propaganda in the court of public oppinion, and they are getting away with it primarily because appalling number of highschools in this country have provided a dismal to nonexistant education in evolution. For example few people have heard of Ring Species. Ring Species should be the CENTERPIECE of any introduction to evolution. Ring Species are an absolutely facinating subject, and they vividly demonstrate living evolution in action. They make the process of evolution blindingly obvious, and even the speciation of evolution blindingly obvious. Not only do you have the two ends of the ring evolving apart, you have living examples of every single intermediate form. And absolute bonanza of scientific information and an amazing window in evolution in action. And if one were to kill the intermediate forms or to otherwise break the ring, you would have an obvious example of an ordinary speciation event.

Evolution really is science just as solid and well supported as any other field like chemistry and quantum mechanics. That is exactkly why it has won over the entire scientific community. There really are mountains of evidence and tests and supports and confirmations of all sorts. Most people's understanding and familarity of evolution primarily comes from bad hollywood movies and TV. If you want more evidence, there's plenty more. Biologists are not some evil cabal conspiring to lie. They all accept evolution becuase they've professionally studied the subject and seen the evidence.

A half dozen crackpot biologists and a fundamentalist evangelical foundation soliciting millions of dollars in donations and running a public relations campaign does not make a genuin

Do not confuse what the central ID propents are saying with what they believe or what they are actually trying to accomplish.

If you want to understand the current Intelligent Design Movement the I suggest you read It leaked out and can be found under the title "Wedge Document" and it lays out their twenty year plan that they call their Wedge Strategy.

Then come back and tell me that this has anything to do with science or truth, that is it anything other than a PR campaign to get the government to push their religious ideology in public schools and to defend Society Itself against the Forces Of Evil, a meglomanic scheme to mould society itself in their religo-moral image.

Yes that sounds rediculous, but read the link. Or just Google for "Wedge Document" and you'll find it all over.

-

The reason that this is a Big Deal is because the ID'ers are infact hijacking a handful of backwater school boards and deleting or trashing the Evolution curriculum and inserting ID as science class curriculum.

The reason it is a Big Deal is becuase they are trying to dress it up in a science costume and sell it to the general public and to get it into science classes across the nation.

The reason this is a Big Deal is because the fricking PRESIDENT has called for it to be taught in science classes across the country.

The reason this is such a Big Deal is because they have some 70-odd percent of the general US population sold on the idea that it is appropriate for "both sides" to be allowed equal presentation in our science classrooms.

The reason this is a Big Deal is because they actually got an ammendment attached to the No Child Left Behind Act to explictly undermine evolution and to pave the way for ID in the schools, and they got it passed in the House of Representatives. It did not however make it through the senate, and rather than appearing in the final bill they got it into the offical "legislating history" to help guide courts on interpreting what the No Child Left Behind Act is supposted to do and mean and to guide how the courts interpret and apply the law.

Those folks have every right to home-school their kids and teach them whatever nonsense they want, and thats the bottom line.

Sure, they have every right to do that. However they are not satisfied with that. They are on a crusade to get THE GOVERNMENT to push their religious ideology.

There's no reason why God couldn't have lit the big bang firecracker and known at that point that humans would eventually evolve

Right. The only ones who have any problem with that are the ID activists. As far as they are concerned evolution conflicts with their interpretation of a "literal" reading of the Bible. That anything that conflicts with their interpretation of God's Literal Truth is a rejection of God himself and of all religion. Whether it is conciously or unconsiously, these activists in complete denial reguarding your suggestion about God setting things in motion and evolution running its course. The God&Evolution combo simply does not exist and does not register to them. Complete denial.

But here is where it gets seriously freaky. They view evolution as an atheist materialist attack to destroy the fabric of scociety itself. *I shit you not*. That they are in a war with a "materialist worldview" that threatens the very "bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built". Read and judge them for youself.
That is a private fundraising document leaked out of the central ID activist groups (they receive millions in donations to fund their efforts). They have admitted the document is authentic. This leaked document is known as the Wedge Document and it lays out what they call their Wedge Strategy. They actually lay out a TWENTY YEAR PLAN to attack "scientific materialism" and insinuate the schools and congress and to transform society in their religo-moral image of a proper God Fearing nation.

And the scary part is that these "clowns in some rural church of ignorance" as you call them are in fact receiveing millions of dollars in contributions and they are infact taking over school boards and they do have in fact been influencing magor national education law and they the general media have in fact been putting them on TV and in newspapers and treating them as if they were legitimate and credible scientists and they have in fact been influencing public oppinion to think that there is a genuine scientific controversey and that they are beeing suppressed by closeminded scientists and that they deserve equal time in the science classroom.

Christ! Why don't the GOOD GUYS ever have this sort of political and propaganda savy?

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To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

While ID "as described in the literature" is not the same thing as creationism, the fact remains that ID was "designed" because creationism was failing.

Some of the articles published by the ID crowd have been shown to be earlier creationist texts with the references to God/creation/etc. removed and standard ID buzz-words inserted in their place.

Their strategy, outlined in the Discovery Institute's Wedge Document is stated quite baldly: "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and hurnan beings are created by God".

Sorry, but you've been fooled.

Qrlx (258924) on Sunday October 30, @03:25PM (#13910149)
was heard questioning- ...I don't know the origins of the Intelligent Design theory, .....

This might help
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html
[checked at 1551CDT 20051030 and has 503 error]

This is the organization and objects set forth to "drive a wedge into the tree and split it."

These people are serious as sin and getting it done.

If any of the next elections, including next months mid-terms, get more of the Evangalistic Right elected we are all guaranteed not "to get a hand basket", you know "to hell in a hand basket".

http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html

The Discovery Institute holds that all natural science, not just evolution, is fundamentally contrary to the Christain faith and therefore must be wiped out. They believe that ever since the scientific revolution, faith has suffered as more and more natural explanations are discovered for phenomena that used to be attributed to God (for instance, diseases are caused by microbes and not God's wrath).

The so-called Wedge Strategy is to use the issue of evolution (chosen because it is already poorly understood by the general public) to build public distrust of scientists. After intelligent design becomes mainstream, they plan to plow over the remainder of science, i.e. everything that we have learned in the past 400 years.

So yeah, the US looks to be headed in the anti-science direction.

Science does not disprove God, but it does make God redundant as an explanatory principle. There are also certain physical consequences that one might expect to find if there were a supreme being behind it all--answers to prayers, certain paranormal or supernatural events, etc. All "evidence" of God has been explained via purely naturalistic causes. If there is a God, He has left no trace, and that's pretty odd considering how big He's supposed to be. God is neither verifiable nor falsifiable, but by the criteria of science, that makes God a bad theory. He falls, not by disproof, but by Ockam's Razor. God adds nothing to our understanding of the universe; indeed, the addition of an unknown and unknowable factor in the physical world actually interferes with the progress of knowledge by discouraging further inquiry.

And this is where strident atheists, like Richard Dawkins, take their starting point. Religion now discourages the entire scientific enterprise, and has done so ever since it became abundantly clear that science provides physical explanations with no need of the divine. As a biologist specializing in evolutionary theory, Dawkins has no doubt encountered no end of people who take offense at his work for no other reason than superstitious bias. To any scientist dedicated to free and open enquiry, this is profoundly disturbing.

Carl Sagan called science "a candle in the dark" dispelling the shadows of the "demon haunted world." It is that darkness that gave the Dark Ages their name. The purpose of ID isn't just to challenge evolution, but to initiate a campaign to undermine the materialistic worldview and replace it with a magical worldview. ID proponents call this strategy "The Wedge." Darwin is only the beginning; their goal is nothing less than the destruction of the entire scientific worldview, and they have stated this quite clearly. This is a long term strategy, embarked on decades ago. It is not a response to militant atheists. Militant atheism is a response to an existing offensive.

We simply cannot support this many people on the planet, nor meet the challenges now facing us, without science. The consequences of this flight into fantasy will be the deaths of billions of people, and quite possibly, the extinction of humanity. This attempted retreat into a childlike world of magic and supersition is nothing less than a wholesale attack on truth, and upon the very means by which truth may be discovered.

The prophets and philosophers on whose visions we have built our culture had a word for such an attack on truth. They called it evil.

How sad that most of the next 300 replies are likely to be attacks on his personal faith.

I find it very ironic to be flamed by anyone who thinks I'm an idiot for not believing in a theory that's never been proven by scientific process.

It's recently become a "religious act" to question science in any capacity, but isn't questioning science the only way we can tell the good science from the bad science?

And there is a lot of great science out there - even in public schools. But there's no longer a way for students to evaluate the credibility of what they're being taught. That seems to be degrading the quality of the subject. Science should be a quest for the truth, with no presuppositions, and appropriate understanding between hypotheses vs. theories vs. laws. When a theory is presented in the classroom as law and it's not held accountable to method, it's degenerated into mere conditioning.

I've spent a considerable amount of time studying topics such as the age of the earth and the theory of evolution, and I could probably argue it quite well if so inclined to engage in a discussion. That's important if you're going to believe anything really - including whatever the mainstreamed secular agenda happens to be.

Just because microevolution is feasable, that doesn't mean I'm going to sweep macroevolution under the rug and not test it - the two are actually worlds apart, just cleverly bundled.

I strongly feel that you should have some factual foundation to support whatever it is, and if you don't, then be man enough to admit you only have a theory put together.

No matter what side of the camp you are on, your beliefs require a certain amount of faith, as neither side is at present proven scientifically.

I don't have all the answers, but I don't think science in its present state does either.

At the end of the day, you can't prove the existence of God factually, and so whatever you believe is still based on faith. But at least the Christians can admit that - I just wish the evolutionists would too.

reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.

You are right, in that it is mostly a political debate, not a scientific debate.

Gotta wonder where you got the idea that he admitted fraud, as it is not true (well, at least not remotely verifiable, he could have said it to a close friend on his deathbed). Read claim #2.
For someone claiming a scientific textbook is spreading information that was "admittedly false," you didn't look too hard. I just googled his name and found that within a minute.

"19. What is the "Springfield Effect"?

The Springfield Effect is the name given to the phenomenon by which every place named Springfield is hard-linked in hyperspace to every other place of this name. In other words, there is only one place named Springfield, but it is "linked" to various locations in the world."

Sadly, creationist FAQs aren't quite so amusing. (Well, okay, there's this one.)

I am against Darwinism (see below) whether or not I ascribe to creationism.

So you are using the term 'darwinist' to describe someone who feels that the theory of evolution provides an adequate explanation for the history of life on earth, right?

It may not surprise you to hear that I've already seen that critique.

Have you read it though? There are many others if you don't like that one.

Have you read Johnson's book? The point of his book is that darwinism, by and large, simply isn't about science. Therefore comments on him being a lawyer are entirely irrelevant.

I'm not wasting good money on obviously bogus arguments and dishonest misrepresentations. I have seen enough examples of his illogical arguments and quote mining tactics to see what he is about. How is a lawyer qualified to judge what is and isn't science?

Have you seen this? What does that say about Johnsons motives and impartiality?

If you genuinely want to know what they are, then you can research - but I can't summarise many books worth of information into a small slashdot debate.

I only ask for a short description of one of these fundamental problems, surely that can't be too hard? Or is it completely unreasonable to ask you to outline (one of) the fundamental problems with 'darwinism'?

Both of your questions - if appropriately addressed - warrant a yes or no answer. You did not answer my initial question, but instead changed what it was asking and addressed that. In both instances I addressed your question at hand.

OK then, maybe you will see the problem with this one:

"Should I buy "Darwin on Trial", the Intelligent Designologist manifesto, even though its author is blatantly dishonest and each and every argument he has presented has been totally refuted?"

Yes or no?

According to the scientific definition of evolution I would consider myself an evolutionist.

Great, but what makes you think it has not applied in the past?

What do you consider to be the scientific theory of evolution?

It's a collection of statements about the mechanisms and processes like natural selection by which organisms evolve.

That all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor is just a plain simple fact, not part of the theory.

It has something to say on the fundamentals of life: How we got here, what is the meaning of life, what is right and wrong, etc.

Yes, maybe it does. So?

darwinism is a theory that explains everything but predicts nothing.

There is no theory of darwinism. There is just the cold hard fact that life on earth evolved from a common ancestor. Not a theory, well supported fact.

Any conceivable data can be made to fit into the theory, so one cannot predict anything with it (except that changes will occur).

No, you are very wrong on that count.

Transitional forms can be predicted, and have been, and there are many ways that common descent can be falsified. Try finding a Permian bird fossil for instance, or a flying horse fossil. Or look for a yet undiscovered species which has a completely unique DNA sequence. Find some land-starfish.

Scientists therefore never really study evolution. They are told its essential points, take it to heart, and then go about doing real science without needing to refer to it much at all.

Not if your scientist is a biologist.