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Antievolution legislation in Alabama
February 6th, 2009
http://ncseweb.org/news/2009/02/antievolution-legislation-alabama-004280

House Bill 300, introduced in the Alabama House of Representatives on February 3, 2009, by David Grimes (R-District 73) and referred to the House Education Policy Committee, is the latest in a string of "academic freedom" bills aimed at undermining the teaching of evolution.

It's one thing to read some Dawkins

I've never read any Dawkins, but from the few clips I've seen of him on TV he seems like a bit of an ass.

People who claim to believe in evolution on the internet have quite clearly never read any science

Hmmm. Willful trolling, or incredibly misinformed?

Every national or international science organization with an an official position on evolution state that evolution in overwhelmingly confirmed by all evidence. Just a sampling of such scientific bodies that have made such statements on the subject:
Academy Of Science Of The Royal Society Of Canada
Alabama Academy Of Science
American Anthropological Association
American Association For The Advancement Of Science
American Association Of Physical Anthropologists
American Astronomical Society
American Geophysical Union
American Institute Of Biological Sciences
American Astronomical Society
American Society Of Biological Chemists
American Chemical Society
American Geological Institute
American Psychological Association
American Physical Society
American Society Of Parasitologists
Association for Women Geoscientists
Australian Academy of Science
Botanical Society of America
California Academy Of Sciences
Ecological Society of America
Genetics Society of America
Geological Society Of America
Geological Society of Australia
Georgia Academy Of Science
History of Science Society
Iowa Academy Of Science
Kentucky Academy Of Science
Kentucky Paleontological Society
Louisiana Academy Of Sciences
National Academy Of Sciences
North American Benthological Society
North Carolina Academy Of Science
New York Academy Of Sciences
Ohio Academy Of Science
Ohio Academy Of Science
Ohio Math and Science Coalition
Oklahoma Academy Of Sciences
The Paleontological Society
Society For Amateur Scientists
Society For Integrative and Comparative Biology
Society Of Systematic Biologists
Society Of Vertebrate Paleontology
Southern Anthropological Society
Virginia Academy Of Science
West Virginia Academy Of Science

You can read the statements from each of them collected here.

Actually the "National Academy of Science" for almost every major nation on earth has made such a statement, but I don't have a handy link for all of them.

There are minor activist groups dedicated to both sides of the issue, but as far as National or International organizations dedicated to science or particular fields of science, non-biased organizations that incidentally issues position statements on the issue as an incidental action aside from their actual mission of preforming and promoting other science, every single one has come down on the side of confirming the scientific legitimacy of evolution and categorizing the anti-evolution side as invalid or pseudo science.

In fact I personally have dabbled in some evolution experiments and I have personally witnessed the fact that it's right and works.

On your side you have the crackpot answersingenesis website, and you have the Discovery Institute activists and a couple of other minor activist groups, and not one single legitimate scientific body, not one recognized International or National body dedicated to general science.

If you think the science is against evolution, you have been wildly misinformed. Except for a tiny fraction of a single percent, actual professional degreed scientists across all of the earth and life sciences come down on the side of evolution being valid and established by the evidence.

You can cite Michael Behe and a small handful of other actual degreed professional biologists who dispute evolution, but as I said they represent a minuscule faction of a percent. And not a single major body dedicated to general science acknowledges any credible scientific results from any of their attempts to refu

Reptiles have immune systems which work for them. They are cold blooded as was mentioned above. Reptiles (in general) have specialized cells which do phagocytosis (even very primitive organisms have this), lymphoid tissue (gut-associated etc) but not lymph nodes, lyphocytes differentiated into B cells and T cells. What they don't have is the variety of immunoglobulin classes that mammals have. ie Their antibody is IgM-like and IgG-like (IgY), but not IgD, IgE and class switching is either slow or non-existent. Birds were the first (phylogenetically) to exhibit lymph nodes and multiple Ig classes, and class switching. Furthermore reptiles don't seem to be able to do the memory (amnestic response) very well. To say that the reptile system is better (or as good as) the mammalian system is non-sensical. They both work have worked to keep species alive for many millions of years and they both continue to evolve. The key is that they work for each in their own envirnmoment. The immune system of a cold blooded animal is by necessity different from a warm blooded animal because bacteria have adapted to grown so much faster at warmer temperatures. If the immune system cannot respond rapidly (ie memory response) then that individual dies. If you look at the evolution of the immune response it appears to have taken several leaps rather than evolving gradually and steadily. These events coincide with changes which could alter the microbiological pressure on animal species. (see the Silurian period and the development of immunoglobulin and T-cell receptors, also the important RAG 1 and RAG2 genes). If reptiles were evolving into birds and there was a change from cold-blooded to warm-blooded at the same time you would expect to see a shift in the immune system capabilities --- and we do. Insects, while vectors of disease likely had little to do with this shift (Achem's razor) http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/exhibits/immune/immune_evo_annotated_bib.html

Even if you word the question in a way to try to give them an "out" by opting for some sort of theistically-guided evolution (the official modern position of the Catholic and Orthodox churches and many mainline Protestant ones), and try to tie down creationism specifically to young-earth creationism (humans were created within the past 10,000 years), a plurality of Americans, nearly a majority, opt for creationism.

The wording Gallup has been using for years when asking the question is this:

"Which one of the following statements come closest to your views about the origin and development of human beings? Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process (or) Humans developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process (or) God created humans pretty much in the present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so?"

The results in 2007 were: 30% for God-guided evolution, 13% for without-God evolution, and 48% for "created in present form within the last 10,000 years".

On the plus side, and contrary to what you might expect, fewer creationists than fans of evolution consider it an issue determining their vote. In 2007, 15% of people said they'd be more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who did not believe in evolution, whereas 29% said they'd be less likely (53% said it wouldn't make a difference to their vote). So adopting a creationist position is a net loss for politicians on a national scale.

Sure it makes sense. Most people have an over-inflated idea of how intelligent they are - the majority claim they're more intelligent than the average person - which simply can't be true.

Then again, the majority of Americans believe that God created human beings: 45% believe god did it within the last 10,000 years, and a further 38% believe that god guided it over the last million years (intelligent design). Only 13% believed in Darwin's theory of evolution.

Contrast that with what people believe just north of the border - only 22% agree that god created humans within the last 10,000 years. 59% believe in evolution.

In this set of findings Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80 percent or more of adults accepted evolution; in Japan, 78 percent of adults did. Turkey, on the other hand, had results akin to the US. Kind of telling, I would say ...

I highly recommend reading the transcripts of Kitzmiller v Dover. It is the whole debate couched in the form of a political drama, with top notch experts on both sides.

There was not one single objection raised by the pro-ID defendant that was not utterly crushed by scientific evidence.

There is not one single ID argument that doesn't reduce to the argument from ignorance...I cited it so often, it used to be my .sig, before I moved on to other fallacies...Here it is one more time.

Argumentum ad Ignorantiam:
Fallacy of taking a statement not provably false and implying that it is therefore true

Irreducible Complexity basically states, "I don't know what is smaller than this, so it's irreducible, and therefore proof for the existence of god." It's a huge fallacy.

Anyway, read Kitzmiller. A lot of the standard ID irreducibles are reduced in there, and the judge is a character.

It's really not fair that you associate ID with geocentricism. Actually, there are a good number of scientists who support ID with actual scientific evidence.

Then try to explain to a die-hard science type that religion/God can account for a lot of the things that science can't currently account for. You'll soon be hated by both sides.

bzzzt!! Thanks for coming out though.

Don't try and paint scientists with the same brush as the religious "zealotry" ... Scientists all over the world spend their lives being open minded and accepting* of competing theories it's what they get fucking paid to do.

* - I use the term loosely... every group has their borderline-psychotics... I've seen scientists nearly get in fist fights over theories... Die-hards are die-hards, but it seems that there are more die-hard religious zealots than die-hard anti-religous scientists. After all, "at least 4 out of 10" is no small number, especially in a group that's being pegged as being anti-religious by definition.

Calling two nerds switching from Mac OS X to Ubuntu a "canary in the coal mine" reminds me of what the (un)intelligent design people say. The ID people draw up a list of a few hundred scientists who "dissent from Darwinism." So, of course, the scientific community is suddenly going to discover how wrong they were about ID and it will become a hypothesis not ridiculed by all but a miniscule percent of biologists.

The ID movement's lists are bullshit, as demonstrated by Project Steve. Project Steve keeps of a list of (credible) biologists who support the teaching of evolution (about 750 right now). The one restriction for the biologists: they must be named Steve/Stephanie/Stephen. Until I see more than a few nerds switching from Mac to Linux, I'll believe the predictions of mass migration as much as I believe the ID people.

AFAICT, the heart of ID is that the 'proof' of evolutionary theory is nothing more than a godly prank on the scientific community, and the reason why there are (or rather, aren't) "missing links" is that the all-seeing, all-knowing God somehow 'forgot' to create some of the missing intermediate links in the paleontological record.

They seem to further believe that 'we're right' is sufficient scientific cause to throw out a couple of centuries of accumulated proof and refinement.

The real problem with ID proponents is that they seem to think that accepting evolution somehow requires a disbelief in god -- which is incorrect. Even the vatican has denounced anti-evolution ID as misguided, while clinging to the belief that God still had a hand in creation.

The fact of the matter is that the 'proof' of evolution is out there. You can believe it or not -- but if you reject it, you should at least be honest enough to admit that it's for religious reasons and not scientific ones.

I'm a catholic and I spent 4 years at a catholic boarding school where I was taught mostly by priests. I think that the IDers who believe that the bible trumps evolution completely misusnderstand the purpose and the style of Genesis, and I got a lot of that belief from the priests that taught me.

Even the vatican has denounced ID as misguided.

That having been said, I don't believe that the validity of evolution and the existence of a god are at odds with each other. They're really disjoint questions. Answering yes to one doesn't require answering yes or no to the other.
_____

AFAICT, the heart of ID is that the 'proof' of evolutionary theory is nothing more than a godly prank on the scientific community, and the reason why there are (or rather, aren't) "missing links" is that the all-seeing, all-knowing God somehow 'forgot' to create some of the missing intermediate links in the palentelogical record.

They seem to further believe that 'we're right' is sufficient scientific cause to throw out a couple of centuries of accumulated proof and refinement.

http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/news/2006/US/733_ intelligent_design_belittles_2_1_2006.asp

"One gets the impression from certain religious believers that they fondly hope for the durability of certain gaps in our scientific knowledge of evolution, so that they can fill them with God. This is the exact opposite of what human intelligence is all about."

--Father George V. Coyne S.J., director of the Vatican Observatory

Only relevant to one part of your comment, but this is always amusing

In response to the '500 scientists doubt evolution' thing, over 700 scientists named 'Steve' or of a similar/foreign variant have signed a statement supporting evolution.

The Duke Nukem Forever Delayed jokes may now be dead but we now have the undying ID (Intelligent Design) joke, which may indeed be forever.

Joke Intelligent designers:
Aliens(1)
Aliens(2)
God(1)
God(2)

General:
The Skeptic's Dictionary
Creation & Intelligent Design Watch
National Center for Science Education

a great bit to observe about Pandas and People came to light in the court case.

see:
http://www2.ncseweb.org/wp/?p=80
which shows early drafts of the book where the terms of inteligent design are used to replace creationisim in later drafts.

Ahh but in fact, ID == Creationisim, as can be shown (and was observed in the court case) as the early manuscripts for the much vaunted "Pandas and People" have the word "creation" in the exact same places as the later ID based version places "Inteligent Design"

please see:
http://www2.ncseweb.org/wp/?p=80 for the evidance.

A link to the decision paper (approx 310KB). I hope their server is up to it.

If not, maybe someone could put up a torrent?

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources.

In fact, if you collect all of the Ph.D's who believe in ID and all of the Ph.D's named "Steve" who agree that evolution is well-supported and the best explainer and predictor of our observations, the Ph.D's named "Steve" will outnumber the Ph.D's who believe in ID.

Ain't that the truth!

http://ncseweb.org/icons/icon1millerurey.html

Now before you respond that "If God set it up so perfectly that he knew it would produce life, then that same condition could have statistically happened all by itself" then I would respond that that's just speculation based on an incomplete knowledge of the universe and the origin of life. Until we see life spontaneously create itself and become more complex, any assertion as to how likely that may or may not be is entirely speculation and certainly not any more fact-based than believing in God.

"Entirely speculation" would be, for example, an ignorant shouting match in an internet forum. As soon as one starts doing research to back up one's claims, the discussion moves out of the "entirely speculation" department and becomes a bit scientific. You're ignoring the process of scientific investigation at your peril, friend. It is inherently "fact-based", in that it seeks to accumulate and refine the "facts" themselves, in pursuit of an accurate explanation for them.

How long has the universe existed? How large is it? How many atoms are in the universe? We don't even have the answers to these questions and we have never seen life spontaneously create itself to a degree necessary to believe we have any idea how statistically common it is or isn't.

The universe has been around for approximately 13.7 billion years' time, according to recent estimates based on the age of white-dwarf-class stars. That estimate has been progressively refined based on many other gathered facts and simulations, such as the layout of the galaxies, the typical formation time of stars and planets, the proportions of various elements around the universe, and yes, even that "evil" mainstay, the fossil record.

There are also similar estimates for the size of the universe. I don't have the most recent figure available, but I know the estimate is based on data from several sources, such as redshift in light from the farthest visible entities, and disturbances in the generally uniform arrangement of matter as mapped from the night sky.

How many atoms are in the universe? Come on, man. Google it. If I sound dismissive, it's because I've seen these questions pop up over and over from people who refuse to do even the most cursory investigation, even if it's just to read the current written works on the subject. But maybe these phenomena go hand in hand: For people who wish to argue on sentimental grounds, objective facts are often the enemy.

You say:
A. "we have never seen life spontaneously create itself,"
B. therefore, we do not "have any idea how statistically common it is"

Use your powers of reasoning, pal. Statement A doesn't lead to statement B. It leads to statement C:
C. therefore, it must be pretty rare, or maybe even impossible.

(For further ironic perspective, consult the Temple of the Invisible Pink Unicorn)

By contrast, we have seen small-scale evolution happen (via natural and unnatural selection) first-hand, in documented experiments that you can reproduce with potted plants in a greenhouse in your own back yard. What's more, the evidence for large-scale evolution is woven throughout the history of man (domestication and spread of crops, for example), as well as pre-human history.

As a Christian I do believe God has an active interest in us but I'm not so arrogant as to believe that that means He can't be actively interested in life elsewhere in the universe.

(Potshot: Yeah, because believing oneself to be one of the conduits of God's will is so much less arrogant than believing oneself to be the conduit of God's will.)

So if you've embraced the idea of intelligent life i

Unless you're talking about Intelligent Falling, then all bets are off. In all seriousness, this is just a little speedbump in the march of progress. The Kansas creationists tried this in 1999, and got voted out. Now they're are back, but they'll be easier to beat this time. Teaching creationism was found to be unconstitutional in Edwards v. Aguillard. In the Intelligent Design (ID) trial in Dover, strong evidence has been presented showing that "ID" is a drop-in replacement for "scientific creationism." For instance, in the ID book "Pandas and People" we have the remains of a word processor search and replace operation with "cdesign proponentsists" being the resulting "transitional fossil," as Pandas' Thumb puts it. The Dover transcripts make for some particularily hilarious reading, especially Mike Behe's testimony, or when members of the Dover school board perjure themselves. We can count on a trial taking place in Kansas very soon, and it will go in much the same manner as it did in Dover. The Kansas Kangaroo Court has already laid the groundwork, providing good evidence on the motivations of the IDers, and how they are indistinguishable from creationists. These guys have shot themselves in the foot so badly that if either Dover or Kansas went to the Supreme Court it is hard to imagine the outcome for ID being any different than it was in the Edwards v. Aguillard decision back in '87. The two dissenters in Edwards v. Aguillard were Scalia (predictable) and Rhenquist, so even with if Roberts and Alito* vote theocratic (unlikely, they seem rational to me, at least) it'll be a 5-4 split with ID losing. IANAL, tho. I think the big take home message of this is that all of us who care about science need to keep up on what the kooks are doing. While I'm fond of following the creationist movement and even have a small collection of creationists books I've picked up from used book stores, I don't have the slightest idea of who is on the local school board and whether they are pro- or anti-science. That's going to change, though.

Please join the NCSE http://www.ncseweb.org/ if you actually want to make a difference in the USA's educational system. The organization's goal is to keep non-science, specifically creationism/ID out of science curriculums.

On a related note, the missing link between creationism and intelligent design was discovered by Barbara Forrest during the recent Kitzmiller v. Dover trial. It's name? cdesign proponentsists.

"For the umpteenth time, Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing."

Check out these exhibits from the Kitzmiller case comparing the usage of certain key phrases over time in the book now known as "Of Pandas and People."

You can see two things in these analyses:
(1) The verbiage of "creation science" has been directly searched-and-replaced with that of "intelligent design."
(2) The vocabulary change happened immediately after a court ruling which declared teaching "creation science" in schools unconstitutional.

Coincidence?

See http://www2.ncseweb.org/wp/ for more coverage of the Kitzmiller case.

"For the umpteenth time, Intelligent Design and creationism are not the same thing."

Check out these exhibits from the Kitzmiller case comparing the usage of certain key phrases over time in the book now known as "Of Pandas and People."

You can see two things in these analyses:
(1) The verbiage of "creation science" has been directly searched-and-replaced with that of "intelligent design."
(2) The vocabulary change happened immediately after a court ruling which declared teaching "creation science" in schools unconstitutional.

Coincidence?

See http://www2.ncseweb.org/wp/ for more coverage of the Kitzmiller case.

So, you say that the FSM "spoof" is flawed because they make reference to a specific creator? It's a more direct parody of religion itself rather than of the "Intelligent Design" shroud that creationists have created, but that's because ID is so thin that upon any brief inspection you discover that it is creationism in disguise. Anyway, the important thing about FSM is spurring discussion, like we have done here for instance. As long as we're talking about ID, do you recognize the fact that ID is not science? Have you ever heard an ID argument that wasn't merely an attack on the the theory of evolution? The reason people "keep talking about" FSM is because creationists are trying to force their supernatural beliefs into public science education! Do you realize how pissed off people are about that? We're talking about an attempt to undermine the very foundation of our society -- rational thought and logical argument!

Religious types try to blow off FSM because it cuts so close to the bone. It's a ridiculous explanation for the way the world works, and it's just as definsible as any other religion on the planet. In other words, not very.

Sorry if I sound accusatory, but I'm pretty riled up over the state of education in our country. I don't know what your position is on this whole debate, other than your opinion that the FSM parody misses the point. If you don't know much about the scientific theory of evolution, or if you end up in an argument with someone who doesn't understand it, you might find this FAQ to be very useful.

Here's to open mindedness and rational argument! May the best supported ideas win!

Evolution is nothing but a theory.

The cool thing Intelligent Design is we know God made us.

Religious apologetics without a shred of science, or even information theory (Dembski does not publish papers on information theory, or any research at all for that matter).

Think about how the world was made. Science has a theory called "Big Bang". It is a theory which states that in the start the mass was so dense, it exploded and everything flew away randomly, making stars and planets, and life.

1. The recession of remote galaxies (the Hubble constant);
2. The existence of the Cosmic Background Radiation;
3. The fluctuations in the CBR (specifically, this is explained by a refinement of the Big Bang theory known as "inflation");
4. The rather sharply-defined age limit of the oldest stars; and
5. The elemental composition of the interstellar medium.

Know what's funny? You aren't even smart enough to distinguish between high-energy physics (the field of science which studies phenomena of the character of the Big Bang) and evolution (which required the Big Bang, a couple rounds of stellar formation and supernovae to make heavy elements, then formation of the Earth, and then biogenesis before there was anything which could start to evolve). The whole thing is one undistinguished mish-mash in your mind, and you've been brainwashed into shoving it into a bin marked "WRONG". People like you crack me up.

For any people who know statistics, what is the probability of that happening?

You would have a better chance at taking a watch, hitting it with a hammer until it was broken into 1000 peices, and then putting it in a bag, shaking the bag, and having the watch come back together out of the random movements.

God made life. It is called a soul.

Looks like you've been systematically disinformed and propagandized. If you want to do something about it, you could do much worse than to go here and start reading. You'll find every one of your talking points listed here, and refuted.

"Unfortunately, seven-day-Creationists have corrupted the term worse than the words "communist" and "hacker" combined."

Except the term was initially used as a drop-in replacement for creationism in the 1989 book "Pandas and People," lately of fame in the Dover Intelligent Design scandal. Here's a review by the Geoscience Research Institute, a young-earth creationist group, from 1992. Notice in the review that "creationism" and "intelligent design" are used more or less interchangeably. Or you can read a 1989 review from the National Center for Science Education that finds the same thing. ID wasn't taken over by creationists. It was founded by them.

In Dover, Pennsylvania apparently. Although since there is no scientific theory of ID to teach, and no ID lesson plan; teaching it basically amounts to reading a really vague and erroneous statement to students.

But ID will face its first big legal challenge next month when Kitzmiller v. Dover gets underway. And from what I've read so far it looks as though the school board isn't going to come out victorious in this trial.

Yeah, unfortunately you will not find agreement in the scientific community that this is actual proof, only a nice story that sounds plausible!!!

Not find agreement? Ok, yes, not 100% agreement, but there will always be dissenters out there... however, don't make it sound like there is is questioned support for Evolution. I direct you here to Project Steve (in honor of Steven Jay Gould) http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3697_the _list_2_16_2003.asp . This is a list of 540 scientists named Steve (or variants of) who support evolution. (there's a FAQ for what the number represents) Basically it is a response to the claims of ID proponents that Evolution is going through some great debate in the scientific community. It is not. There is huge majority of evolution supporters in the scientific community.

When I studied Physics in college I had to build a math model of a 10 pole system, the math model worked!!! Experimentally I could only prove a dipole system that actually refuted the 10 pole system!!!

when you built the math model in physics, was there evidence of a 5,6, and 7 pole model? feh. nevermind. See, this is my problem. Evolution necessarily doesn't reufte ID, ID doesn't necessarily refute evolution, they can and should be mutually exclusive things. Evolution is concerned with how an organism changes in reaction to its environment to ensure its survival over time. ID is concerned with how that organism came to be in that environment. You wanna believe that God or Aliens put us here, fine...but he/they did so in a way that took millions of years to shape and refine.

A theory does not make truth, you need evidence to back it up, and evolution dose not only not have evidence it is built on a house of cards!!!

yes, a theory doesn't make truth, because science isn't democracy...i never claimed that evolution is truth, it's just the best theory to fit the facts. Much more so than ID. But, i'm open to being proven wrong. Please examine this list and let me know which cards I can take out of my deck http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

There is a big difference between science fiction and science fact!!!

I completely agree.

offhand, and seriously, what would it take for you to see things the evolutionists way? what evidence would you need to be presented with...or are you ID all the way?

Maybe they are "heavy hitters" in *your* scientific community, but they are at best marginal figures in the scientific community at large.

It's amazing how much *any* qualification at all is pumped up by creationist types: ooh, look, a Ph.D. in Architectural Engineering..., yet they claim evolutionists are simply slaves to academic authority.

There are more than 220 Ph.D.'s *named Steve* http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/4023_the _press_release_2_16_2003.asp
who don't believe ID or creationism are baloney.

About 1% of scientists are named Steve. That makes it likely we could come up with about 22000 scientists willing to sign a statement to that effect.

You can also use Talk Origins, Talk Reason, Talk Design, EvoWiki and Panda's Thumb to find lots of info on why these people are wrong. If you want to donate money, donate it to the NCSE or Talk.Origins, or perhaps buy some of the books of creationism refuters - I'd reccomend Robert Pennock's book 'Tower of Babel' as quite a good introduction.

Even my lowly blog has a few things on the ID/creationism debacle.

"You can see this happen on a small scale with bacteria becoming resistant to anti-biotics. The changes in the bacteria are very physical. But I suppose this is not macroscopic enough for you."

I know of many ways that bacteria become resistant, and I don't think any of them qualify as evolution.

1) Natural selection -- the resistant bacteria live, the non-resistant ones died. No new information, in fact we're losing information within the population.

2) Plasmids -- antibiotic resistance can be transferred between bacteria through plasmids. These plasmids are already in existence, and no new information takes place.

3) Removal of a pump -- if a mutation of a gene causes a bacteria to _lose_ the ability to pump a large class of material in, some of which happens to be antibiotic, this can hardly be qualified as the kind of evolution required to go from minimal complexity to maximal complexity, because we're going the wrong way. If instead you showed that brand new kinds of cellular pumps were being generated in response, and not as the result of plasmids or any other pre-programmed response, that would be something.

"I don't suppose you believe all the 'historical' accounts of ancient gods and goddesses, atlantis, fantastic creatures like cyclopses, etc etc?"

As I pointed out, the difference is that there is agreement among cultures that the event happened, and for a long time artifacts of the event remained in public viewing.

"in which case you would have to claim that all our dating methods, and huge amounts of other research are false"

There are many reasons to believe that is the case.

"Scientists have looked honestly at evolution. There is no other possibilities."

There are many scientists who disagree. Or do you think Jonathan Wells, Michael Behe, Ariel Roth have done nothing scientific in their entire careers? Why did the Smithsonian's peer-reviewed biology journal include an article on Intelligent Design? If the editor was biased, how did such a prominent scientist come to be biased towards Intelligent Design if all the evidence points away from it? This whole "the argument is closed" idea is nothing more than a power grab.

"Your own link has shown that at least one creationist 'evidence' is full of dishonest reporting."

You don't think that evolutionists are capable of dishonest reporting? This is silly. The fact that there exists one or many dishonest reports from creationists does not invalidate creationism. The same is true of evolutionists.

"As I've said before, creationism does not make any usefull predictions."

The fact that Brutus killed Caesar does not make any useful predictions. The question is if it is true. Creation, by its very definition, is speaking of one or multiple singular events. To say that singular events don't happen because they aren't subject to mathematical reasoning is silly.

"Scientists love any break in current theory because it always gives insights to improved theorems. If they were outraged, it would be because of the quality of research."

Read for yourself Richard Steinberg's account. For fairness, I'll give you Panda's Thumb's Rebuttal.

The statement of the Biological Society of Washington is amusing at best. Instead of criticizing research methods or other scientific grounds, they simply announce that now it is a matter of policy not to publish ideas that are counter to the status quo. They said that it is outside their normal scope (Taxonomy) which Sternberg fairly easily repudiates in his answer.

"Scientists love any break in current theory because it always gives insights to improved theorems. If they were outraged, it would be because of the quality of research."

I love it when people say "scientists can't be wrong because they are scientists. It makes them superhuman with regard to the influences that happen to mere mortals."

How do you explain away the many successful scientists who are both out-and-out Creationists and dare to say so despite the risk of being branded heretic and burned at the academic stake for it?

I don't have to, because there are not "many" if by "creationist" you mean disbeliever in evolution, natural selection, etc. Rare, rare, rare. It's possible to get a PhD in science and hold any number of irrational beliefs, but most scientists don't because irrational beliefs are the antithesis of scientific thought. How about we instead talk about the overwhelming number of scientists who are secure about evolution? I'm sure you've heard about Project Steve?

Again, most of the creationist hacks I come across usually argue against what they think evolution is, rather than what the theory actually is. For instance, evolution says nothing about the origin of life, just of species. That's "uneducated" in my book.

Personally, you should peddle your creationist non-science someplace other than slashdot, and, at the least, some thread other than one about the Hubble Space Telescope.

Mentioning evolution makes it a religious issue because of the history of the evolution/creationism controversy. The sticker doesn't explicitly make any mention of religion, but religion is the driving force behind the sticker being placed there in the first place.

You ignored the "generally accepted" figure of 150,000 years BCE for the divergence of homo sapiens sapiens, then cherry picked another mutation rate, out of another article, just to make your arithmetic work out. How many variations did you try before you got it to work out? The authors of the third article specifically indicated an age of 144,000 years ago. That's not even bad science, it's right up there with the kind of stuff that Kent Hovind puts out (who Answers In Genesis has attempted to correct).

The Family tree article doesn't say that there was only one family tree at 1415BC. It says that on average, all family trees intersect at that point, which is vastly different from what you said.

As far as what Newton believed in. Alchemy, Astrology, and Creationism were all appropriate for his time, but just as Alchemy and Astrology have been relagated to quaint history, so has creationism.

Earning a Ph.D. in the sciences generally indicates that some one is a scientist, which is why I said "reputable scientist". You can read reputable to mean a scientist working to increase knowledge in his field of study and submitting his work for review by other scientists in the same field of study. And if you want lists, check out Project Steve. http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/3541_pro ject_steve_2_16_2003.asp

The 521 scientists named Steve that have signed the statement supporting the age of the earth and evolution statistically represent 52,100 scientists.

As far as some of your other "facts", dendrochronology using crossdating for bristle-cone pines has documented a continuous history for 8,200 years. There even other older living things, for example, an 11,000 year old creosote bush in the Mojave Desert, a 13,000 year old eucalyptus in Australia, a 13,000 year old Box Huckleberry in Pennsylvania, and a 43,000 year old King's Holly in Tasmania.

As far as all the flood myths, most civilizations arise around fertile river flood plains, which just happen to experience floods. There is still no evidence to support a global flood, and still an enormous amount of evidence that indicates that there never was a global flood.

maybe they need a list of Steves for global warming as well.

http://www.ncseweb.org/resources/articles/5945_the _faqs_2_16_2003.asp

You didn't follow any of the links already supplied in the grandparent post, did you? Is your mind so made up that you don't want to be confused by any facts?

Dude, there was a total of one link in that post, and I did follow it. Siting text references doesn't work so well in a web-based forum; please endevor to find web-based versions of the articles, or paraphrase them in your own post.

On your opinion that I should make up my mind and not getting confused by facts:

Sir, I've already thought myself through a major philosophy shift once in my life, away from the very things you are arguing for and towards a more skeptical outlook on the world. That itself should point out to you that I am convincible, though I doubt you will take me at my word.

But you are NOT going to convince me by saying "Follow the bouncing ball very slowly and carefully!" I've been careful not to talk down to you through all this, you can at least have the courtest to do so. And you are not going to convince me *easily*, I'll tell you that for free.

A Google search for: "Stephen Meyer" "Discovery Institute" "Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington" turned up the following very interesting link:

Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal : Déjà vu All Over Again by Chris Mooney. It sheds some much-needed light over this paper, and the drive to get Intelligent Design published in reputible journals. (Here's a hint: it all boils down to politics.) It reveals that the three reviewers who approved the article are unnamed, and that the editor of the journal was sympathetic to the Intelligent Design cause. It is interesting reading, more interesting than your link in any case. And linked from that article is The Panda's Thumb : Meyer's Hopeless Monster, by three named, mainstream scientists refuting the article you presented, and the Biological Society of Washington itself has repudated the article.

It is trivial to show that self-creation by accident is mathematically well beyond impossible. There's not nearly enough time (1E17 seconds) and materials (1E81 atoms) available under even the most stupidly optimistic of circumstances to achieve the required result.

I disagree -- those are huge, huge numbers you're talking about. You're going to have to explain that one to me.

Seconds: 100,000,000,000,000,000.

Atoms:
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000, 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,000.

The Atom number, while nineteen zeros short, is not far in length to actually giving us a use for the word googol. The seconds number is a bit suspect: there is an average of around 31557600 seconds in a year (including leap years). Diving your number by that brings up a figure of about 3.17 billion years, which is short of the period of time the Earth has been around, and is far short of the universe's estimated age.

But you should realize that the scientific community is far from certain about their numbers. I don't think anyone stakes definite claims for either of them. Science works by trying to figure things out, not being certain about them beforehand. Otherwise, how would Einstein have been possible?

Bring on the self-structuring molecules, bring them all together and interact them at incredible rates in amazing quantities, do what you please, it still falls utterly flat.

Again, those are not small numbers up there. Rates do not have to be amazing within that time frame. And even if they are, it's possible that those processes got an accidental boost to bring forth life on Earth, due to the so-called anthropic principle: it happened, because we

And here's a list of 434 scientists named Steve who do believe in so-called "molecules to man" evolution. Your point?

I've read articles by Behe and Dembski and was not favorably impressed. Behe and Dembski are not taken seriously by the scientific community for that matter either. For example, read Nature's review of Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" (Nature 1996, Volume 383, pages 227-228, available pay-only from them, but freely available here). Another review that is available online is from the National Center for Science Education--the premier science education body in the USA. Naturally, both it and Nature (and, well, science in general) are firmly in the evolutionists' camp. You've probably heard it before, but why not give talkorigins a try? They have their own pages on Behe and Dembski as well.

Yes, they are both theories. There is nothing scientifically factual about evolution whatsoever.

Your post demonstrates your complete lack of knowledge about evolution and about science. While I don't have time to get into specifics (late for work), I will post some links:

A nice set of links at syacuse university
Coalition for Excellence in Science and Math Education
National Center for Science Education

Darwin, Newton, Einstein & Co. all are worthwhile reading, mostly to see where in the past a field came from and how these people revolutionized science. They are not particularly useful for telling where a field is going today. For instance, my last paper had 61 references. To break them down by decade, 13 were from the 2000's, 26 from the 1990's, 11 1980's, 4 1970's, 5 1960's, and two all the way back from 1959. For the field, my paper had an extensive (perhaps overly so) review of the literature before delving into the issues at hand. I did not cite anything earlier because it simply wasn't relevant--reinventing the wheel, so to speak. As far as the field was concerned, earlier works laid the foundations but are compressed and sorted into textbooks. Similarly for the evolutionary biologists, they seldom cite Darwin. Why? Because the field has moved on--his work is no longer on the cutting edge but instead is a part of the foundation of the field. So if you want to attack current thinking in a field, you should do so by using references as current as possible. Fields move rapidly, and what was cutting edge twenty years ago is old hat today. Also when you quote something, it is improper and dishonest to take a reference's quotation and cite it as your own if you have not read the original quoted material youself. A more proper quote would be something like "X said Y, as quoted in Z." Or would you care to demonstrate you actually read those original sources? Just the sentence on either side of the quotes will do--and yes, I have access to the original sources to check up on you.

But maybe before you bother, you should know that "Scientific American" is a popular magazine, not a technical journal (and your quote has no impact on current thinking in either evolution or abiogenesis). Fred Hoyle was an astronomer, not a biochemist, so his views on protein structure and their probabilities of existing are no more informed than any other layman. Francis Hitching it turns out is a writer, mainly on the paranormal, with titles to his credit such as "Dowsing: the Psi Connection." As far as Behe goes he's regarded as a crackpot. Black Parrot's already pointed out talkorigins' thorough debunking of his ides, but if you don't trust the site try the National Center for Science Education and do a search for "Behe". I particularly like the first hit, a review of "Darwin's Black Box." In a nutshell, it's crap. 200 year old rehashed debunked crap, actually.

"Your" (actually Hoyle's, see above) statistical improbabilities: you could read Black Parrot's or barakn's posts, or for something more thorough go here to talkorigins and read. Why do I put trust in the site? Besides being in my own experience an excellent, factually correct, and largely up-to-date source on the topic, it is endorsed by Science, Scientific American, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Smithsonian Institute, and The Geological Society of America, among many others. In other words, the scientific mainstream: the people who work in labs and in the field, who write papers presenting their findings and their ideas, papers which must stand up to the criticism of their peers, persons whose careers are shaped by their abilities to form and support hypotheses and correct past errors of in their field, using evidence and reason. Your concept of "orginal thinkers" seems to be those who would ignore the vast body of know

> The case for creation completely embraces the notion that the universe began in a "Big Bang" or similar act of creation.

That's why there isn't a case for creation: the arbitrary will of and omnipotent being is compatible with anything, and is therefore lies outside the realm of things that can be studied on the basis of evidence.

> There are many renowned and respected scientists that use the scientific method to disprove the theory of evolution.

Actually there are aren't that many at all, as Project Steve jokingly calls to your attention.

> One such theory is called the "Irreducible Complexity Theory." It argues that living organisms are so complex that they cannot have a singular chemical starting point, but rather come to a point where the intracacies are so interdependent that it becomes a mathematical impossibility for them to form spontaneously.

Actually the major proponent of IC, Michael Behe, thoroughly accepts biological evolution and the common descent of the species. He merely claims that there are some specific biological structures/procesess that could not have arisen by evolution, concluding that something else must have been at work in addition to evolution. Unfortunately for him and his followers, his claims rely on some assumptions that aren't actually a part of the theory of evolution, so the best he can claim is that his strawman version of evolution didn't result in the biological structures/processes that he has called attention to. No evolutionary biologists would dispute that! (More than you could want possibly want to read about all this can be found at the talk.origins archive).

> Which leads to a point: Evolution is still a theory and remains unproved.

Yeah, that's kind of the way science works. Proof, as they say, is for mathematicians, beverages, and gunpowder. The empirical sciences don't have such a luxury. (Perhaps you've heard of "atomic theory", "theory of gravitation", "electromagnatic theory", and a bunch of other scientific discoveries with similar names?)

> The irony is that no one would argue that a laptop computer ever came into existence on its own, out of the random swirlings of sand and oil (an evolutionist's view), but in the next breath argue that in the case of humans and all other life, which is inarguably inifinitely more complex, did come into existance that way.

The intersting thing is that the theory of evolution doesn't say that humans came into existence out of random swirlings of sand and oil. The whole point of a theory is to describe the mechanism that explains why seemingly improbable things happen regularly in the universe. Atomic theory explains why we get the - Wow! - integer ratios between the amount of reactants consumed when we mix chemicals (an amazing improbability if you're unaware of the mechanism), and biological evolution explains why we get the wonderful diversity of life we have out of a mindless universe.

> This pertains to the main article because "fossils" only prove prior existence of something. They do not prove how those things came into existence. Such a conclusion is an imaginative leap.

Fossils are a phonomenon with a curiously non-random distribution, and that demands an explanation. The theory of evolution is the best explanation anyone has ever set forward for it. You're welcome to try going it one better, if you wish.

> (As an aside, if fossil hunters had found the proof they needed to unequivocally support evolution, they would not still be looking for "it".)

Paleontologists don't hunt fossils in search of "proof" of evolution; they search for them in order to fill out the details of biological history.

> Religionists always get the bad rap of being closed-minded, but I think that parent

I've posted this link before on /., but I figure a story like this is going to stir up a great number of people that would both strongly agree and disagree. So, here it is.

But there are women too! Stephanies are accepted to sign the list. Go Meet the Steves.