Kansas Evolution Fight Escalates...

[Ed]

So in effect, you are saying that doctors who believe in God aren't as good as doctors who don't? Can you prove this? Do you have any hard data to support this assertion beyond your rationalisation above?
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HypnoPsi

In effect I am saying that people who look no further than a supernatural explanation when they hit a hard spot are not competent to practice medicine or science or perhaps even raise kids. It is axiomatic and does not need proof.

 

[SezMe]

In an attempt to derail Hammy's incessant derail...

I have mixed feelings about this. Living in Kansas, it makes me sad to think that such a step would be taken. I don't think it will be productive in the least.

OTOH, it is about the only concrete step that organization can take. Issuing a public statement that the disagree doesn't do much. Withholding copyright permission is something they can do and does impact the State BOE. They now must pony up additional resources to duplicate the work. So it's a way to express their displeasure that will actually be felt by the BOE.

I agree with Beth. I think this was the firmest step these organizations could take to apply pressure on the BOE. I see it as one grain of sand that will eventually merge into a beach head that (in my dreams) becomes simply insurmountable.

 

[hammegk]

In effect I am saying that people who look no further than a supernatural explanation when they hit a hard spot are not competent to practice medicine or science or perhaps even raise kids. It is axiomatic and does not need proof.

Axiomatic it might be. Who do you nominate as the doctor or scientist (or everyday citizen) believing-in-god-dullard who actually does so? And then, as we say here, got "evidences"?

Or perhaps you'd rather contend that all good doctors & scientists (& people) are atheists?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I nominate Rupert Sheldrake.

~~ Paul

 

[hammegk]

I nominate Rupert Sheldrake.

~~ Paul

I agree that snake-oil salesmen are still around. Do you think you know what Sheldrake actually believes regarding anything?

At their common ancestor, some sort of extinct Carnivora/Pholidota/Perissodactyla creature.

Yes, or back in the primordial soup, if even there. Hence my comment on the taxon of choice.

I do not assert that there is a "point at which micro=macro", any more than my belief that there are continuous gradations of, say, weight, is an assertion that at some point light=heavy.

Good, because then you'd have that fossil record to contend with.

So if I provide you with an example, how will you know you're looking at one?

The same way you will know you actually found one.

 

[delphi_ote]

For the record: "survivial of the fittest" is NOT TRUE IN NATURE. That is why the terminology "natrual selection" was settled on. Many unfit individuals survive and breed.

Hammy, either stop using the phrase "survival of the fittest," or admit that you don't have the foggiest notion what you're talking about.

 

[Pastor Bentonit]

You may even believe that. Who knows.

Survival of the fittest continues, as always, to be the order of the day. Bacteria & antibiotics, strains of yeast with differing properties ... natural, you say; survival, definitely. And bacteria remain bacteria, yeast yeast.

I think you will find noone said that bacteria would change into yeast (or the other way around) just like that. Because that would truly be the workings of a supernatural Go...I mean Designer. However, if you look inside yeast cells you will find tiny bacteria, called mitochondria. They´re in our cells too, as in almost all eukaryotic cells. If that´s confusing, maybe you should tell us all how an idealist (as opposed to a materialist) would explain the overwhelming evidence (molecular, morphological, yadda yadda yadda) for all known living organisms being more or less related to each other?! You seem to believe that no organisms change much (see your quote), so please feel free to explain. And btw, since I´m new here, you might want to pitch in your estimate/view on the age of Earth.

To get on topic again, Behe´s testimony/cross seem to be the last court transcripts; and more than one of the pdf files seems to be damaged (one can´t see the bottom half of many pages, or some words are missing from the text). Anyway, Behe managed to disprove his own pet "theory" of irreproducible complexity (whaddaya know!). Former Dover school board member W. Buckingham lied under oath. The clowns sure are busy...

 

[brodski]

I think the point here is: can you teach ID in such a way that you don't promote ID?
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HypnoPsi

yes you can, I nwas taught hollocaust denial in school, but not as part of my history class (it was as part of RE) baiscaily you teach kids that a group of people belive X, and then explain to them why X is not supported by the evidence, the point is though in Kansas and Dover they aren't proposing to teach kdis ID, as ther is currently nothign to teach. What they want to do is poisen the well for evolution, the idea being that if Darwin was wrong, god dunnit.

 

[Ed]

Axiomatic it might be. Who do you nominate as the doctor or scientist (or everyday citizen) believing-in-god-dullard who actually does so? And then, as we say here, got "evidences"?

Or perhaps you'd rather contend that all good doctors & scientists (& people) are atheists?

You you being purposely dull? Once you, cravenly, allow for the mystical, you have given up rationality.

You you prefer a world where, when faced with the realiy of slow virus', the researcher threw up his hands and said "gosh, being the dense and less than high level intellect that I am I see no solution so I guess God did it as some wierd, pathological manifestation of his greatness which he somehow continually seems to have the all too human need to maliciously prove by torturing his creations". After which he delares that since goddidit, it is pointless to explore and he sits on his thumb and write stupid psalms for the rest of his life. That is the bloody implication of the stupid bloddy concept of "goddidit". You want medicine populated with people like that? "Sorry Mr. Hammeric, that there cancer is a nasty one. Must be gods work. That pain stuff? Well we really don't understand that either and since it is obviously gods work, since we are stupid and lazy, I think that it would be blasphamous to give you any pain medication, god wanting you to suffer and all from something that we are too bloody stupid and intellectually flabby to explore."

Nice world.

 

[Dr Adequate]

Good, because then you'd have that fossil record to contend with.

So, you have no challenge to my assertion that lots of micro-evolution adds up to macroevolution.

I don't think I'm going to let you off the hook on this one. This is going to be as much fun as when you refused to argue against the existence of intermediate forms.

Where do you locate the supposedly uncrossable barrier between micro-evolution and macro-evolution, why do you put it there rather than elsewhere, and why do you believe it exists?

 

[catbasket]

For the record: "survival of the fittest" is NOT TRUE IN NATURE. That is why the terminology "natural selection" was settled on. Many unfit individuals survive and breed.

I wonder if this is strictly true? I always understood "fittest" in this context to mean -

adj. fit·ter, fit·test
<snip>
4. Biology. Successfully adapted to survive and produce viable offspring in a particular environment. Dictionary.com

Maybe "natural selection" was settled on to avoid people confusing "fittest" to be equivalent to "healthy"? Sort of like the scientist/non-scientist understanding of "theory"?


Edit to avoid accidentally implying delphi_ote is a non-scientist - changed "non-scientist" to "people".

 

[Mojo]

Maybe "natural selection" was settled on to avoid people confusing "fittest" to be equivalent to "healthy"?

I've seen this done in a letter published a few years ago in (I think) the Guardian. A clergyman thought he could disprove the theory evolution by pointing out that if physical fitness was not a positive trait for survival then the fittest wouldn't survive.

 

[delphi_ote]

I wonder if this is strictly true?

Unfit individuals survive and breed regularly. The "fittest" do not survive. "Fit enough" also survive if there are enough resources.

1. IF there are organisms that reproduce, and
2. IF offspring inherit traits from their progenitor(s), and
3. IF there is variability of traits, and
4. IF the environment cannot support all members of a growing population,
5. THEN those members of the population with less-adaptive traits (determined by the environment) will die out, and
6. THEN those members with more-adaptive traits (determined by the environment) will thrive

The term "survival of the fittest" comes from economics, not biology. It's a convenient shorthand description, but it is NOT TRUE.

 

[catbasket]

Cheers delphi_ote, you've taught me something I didn't know (and Wikipedia tells me the term was coined by Herbert Spencer)!

 

[Dr Adequate]

The example I always use is the salmon. There is no selective benefit to surviving after they spawn, so they don't. This is a product of natural selection. It would be more accurate to speak of "successful reproduction of the successful reproducers".

 

[delphi_ote]

The example I always use is the salmon. There is no selective benefit to surviving after they spawn, so they don't. This is a product of natural selection. It would be more accurate to speak of "successful reproduction of the successful reproducers".

Or in some cases "more successful reproduction of the more successful reproducers." It just rolls right off the tongue...

 

[HypnoPsi]

In effect I am saying that people who look no further than a supernatural explanation when they hit a hard spot are not competent to practice medicine or science or perhaps even raise kids. It is axiomatic and does not need proof.

1984 here we come!

Why would a belief in God mean someone looks no further when they hit a hard spot? That's "god of the gaps-ism". Being a theist or trancendentalist (like a Christian, Buddhist or whatever) really just means lacking the belief that matter has substance (though not structure or continuity) independent of the realness/beingness we are aware of in consciousness. It doesn't actively mean promoting "god of the gaps-ism".

But what of radical materialism actively promoting the idea that unknowable "matter" ultimately produces consciousness? Why should that be acceptable?
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HypnoPsi

 

[delphi_ote]

The same way you will know you actually found one.

I've shown you many examples in other threads, but you deny they are really examples. If you can't tell me what would constitute an example, how do I know you won't keep moving the goal post?

 

[HypnoPsi]

I nominate Rupert Sheldrake.

Why? One of your poster-boys, Daniel Dennett, is just Sheldrake's views taken to their logical conclusion. While Sheldrakes "morphic fields" seem to be about little more than genetics, Dennett went for the gold with thermostats being 'intentional systems' as a metaphor for the sodium-potassium pump in neurons.

What Dennett's fogotten is that everything is binary because nothing is at absolute zero and for every action there is an equal or an opposite reaction. He's ended up with something very much like animism, panpsychism or pantheism himself as soon as he tried to apply reductionism to consciousness.
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HypnoPsi

 

[HypnoPsi]

I think the point here is: can you teach ID in such a way that you don't promote ID?

yes you can, I nwas taught hollocaust denial in school, but not as part of my history class (it was as part of RE) baiscaily you teach kids that a group of people belive X, and then explain to them why X is not supported by the evidence,

So, not only are you going to insist that ID is not taught in biology you also want to see it actively debunked in some other class like modern studies, philosophy or RE?

Methinks you might want to try for a goal that is a little bit more realistic rather than trying to effect a second US civil war.
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HypnoPsi