Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

Would you be happy if we were all like you ? God help us. Are you feeling lonely and want company in your arrogance and poor logic ?

Youre dodging the issue of who decides whom is a troll.

Troll.

That is a statement not a question. You tell us all the positive things that all sciences have done on this planet.

If you can provide numbers maimed or killed by scientific weapons, including those in religious wars and political persecutions it would be greatly appreciated.

Religion has killed far fewer people than politics. Lets do away with politics...we can fight each other for supremacy, and science will provide the weapons.

But only in scientific causes, not religious ones, right ?

They are all inclusive.

Are you trying to get us to piss our pants ci?

A "non-profit" organisation that provided you, and presumably others, with a "pretty good income", entertainment and self-validation. All three selfish and thus "profit".

And that after emotions are in or out depending whether you're on a Florence Nightingale kick or a materialist severity and you're an evolutionist helping the stragglers up the slope to get a round of applause.

You just make it up as you go along. Poor old fm with you as a partner.

The "developmentally disabled" should be looked after by government agencies funded by tax increases and not be at the mercy of you being at a loose end and dignifying them with your profitable patronage.

Any proposition for which no conceivable test can be designed doesn't belong in the sciences. ID is one of those, evolution isn't.

From Richard Feynman's "The Meaning of It All", p. 39 in my edition.

All religions share this awe at the cosmos. But science discovers and tests, e.g., the inverse square law for gravity, while such topics are beyond the scope of religion, which is based on faith. Test and experiment belong to science. I see no contradiction between ID and any scientific theory, including evolution. Can we test for evolutionary processes in the laryngeal nerve? I don't see why not, or why we have to introduce a deus ex machina to do it.

Thanks for responding, High Seas. I agree that intelligent design can not be tested scientifically.

Sometimes I come across actual attempts by proponents of intelligent design to write scientific papers that could be subject to "peer review." Dr. Loennig's paper is one of the few I have come across.

The author you quote seems to believe otherwise; this from p. 11 on your link:

If I followed his reasoning, he assumes evolution to be a linear process, with each transition node being to a more efficient (more perfect) state. However I don't know anyone who claims linearity in evolutionary processes: whales, e.g., left the oceans about same time we did, but then decided to go back to it. So demonstrating that giraffe nerves haven't developed in an ever-more-perfectly linear fashion (if he's really demonstrated that much, as he asserts) proves exactly nothing - certainly not that ID has been tested and found superior to the alternative hypothesis. ID isn't testable by definition.

Dr. Loennig's employer, The Max Planck Institute in Bonn, Germany requires him to issue a disclaimer that his views do not represent the views of the institute.

I would say HS that, "seems inadequate" , is a satisfactorily sloppy conclusion to come to after such a sanctimonious spiel of soft sentimental conceit as that lot is. One feels as if one ought to take out an onion and play a mournful version of Love's Old Sweet Song on the violin. The whole thing is ridiculous.

If you think evolution can be proved or tested what is your explanation of the continuous and expensive search for ways of testing it and proving it. There is no army of "scientists" scouring the world to prove those things that can be tested and proved. What test have you in mind? A "conceivable test" is not just a phrase.

The laryngeal nerve is an irreducible complexity no matter how many weavers of the woof and weft get it onto their needlecraft frame.

Not before time too. A prestigious scientific institution like that can't afford to become associated with nonsense.

And Science can't afford to be associated with you silly sods on here whose only interest is undermining the Church's sexual discipline presumably having been compromised on it personally.

It's hard enough as it is keeping the strong and powerful at bay without giving them the green light of evolutionary principles taught by barely qualified individuals with a similar axe to grind.

This is nonsense of breathtaking proportions - testing and proving is all that scientists ever do. The essence of science is the repeatable experiment.

Separately - kindly don't address me. My feelings were deeply hurt when, upon being informed that I subscribe to the "Protestant heresy", >
http://able2know.org/topic/121621-334
> you fled in horror after putting up a smokescreen to cover your ignominious retreat. Go "get a room" with another lady, please! <G>

Cn you summarize the issues of the laryngeaql nerve that are in dispute? There are many other human body parts that seem totally "jiggered with" rather than designed but Im not familiar with this one.

Wandel's article concerned the laryngeal nerve of the giraffe - lots more neck than we have, so presumably easier to study. Feynman's motto:

One of NEil Shubins critiques of the "Implied design" of the laryngel nerve paths is the apparent lack of efficiency in the present setup in mammals (He says that, in fish, where the breathing apparatus is gill originating, such a fishy structure would make sense) However, in mammals the path of the laryngeal nerve leads to some serious potential health risks, not the least of which is hiccups.

I will try to summarize the conflict in views. Earlier I provided a link to Dr. Loennig's ID interpretation.

The laryngeal nerve is long and somehow unnecessarily loops through parts of the mammalian anatomy. Dawkins and Coyne have always used it as an example of bad design. They assert that its configuration is evidence of the fish to mammal transition that occurred millions of years ago.

Dr. Loennig believes the design is purposeful and a reflection of an intelligent designer. Although the route of the laryngeal nerve is circuitous, the nerve has branches that ennervate additional organs such as the trachea and esophagus. Branches of the laryngeal nerve also ennervate "cardiac fillaments." Therefore, Dr. Loennig claims the design brilliantly performs many functions.

Listen HS--I know what science is and does. All that's happening here is that a smattering of knowledge is being parleyed into something or other. If you want some science this is not the place to come to. This battle ends with barricades.

I will accept that I didn't phrase what I said as well as I might have done but you have missed the point. Testing for evolution is an ideal subject for certain types of people. That it can't be tested for or proved renders it open-ended (good for muncho grosso funding). All you need do is try to test for it and pen scientific seeming papers about your efforts and away you go. Holidays abroad, tents with pretty research assistants, boozing etc and videos when you are at "work". Stick it to a dumb audience which is eager, rabid sometimes like with Dawkins, to have the Church's teaching on sexual matters scoffed off the scene, and it's a job for life. What else in science obsesses the laity as this subject does. It can't be because it has any interest in science, a dirty business, because it's members would have become scientists if they had have.

I meant that there isn't an army of scientists climbing up and down the Tower of Pisa trying to repeat and confirm Galileo's findings. Or that acids turn litmus paper red. The subject of evolution can never be used to test irreducible complexity even if every expert in the world testifies with the Bible in his hand that it can be. That's the beauty of it. It's the perfect subject for the failed scientist and the wannabee thought scientific. It has evolved. The sons of gentry, in trade or otherwise, used to do it. Now it's people who majored in sums.

And what interest does anybody have in testing for it when it's staring you in the face and we are slap bang in the process, like passengers on a train. Some of us think that if our religion is set aside the train will be one we don't want to be on. The interest is motivated from another quarter.

The odd thing is that with all the scientific breeding of racehorses the times for the races since timing began are the same as they were then. And the animals are so tender now that they would soon be dead if turned out in the wild.

Irreducible complexity is an asymptote. However near to proving there's no such thing as irreducibly complex they get the distance they still have to go gets bigger. What they should do is have licences for testing for evolution and fix it so they can be handed down from generation to generation like land or securities.

If you come on this thread I will address you as I think fit. My barricade doesn't fall down because you pull your bottom lip.

I can't make head or tail of your comments about my posts regarding the Venus of Willendorf or what my "ignominious retreat" is all about. Perhaps you will explain. I look forward with anticpation, Madam, to you doing so.

You post said absolutely nothing of import. It's full of bull **** and nonsense.

That's a clincher eh? There goes the anti-ID scientific. No wonder real scientists keep out of the way of this lot.