Latest Challenges to the Teaching of Evolution

I know you already are aware that virtually all the Bible myths are drawn from earlier other non-Christian myths.

So I guess God was dictating stories to pre-Christian and pre-Hebrew secretaries. Or, like the great flood, they were oral histories passed down from actual natural events, happening long before the Old Testament was written. Plato seems to have picked some up as well, like the eruption of Thera for Atlantis (which also wiped out the Minoan civilization in a tidal wave) and an actual historical battle for the city of Troy which had been handed down in oral accounts.

JRR Tolkien pulled together myths from several cultures to make a more complete British mythology in "The Lord of the Rings," and although he was one of the translators of the King James versions of the Bible and, of course, a Christian, there is no religion in LOTR. His contemporary, C. S. Lewis, did show the influence of the Christian religion in the Narnia books.

LW, Your mention of brought back some memory of our visit to Crete many decades ago where we visited Knossos where we heard about the great flood when the volcano of Santorini erupted. We were also told the Minoans were also one of the earliest civilizations in their time. I can still mentally picture some of the structures of Knossos even today.

ci. We all know about your mental pictures from long ago. And they tell me to start a new thread and just read these two on Challenges to Evolution.

We are still waiting for an explanation of the changes in offspring which better fit them to do most of the shagging? A description of the changes after they have happened might be useful for visual aid manufactures and such-like but it isn't science anymore than remeniscing about a long-gone pollution orgy is.

Darwin said that chance was not the only cause of the changes and he went out of his way to qualify "chance" as "unknown cause" rather than "random cause".

Atheists have objected to Darwin because he simply moved the Creator further away and fundamentalists object to Darwin because he moved the Creator so far off that She was no longer useful for religious purposes.

(We should go down on our knees in thanks for that--Ed.)

The atheists make no sense at all because they can't abolish an entity they have no conception of. On the other hand religious purposes can be quite useful if properly managed. The atheists needs must do without such uses.

With Christianity having outcropped in this cornucopia of goodies where having to economise on pedicures creates wailing and gnashing of teeth such uses are not to be dismissed lightly. One chap I know cancelled his order for 2 grand's worth of garden architecture because he was "worried about the future".

His wife had ordered it mind you.

It was a deck to go on one end of the sculpted pond, with illuminated waterfall cascading down in imitation, in real genuine stone set by some builders in a likeness of a photo of a real waterfall in the Dales, of the very same waterfall, in which some carp wallow packed to the gills with the carp food supplied hourly and on which, the deck, were to be placed two sun-loungers and a barbecue grill. I almost wept. When I wrung my hands really disconsolately my mates in the corner cracked up.

No, Darwin did not qualify all chance as "unknown causes." He used the term in Chapter 6, Difficulties on Theory, in regards to characteristics that dissapeared in a species and then reappeared later with no apparent use. That is exactly the chapter where he discusses parts of his theory that need further study.

Going back to basic Darwin and insinuating this minor change in the whole scheme of life was by a designer and then declaring it a final conclusion is typical. There is nowhere where Darwin states that all life was created by unknown cause, not by random cause.

Scott to appear on Science Friday


NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott is scheduled to be a guest on the first hour of NPR's Science Friday show for April 10, 2009. Science Friday's description of the segment:

In late March, the Texas State Board of Education held several days of debate over new curriculum requirements scheduled to take effect in 2010. The school board eventually decided to accept evolution as accepted, mainstream science " but the standards were modified to instruct that students examine "all sides of scientific evidence" on a range of topics. Critics of the school board say that phrases such as "all sides" and "examine the strengths and weaknesses" (a phrase rejected by the board after debate) are code words that would allow the teaching of creationism in the science classroom. The large state of Texas is considered a crucial battleground in the fight over teaching evolution, as its purchasing power gives the state's curriculum standards a good deal of influence over the content of textbooks sold around the country. We'll find out how the topic of evolution will be taught under the new standards.

The segment airs and streams between 2:00 and 3:00 p.m. (Eastern) on many NPR stations across the country; a list of stations is available on the show's website.

I didn't say he did. He said that "chance" does not mean "no cause" . And that it was a term which "serves to acknowledge plainly our ignorance of the cause of each particular variation". Which ignorance still exists and will always do. And in the sexual selection side of matters the ignorance is chosen to hold to a bit of bliss.

Despite having said that he generally speaks as if the useful (italics mine) variations, an anthropomorphic phrase, which Nature selects from the mass of useless (my italics) ones were thrown up at random. The one meaning of "chance", Darwin's first clarification, allows for an intelligent designer and the other doesn't.

He also wrote in Life and Letters, vol I, p 304-



Which allows for an intelligent designer.

And he ends Origin with this sentence-



Allowing for an intelligent designer again.

And Darwin's claim that the geological record is reliable when it speaks to him and suddenly "imperfect" when it doesn't is iffy to say the least.

So Darwin did not rob mankind of his superior status in Nature nor level him with the beasts, nor cancel his divine and spiritual status nor his free will nor his hopes of immortality. How could he when he uses words like "beautiful" and "wonderful". Only atheists insist on those things. And they cannot in all good conscience use words such as "beautiful" and "wonderful" or any other words implying a spiritual aspect to man. They have denied that.

And that is why the anti-IDers continuous weaving of creationism and ID into one concept is so utterly stupid and the mark of someone who only glanced at these matters and has drawn subjective conclusions from them. To make a buck I presume. Hopefully. What else could a militant materialist have in mind?

And by the end of his life Darwin admitted that he had lost interest in music and poetry and art. Which is logical enough if the randomness of chance is accepted. The two definitions of "chance" are a cause of much confusion when too little is known about this subject. Putting the "unknown cause" definition on Ignore is a mere conceit.

Darwin has nothing to do with atheism. He's just a stick they use to beat the pious religionists with. Then they can keep on sinning justifiably. So the challenge to teaching evolution concerns the motives of those taking Darwin's name in vain in order to push out some other boat. I have discussed those at length throughout these threads. They are those of people who benefit from widespread sinning. Obviously. Think of the plight of judges if no sinning was taking place. Especially in PA where two judges are up for getting fees for sending kids to jail.

I don't know a single atheist who uses Darwin for an excuse to be a non believer. I do believe knowledge of evolution helps in the fight against organized religion, since it debunks certain myths, for instance.

The IDers are not purporting what Darwin stated regarding his sustained reference to a Creator, they are distancing themselves by claiming that all species appeared at the same time, designed and plopped down like setting up a Chess board with players. They do not accept the creation of one or a few elemental forms of life that evolved. Their egos won't allow for that -- they will never accept that we evolved from a lower form of life. I've been stating that throughout this and other discussions, and stated that they'd have more chance selling their concept if a designer planted the seeds and let them grow without controlling their evolution. The only difference is when. The Creationist still stick steadfast to approximately 6,000 year time of creation where all living things were dropped onto the Earth, the Grand Canyon was carelessly left lying around (either as is or by a really speedy and violent Colorado River carving through rock in time to get discovered), the oceans were formed exactly as they are today, the Black Sea was dug out by Yahweh's hand and he had water left over from the oceans to fill it, the British Isles were never connected to the continent (no Pangaea), and on and on, ad absurdum.

The statements by Darwin never suggested that natural selection was not a random process. He perhaps wanted to do some damage repair and get the fundamentalist Christians off his back.

That we have all evolved is a very simple concept. All one needs to do is look at all warm blooded animals and see that we all essentially have the same biology with some variations on shape and makeup. Skin and bones with some abilities at sensory perception are the basis with many variations in types and classes depending on the environment.

That's news to me. What is time anyway? Entropy?

Nobody can prove that P.H.Gosse's Omphalos: An Attempt to untie the Geologic Knot (1857), is untrue. Not that I believe it I suppose I need to say to avoid any misunderstandings. But nobody can prove it wrong. However mad it is. Assuming madness consists of logical inferences drawn from unreal premisses.

Hear yea here yea and so sayeth spendiose

Well, so sayeth the experts (specialists) which Pope Spendi is not:

Scott Atran, anthropologist and psychologist, wrote: "Nothing indicates that people who believe that life arose by chance also believe that morality is haphazard."

Sam Clifford, a high-school biology teacher from Georgetown, TX, said: that intelligent design is "a piecemeal, haphazard concoction" that he does not have time for.

Jerry A. Coyne, evolutionary biologist, wrote:
"Not only is ID markedly inferior to Darwinism at explaining and understanding nature but in many ways it does not even fulfill the requirements of a scientific theory."


"The geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky famously declared, 'Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.' One might add that nothing in biology makes sense in the light of intelligent design."

Richard Dawkins, leading evolutionary biologist, wrote:
"Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity"
"The supernatural explanation fails to explain because it ducks the responsibility to explain itself."

Daniel C. Dennett, a philosopher, wrote: "Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists, but intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything at all."

Marc D. Hauser, evolutionary psychologist wrote:
"What counts as a controversy must be delineated with care, as we want students to distinguish between scientific challenges and sociopolitical ones."
"Incredulity doesn’t count as an alternative position or critique."


Stuart A. Kauffman, theoretical biologist wrote: "To state that a given organ is so improbable that it requires design is just ill founded. The argument uses standard probability, which does not apply to the evolution of the biosphere."

Leonard Krishtalka, director of the University of Kansas Museum of Natural History. Referring to ID, he said, "That's a religious belief, and science has no comment on that." Referring to the lack of understanding of the evolution of a living cell, Dr. Kristalka commented: "The absence of knowledge does not mean the answer is a supernatural creator."

Steven Pinker, Psychologist, wrote: "An evolutionary understanding of the human condition, far from being incompatible with a moral sense, can explain why we have one."

Lisa Randall, physicist, wrote: "We don’t have an intelligent designer (ID), we have a bungling consistent evolver (BCE). Or maybe an adaptive changer (AC). In fact, what we have in the most economical interpretation is, of course, evolution."

Scott D. Sampson, paleontologist, wrote: "Rather than removing meaning from life, an evolutionary perspective can and should fill us with a sense of wonder at the rich sequence of natural systems that gave us birth and continues to sustain us."

Dr. John Staver, a professor at Kansas State University professor and co-chair of the committee that crafted the new science standards for Kansas public schools, described ID as a "fringe idea at the moment, and not one being discussed all that much in the scientific community."
bullet Tim D. White, paleontologist, wrote: "A denial of evolution"however motivated"is a denial of evidence, a retreat from reason to ignorance."

Yeah--and JS Mill said that any position held by large numbers of people over long periods of time can't be casually dismissed.

And he's more famous that that lot.

It wasn't casual dismissal. It's a brief few sentences by evolution scientists, et al, who have written volumes of materials. Of course, one can't casually dismiss religions, but they can ignore them.

Splendiose, you sure know how to use religious science to prove what you believe.. they must have big casks of liquid faith at your pub.

That's a casual dismissal. It's a counter-jumpers retreat into ignorance. There's no such thing as reason. It was blown away from Kant onwards. A materialist talking about reason. Whatever next. He's behind my great, great, great, great, grannie's times. On what evidence will he deny the Omphalos of Gosse?

Where is his evidence of the mechanisms of transformation. He's just treating what he says happened as a datum. Like seeing the trains coming and going without any reference as to the how.

How much intellectual effort does his statement imply.

And using "IDiot" is as casual as casual gets.

And since when have people not been ignorant? What does ignorant mean? One supposes he means ignorant of what his compartment consists of and of the fact that there's a myriad of other compartments of which he is ignorant. He's relying on ignorance to make statements of that nature.

He can't even use his own language properly.

How can you ignore religion? Wall Street is closed for Easter isn't it? And at Christmas I expect he will have a paper hat on.

Im here to state emphatically that Wall Street rarely wears a paper hat anymore, he lets the Brits look like idiots with that one.
Why not bring up Magrathea while talking about the silly works of "Lastweekism". Your attempts at arguments get even more desparate as you grow older. Do you compose these posts in the rising wave of inebriation or on the wave of decline as you sober up?

Just curious which is it.

Neither. You can't get inebriated on the small amounts of liquid hops
that I hurtle past the windpipe every night as I listen to my fellow topers inform me in the most pompous manner things which I already know and indeed most people know and have done for some considerable time. That the nights are drawing out for example or that the tomato seedlings which were an inch high the other day are now two inches high or that as natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable modifications , each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to take the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved parent or other less favoured forms with which it comes into competion and other such like interesting fact. If I remind the diddi that British immigration policy is based precisely on such well known principles I am looked at as if I am one leg short of a pantie. It's a waste of time bringing up Mr Gorer's thesis that a landscape acts on human beings in a certain way and that it's a slow process and accurate scientific observations of the character a landscape produces is best done by studying those races which have inhabited them and adapted to them over unimaginable stretches of time, as Mr Darwin often said, or words to that effect. I don't know if it is true but it certainly works on idealistic politicians suddenly transferred to Whitehall or Washington where they are said to "go native" at an alarming velocity. I think that religious sensibilities do help to inhibit the process, somewhat imperfectly I'll admit, but without them one might easily assume a degree of loss of control.

It turned out the other night that the crust of the earth is a vast museum although it was allowed, somewhat sheepishly, and after being pressed, that the collections have only been made at long intervals of time immensly remote it seems.

One might easily become enlightened in pubs. The true nature of the female of the species is often on display towards the end of the day when a few units have caused the decorum so patiently learned in schools to fall away to a certain extent.

I'm more inclined to compose my posts in the light my piercing intellect and capacity for critical analysis brings to the illumination of the passing scene in all its stark, staring glory.

sPendi's pathetically pompous pontificating has pulled the plug on our patience.

He Kant understand scientific logic and reason.