Intelligent Design Theory: Science or Religion?

wandeljw wrote:

VIRGINIA UPDATE

Quote:

Bible Battle
(Donna C. Gregory, Richmond Observer, July 9, 2007)

After losing the battle to add Intelligent Design to the science curriculum at county schools, several residents are now asking the Chesterfield School Board to consider allowing students to study the Bible as an elective.

Apparently they've given up on trying to cloak it in Intelligent Design and now they're just going straight at it.

Threats by religious group spark probe at CU-Boulder
(By The Denver Post, 07/10/2007)

University of Colorado police are investigating a series of threatening messages and documents e-mailed to and slipped under the door of evolutionary biology labs on the Boulder campus.

The messages included the name of a religious-themed group and addressed the debate between evolution and creationism, CU police Cmdr. Brad Wiesley said. Wiesley would not identify the group named because police are still investigating.

"There were no overt threats to anybody specifically by name," Wiesley said. "It basically said anybody who doesn't believe in our religious belief is wrong and should be taken care of."

The first threat was e-mailed to the labs - part of CU's ecology and evolutionary biology department housed in the Ramaley Biology building - on Friday. Wiesley said Monday that morning staff members found envelopes with the threatening documents slipped under the lab doors.
Wiesley said police will have increased patrols in and around CU science buildings.

"What's written on paper is what's written on paper," Wiesley said. "One of the question marks here is who wrote it and who delivered it."

rosborne979 wrote:

Apparently they've given up on trying to cloak it in Intelligent Design and now they're just going straight at it.

Funny observation, rosborne, and completely true!

Another Crime Story Involving Evolution Debate:

Quote:

Threats by religious group spark probe at CU-Boulder
(By The Denver Post, 07/10/2007)

"There were no overt threats to anybody specifically by name," Wiesley said. "It basically said anybody who doesn't believe in our religious belief is wrong and should be taken care of."

They need to teach whatever they want about religion and ID in their home and churches. Elective, my foot; we already lack enough funding in our schools to provide the arts.

We should stop thinking of people as "this religion" or "that religion" and start thinking of them as a crackpot or not.

New sub-atomic particle confounds theory
13:38 01 May 2003
NewScientist.com news service
Jenny Hogan

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Ds paper, Giorgi et al
BaBar
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Quarks
A sub-atomic particle predicted to exist by physicists has been detected for the first time in a particle accelerator in California - but its properties do not fit with theory.

The particle, called Ds (2317), was discovered in the debris of collisions between other sub-atomic particles. But it has baffled and intrigued the 500 physicists working on the project.

They think the particle belongs to a family of eight particles known as the charm-strange mesons. Four of them have been found so far, all precisely fulfilling the theorists' predictions. But the mass of the newly found Ds particle is significantly smaller than expected, casting doubt on current theories of the nature of matter.

The discrepancy means physicists are confronted with a particle they predicted but cannot explain, says the University of Pisa's Marcello Giorgi, leader of the international BaBar project that made the discovery. "This has never happened before," he says. "It is very, very exciting".

Charm and strange
The predictions for the particle's mass were based on the theory of quark interactions. Quarks are the subatomic particles which make up, for example, protons and neutrons. These nuclear particles each contain three quarks, but mesons contain only two.

Charm and strange are two different types of quark, and it is combinations of these and their antimatter counterparts that make up the charm-strange mesons. They are held together by special force-carrying particles called gluons.

Modelling the strength of the force allows the mass of the quark conglomerates to be predicted. If the particle found is indeed the Ds - a charm quark paired with an anti-strange quark - it should have a mass of about 2500 mega electron-volts. But the particle they have found is 10 per cent lighter. Until now, says Giorgi "the theory has predicted everything very precisely, but this time it is way out".

The result was described to an audience of physicists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre in California this week. If it is accepted, the discovery will mean revising the current understanding of quarks. But it has been positively received by other researchers.

Four-quark state
Roy Briere, an experimental particle physicist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told New Scientist: "It certainly looks real - the result is surprising, but they've done all the right things with their data."

Briere is collaborating in an experiment called CLEO, which also collects information on charm quarks. "My experiment is in principle in a position to confirm this - there are several groups in the world that could, and we are all working on it" he says.

While a failure of theory is the most likely explanation for the Ds particle's low mass, it is possible that the particle is in fact a combination of four quarks. But four-quark states have never been detected and the experimental evidence suggesting they might exist is far from convincing.

Giorgi will be leading further experiments over the next few weeks to probe the new Ds particle by studying its decay products. He will also look for other particles that clash with the existing theory.

Theorists are already pondering what revisions may be required to accommodate the light Ds particle, says Briere: "I've already heard hall-way talk of papers". He is looking forward to heated debate at the next big particle physics conference, which starts on 19 May in New York.

STOP PRESS.

Complexity further reduced.

Quote:

New sub-atomic particle confounds theory
13:38 01 May 2003
NewScientist.com news service
Jenny Hogan