Press Release: SICB Boycotts Louisiana

I hope other scientific societies will soon follow suit. Fellow Brunonian Bobby Jindal - who was a biology concentrator at Brown - should have known better.

Speaking of Brown, I am delighted to report this wonderful bit of news:

Today at the AAAS meeting in Chicago, Brown cell biologist Ken Miller will be the recipient of its annual Public Understanding of Science and Technology Award:

http://news.aaas.org/2009/02112008-aaas-public-understanding-of-science-and-technology-award-presented.shtml

He was nominated in part, due to his memorable testimony at the 2005 Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial on behalf of the plaintiffs.

On a more personal note, I remain delighted to have assisted Ken in his very first debate against a creationist, which was held many years ago at Brown's hockey rink. As the sole "evolutionist" on an ad hoc campus "Origins Committee",
I saw Ken deliver a crushing blow to his opponent, Dr. Henry Morris, Vice President of the Institute for Creation Research.

John Kwok -

100% agreement.

By the way, what will you do if Jindal is the Republican presidential nominee in 2012?

Oh GOSH it's the EVIL SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY exercising CENSORSHIP again!

In all seriousness, the Darwin-basher blogosphere is going to howl over this. Not that the howling is any any big deal as such -- it's just that they're predictable in that way.

Cheers -- MrG / http://www.vectorsite.net/gblog.html

Reed, your header should say "SICB," not "SCIB."

harold said: John Kwok - 100% agreement. By the way, what will you do if Jindal is the Republican presidential nominee in 2012?

I can see Jindal as the lever (unintentional) that pries apart the bizarre union of the Christian Theocratic and Libertarian halves of the Republican party.
Amazing they've stayed attached at the hip this long.

Harold, if Jindal is reading this thread, he should take seriously these remarks of mine in rebuttal to Casey Luskin's latest example of breathtaking inanity; a senseless rant about Darwin Day that was published online at US News and World Report:

ID has had twenty years to prove itself to be scientific

IDiots (Intelligent Design advocates) like Casey Luskin have had twenty years to demonstrate that Intelligent Design is valid science. However, we have not seen any valid research programs from leading Intelligent Design advocates like mathematician and philosopher William Dembski and biochemist Michael Behe. We have not seen any testable predictions made by IDiots demonstrating how Intelligent Design does a better job than contemporary evolutionary theory - which admittedly is still quite imperfect - in explaining the origins, history and current composition of Earth's biodiversity. Instead, all we get from the likes of Dembski and Behe and Luskin are gross distortions, serious omissions, and abysmal errors which demonstrate not only their woeful ignorance of biology, but also, of mathematics, especially probability and statistics, and indeed, much of science too. Since Intelligent Design advocates like Luskin devote their time to ample lying and dissembling, then we ought to view them correctly as mendacious intellectual pornographers who excel in successful promotion of the mendacious intellectual pornography known as Intelligent Design creationism.

We live in a most remarkable time in which ample data from sciences unknown to Darwin like genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and evolutionary developmental biology (better known as "evo - devo") are strongly supporting every day, the predictions made by Darwin and Wallace when they developed independently the theory of evolution via natural selection back in the mid 19th Century. But you would never know that to be true from the inane commentary written by Luskin and his fellow Dishonesty Institute mendacious intellectual pornographers. Moreover, these new sciences offer the promise of yielding an "Extended Modern Synthesis" which may allow us to understand extinction, especially the role of mass extinctions in radically reshaping Earth's biodiversity not just once, but at least seven times in the past 550-odd million years, and the importance of long-term evolutionary stasis.

US News and World Report should be ashamed of itself for becoming a platform for the gross lies and exaggerations written by a mendacious intellectual pornographer such as Casey Luskin. I strongly doubt this fine magazine would provide a similar platform to an unrepentant Nazi or Communist. Then why should Luskin be granted this opportunity?

Of course Jindal knows better - he's been bombarded with it ever since the bill was introduced, and his education reinforces that.

Maybe we could recognize that the prime directive for any politician is to be elected and re-elected, and if his constituents are yahoos, he'd better stroke them to get votes. Jindal is not stupid - he knows the courts will strike down any effort to implement this policy so it will never actually get into practice, and he knows he can blame the "godless courts" for this, preserving both Louisiana's public education and his re-electability.

More abstractly, one could argue that public officials are elected to support and enact the will of the people, even when the people are stupid and what they demand injures them. Jundal may be taking this principle seriously (though I suspect Jindal is himself a creationist).

IDiots (Intelligent Design advocates) like Casey Luskin have had twenty years to demonstrate that Intelligent Design is valid science.

— John Kwol

Flint said: (though I suspect Jindal is himself a creationist).

Oh GOSH it’s the EVIL SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY exercising CENSORSHIP again! In all seriousness, the Darwin-basher blogosphere is going to howl over this. Not that the howling is any any big deal as such – it’s just that they’re predictable in that way.

— mrg(iml8)

I can see Jindal as the lever (unintentional) that pries apart the bizarre union of the Christian Theocratic and Libertarian halves of the Republican party. Amazing they’ve stayed attached at the hip this long.

— chuck

Not to worry. The Dishonesty Institute will call upon their 700 club, the infamous anti-evolution list (including 4 dead people) and will replace the SICB meeting in Louisiana.

Seriously, it's what Louisiana deserves. The same should go for any other state that passes these stupid laws.

I suspect he’s a YE creationist.

— chuck

Dream Ticket - Jindal - Palin 2012.
We could all laugh at the debates featuring questions about exorcisms - v witch expulsions.
More discussions about "The Country Of Africa" could be fun. Also, in this great country of ours too.

The question for discussion before us today: Casey Luskin - Dishonest D I Hack, or Just Another Lyer for Jesus?

"A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." --- Charles Darwin

Given his biology background he probably knows that YEC, and most versions of OEC (those that deny common descent), are simply unsupportable

Let me get this straight. You guys are endorsing the SICB’s pouty little economic-blackmail tactic?

Flint said: Morton's Demon is their only friend, but a powerful friend indeed. We regard their efforts as dishonest, but they can't see it that way. They KNOW KNOW KNOW KNOW that they're right. Doubt is incomprehensible.

I wrote:

"The irony is that this 'censorship' is the action of the free-market that the theocratic far-right pretends to favor. But they really don’t, especially when they demand 'handouts' in the form of teaching nonsense that hasn’t earned the right to be taught."

And just s few comments later, FL, the hysterical "liberal" whines:

"Let me get this straight. You guys are endorsing the SICB’s pouty little economic-blackmail tactic?"

I hope everyone's irony meter was turned off.

I keep saying this: these folks are not liars. Liars are people who KNOW they’re not saying the truth. These folks believe trash and think it’s treasure.

— mrg(iml8)

FL said: ***

"A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." --- Charles Darwin

*** Memo to SICB and ASBMB: The people are against you. Better think things over! FL

Unfortunately, the quote is glaringly out of context. Here are Darwin's actual words from the introduction of On the Origin of Species:

This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors will have crept in, though I hope I have always been cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this. For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be here done. Charles Darwin On the Origin of Species

By replacing a semi-colon with a period, the first part of Darwin's original sentence has been deceptively changed into what appears to be a complete thought. Contrary to what the DI would have us believe, Darwin was not referring to a debate between evolution and some purported alternative explanation. He was referring to his own ideas concerning evolution and lamenting the fact that he knew of so many supportive observations that he could not possibly present them all - even in his 500+ page "abstract." Personally, I think that it is quite fitting that the folks at the Discovery Institute would "honor" Charles Darwin's birthday by actively misrepresenting something that he wrote and then using it to further their own anti-evolution agenda. It is precisely this kind of hypocritical and unreflective behavior that exemplifies their twisted sense of "honor."

FL said: Let me get this straight. You guys are endorsing the SICB's pouty little economic-blackmail tactic?...

FL said:

"A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question." --- Charles Darwin

A fuller context: This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors have crept in, though I hope I have always been cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice. No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail all the facts; with references on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this. For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be here done. - First edition, quoted from p 66-7 of the Penguin edition. By the sixth edition, the exact phrasing "is here impossible" has been inserted. [Editor's note: Since the quote mine dated the reference to 1859, that necessarily implies the first edition. It is a minor difference in the quote but further evidence of the sloppy or, more correctly, nonexistent scholarship of creationists. The different editions can be found on the web here: first edition (p. 2), and the sixth edition (pp. 1-2).] Darwin originally intended to have a large and academic book, with footnotes and exhaustive factual illustrations. His plan was defeated when Wallace sent his outline of the theory, so Darwin had to publish this "abstract" of the larger essay. It was eventually published in the 1970s, over a century later.* The phrase quoted is an apology for the paucity of facts used in the argument. The "both sides" are, of course, special creation and evolution. - John Wilkins Source

Frank J said: But even there, may be a "noble lie", like telling fairy tales to children.

So tell us, FL, what sort of educational, economic, scientific and other societal benefits can come from mandating the teaching Creationism and or Intelligent Design Theory?

people who cannot tell the difference between day and night if it just happens to be inconvenient to do so

FL,

Let me get this straight. You thought that there would not be a price to pay when Jindal signed the Louisiana Science Education Act? You think that this will be the only price? You think that there will be no other consequences and repurcussions?

Keep up the pathetic quotemining, it reveals the moral bankruptcy of your position.

DS said: FL, Let me get this straight. You thought that there would not be a price to pay when Jindal signed the Louisiana Science Education Act? You think that this will be the only price? You think that there will be no other consequences and repurcussions?

My heart's with SICB, but I wonder if a case could be made that they should go where they're needed most- that Louisiana is in need of the Light more than Utah, and their presence would be a witness to truth.

FL said: What? You want to see worse Zogby Poll numbers than what's currently on the table?? http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/3/2009/02/10/new_zogby_poll_shows_overwhelming_suppor_1 Therefore (in Sixties parlance), evolutionists had better "get hip to the jive", and soon! ... Memo to SICB and ASBMB: The people are against you. Better think things over! FL

Flint said: This is unfair. Convenience is irrelevant.

Memo to FL: you’re quotemining.

The “both sides” are, of course, special creation and evolution. --- John Wilkins.

Now if you want pitiful, ID has failed to produce a single piece of data in peer-reviewed scientific research papers. What’s up with that? Conspiracy? Incompetence? Inquiring minds want to know, dammit!

So Fl stoops even lower in a desperate attempt to defend his pathetic quotemine.

Just for the record, it wouldn't matter in the least even if FL was completely correct (which he most certainly is not). Even if Darwin completely rejected the theory of evolution it would not be a problem in the slightest for any modern evolutionary biologist. Fl is the one who worships figureheads, real scientists do not need to do that to study reality, they merely follow the evidence. In this case the evidence is clear, evolution is true. We don't need no stinkin figurehead to worship. Fl needs to understand that others have moved past his narrow view of reality and his need for a figurehead to worship.

May Darwin bless you and keep you until we meet again.

By the way, what will you do if Jindal is the Republican presidential nominee in 2012?

“A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” — Charles Darwin

FL said: The fact is that even though Darwin's statement appears in the larger context of an apology Darwin was making for his book for the apparent paucity of facts therein, it doesn't change the actual meaning of Mr. Darwin's quoted sentence itself. Imagine that. Darwin still meant exactly what he said in that one sentence.

FL: Therefore (in Sixties parlance), evolutionists had better “get hip to the jive”, and soon!

FL said: Evolution is your god,

Darwin is your bible,

and now your "church" is being overrun by heretics who just want to see a little more science and a little less censorship in public school science classrooms.

Gosh, what's a dutiful devotee of Darwin to do these days? FL

Sixties parlance, huh? More like 1940s. The Sixties were “Turn On, Tune in, Drop Out”. Anybody in the Sixties who said something like “get hip to the jive” was considered hopelessly old and out of it.

— Father Wolf

The onus is on you and other religiously motivated evolution-deniers to explain exactly how teaching a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis is science, let alone science worth teaching in a science classroom...

— Stanton

These people (for the most part) are not charlatans. They are victims.

FL said: And yet, as you see, one evolutionist's accusation of "quote-mining" just happens to quote a source who clearly states...

The “both sides” are, of course, special creation and evolution. --- John Wilkins.

Needless to say, Oooooops!

Darwin originally intended to have a large and academic book, with footnotes and exhaustive factual illustrations. His plan was defeated when Wallace sent his outline of the theory, so Darwin had to publish this "abstract" of the larger essay. It was eventually published in the 1970s, over a century later.* The phrase quoted is an apology for the paucity of facts used in the argument. The "both sides" are, of course, special creation and evolution.

FL said: Evolution is your god, Darwin is your bible, and now your "church" is being overrun by heretics who just want to see a little more science and a little less censorship in public school science classrooms. Gosh, what's a dutiful devotee of Darwin to do these days? FL

Wow. Just... wow. You are one seriously damaged and benighted induhvidual, FL.

Frank J wrote: Sorry to be so OT, but from one who was there: “Turn On, Tune in, Drop Out” didn’t become common across the US until about ‘67. Meanwhile, back in ‘61 “get hip and with that jive” was among the lyrics of the #1 hit “Quarter to Three.”

FL said:

Memo to FL: you’re quotemining.

Every time a non-Darwinist repeats Charles Darwin's famous "fair result - both sides" statement these days, it's guaranteed that the next thing you'll hear is an evolutionist accusation of quote-mining.

FL said: So, now we see the real deal Cheryl. Tell Jeremy to pull up a chair too, he'll want to see this.

FL said: But I can understand why you wanted to dismiss Darwin's clear words as a "quotemine." I honestly do understand why you seek to accuse me of "Lying for Jesus."

FL said: Because if you DON'T go that route, if you DO face the facts instead, you're forced to deal with the fact that a very massive 76 percent of Americans happen to agree with Darwin's statement, while only 19 percent disagree, and only 5 percent aren't yet sure.

FL said:And that makes you nervous, doesn't it? Makes you scared a little, makes you upset a little, because you know that officials, especially elected officials, do eventually pay attention to overwhelming poll numbers like that.

FL said: Evolution is your god, Darwin is your bible,

FL said:Gosh, what's a dutiful devotee of Darwin to do these days? FL

Father Wolf said: To stretch a side point -- the Sixties era that people still talk about didn't start on January 1 1960 but rather in 1964 or so with the popularity of the Beatles and really got going in 1966-67. An R&B song from 1961 with a strong 1950s flavor isn't part of the era. (I must confess, though I was born in the late 1940s, I don't think I ever heard the above song until I looked it up on youtube. Not exactly Jefferson Airplane or CSN&Y.)

Cheryl Shepherd-Adams said: FL, did you know that 50% of Americans aren't aware that the earth orbits the sun and takes one year to do so? Teach the controversy! FL, did you know that 30% of Americans believe that alien spacecraft visit the earth on a regular basis? Teach the controversy! FL, were you aware that 44% of Americans believe that astrology is "very" or "somewhat" scientific? Teach the controversy! (Oops, Michael Behe already tried that one :) )

Aw, frackin' a. I'll look around for them again; will post, then head out.

It ended when dope-smoking hippies became coke-snorting yuppies, and abandoned "Dancing in the Moonlight" for "Disco Inferno". What a sad, sad time for music that was.

Here's a reference to the alien and astrology data.

Sorry for the dead links; they'd worked just fine in SnapShots.

Cheryl Shepherd-Adams said: FL said: Evolution is your god, Darwin is your bible, Oh, no, you dinnt. Wrong move, baby. YOU ARE NOT MY MINISTER. YOU ARE LYING ABOUT ME, FL, AND YOU OWE ME AN APOLOGY. I have never impugned your faith even while I question your actions.

You can't really be mad at FL for his projection. He's an individual with a belief in a deeply figure worshipping religion. To him there is no other stage beyond Kohlberg's #4 (law and order morality, or appeal to authority). Further, he seems to apply his stage of the moral hierarchy to knowledge, apparently believing that knowledge must come from sources of authority. For this reason, evolution to him must be 'religion' and darwin must be 'jesus' because he lacks the capacity for comprehending knowledge, morality, indeed any world view that is different from this cookie cutter model.

So don't be angry at FL for his words, feel pity for his mental handicap.

And it ended in the early seventies. I’ve heard it argued that it ended with the Arab oil embargo in late 1973, whgen it was no longer economically viable to be counter-culture.

— David Fickett-Wilbar

YOU ARE NOT MY MINISTER. YOU ARE LYING ABOUT ME, FL, AND YOU OWE ME AN APOLOGY.

The fact is that even though Darwin’s statement appears in the larger context of an apology Darwin was making for his book for the apparent paucity of facts therein, it doesn’t change the actual meaning of Mr. Darwin’s quoted sentence itself. Imagine that. Darwin still meant exactly what he said in that one sentence. All the more so, in fact, since Darwin directly refers to the distinct possibility that “conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived” could be arrived at by the reader via the “facts”, which immediately sets up Darwin’s “fair result–both sides” comment. And of course, thanks to Wilkins and the Quote Mine Project, we already know what those two sides just happen to be. That little Wilkins statement directly DESTROYS Jeremy’s little ditty of “Darwin was not referring to a debate between evolution and some purported alternative explanation.” The “both sides” are, of course, special creation and evolution. — John Wilkins.

FL said:

YOU ARE NOT MY MINISTER. YOU ARE LYING ABOUT ME, FL, AND YOU OWE ME AN APOLOGY.

Ahhhh. I can calmly swallow a spoonful of being called a "Liar for Jesus", but you can't calmly swallow a spoonful of "Evolution is Your God." C'est la vie. And btw, how does calling somebody a Liar for Jesus NOT "impugn their faith"? I'm curious about your reasoning. FL

This Abstract, which I now publish, must necessarily be imperfect. I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors will have crept in, though I hope I have always been cautious in trusting to good authorities alone. I can here give only the general conclusions at which I have arrived, with a few facts in illustration, but which, I hope, in most cases will suffice.

FL,

You have been shown to be dead wrong in your claims. You have been shown to have made senseless and baseless accusations about others, projecting your own delusions onto them. If you don't like the reaction to such cowardly taunting then stop doing it. If you don't like to be called on your nonsensical assertations then stop making them.

Remember there is no crying in baseball. No one here is going to fall forthe "poor little mistreated me" routine after you deliberately insult and offend them. Why don't you spend your time on sites where people share your delusions if you don't like being shown up for a liar? You really are not doing yourself or anyone else any good by posting nonsense and crying when you get called on it.

May Darwin bless you and keep you, may Darwin cause his sun to shine upon you.

Here's some more unsolicited advice I have for my fellow Brown alumnus, Bobby Jindal, which I have posted elsewhere online in reply to yet another inane bleating from Casey Luskin over at the US News and World Report website:

As the Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District trial unfolded, in the fall of 2005, I attended an alumni gathering in the auditorium of my high school alma mater, New York City's prestigious Stuyvesant High School, which is widely regarded as the finest American high school devoted to the sciences, mathematics, and technology (Its distinguished alumni include four Nobel Prize laureates, many distinguished mathematicians, scientists, doctors and engineers like eminent Harvard University physicist Lisa Randall, and two key advisors to President Barack Obama.). In reply to an alumnus' question, the school's current principal pledged that Intelligent Design would never be taught there as long as he continues to serve as its principal. When I received an unsolicited e-mail from my "pal" Bill Dembski, in which he noted that he knows scores of Texas high school principals who want ID to be taught only - and not evolution - in science classrooms, he couldn't answer when I asked him how many of these principals teach a rigorous freshman only introductory physics course (which Stuyvesant's principal still does, to the best of my knowledge). I respectfully submit that the overall quality of American science education would improve if the principals of other schools - private, parochial as well as public - followed in the lead of Stuyvesant's.

taking this literary modesty as some sort of veiled proof that Darwin thought there was evidence for separate creation of species

FL said:

taking this literary modesty as some sort of veiled proof that Darwin thought there was evidence for separate creation of species

No such claim has been made, Eric.

Now if you want pitiful, ID has failed to produce a single piece of data in peer-reviewed scientific research papers. What’s up with that? Conspiracy? Incompetence? Inquiring minds want to know, dammit!

taking this literary modesty as some sort of veiled proof Darwin thought there was evidence for separate creation of species

Now if you want pitiful, ID has failed to produce a single piece of data in peer-reviewed scientific research papers. What’s up with that? Conspiracy? Incompetence? Inquiring minds want to know, dammit!

FL writes... Ahhhh. I can calmly swallow a spoonful of being called a “Liar for Jesus”, but you can’t calmly swallow a spoonful of “Evolution is Your God.” C’est la vie.

"God is a deity in theistic and deistic religions and other belief systems, representing either the sole deity in monotheism, or a principal deity in polytheism.[1] God is most often conceived of as the supernatural creator and overseer of the universe. Theologians have ascribed a variety of attributes to the many different conceptions of God. The most common among these include omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, omnibenevolence (perfect goodness), divine simplicity, jealousy, and eternal and necessary existence." (from Wikipedia, which seems a reasonable summary)

FL said:

Now if you want pitiful, ID has failed to produce a single piece of data in peer-reviewed scientific research papers. What’s up with that? Conspiracy? Incompetence? Inquiring minds want to know, dammit!

I don't blame you for wanting to shift the ground of discussion, James. After all, the quotemining accusation isn't panning out too well. So, to respond to your question, I would just send you to a pro-ID research paper that HAS been accepted in a peer review science journal. Conduct your own investigation from there. Perhaps you'll find, well, a single piece of data. http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/another-pro-id-paper-passes-peer-review/ FL

Ah, I see James. You guys used to complain that ID research papers could never be found in peer-review science journals. Now that evolutionists can't use that line anymore, the goalposts are simply moved.

NOW, the peer review journal published pro-ID paper cannot be "completely theoretical" (and needless to say, there is no similar rule in place for any other peer review science journal article) or James won't accept ID.

Forgive me if I don't spend much time discussing the obvious problems with your approach.

FL :)

FL said: Ah, I see James. You guys used to complain that ID research papers could never be found in peer-review science journals. Now that evolutionists can't use that line anymore, the goalposts are simply moved. NOW, the peer review journal published pro-ID paper cannot be "completely theoretical" (and needless to say, there is no similar rule in place for any other peer review science journal article) or James won't accept ID. Forgive me if I don't spend much time discussing the obvious problems with your approach. FL :)

“Accepting modern evolutionary theory as basically correct, based on the huge body of aggressively tested empirical evidence, spread across multiple disciplines, which supports it”.

So can you summarize this alleged peer-reviewed Intelligent Design paper, and explain its ramifications for Biology?

Also, what about Michael Medved's spiel about Intelligent Design not being a theory?

FL said: Gen. 2:7 and Gen. 2:21-22: The first humans on earth (both the first man and the first woman) had NO animal ancestors at all, but were directly and supernaturally created by God Himself. Furthermore, they were created as talking, functioning, intelligent adults on their very first day of existence --- an apparent-age miracle on multiple levels. And they were not originally subject to death, not at all, ever, until they sinned against God (an event known as the Fall) and themselves brought death into the world. This is the Bible's historical claim.

FL said: And btw, how does calling somebody a Liar for Jesus NOT "impugn their faith"? I'm curious about your reasoning.

Ah, I see James. You guys used to complain that ID research papers could never be found in peer-review science journals. Now that evolutionists can’t use that line anymore, the goalposts are simply moved.

FL said: It is claimed only that Darwin's "both sides" phrase does mean evolution versus special creation (Wilkins), and that Darwin's "fair result - both sides" statement meant exactly what he said, and was not a quotemine.

In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such a conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and coadaptation which justly excites our admiration. Naturalists continually refer to external conditions, such as climate, food, &c., as the only possible cause of variation. In one limited sense, as we shall hereafter see, this may be true; but it is preposterous to attribute to mere external conditions, the structure, for instance, of the woodpecker, with its feet, tail, beak, and tongue, so admirably adapted to catch insects under the bark of trees. In the case of the mistletoe, which draws its nourishment from certain trees, which has seeds that must be transported by certain birds, and which has flowers with separate sexes absolutely requiring the agency of certain insects to bring pollen from one flower to the other, it is equally preposterous to account for the structure of this parasite, with its relation to several distinct organic beings, by the effects of external conditions, or of habit, or of the volition of the plant itself. It is, therefore, of the highest importance to gain a clear insight into the means of modification and coadaptation. At the commencement of my observations it seemed to me probable that a careful study of domesticated animals and of cultivated plants would offer the best chance of making out this obscure problem. Nor have I been disappointed; in this and in all other perplexing cases I have invariably found that our knowledge, imperfect though it be, of variation under domestication, afforded the best and safest clue. I may venture to express my conviction of the high value of such studies, although they have been very commonly neglected by naturalists.

No one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in regard to the origin of species and varieties, if he makes due allowance for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of the many beings which live around us. Who can explain why one species ranges widely and is very numerous, and why another allied species has a narrow range and is rare? Yet these relations are of the highest importance, for they determine the present welfare and, as I believe, the future success and modification of every inhabitant of this world. Still less do we know of the mutual relations of the innumerable inhabitants of the world during the many past geological epochs in its history. Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained - namely, that each species has been independently created - is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the most important, but not the exclusive, means of modification.

"We're celebrating Charles Darwin's birthday by supporting what he supported: academic freedom. Like Darwin, we recognize the importance of having an open and honest debate between evolution and intelligent design."

FL writes (to me)... Okay. You and I have two rationally incompatible historical claims, one from the Bible and one from MET. Both claims cannot be true in actual Earth history at the same time. So Stevaroni (and I’m asking this only to be asking, not to try to attack you), which account is historically accurate, and which one is historically inaccurate? Which one is to be accepted as true, and which one is to be rejected as false?

In effect, WRT this one issue (origin of the first humans in actual Earth history): Who’s your Final Authority on this issue? God.…or Evolution? Darwin.…or Bible?

stevaroni said: I go to the bones and the rocks.

FL said: Ahhhh. I can calmly swallow a spoonful of being called a "Liar for Jesus", but you can't calmly swallow a spoonful of "Evolution is Your God." C'est la vie. And btw, how does calling somebody a Liar for Jesus NOT "impugn their faith"? I'm curious about your reasoning. FL

stevaroni said: Did I just read a research paper with absolutely no research, or a math paper that presented no math? Ladies and gentlemen, the peer review is in. The DI has their first ID paper published. It totally sucks.

FL said: Memo to SICB and ASBMB: The people are against you. Better think things over! FL

FL said: Who's your Final Authority on this issue? God....or Evolution? Darwin....or Bible? FL :)

stevaroni said: I see no reason that the first humans were any more supernatural than the first aardvarks. (in fact, if I'm not mistaken, we actually know more about prototypical humans than ancient aardvarks).

In fact, if there were some book or council or other source of pure truth in science, then all the research scientists today would be unemployed.

hmm, that might explain why Hector Avalos and other theologians have called for an end to theology itself; they realize they are all just unemployed researchers, and the only thing holding them back from getting back to it was being chained to a silly old book of exceeding questionable value.

:)

stevaroni said: Section 6 Life processes follow the rules of chemistry. But humans posses creativity, which physics has not explained. Ergo, "poof". Um, That's it? Did I miss something, or am I just confused?

The answers to what FL no doubt thought was a knock-down question (what is your Final Authority?) require nothing further, except to say that they exemplify the Enlightenment, and that the question itself could only arise in a mind mired in the Middle Ages. The question of Authority loomed large to a medieval scholar.

But I'm pretty sure that FL has no more read Aquinas or William of Occam or Peter Abelard than he has read Darwin or Karl Popper. (I must admit that Aquinas was too much for me. I gave up on him, and hit the road with Francois Villon instead.) FL's reasoning is medieval, but not because he actually has a medieval scholar's mind. They were authoritarians, but at least they were scholars, and FL has no respect at all for genuine scholarship, as he has comprehensively proven. No, FL wants a Final Authority for far simpler reasons. He needs an authority figure, for the same reason that a child does. The world would be a terrifying and unfathomable place without one.

But some of us grow up.

John Kwok,
I thought I could get Mr. Williams to commit. You can lead a horse to water.......

In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is, to hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing.

FL,

Last time you were here you were going to tell us about the weaknesses of evolution that you want to be taught in schools, but unfortunately all you gave us was an example of a textbook that did not deal with the origins of life as thoroughly as you would have liked.

Before you run off again, how about giving us some of those weaknesses of evolution that so concern you?

stevaroni said: Um, That's it? Did I miss something, or am I just confused?

Can we really apply logical terms such as “paradox” and “consistent” to biological systems in the same manner as we do to formal systems? Even though we must admit that biological systems sometimes are more “fuzzy” than the strict world of formal systems, there are constrains [sic] on how it is possible to organize them. A hypothetical biological system trying to reproduce without a symbolic self-reference, but by self-inspection will run into related problems as within a formal system.

An important implication of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem is that it is not possible to have a finite description with itself as the proper part. In other words, it is not possible to read yourself or process yourself as process.

I don't have time to deal with FL's latest barrage of diversionary irrelevant nonsense (notice he still hasn't answered the demand for actual data supporting ID?), so I'll just pick out this nugget of win from the river of sewage:

Furthermore, they were created as talking, functioning, intelligent adults on their very first day of existence — an apparent-age miracle on multiple levels.

Here we have a concise admission of the cellular-level dishonesty of creationism: FL admitted there was indeed evidence of "age," but then said it was deliberately faked by his hokey little God. Then he called that systematic deception a "miracle." (Dude, if you're REALLY interested in miracles, you should study the life -- and the teachings -- of Jesus; his miracles actually served a purpose, and his teachings made a lot more sense than you ever will.)

Quite frankly, I'm amazed that so many people here continue to waste their time arguing with a pathological liar like FL. He's repeatedly admitted he worships a God who fakes evidence on a planetary scale; and he's never shown a trace of shame about it. Can we really expect a worshipper of a deceiver-God to be anything other than a deceiver himself?

Now, if ID promoters were merely using the “both sides” quote in support of their recent push to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, then my charge of quote mining would be refuted. In fact, that’s primarily how the quote has been used in the Discovery Institute’s “Academic Freedom Day” materials.

I’m amazed that so many people here continue to waste their time arguing with a pathological liar like FL.

My rational response, FL, is that your post, like nearly all of your posts on all of the threads on which you show up, has nothing at all to do with any subject relevant to reason, biology or evolution, and offers absolutely no valid argument or evidence disproving evolution or supporting any form of creationism. You're changing the subject again, using a tactic I can only call Gish Gallop 2.3, and I see no need to offer a substantive response to a non-substantive and irrelevant comment.

Now how about a rational response to my comments? You don't have one, of course; which is, I'm guessing, why you didn't respond to me in the threads in which I actually commented.

FL,

Since you're still studiously avoiding my question, I'm going to draw a conclusion and give you the chance to confirm or deny it.

Since you tried, unsuccessfully, to refute my original factual assertion that not a single piece of data has been presented in peer-reviewed scientific research papers that supports ID, I'm going to assume that you think ID is science and that its proponents are not incompetent.

That leaves me with the option that you think there is a global conspiracy that has suppressed, for decades, every attempt to publish valid evidence in support of ID. This means you've accused the entire scientific community of being a powerful cabal of liars.

Have I got it right, FL?

The fact is that even though Darwin’s statement appears in the larger context of an apology Darwin was making for his book for the apparent paucity of facts therein, it doesn’t change the actual meaning of Mr. Darwin’s quoted sentence itself. Imagine that. Darwin still meant exactly what he said in that one sentence. All the more so, in fact, since Darwin directly refers to the distinct possibility that “conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived” could be arrived at by the reader via the “facts”, which immediately sets up Darwin’s “fair result–both sides” comment. And of course, thanks to Wilkins and the Quote Mine Project, we already know what those two sides just happen to be. That little Wilkins statement directly DESTROYS Jeremy’s little ditty of “Darwin was not referring to a debate between evolution and some purported alternative explanation.” So.….better stick a fork in it Cheryl, ‘cause that one is quite clearly done.

It is claimed only that Darwin’s “both sides” phrase does mean evolution versus special creation (Wilkins), and that Darwin’s “fair result - both sides” statement meant exactly what he said, and was not a quotemine.

Since my own previous post which quoted Darwin’s “fair result - both sides” was specifically given in the support of the Louisiana Science Education Act, which ONLY deals with possible strengths and weaknesses of evolution (no mention of ID, no mention of creationism), then the accusation of quotemining against my use of the term is necessarily falsified. Your own words make that clear.

Hey FL,

That snippet you quoted from Jeremy Mohn had a "however" following the "if" and the "then." If you really want your readers to "think over" what he wrote, why didn't you included the "however" in your quote? You know, to provide context for what he really meant?

Stanton said:

FL said: And btw, how does calling somebody a Liar for Jesus NOT "impugn their faith"? I'm curious about your reasoning.

If you are so sure of your faith in Jesus, then how come you constantly lie and refuse to support your false claims, save with more lies?

SWT said: Hey FL, That snippet you quoted from Jeremy Mohn had a "however" following the "if" and the "then." If you really want your readers to "think over" what he wrote, why didn't you included the "however" in your quote? You know, to provide context for what he really meant?

I belong to a scientific society, and who amongst us here does not, and inquire about their position or response in light of such laws. In my case the urgency stems in part because the society I belong to last year selected New Orleans as the site for the annual convention. I wrote a letter asking what are they going to do and in my opinion that they should cancel New Orleans.

Forgot to say New Orleans was selected to hold this year's annual convention.

Jeremy Mohn said: Now, if ID promoters were merely using the “both sides” quote in support of their recent push to teach the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution, then my charge of quote mining would be refuted.

eric said: I think its worthwhile to give FL a chance to explain what he thinks about his own quote of Darwin. FL, lets cut to the chase. When you quoted Darwin on your Feb 14th post, did you think Darwin was referring to special creationism or not?

In a word, a nutjob.

Back when FL made that blasphemously moronic claim of how the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ magically refuted ....

stevaroni said:

Back when FL made that blasphemously moronic claim of how the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ magically refuted ....

How does he know? Was he there? (couldn't resist)

I only posted my response when you began to insist that Darwin’s use of the phrase “both sides” referred to evolution and special creation. Since I was familiar with the full context of the quote, I knew that was not the case.

Now you say that you used the quote only in support of the “strength and weakness” mandate of the LSEA (never mind that Act 473 doesn’t actually use that terminology).

...taking this literary modesty as some sort of veiled proof that Darwin thought there was evidence for separate creation of species

I wrote a letter asking what are they going to do and in my opinion that they should cancel New Orleans.

No creationist wants to ensure that kids who read Chapters 2, 3, and 4 of Origin of Species also read Chapters 6, 7, and 10. They don’t want kids to be exposed to it at all.

FL said: DEFINITELY let all black, hispanic, and native american, schoolkids read a couple good chapters of Darwin's book The Descent of Man so they can know how evolution really is.

FL; Second, do you need me to re-post the original post in which I quoted Darwin’s “fair result - both sides” statement ... showed support for the “strengths and weaknesses” concept?

FL,

At least answer my question: why are there no data presented in peer-reviewed scientific research papers that support ID (or that refute evolution, for that matter)? My best guess is that you believe in a global conspiracy that prevents such data from being published. As a scientist, I'd like to know if you think I'm a liar and/or part of a powerful worldwide cabal! Come on, I haven't insulted your religion or called you nasty names. :)

Will you stop flogging the semantic horse and just answer the frappin’ question?

I am more than willing to have a real “both sides, strengths and weaknesses” discussion, but before I admit it to the public schools, I want to see the case you intend to present, because I don’t believe you actually have one.

I don’t want to hear about the weaknesses of evolution

FL said:

I don’t want to hear about the weaknesses of evolution

Fine, but I just answered your primary question. You can personally believe that evolution is the heavenly gospel for all I care. But now that your question is answered, let's see just how willing you really are to have that "real, both sides, strengths and weaknesses" discussion. FL :)

FL writes... Fine, but I just answered your primary question. But now that your question is answered, let’s see just how willing you really are to have that “real, both sides, strengths and weaknesses” discussion

I don’t want to hear about the weaknesses of evolution, FL that’s smoke and mirrors to evade answering the question, I want to hear about the strengths of your case.

1. The given school district’s biology textbook presents RNA world... 2. The given school district’s biology textbook presents the Primordial Soup... 3. Problems with human evolution claim ... 4. Assorted tidbits like recent publicized problems with Darwin’s evolutionary tree.... Okay. Your turn.

FL said:

I don’t want to hear about the weaknesses of evolution

Fine, but I just answered your primary question. You can personally believe that evolution is the heavenly gospel for all I care. But now that your question is answered, let's see just how willing you really are to have that "real, both sides, strengths and weaknesses" discussion. FL :)

stevaroni said: Unsurprisingly, all of FL's "evidence" is simply whining about a biology textbook and evasion.

Dan said:

stevaroni said: Unsurprisingly, all of FL's "evidence" is simply whining about a biology textbook and evasion.

It's not even up to that level. He's whining about a biology textbook that might or might not exist. Certainly the one biology textbook that FL did in fact mention doesn't in reality conform to his whining. http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2009/01/over-800-scient.html#comment-177803

It's been said most succinctly before: If evolution threatens your god, maybe you need a better god.

Wasn’t it already pointed out to FL that the book didn’t actually say what he lied about it saying? And yet, FL claims that I’m a liar.

stevaroni said: I asked you a simple question over and over - "WHAT are the strengths of your case?" - and you always respond by claiming weakness in mine. A less charitable man would imagine that you're hiding something. Creationism does not win by default.

FL said:

I am more than willing to have a real “both sides, strengths and weaknesses” discussion, but before I admit it to the public schools, I want to see the case you intend to present, because I don’t believe you actually have one.

Sure. When the biology classroom arrives at the Origin of Life chapter, there should be legally protected opportunities (which need to be put in writing via state science standards) for the biology/science teach to teach "strengths and weaknesses" WRT....

1. The given school district's biology textbook presents the RNA World hypothesis but DOES NOT mention any (not even one) of the specific problems associated with that hypothesis. (Orgel etc.)

2. The given school district's biology textbook presents the Primordial Soup claim but does not mention any of the specific problems with that Primordial Soup claim, including no geological evidence at all, and no evidence of existence via carbon-ratio and nitrogen-ratio tests. (Thaxton Bradley Olson, Rana/Ross, Science, Nature, Yockey)

Aside from the OOL chapter (and since it's there and since it's being taught in public school science classroom, no use trying to escape from teaching strengths and weaknesses on it), there's also the following.... 3. Problems with human evolution claim (big gaps in fossil record), specific human abilities (eg language ability, abstract thinking, etc) that evolution cannot account for, etc.

4. Assorted tidbits like recent publicized problems with Darwin's evolutionary tree. Anything that's scientifically documented and published, like Takahashi et al's paper that cast doubt on the dogmatic evolutionist claim of peacock feathers being evidence of sexual selection.

FL said:

I don’t want to hear about the weaknesses of evolution

Fine, but I just answered your primary question.

So FL thinks that "weaknesses of evoluton" consists of stuff he doesn't want to believe about the origin of life and stuff he doesn't want to believe about the evolution of human beings. These unsupported assertations are not scientific criticisms, they simply show that FL will never be convinced by any evidence., There is no call for presentation of any evidence, FL ignores all of that. There is no call to go over the strenghts of the evidence that is available and all of the predictions that have been confirmed. There is simply a demand for an infinite amount of detail. Until then FL is not willing to accept anything in evolutionary theory.

Who cares?

High school classes are not the place for all of the details of cutting edge research. It is the place to present the consensus view of science and the main findings of evolutionary biology. There is no controversy over the fact of evolution. FL just doesn't like it. Too bad.

I am more than willing to have a real “both sides, strengths and weaknesses” discussion, but before I admit it to the public schools, I want to see the case you intend to present, because I don’t believe you actually have one.

Wasn’t it already pointed out to FL that the book didn’t actually say what he lied about it saying?

Even if evolution were completely wrong, you still have to affirmatively prove ID before you can claim it true.

Evolution can perfectly account for language and abstract thinking.

Abstract Thinking Is the human brain that much different from that of our closest "relatives," the chimpanzees? According to Daniel J. Povinelli, from the University of Louisiana's New Iberia Research Center: "Humans constantly invoke unobservable phenomena and variables to explain why certain things are happening. Chimps operate in the world of concrete, tangible things that can be seen. The content of their minds is about the observable world." (Tuma, R.S. 2000. Thinking Like a Chimp. HMS Beagle, BioMedNet 90: feature 2 (requires free registration.)

Insight into how chimpanzees really think can be seen in some recent experiments performed by Dr. Povinelli. In these experiments, the researchers used the chimps' natural begging gesture to examine how they really think about their world. They confronted the chimps with two familiar experimenters, one offering a piece of food and the other holding out an undesirable block of wood. As expected, the chimps had no trouble distinguishing between the block and the food and immediately gestured to the experimenter offering the food. Next, the researchers wanted to see if the chimps would be able to choose between a person who could see them and a person who could not. If the chimpanzees understood how other animals see, they would gesture only to the person who could see them. The researchers achieved the "seeing/not-seeing" contrast by having the two experimenters adopt different postures. In one test, one experimenter wore a blindfold over her eyes while the other wore a blindfold over her mouth. In the other tests, one of the experimenters wore a bucket over her head, placed her hands over her eyes or sat with her back turned to the chimpanzee. All these postures were modeled after the behaviors that had been observed during the chimpanzees' spontaneous play. The results of the experiments were astonishing. In the tests involving blindfolds, buckets and hands over the eyes--the apes entered the lab and paused but then were just as likely to gesture to the person who could not see them as to the person who could. In several cases, the chimps gestured to the person who could not see them and then, when nothing happened, gestured again, as if puzzled by the fact that the experimenter did not respond. In the case of experimenters facing with their backs to the chimps, they performed as if they knew that those facing way from them could not see and offer them food. However, subsequent experiments proved that the chimps had merely responded to conditioning from the initial experiments, since they had only received food from those experimenters who faced them. This was proven by having experimenters facing away from the chimps, but then turning to look over their shoulders. The chimps were just as likely to gesture to the experimenters facing away as the one who turned to look at them. Chimpanzees have no clue that humans must face them in order to see. It is obvious from these experiments that chimpanzees lack even a simple understanding of how their world works, but merely react to conditioning from directly observable events. (Povinelli, D.J. 1998. "Animal Self-Awareness: A Debate Can Animals Empathize?" Scientific American.)

They also can't walk fully erect, or talk. SFW????

FL said: You are aware that the LSEA embodies and allows for possible (not required) science-class discussion of strengths and weaknesses of evolution, right?

FL said: Remember, the LSEA doesn't single out evolution. You remember that? You evolutionists get all upset if evolution is singled out, so the LSEA does not single out evolution.)

13 B.(1) The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, upon 14 request of a city, parish, or other local public school board, shall allow and 15 assist teachers, principals, and other school administrators to create and foster 16 an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that promotes 17 critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of 18 scientific theories being studied including, but not limited to, evolution, the 19 origins of life, global warming, and human cloning.

FL said: Four concise areas, any of which may appear in a given school district's biology textbook or biology teacher's lecture.

FL, you're being rather transparent in your argumentation's fallacies. He did indeed ask you for the *strengths* of your proposed hypothesis for the origin of life. The fact is, high school is not a post-grad class, cutting edge theories change too fast for high school curricula to keep up. For this reason high school is for giving a scientific overview, not for getting into the fine details of horizontal gene transfer, or binding complications for wild RNA. If you propose 'teaching the controversy' then you need to provide an equally valid theory that won't undergo rapid change in the face of scientific inquiry, just like evolution is unlikely to undergo rapid change in the face of scientific inquiry now. All I've seen in ID is a hypothesis that has failed where tested, and has been modified so as to be untestable. ID as I see it now is not scientific and therefore should not be in the science class.

For this reason, you need to provide the strengths of your argument so as to prove the case for 'teaching the controversy.' Negative argumentation is pointless in this, because it does not provide an alternative to evolution and hence only serves to muddy the waters as a transparent advance of a political agenda. So, I'm curious as well, what are the strengths of your proposed hypothesis?

FL said: You mean, when "the esteemed John Wilkins" insisted that Darwin's use of the phrase "both sides" referred to evolution and special creation. For he did very clearly state that specific interpretation. Apparently nobody at TalkOrigins disagreed with it, either. Your disagreement still remains with evolutionist Wilkins on the meaning of Darwin's term "both sides". (Btw, are you suggesting that the esteemed Wilkins is not as familiar with the "full context of Darwin's quote" as you are?) And frankly, I still side with Wilkins, since (1) special creation was in fact a real competitor to Darwin at that particular time (a point on which you have remained rather silent), and (2) because of Darwin's prior comment which immediately sets up the "fair result - both sides" comment, as explained earlier.

Darwin wrote: Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained - namely, that each species has been independently created - is erroneous.

Once again, FL has nothing to offer but lies, misrepresentations, diversionary hand-waving, and "conclusions" that aren't supported by the facts he so breathlessly cites...

Returning to Stevaroni:

Even if evolution were completely wrong, you still have to affirmatively prove ID before you can claim it true.

And at this point, you are changing the subject.

Yes, he is indeed changing the subject -- back to the most important subject this blog exists to address. And since you have absolutely nothing to say about that subject, you just go right back to your diversionary nonsense and accuse everyone else of not talking about the "right" things.

Okay, let’s stop there for now. Evolution’s looking a bit “less than perfect” WRT language and abstract thinking, no?

No. The study results you cite do absolutely nothing to disprove evolution.

Yes, I'm having a WTH moment. FL actually thinks he's got a point, or acts as if he does. He really does think that it isn't sufficient, in a high school biology textbook, to point out that there is considerable disagreement about models for the origin of life. It isn't sufficient to use tentative and highly conditional language, nor to observe that several possible models are proposed, and in giving an example of one of them, to state clearly that there is no consensus.

To say that much is to say plainly that the processes are unknown. The RNA world is not known fact. What more does FL want?

What he wants is for the textbook and the curriculum to state that this is a problem in the sense of a weakness, a logical hole, in the theory of evolution. He isn't going to get his wish. There is no such weakness, no such hole. To say so would be to tell a lie. But that, of course, is what FL wants textbooks to do.

He is arguing from ignorance. It's a logical squib. That we don't know everything is not a problem in the sense of weakness. In fact, it's plainly obvious that we can't know everything, and never will. But the fact that we don't know everything does not mean that we know nothing, nor does it mean that we must discard what we know. The origin of life is not known. How the first living cell arose is not known. There are competing hypotheses. None of them are accepted because it has not been demonstrated that any of them actually work on the biochemical level. That does not constitute a hole or weakness in the theory of evolution.

Now, all this is old hat, I know. But there's FL, still insisting that the textbook must use the word "problem" and mean "weakness". Nonsense. He hasn't got a point, no matter how much he poses or plays with words.

I suppose that you’re now just hoping you can win this argument on a technicality, but that only demonstrates how desperate you are to avoid having to admit that you were wrong. It’s truly sad that you apparently have no qualms about behaving so dishonestly to try to cover up for your own ignorance.

— Jeremy Mohn

He hasn’t got a point, no matter how much he poses or plays with words.

— Dave Luckett

I am more than willing to have a real “both sides, strengths and weaknesses” discussion, but before I admit it to the public schools, I want to see the case you intend to present, because I don’t believe you actually have one.

I am more than willing to have a real “both sides, strengths and weaknesses” discussion, but before I admit it to the public schools, I want to see the case you intend to present, because I don’t believe you actually have one.

“A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” — Charles Darwin

FL said:

Wasn’t it already pointed out to FL that the book didn’t actually say what he lied about it saying?

While admitting that the textbook did contain tentative language, I also pointed out---repeatedly---that the very same textbook DOES NOT mention ANY of the specific problems with the RNA World Hypothesis (Item #1) nor tell the science students anything of the magnitude of the problems.

Dave Luckett said: In fact, it's plainly obvious that we can't know everything, and never will.

ragarth said:

Dave Luckett said: In fact, it's plainly obvious that we can't know everything, and never will.

I know this is off topic, but what's your supporting proof that we can *never* know everything? I give you that unless death and aging and the limits of the human mind are conquered, no single *individual* can know everything, but humanity as a whole has a decent chance of it, short of the existence of supernatural phenomena (which I don't believe in).

ragarth said:

Dave Luckett said: In fact, it's plainly obvious that we can't know everything, and never will.

I know this is off topic, but what's your supporting proof that we can *never* know everything? I give you that unless death and aging and the limits of the human mind are conquered, no single *individual* can know everything, but humanity as a whole has a decent chance of it, short of the existence of supernatural phenomena (which I don't believe in).

FL said:

Evolution can perfectly account for language and abstract thinking.

"Perfectly", is that right, Robin? Let's let the OEC "God and Science" website author, Rich Deem, respond to that one:

Okay, let's stop there for now. Evolution's looking a bit "less than perfect" WRT language and abstract thinking, no? Apes and chimps not delivering the goods for you after all? C'est la vie baby! FL :)

I find it amusing that FL complains we aren't staying on topic, when very little of his effort (~2 lines out of all his posts) concern the boycott.

FL, Reed seems to be content to allow the digressions we've had so far. If you don't want to talk with Stevaroni about (i.e.) comparing strengths of evolution vs. strengths of special creation, that's your choice. But for goodness sake just say so - don't try and hide behind a 'relevancy to original post' argument because (a) that hasn't stopped you from going off topic here and (b) its never stopped you from going off topic before.

Oh yeah...one more thing FL. If you are going to use a reference like Deem, in the future, you might consider actually checking his use of a given reference. A quick search on the ol' Intertubes using the ol' Googles reveals that Deem didn't quite present Dr. Povinelli's work and conclusions accurately. I'm sure you're just SHOCKED at this revelation.

In fact, Dr. Povinelli has actually performed extensive research on the the evolutionary explanation of BOTH abstract thinking AND language. The real kicker is (I love this sort of thing) that Povinelli goes on to point out WHY the unexpected results in the paper DEEM ciets are evolutionarily significant (I'm sure Dr. Apologist Bowel Movement didn't mention that though, so you likely missed that tidbit FL). In case you're curious about the actual information regarding evolution, abstract thinking, and language, here's a list of Povinelli's work:

http://apfd.louisiana.edu/endowed/Povinelli-Daniel.shtml

In particular, I highly recommend this:
Povinelli, D.J. (2001). The minds of humans and apes are different outcomes of an evolutionary experiment. In S. Fitzpatrick & J. Bruer (Eds.), Carving our Destiny: Scientific Research Faces a new millennium. Pp. 1-40. National Academy of Sciences and John Henry Press. [Commemorative Essays of the James S. McDonnell Centennial Fellows]

You might consider going to the actual research source rather than some clown presenting his interpretation of research he clearly doesn't understand.

ragarth said:

Dave Luckett said: In fact, it's plainly obvious that we can't know everything, and never will.

I know this is off topic, but what's your supporting proof that we can *never* know everything?

ragarth said:

Dave Luckett said: In fact, it's plainly obvious that we can't know everything, and never will.

I know this is off topic, but what's your supporting proof that we can *never* know everything? I give you that unless death and aging and the limits of the human mind are conquered, no single *individual* can know everything, but humanity as a whole has a decent chance of it, short of the existence of supernatural phenomena (which I don't believe in).

National Scientific Society to Boycott Louisiana over LA Science Education Act

"A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; and this cannot possibly be here done." Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (Introduction). ---- from the top of the Gert Korthof webpage "Was Darwin Wrong"

Given the brevity of the presentation and very tentative presentation of this topic, what specifically do you want to see in an exposition of the “specific problems” or the “magnitude of the problems?” Remember that item 2 of the “Section 1 review” is “Critique two scientific models that explain the origin of life.”

Looking at the whole situation a year after the publication of The Origin, Huxley says that the supporters of Mr. Darwin’s views were numerically extremely insignificant, and that “there is not the slightest doubt that, if a general council of the Church scientific had been held at that time, we should have been condemned by an overwhelming majority.” ---Charles Finney Cox, New York Academy of Sciences, 1909 http://www.nyas.org/snc/uu/winter_09/09_Magazine_Winter_Cox.pdf Winter 2009

Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained - namely, that each species has been independently created - is erroneous.

Sheesh! This Foghorn Leghorn is a Friggin Loser.

Boring.

You guys want to claims—you so desperately, angrily want to claim—that Darwin’s “both sides” statement doesn’t apply to the LSEA, the topic of this thread.

“A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question.” — Charles Darwin

FL said: You're getting left behind, guys. At long last, you're finally....losing the game. FL

As Kyle would say, "Dude, this is really ****ed up right here."

If you want to present "fair result - both sides" -- whatever you consider the other "side" -- then you cannot just promote "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution.

The "strengths and weaknesses" weasels, are, like you FL, never going to present "strengths and weakness" of their argument, because they don't even have an argument.

This is all a smoke screen to destroy science in the name of fundamentalist fascism. You know it is, FL, you just don't have the balls to admit it. You are as big a coward and liar as novparl and bobby and all the other so-called "Christians".

Shame on you, sir. Shame.

FL said: Let's let the OEC "God and Science" website author, Rich Deem, respond:

Abstract Thinking Is the human brain that much different from that of our closest "relatives," the chimpanzees? According to Daniel J. Povinelli, from the University of Louisiana's New Iberia Research Center: "Humans constantly invoke unobservable phenomena and variables to explain why certain things are happening. Chimps operate in the world of concrete, tangible things that can be seen. The content of their minds is about the observable world." (Tuma, R.S. 2000. Thinking Like a Chimp. HMS Beagle, BioMedNet 90: feature 2) Insight into how chimpanzees really think can be seen in some recent experiments performed by Dr. Povinelli. ...Chimpanzees have no clue that humans must face them in order to see. It is obvious from these experiments that chimpanzees lack even a simple understanding of how their world works, but merely react to conditioning from directly observable events. (Povinelli, D.J. 1998. "Animal Self-Awareness: A Debate Can Animals Empathize?" Scientific American.)

Evolution's looking a bit "less than perfect" WRT language and abstract thinking, no? Apes and chimps not delivering the goods for you after all? C'est la vie baby!

Derek C. Penn, Keith J. Holyoak, Daniel J. Povinelli, BEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN SCIENCES (2008) 31, 109–178 ...we know from Darwin’s more well-grounded principles that there are no unbridgeable gaps in evolution. Therefore, one of the most important challenges confronting cognitive scientists of all stripes, in our view, is to explain how the manifest functional discontinuity between extant human and nonhuman minds could have evolved in a biologically plausible manner. Povinelli and colleagues have previously proposed that humans alone are able to “reinterpret” the world in terms of unobservable, hypothetical entities such as mental states and causal forces and that our ability to do so relies on a unique representational system that has been grafted onto the cognitive architecture we inherited from our nonhuman ancestors (Povinelli 2000; 2004; Povinelli & Giambrone 2001; Povinelli & Preuss 1995; Povinelli & Vonk 2003; 2004; Vonk & Povinelli 2006). Independently, Holyoak, Hummel, and colleagues have argued that the ability to reason about higher-order relations in a structurally systematic and inferentially productive fashion is a defining feature of the human mind and requires the distinctive representational capabilities of a “biological symbol system” (Holyoak & Hummel 2000; 2001; Hummel & Holyoak 1997; 2001; 2003; Kroger et al. 2004; Robin & Holyoak 1995). Herein we combine, revise, and substantially expand on the hypotheses proposed by these two research groups. We argue that most of the salient functional discontinuities between human and nonhuman minds – including our species’ unique linguistic, mentalistic, cultural, logical, and causal reasoning abilities – result in part from the difference in degree to which human and nonhuman cognitive architectures are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system (Newell 1980; Newell & Simon 1976). Although human and nonhuman animals share many similar cognitive mechanisms, our relational reinterpretation hypothesis (RR) is that only human animals possess the representational processes necessary for systematically reinterpreting first-order perceptual relations in terms of higher-order, role-governed relational structures akin to those found in a physical symbol system (PSS). We conclude by suggesting that recent advances in symbolic-connectionist models of cognition provide one possible explanation for how our species’ unique ability to approximate the higher-order relational capabilities of a physical symbol system might have been grafted onto the proto-symbolic cognitive architecture we inherited from our nonhuman ancestors in a biologically plausible manner. ...we believe that nonhuman animals are capable of many kinds of “representational redescriptions” – just not the structurally systematic, role-governed relational redescriptions that are the hallmark of the human mind. Importantly, we are not claiming that our higher-order relational capabilities are the sole and sufficient condition for explaining all of our species’ unique cognitive abilities. The uniquely human biological specializations associated with language (see Pinker & Jackendoff 2005), ToM (see Saxe 2006), and complex causal reasoning (see Johnson-Frey 2004) – to take only the most obvious candidates – are clearly much more multifarious than a domain-general capacity for higher-order relational reasoning alone. Our claim, rather, is that the ability to reason about higher-order structural relations in a systematic and productive fashion is a necessary – but not sufficient – condition for the normal development and full realization of these other capabilities in human subjects. Our further claim is that it is highly unlikely that the human ability to reason about higher-order relations evolved de novo and independently with each distinctively human cognitive capability. Rather, it seems much more likely that higher-order relational reasoning belongs to a single “supermodule” which is duplicated, reused, shared, or called upon by the functional “modules” associated with each of these other distinctively human cognitive capabilities (see Barrett 2006 for an important discussion of the many possible relationships between architectural, developmental, and functional modularity). ...we have acknowledged from the outset that this cognitive gap must have evolved largely through incremental, Darwinian processes. The question that naturally arises, then, is this: What representational-level and physical-level innovations explain how this functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds arose in an evolutionarily plausible manner? 11.1. LISA: Relational reasoning in a biological symbol system Hummel and Holyoak (1997; 2003; 2005) have proposed a hybrid symbolic-connectionist model of relational reasoning – LISA (Learning and Inference with Schemas and Analogies) – which we view as one promising (though partial) approach to implementing our RR hypothesis in a computationally feasible and neurally plausible fashion (see also Holyoak & Hummel 2000; 2001; Morrison et al. 2004). LISA combines the syntactic strengths of a physical symbol system (PSS) with the semantic flexibility and generalization capabilities of a distributed connectionist system by using temporal synchrony to approximate the dynamic role-filler binding capabilities of a PSS within a connectionist architecture. Notably, LISA implements the distinctive higher-order relational capabilities of a PSS via an additional representational system that has been grafted onto a simpler system of conjunctive representations used for long-term storage. This simpler system provides conjunctive representations that are functionally, but not concatenatively, compositional and therefore is arguably sufficient to approximate the representational capabilities of nonhuman animals but insufficient to approximate the higher-order relational capabilities of humans. LISA provides an existence proof that the higher-order relational capabilities of a PSS can, in fact, be grafted onto a neurally plausible, distributed connectionist architecture. At the same time, LISA shows that it is quite hard to approximate the higher-order relational capabilities of a PSS within a neural network – particularly to achieve both role-filler independence and dynamic role-filler binding. In other words, LISA suggests that approximating the higher-order, role-governed features of a PSS is not likely to be an ability that evolved as a by-product of increased brain size, greater neural plasticity, or larger processing capacity alone. There must be other substantive differences between human and nonhuman primate brains waiting to be discovered (Preuss 2004) If LISA is broadly correct, the substantive difference between human and nonhuman brains will be found in the prefrontal cortices, and specifically in synchronized activity among prefrontal neural populations that support working memory, as well as among neural populations in the frontal and posterior cortical areas (see Lu et al. 2006; Morrison et al. 2004; Robin & Holyoak 1995; Waltz et al. 1999; 2004). Of course, we are not suggesting that temporal synchrony among prefrontal neural populations is the only possible neural-level explanation for the functional differences between human and nonhuman relational cognition, nor that it provides a full explanation (see, e.g., Jung & Haier 2007). We are simply suggesting that computational models of biological cognition such as LISA provide an important tool for comparative researchers wishing to formulate biologically plausible, representational-level hypotheses concerning the similarities and differences between human and nonhuman minds. In some cases – for example, numeracy, cooperation, and mental time travel – others have already proposed analyses of the functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman animals’ capabilities that are largely consistent with the hypothesis defended in the present article (see, e.g., Dehaene 1997; McElreath et al. 2003; Suddendorf & Corballis 2007a). In other cases – for example, empathy and metacognition – the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds continues to be challenged (cf. Preston & de Waal 2002; Smith et al. 2003). We believe our analysis and hypothesis can (and should) be extended to these latter domains as well. Indeed, we believe that our RR hypothesis offers a powerful framework for explaining what all these disparate cases – from cooperation and mental time travel to numeracy and metacognition – have in common. ...We do not have a complete solution to Fodor’s challenge; but, like many others, we do not believe it is in principle unsolvable (Barrett 2005; Carruthers 2005b; Pinker 2005). Hybrid symbolic-connectionist architectures such as LISA provide one possible solution that Fodor has not considered. Fortunately, the fate of our RR hypothesis does not ride on the success or failure of any particular computational proposal. Our most important claim in this target article is simply that whatever “good trick” (Dennett 1996) was responsible for the advent of human beings’ ability to reinterpret the world in a symbolic-relational fashion, it evolved in only one lineage – ours. Let us be clear: All similarities and differences in biology are ultimately a matter of degree. Any apparent discontinuities between living species belie the underlying continuity of the evolutionary process and largely result from the fact that many, and often all, of the intermediate steps are no longer extant. In the present article, our claim that there is a “discontinuity” between human and nonhuman cognition is based on our claim that there is a significant gap between the functional capabilities of the human mind and those of all other extant species on the planet. Our point, to cut to the chase, is that the functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds is at least as great as the much more widely acknowledged discontinuity between human and nonhuman forms of communication. But we do not doubt that both evolved through standard evolutionary mechanisms. ****** ...our claim that there is a significant gap (a.k.a. “functional discontinuity”) between the relational abilities of modern humans and those of all other extant nonhuman species is completely consistent with the fact that the relational abilities of all extant species undoubtedly evolved along a multidimensional continuum and can still be distributed along that continuum. ...LISA’s explanatory neck is stuck out a good deal farther. If LISA is correct, the substantive discontinuity between human and nonhuman cognition came about because only the hominid lineage evolved the ability to use synchronized activity among prefrontal neural populations to support dynamic-binding among roles, fillers and structured relations. Although neural synchrony is used by many species for coding contextual associations of various sorts (see Fries et al. 2007), LISA suggests that co-opting this mechanism for role-based relational coding was responsible for the “Great Move” (Newell 1990) in human cognition. Certainly, neural synchrony is not the only possible mechanism by which the human brain might approximate the higher-order properties of a PSS (for other possibilities, see Smolensky 1999; Wilson et al. 2001a). And the hypothesis that some form of neural synchrony is the critical innovation subserving higher-order human cognition requires much further empirical support before it can be deemed anything more than a plausible possibility (but see Uhlhaas & Singer 2006 for a start). ******* The editors of this journal warned us that the title, “Darwin’s Mistake”, might distract some commentators from the substantive issues at stake in our article. They were right. Many contemporary comparative psychologists reflexively treat any suggestion of a cognitive discontinuity between human and nonhuman species as a heresy equivalent to defending creationism, or, worse, anthropocentrism. For the record, we never suggested either that some deus ex machina played a role in the evolution of the human mind or that animals lack the power of abstraction; and we never called for Darwin to surrender his place in the pantheon of great scientists. Indeed, our hypothesis is entirely Darwinian in its inspiration. Was not the entire point of Darwin’s (1859) magnum opus that the “Divergence of Character” combined with the principles of “Natural Selection” and the “Extinction of less-improved forms” would, by their very nature, create functional differences between extant organisms, some so great as to differentiate one kind (i.e., “species”) of organism from another? Lupyan puts it perfectly: “Owing to non-linear interactions between genotypes, environment, and the resulting phenotypes, functional discontinuities are a common product of continuous evolutionary tinkering.” Our claim that continuous evolutionary processes have produced a radical functional discontinuity between the cognitive abilities of extant species is not an affront to Darwin’s legacy (cf. Burghardt, Wasserman) – it is what Darwin’s own theory predicts. The differences between human and nonhuman brains are clearly not limited to an incremental change along some single continuous quantity, such as number of neurons or brain size (Preuss 2000). Yet everybody (reasonable) agrees that there is no need to posit any special kind of nonmaterial mental stuff. Whatever differences there are between human and nonhuman minds, they are certainly more than “superficial” in Adler’s sense but definitely less than “radical,” and in any case are completely compatible with and predicted by Darwin’s materialist theory of evolution. Darwin’s emphasis on the mental continuity between human and nonhuman minds was politic in his time – as it still is today. And whatever mistakes Darwin made, he made them almost a hundred years before the rise of modern linguistics, computational theory, genomics, and the cognitive “revolution” in psychology. So after considering the commentaries on our target article, we admit our original title may have been too harsh. Darwin (1871) at least acknowledged the “immense” and “enormous” difference between “the lowest savages” and even the “most highly organised ape” – whereas many comparative researchers today believe that a human child magically kept alive alone on a desert island would “not differ very much” from other great apes (Tomasello & Rakoczy 2003; see also Gardner, Lupyan, Wasserman). And unlike some researchers (e.g., Bickerton) who believe that language alone can explain what is distinctive about the human mind, Darwin argued – as we do – that “the mental powers of some early progenitor of man must have been more highly developed than in any existing ape, before even the most imperfect form of speech could have come into use” (Darwin 1871, p. 57). In short, any differences we may have with Darwin concerning the cognitive limitations of nonhuman animals pale in comparison to the differences we have with most of our contemporaries in comparative psychology. And any mistakes Darwin may have made over the course of his career seem trivial when weighed against the monumental insights he provided into the evolution of life in general and the origins of the human mind in particular. In hindsight, we erred: “Darwin’s Triumph” makes a better title.

Posted all that as an illustration of how the "weaknesses of evolution" are going to be taught by the likes of FL:

"Children, here's a noble christian apologist quoting Scientist X supporting 'discontinuity' between humans and non-humans. Scientist X also wrote a paper entitled 'Darwin's Mistake'."

Requires 20 paragraphs, some at the graduate level, to debunk.

So would FL be so kind as to demonstrate how a lack of geological evidence for "Primordial Soup" is a weakness of evolution by explaining how this lack impairs scientists' ability to explain the appearance and rise of pesticide-resistant insects and antibiotic resistant bacteria? Or can FL please explain how not knowing about what really was inside the "Primordial Soup" impairs scientists' ability to study fossil organisms?

Or is that too much to ask of a person who thinks an observed biological phenomenon is a god, a century-old corpse is a bible, and science classrooms being churches?

FL said: Ragarth says, "ID as I see it now is not scientific and therefore should not be in the science class", but the LSEA doesn't say anything about ID anyway and neither did the Zogby Poll and neither does the Texas Science Standards. The overwhelming majority of Americans say they want honest strengths and weaknesses OF EVOLUTION taught in science classroom. That's where things stand, whether you like it or not. This time, it's not about your personal opinion of ID.

Was I just quotemined? FL just totally blew off the premise of my argument and fabricated some abstract point out of thin air from a supporting statement I gave to prove my premise.

JohnK said: Posted all that as an illustration of how the "weaknesses of evolution" are going to be taught by the likes of FL: "Children, here's a noble christian apologist quoting Scientist X supporting 'discontinuity' between humans and non-humans. Scientist X also wrote a paper entitled 'Darwin's Mistake'." Requires 20 paragraphs, some at the graduate level, to debunk.

stevaroni said:

Was I just quotemined? FL just totally blew off the premise of my argument and fabricated some abstract point out of thin air from a supporting statement I gave to prove my premise.

Um, yeah, that happens with FL. You get used to it.

Insight into how chimpanzees really think can be seen in some recent experiments performed by Dr. Povinelli. In these experiments, the researchers used the chimps’ natural begging gesture to examine how they really think about their world. They confronted the chimps with two familiar experimenters, one offering a piece of food and the other holding out an undesirable block of wood. As expected, the chimps had no trouble distinguishing between the block and the food and immediately gestured to the experimenter offering the food. Next, the researchers wanted to see if the chimps would be able to choose between a person who could see them and a person who could not. If the chimpanzees understood how other animals see, they would gesture only to the person who could see them. The researchers achieved the “seeing/not-seeing” contrast by having the two experimenters adopt different postures. In one test, one experimenter wore a blindfold over her eyes while the other wore a blindfold over her mouth. In the other tests, one of the experimenters wore a bucket over her head, placed her hands over her eyes or sat with her back turned to the chimpanzee. All these postures were modeled after the behaviors that had been observed during the chimpanzees’ spontaneous play. The results of the experiments were astonishing. In the tests involving blindfolds, buckets and hands over the eyes–the apes entered the lab and paused but then were just as likely to gesture to the person who could not see them as to the person who could. In several cases, the chimps gestured to the person who could not see them and then, when nothing happened, gestured again, as if puzzled by the fact that the experimenter did not respond. In the case of experimenters facing with their backs to the chimps, they performed as if they knew that those facing way from them could not see and offer them food. However, subsequent experiments proved that the chimps had merely responded to conditioning from the initial experiments, since they had only received food from those experimenters who faced them. This was proven by having experimenters facing away from the chimps, but then turning to look over their shoulders. The chimps were just as likely to gesture to the experimenters facing away as the one who turned to look at them. Chimpanzees have no clue that humans must face them in order to see. It is obvious from these experiments that chimpanzees lack even a simple understanding of how their world works, but merely react to conditioning from directly observable events. (Povinelli, D.J. 1998. “Animal Self-Awareness: A Debate Can Animals Empathize?” Scientific American.)

FL wrote:

Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained - namely, that each species has been independently created - is erroneous.

Hmmm. Darwin is apparently using the word “created”, NOT to refer to the special creation belief of that time, but instead to Lamarckian evolution? Even though the creationists and churchmen of that time were clearly holding to the doctrine of “each species independently created”? Darwin even sent a worry-letter to Asa Gray because he feared Lamarckists would unleash a titanic religious condemnation on him? Very Odd.

What weaknesses are there in modern evolutionary theory?

A weakness would be a piece of definitely contradicting evidence with repeated attestation, or some real logical impossibility. Not a slur. Not an innuendo. Not an argument from ignorance or incredulity. Not something along the lines of "yes, but you can't explain x", unless x were actually contradictory, and not merely unexplained yet. Not a criticism of dating techniques, (real scientists do that much better) not a quote from some creationist blog, not a line or two lifted from an unwary real scientist. Not an observation that hasn't been made, or hasn't been made yet, but one that actually has been made, whose provenance is accurately cited, and which can be independently checked and confirmed. An actual weakness, based on actual data from actual observations that can be specified.

You won't find any. None are known to exist, by anyone. FL is requiring the schools to teach vacuum.

FL said: ... Cheryl and Jeremy have both linked to that LSEA, so by now you've all had time to read it. All of you are arguing against it -- you don't even realize that NOW you're in the minority of Americans on this one; the overwhelming majority of Americans, in the most recent Zogby, say yes it's time to embrace the LSEA's concept of allowing "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. ... You're getting left behind, guys. At long last, you're finally....losing the game. FL

What kind of man thinks the future of actual knowledge under the threat of religious fundamentalism is a game?!?

FL:

Does it make you rub your hands together in petty sadistic glee to think there's one more child who won't learn the facts? That maybe you have a chance to convert one more innocent to your twisted, narrow, sectarian world view? That your poor persecuted (as if) minority might some day take over the most powerful military the world has ever known? Is that how your good book teaches you to behave? Just wondering, 'cause from what I remember, the New Testament was all about "blessed are the meek" and "do unto others", and "of these the greatest is Love".

I guess I was wrong. Thanks for clearing that up.

fnxtr said: I guess I was wrong. Thanks for clearing that up.

FL said: ... Cheryl and Jeremy have both linked to that LSEA, so by now you've all had time to read it. All of you are arguing against it -- you don't even realize that NOW you're in the minority of Americans on this one; the overwhelming majority of Americans, in the most recent Zogby, say yes it's time to embrace the LSEA's concept of allowing "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. ...

FL wrote:

"You’re getting left behind, guys. At long last, you’re finally.…losing the game."

Waterloo! Waterloo! Waterloo!

Just keep saying it over and over FL. That will give real scientists anouther 150 years to gather a million more pieces of evidence that you can't refute. Then we'll really be in trouble!

Man I can't wait until ID gets its fair day in court, then evolution will be destroyed for good. Oh wait ... never mind.