I'm convinced

[Choobus]

anthonyjfuchs wrote

No, no, no. You guys aren't my fucklings.

Not yet...

you say that now, but we know you crave entry into the "oval office"......

[Victus]

Some loon wrote

"But it's science," you say. No, not really. Certainly, not yet, if it ever will be. It's a theory

So is gravity. "Gravity", like "evolution", is a fact. The theory is what we use to describe the specific processes surrounding it.

Some loon wrote

an extremely farfetched

Now who's unscientific.

Some loon wrote

unproven theory and – at its base, its fundamental core – terribly unscientific!

*compares the number of scientific studies supporting evolution to those supporting creationism*

Snap.

T

Some loon wrote

But this unfunny joke has been taken very seriously by a host of scientists, and now most educators, and it has been universally accepted as "fact" by most universities and school systems. And woe to the teacher, from grade school through college, who dares to question this improbable, unproven theory. If he or she dares to suggest or present the alternative theory of Intelligent Design – the vastly more plausible notion that this incredible universe and all living things point logically to a Creator with an intelligence far beyond our feeble comprehension (no matter how many Ph.D. degrees we might have among us) – lawsuits and intimidation will surely follow that teacher.

People aren't slapped down for teaching alternative views, they're slapped down for teaching religion, which has no place in the public (or any, in my opinion) school system. Come up with a validated scientific theory of your own and the restrictions will stop. Otherwise shut your cake hole.

I

Some loon wrote

n one of his many excellent and substantive mailings, D. James Kennedy drew my attention to Tom DeRosa, who grew up Catholic in Brooklyn and spent his high-school years at a Catholic seminary. He was voted "Best Seminarian" in 1964, but one year later, instead of taking vows to enter the priesthood, he became an atheist.

His encounter with Darwin in college led to that decision. "There was a point where I became so rebellious that I yelled out, 'No God!' I remember saying, 'I'm free, I'm liberated,'" DeRosa recalled. "I can do what I want to do; man is in charge! It was pure, exhilarating rebellion!"

Good to see his decisions are always based on logic and reasoning *sarcasm*.

Some loon wrote

That rebellion soured after a while, and after 13 years as a respected public-school science teacher, he experienced a spiritual awakening that completely changed his perception of existence – and science. He's now founder and president of the Creation Studies Institute and author of "Evidence for Creation: Intelligent Answers for Open Minds."

As they always say, the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Stupid is as stupid does (PS: I like how you use the term 'public school teacher' as if it represents the upper echelons of academia. Well played).

Some loon wrote

Did his IQ leak out his ears? Did he cease being a scientist?

Do people who don't conduct experiments even count as scientists?

Some loon wrote

Far from it; he became a real scientist, an honest seeker after truth who could look at facts without a predisposed belief and actually see the obvious all around us.

Quick, let's find his published studies supporting his position. Oh wait...

Some loon wrote

As a real scientist, he looked again at what he'd gullibly accepted in college. And, examining the prevalent claim that life "evolved" from molecule to man by a series of biological baby steps, tiny mutations over millions of years, he realized there is no historical evidence for that claim. He writes, "Millions upon millions of fossils have been collected to date, but there is no evidence of transition fossils, that is, fossils of organisms in an intermediate stage of development between steps on the evolutionary ladder."

All but the first organism were, technically, transitional organisms.

Some loon wrote

Had you thought about that? If all life on this planet were actually in a process of "evolution," would every species evolve in lock step, regardless of different environments?

No, they wouldn't Interestingly, evolution also claims that different environment stressors will cause different patterns of evolutionary development. Are you sure you're a creationist?

Some loon wrote

Or wouldn't there be all the intermediate steps still in evidence, at various places around the globe?

Like, say, fish that can breath air for brief periods of time? Birds that can't fly, but rather swim?

Some loon wrote

Wouldn't there be plenty of evolving apes, tending toward homo sapiens, in the jungles and rain forests, possibly developing verbal skills and capable of elementary math and reasoning?

You mean like, say, a chimp?

Some loon wrote

None such. Ever. Nada. Apes have always been apes, and humans always human (though some of us less so than others).

I'm glad to see your religious convictions haven't prevented you from deeming your fellow citizens as sub-humans.

Some loon wrote

I wonder if any science teachers today ever share with their students that Charles Darwin acknowledged "the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe … as the result of blind chance or necessity." If the originator of the theory of evolution and the author of "The Origin of Species" (the book which later students eagerly used as an excuse to leave a Creator out of the picture) couldn't imagine everything we see and know happening without some design and purpose – why should any of us?

You don't want to get into a quote mining war while you're waving a bible around. The contradictions in the bible are longer than the thing itself. Further, unlike religion, science isn't contingent on the beliefs of the person making the suggestion, it's contingent on the evidence. Darwin could have believed that the universe was created by unicorns who lived in his beard, but that doesn't change the evidence, or necessitates that anyone else believe in the unicorns without evidence.

Some loon wrote

Could it be that this whole evolution idea has grown out of a deep desire to escape the implications that necessarily accompany the concept of an infinite Intelligence, a Creator? If humans want to prove some theory, no matter how farfetched and self-serving, they will inevitably find some "evidence" that they can wedge into their theory.

I disagree. Creationism hasn't been able to find any evidence at all.

[nkb]

It is amusing, but at the same time frustrating, that he attributes a lot of the motivations of theists to the "believers" of evolution. It is so ironic, I am about to burst.