Thoughts in a Haystack

There is a widespread misunderstanding about the rule of law. All the O'Reillys and Schlaflys and Robertsons and Coulters work to create an impression that judges should operate personally, that they should make ad hoc or personal rulings or, worst yet, respond to public will. The truth is that article three of the Constitution is a bulwark against the public will.

This is one of the reasons I keep insisting that I'm not an activist judge. If I had come to a different conclusion and ruled that it was acceptable to teach religious material in school — thrown one for the team — then I would have been an activist judge. Activist judges are not desirable.

What concerns me now is that even if you're as brilliant as Newton, you reach a point where you start basking in the majesty of God and then your discovery stops - it just stops ...

Question: What is the opposite of faith?
Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief.
Doubt.

Doubt does not constitute a dismissal of religion. Accordingly, faith is not the antonym of curiosity, and religion and science do not have to be contradictory ideals.

Instead, even smaller sulfur molecules seeped in and chemically fixed the marrow in much the same way formaldehyde would.

Though I am not a young earther, I find this evidence to be a compelling case for a young earth.

I’m not entirely sure why the article is posted here unless ID is attempting to promote the young earth theory - in which case Intelligent Design simply collapses into young-earth creationism. 400,000 year old DNA should be no less surprising to old-earth IDists than to Evolutionists.

The truth is that soft tissue usually doesn’t survive very long at all, a few years is most usually plenty enough to dispose of it. If we add a world-wide flood killing off the dinosaurs, as the YEC hypothesizes, how much soft tissue would survive? Very little soft tissue surviving is consistent with the YEC hypothesis.

I would suggest that ID, if agnostic on the question of a young earth, is solidly biased towards an old earth. With that in mind, this find is almost as surprising to the ID community as it is to the scientific community at large.

I believe that there are two primary reasons why this article is being discussed in this forum:

1 - IDers have a committment (sic) to let the evidence take them where it will.

This is evidence. It must find its way to fit into our understanding.

2 - This is an excellent example showing that the scientific community doesn’t "know" as much as it thinks it does. Further, it shows that our expectations inform our observations. IE, we didn’t find soft tissue earlier because we were not looking.

Okay, but the IDists who continue to believe in an old-earth in light of this finding - aren’t they in pretty much the same position as evolutionists?

To put it another way, it seems like IDists could say that there is too much evidence for an old earth to let this evidence (and other preservation of soft tissue) change them to a young earth view. It might be rationalized that soft tissue survives much longer than previously imagined. But, that position is identical to the evolutionists position. Further, it raises questions about why IDists who use these rationalizations are "[letting] the evidence take them where it will" whereas evolutionists who take this view are not - since both use the same rationalization.

The intelligent design debate has nothing to do with the evidence. It has everything to do with what we are going to let that evidence tell us.

Public understanding of science will not be advanced by people like Francis Collins, Simon Conway Morris, and Ken Miller. They are subverting science in order to make it conform to their personal religious beliefs. (Which, by the way, conflict.) They are doing more harm to science than those who oppose it directly from the outside because the Theistic Evolutionists are subverting from within. It is sad that they are being supported by people who should know the difference between rationalism and superstition.

If this is the way it's going to work, if you're going to go along with Brayton's division into us and them, and his outrageous distortions of our position (we're out to attack and destroy religion by any means possible? Please.) then I will plainly state that I am not on "Ed's team".

I'm also not interested in being on any "team" that treats criticisms of its members as intolerable dissent, and who react to disagreement by announcing that they're going to treat the critics as schismatics. I know which side is hypocritically demanding conformity and purity of the movement, and it ain't us evil atheists.

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Have you even noticed the irony of decrying those " who want to divide the movement" while announcing that you've decided there are two teams, and denouncing the other guys?

As for literature, drama, the visual arts, etc....only an idiot would think Moran or I are denying the importance of art, and only an idiot would equate superstition with art. That was an appallingly stupid comment.

When Eugenie Scott and others promote a theistic version of science they seem to think they are allowing for a safe middle ground where Theistic Evolutionists like Francis Collins, Simon Conway Morris, and Ken Miller can find common cause with scientists who don't let superstition masquerade as science. They are wrong. There is no common ground between the rational and the irrational.

Scientists divide into two schools of thought over the best tactics with which to face the threat. The Neville Chamberlain 'appeasement' school focuses on the battle for evolution. Consequently, its members identify fundamentalism as the enemy, and they bend over backwards to appease 'moderate' or 'sensible' religion (not a difficult task, for bishops and theologians despise fundamentalists as much as scientists do). Scientists of the Winston Churchill school, by contrast, see the fight for evolution as only one battle in a larger war: a looming war between supernaturalism on the one side and rationality on the other. For them, bishops and theologians belong with creationists in the supernatural camp, and are not to be appeased.

Horowitz said that he was furious about the “breathtaking audacity of this theft of the report by the Democrats and the unions,” and that a “cabal” of faculty leaders had convinced “weak-spined Republicans” (who controlled the committee) to go along with the “theft.”

[B]ecause the final vote on the report was unanimous -- on a committee controlled by Republicans -- the committee made it more difficult for Horowitz to blame his problems on liberals.

He maintained, however, that despite the “travesty and the cover-up,” he was in fact pleased with what he accomplished in Pennsylvania.

In the end, though, the panel on Tuesday stripped away what he had been citing as points of victory. The final report kept the language saying that it couldn’t find evidence of problems with students’ rights. On whether colleges need new policies, the report’s language changed, noting that some colleges have such policies and need only review them. On student evaluations of faculty members, the report shifted from urging colleges to change them to urging colleges to look at them and make their own decisions.

Was the Ford Pinto, with all its imperfections revealed in crash tests, not designed?

Apparently, the vertebrate eye is backwards because God decided it was cheaper to settle the lawsuits than make the cheap fix earlier implemented for the cephalopods.

Parents and students beware: the author of a leading college biochemistry textbook believes that pro-intelligent design students are not smart and should not be admitted to college.

I agree with the Dembski sycophants that UCSD should not have required their uneducated students to attend remedial classes. Instead, they should never have admitted them in the first place.

It is also worth noting that Professor Moran called ID-proponents "IDiots" and "sycophants."

A sycophant is "a self-seeking, servile flatterer; fawning parasite."

Philosopher Jay Richards of Acton Institute concluded from his findings that the universe was designed for discovery. And with each discovery, the Darwinian theory of evolution is expected to go down as "a huge mistake in history," Richards said.

Over the last several decades, Christians have begun to emerge back into the intellectual public square. This is primarily occurring in the field of philosophy, New Testament studies with regard to the historical Jesus and the gospels, and it is now beginning to occur in the physical sciences as manifested in the Intelligent Design movement ...

Now, Christians can stand confidently within biblical truth knowing that it's in line with astrophysics and cosmology, said [Lee] Strobel, [author of The Case for a Creator] quoting a cosmology expert. "It is now the atheist who has to maintain by faith, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, that the universe did not have a beginning."

Paramount Pictures has hired Ron Nyswaner to pen the screenplay for "Dover," based on the landmark 2005 trial that stopped a Pennsylvania school board from teaching "intelligent design" -- i.e., creationism -- over evolution.

I will note that I had a choice to make in the beginning of the case as to whether or not I wanted to make myself available at all to the press, and some judges do and some judges don't. I decided that I would do that so long as I didn't discuss the merits of the case. And so I allowed certain reporters at times to interview me in chambers. This worked out well, save for some over-the-top questions, Oprah-like questions, if you will, that I got, such as "What's your favorite sports team? How many times a week do you work out?" And my favorite: "Who do you want to play you in the movie version?" For the record, that's the Philadelphia Eagles, six times a week, and Tom Hanks.

The intent of this resolution is to resist the introduction of religion into the science curriculum of our public schools and to maintain the separation of church and state.

To see the disingenuous hypocrisy of religious people who embrace NOMA, imagine that forensic archeologists, by some unlikely set of circumstances, discovered DNA evidence demonstrating that Jesus was born of a virgin mother and had no father. If NOMA enthusiasts were sincere, they should dismiss the archeologists' DNA out of hand: "Irrelevant. Scientific evidence has no bearing on theological questions. Wrong magisterium." Does anyone seriously imagine that they would say anything remotely like that? You can bet your boots that not just the fundamentalists but every professor of theology and every bishop in the land would trumpet the archeological evidence to the skies.

Either Jesus had a father or he didn't. The question is a scientific one, and scientific evidence, if any were available, would be used to settle it. The same is true of any miracle - and the deliberate and intentional creation of the universe would have to have been the mother and father of all miracles. Either it happened or it didn't.

Dr. [Bruce] Masse analyzed 175 flood myths from around the world, and tried to relate them to known and accurately dated natural events like solar eclipses and volcanic eruptions. Among other evidence, he said, 14 flood myths specifically mention a full solar eclipse, which could have been the one that occurred in May 2807 B.C.

Half the myths talk of a torrential downpour, Dr. Masse said. A third talk of a tsunami. Worldwide they describe hurricane force winds and darkness during the storm. All of these could come from a mega-tsunami.

Of course, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, Dr. Masse said, "and we’re not there yet."

What if she had been told, "We only teach Darwin's theories, and you can't question it". Worms would still have to "eat dirt". If she were a student in Ohio, she would have been taught to accept what she was taught, it's the truth, and that all there is. But somewhere in her education she was taught to question, to be creative, to have tenacity.

Contrary to Ms. Haverkos' assertions, my work does NOT in any way challenge Darwin's theory of evolution; in fact, my work on worm burrowing illustrates an outstanding example of convergent evolution. I have found that burrowers across many animal phyla exert forces in similar ways and have evolved to have a wedge shape and/or anatomies allowing exertion of large forces to propagate a crack. Without an understanding of the theory of evolution, I would not be able to explain this similarity across unrelated animals.

I find it very disturbing that my research has been grossly misinterpreted to support the idea of intelligent design. Intelligent design is NOT a testable hypothesis and therefore has no place in science classrooms. Ms. Haverkos points out the importance of challenging theories, which I fully support. However, the way scientists challenge theories is by generating alternative TESTABLE hypotheses and collecting data to TEST those hypotheses. Students of science should certainly be taught to ask questions and to challenge established ideas, but they should be taught to do so using the scientific method. In addition, in order to generate intelligent questions that can advance the field of biology, it is essential to have a basic understanding of the field. The theory of evolution explains a tremendous amount of scientific data and there are currently NO other viable theories to explain those data that withstand scientific tests. Telling students to challenge an established theory without either presenting a testable alternative hypothesis or specifically encouraging students to develop their own testable alternative hypothesis confuses them not only about the theory itself, but about the entire process of doing science.

20 points for every use of religious or science fiction works or myths as if they were fact.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has suggested that if Bush replaced [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld two weeks before the election, voters would not have been as angry about the unpopular Iraq war. Republicans would have gained the boost they needed, according to Gingrich, to retain their majority in the Senate and hold onto 10 to 15 more House seats.

"The president was not going to replace Secretary Rumsfeld unless he was confident that he had a very strong replacement available to him to put in place," Bolten said.

Prime Minister Tony Blair said today that the threat from home-grown Islamic terrorism would last “a generation,” reinforcing a highly unusual warning by the head of the MI5 domestic intelligence agency that some 1,600 suspects in 200 terrorist cells were under surveillance.

The [intelligence] estimate by Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, head of MI5, was by far the most extensive and alarming report given by the government. It included assertions that some 30 terrorist cells were under surveillance and that “tomorrow’s threat may include the use of chemicals, bacteriological agents, radioactive materials
and even nuclear technology.”

- "Blair Says Terrorist Threat to Last ‘a Generation’" by Alan Cowell, The New York Times, November 10, 2006.

Earlier this year, at a lecture sponsored by the Royal Society, Steve Jones, the British geneticist, noted that more than half of all Americans, including President Bush, believe in some form of creationism, and that creationism was "beginning to find a significant toehold in the U.K."

Jones called this a "step back from rationality." As in the U.S., main proponents of creationism are religious fundamentalists. In Britain's case, however, the fundamentalists tend to be Muslims rather than Christians.

Earlier this year, Muslim medical students at one London university distributed leaflets challenging Darwin's theory and citing a verse from the Koran that says God created every animal from water.

- "Society fights battle royal over creationism, global warming" by Tom Hundley, The Chicago Tribune, November 10, 2006.