Religion 'Intelligent design' teaching ban in the US

[sadakoyamamura]

I thought it was funny that she is against Intelligent Design being taught...but while they interviewed her she was baking Christmas cookies!

That made me laugh.

I'm not sure what you mean CC1 :?

Creationism has religious implications according to people who are against it and yet the woman was baking christmas cookies. Christmas is a religious celebration of the birth of Christ.

 

[Tsuyoiko]

Creationism has religious implications according to people who are against it and yet the woman was baking christmas cookies. Christmas is a religious celebration of the birth of Christ.

I thought that's what he meant. But Christmas existed long before Christ, although it had a different name. 'Christmas' cookies actually date back to the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was a pagan celebration of the winter solstice. As that is a natural event, you don't have to be a Christian to celebrate it. Or maybe she just celebrates 'Christmas' because it is a time to get together with family and have fun.

 

[sadakoyamamura]

@Tsuyoiko:
Yes I know that but did the woman knew the irony she was in? I would like to think that the change in the name has also changed the association so to speak.

Now back to original topic... I don't know what to say. It seems that the more I read about all the arguments presented here the more I get confused about what ID really is all about. :? Yes it smells of creationism and yet I have read that the theory of intelligent design has been used in science fields as archeology and forensics. Further, Darwin himself was reputed to have said, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

 

[Gaijin 06]

The fact seems to be that evolution is an impossibility. If we evolved from the primates, there would be no primates on the planet. But there are and scientists are still at a loss to provide the "missing link." Does anyone see evolution occuring on this planet?

Hi Pachipro... unfortunately your post is littered with misconceptions, and I really don't have time to correct them all - as there are plenty of sources that do it far more comprehensively and eloquently than I can hope to achieve on a jref post.

One of your misconceptions is quoted above, and this is a huge one that is shared by many people who have never bothered to study evolution. We DID NOT evolve from primates, NOR does the theory of evolution claim so.

All forms of life on earth have a common ancestor, so we share distant ancestors with the primates on earth. It would be better to represent our relationship with them as distant cousins rather than ancient sires.

I suggest this site

http://www.talkorigins.org/

as being an excellent place for you to begin some basic research on evolution & natural selection.

 

[Gaijin 06]

I was hoping to spark some intelligent debate concerning both sides, but I guess that is not to be the case for as with the abortion debate, and debates about religion, people take sides and refuse to acknowledge the other side unless it is written in stone or said on the news or by some named professor of a named university.

The abortion debate can not be compared to the natural selection vs creationism debate. Talking about abortion is a matter of our morals, and what we feel is right and fair. It is understanable there can be two or more valid points of view, depending on which side of the fence you sit.

Talking about evolution is a matter of fact and evolution and creationism are mutually exclusive. The earth is not both flat and round at the same time!

 

[Mycernius]

Evolution is only contrary to experience because it happens too slowly for us to observe it! But the indirect evidence of the fossil record is largely explained by natural selection.

Evolution can be observed in a relative short time when it come to bacteria and virus. Evolution is mutation to something slightly different from its parent. Because of the short lifecycle of these micro-organisms we can observe their lifecycle and compare difference between a drug resistance type to its earlier incarnations. It has evolved to combat a new threat to its life. Even rats have changed to become bigger, smarter and poison resistant, compared to their ancestors of 400 to 500 years ago. It is happening even in humans, abiet slowly. Our jaws are getting smaller, some people are not growing wisdom teeth to cope with this change. Childrens thumbs are becoming more flexible and longer trhan their parents and grandparents due to games and phones. We might not change as fast as other animals onthe planet because we bend nature to fit us and not the other way round, but we are still adapting to the changes that we make in our artifical world.

@Pachipro- I do find one flaw in your arguement that humans are not from this planet, but evolved somewhere else. If we are not of this world how do we manage to share about 99% of the DNA with chimps and other apes. If our natural planet is not this one then genetic data would not match very much on this world, but it does.

 

[Gaijin 06]

It is happening even in humans, abiet slowly. Our jaws are getting smaller, some people are not growing wisdom teeth to cope with this change. Childrens thumbs are becoming more flexible and longer trhan their parents and grandparents due to games and phones.

I think you need to be very careful with this sort of example. What you are talking about in both cases is obviously not evolution in any sense of the word.

Evolution through natural selection involves two things not shown in your example

(a) changes that can be passed on to children
(b) changes that concur an advantage to their host to enable him/her/it to have a better chance of passing on their genes to their children.

Your examples are both physiological based on lifestyle changes, and will not be passed onto future generations (because the DNA of a person does not alter if he has bigger muscles, nimbler fingers etc).

 

[Tsuyoiko]

@Tsuyoiko:
Yes I know that but did the woman knew the irony she was in?

Since IMO Christmas is not just a Christian festival, I don't think there is any irony. She can bake cookies to her hearts content.

Further, Darwin himself was reputed to have said, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

I'm not sure a few counter examples would be that disastrous for Darwin's theory. Even if a few cases of, say, Lamarckian inheritance were found, it wouldn't change the fact that Natural Selection is the main cause of evolutionary change. (That idea is not as mad as it was once thought to be - see this article on Epigenetics)

 

[Pachipro]

All forms of life on earth have a common ancestor, so we share distant ancestors with the primates on earth. It would be better to represent our relationship with them as distant cousins rather than ancient sires.

I suggest this site

http://www.talkorigins.org/

as being an excellent place for you to begin some basic research on evolution & natural selection.

Yes, I agree, they are our distant cousins and not our sires. No argument there.

The site you mentioned provides only "mainstream scientific responses". That is not what I am getting at with my argument. I know what mainstream science believes. I'm looking at other "credible" theories such as "Intelligent Intervention" which many do not even want to consider as they believe it to be only myth.

I do find one flaw in your arguement that humans are not from this planet, but evolved somewhere else. If we are not of this world how do we manage to share about 99% of the DNA with chimps and other apes. If our natural planet is not this one then genetic data would not match very much on this world, but it does.

But we did come to be on this planet and that is what Mr Pye is trying to point out in his essay in that we are a hybrid species. Our hominid DNA was mixed with that of another species of advanced extraterrestials in order to "make man in our image." The bible mentions it, as do the ancient Sumerian tablets. Also, most ancient civilizations on the planet mention gods having come down from the skies including ancient Japanese texts. That's why we share 99% of our DNA with primates as well as something like 90% with the common earthworm. I will quote below further from his essay below.

The argument may not hold water in mainstream science, but I believe there is a credible argument that should be looked into by mainstream science and put this debate to rest once and for all.

 

[Pachipro]

Further quoting from Lloyd Pye:

"The problem is simple: nobody in any conceivable position of power wants to confront the truth about human origins. No scientist, no politician, no clergyman could hope to preserve his or her authority—at whatever level—after actively coming forward with the truth about this incendiary subject. They have all seen colleagues ?gdisappeared?h from their ranks for stepping out of line, so they know retribution is swift and sure.

"As noted above, Creationists insist that God (a singular male now, reduced from the genderless plurals of original Biblical text) created man in His own image, after His own likeness. Well, if that?fs true, He must have been having a heck of a bad day, because we humans are a poorly designed species. True, we do have highly capable brains, but for some reason we are only allowed to use a relatively small portion of them. (Now we will hear frantic howls of protest from the scientists off to our right, but ignore them. If 100 idiot savants can access 100 different portions of their brains to perform their astounding intellectual feats, then those same portions must be in our brains, too, but our normalcy keeps us from being able to access them. Period.)

"Morally we are a terrible mishmash of capacities, capable of evil incarnate at one moment and love incarnate the next, while covering every range of emotion in between. Physically we carry more than 4,000 genetic disorders, with each of us averaging about 50 (some carry many more, some many less). New ones are found on a regular basis. No other species has more than a handful of serious ones, and none which kill 100% of carriers before they can reach maturity and reproduce. We have dozens of those. So how did they get into us? Better yet, how do they stay in us? If they are 100% fatal before reproduction is possible, how could they possibly spread through our entire gene pool?

"If we assume God was at His best the day He decided to create us, functioning in His usual infallible mode, that gives Him no legitimate excuse for designing us so poorly. Surely He could have given us no more physical disorders than, say, our nearest genetic relatives, gorillas and chimps. A little albinism never hurt any species, not those two or ours or dozens of others that carry it, so why couldn?ft He just leave it at that? What could have been the point of making us much less genetically robust than all the other species we are supposed to be masters of?

"There is no point to it, which is my point. It simply didn?ft happen that way.

"Now, let?fs examine the Darwinist dogma that humans descended from primates (chimps and gorillas) by gradually transitioning through a four-million-year-long series of prehumans known as Australopithecines (Lucy, etc.) and early Homos (Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, etc.). Even though Australopithecines undoubtedly walked upright (their kind would have left the famous pair of bipedal tracks at Laetoli, Tanzania, 3.5 million years ago), their skulls are so ape-like as to be ineligible as a possible human ancestor. But let?fs assume that somehow they bridged the evolutionary gap between themselves and early Homos, which indeed are in the ballpark of physical comparison with humans.

"Notice that in any series of photos showing the skulls of the Homo prehumans, little changes over time except the size of their brains, which increase by leaps of roughly 200 cubic centimeters between species. Every bone in those skulls is much denser and heavier than in humans; they all had missing foreheads; huge brow ridges; large, round eye sockets holding nocturnal (night) vision eyes; wide cheekbones; broad nasal passages beneath noses that had to splay flat across their faces (no uplift of bone to support an off-the-face nose); mouths that extend outward in the prognathous fashion; and no chins.

"Each of those features is classic higher primate, and they predominate in the fossil record until only 120,000 years ago, when genuinely human-looking creatures—the Cro-Magnons—appear literally ?governight?h (in geological terms), with absolutely everything about them starkly different from their predecessors. In fact, the list of those differences is so lengthy, it is safe to say humans are not even primates! (More howls of outrage from off to our right, but please keep to the middle ground and consider the evidence.)

"According to our mitochondrial DNA, humans have existed as a distinct species for only about 200,000 years, give or take several thousand. This creates quite a problem for Darwinists because they contend we are part of the sequence extending back through the Australopithecines at four million years ago. Furthermore, we should follow directly after the Neanderthals, which followed Homo Erectus. But now the Neanderthals, which existed for about 300,000 years and overlapped Cro-Magnons by about 100,000 of those, have provided mitochondrial samples which indicate they are not related closely enough to humans to be direct ancestors. This compounds yet another serious transition problem because human brains are on average 100 cubic centimeters smaller than Neanderthal brains! How might that have happened if we are on a direct ancestral line with them?

"Anthropologists are now left with only Homo Erectus as a possible direct ancestor for humans, and Erectus supposedly went extinct 300,000 years ago—100,000 before we appeared. Obviously, something had to give here, and—as in war—truth has been the first casualty. Recently anthropologists started reevaluating Homo Erectus fossils from Indonesia and guess what? They are now finding possible dates as early as 30,000 years ago, well beneath the 120,000 years ago Cro-Magnons first appeared in the fossil record. Such a surprise! However, scientists still have to account for our ?gsudden?h appearance and our wide array of new traits never before seen among primates.

"Understand this: humans are not primates! Yes, we do fit the technical definition of having flexible hands and feet with five digits, but beyond that there is no reasonable comparison to make. We don?ft have primate bone density (theirs is far more robust than ours) or muscular strength (pound for pound they are 5 to 10 times stronger than we are); but we do have foreheads; minimal brow ridges; small, rectangular-shaped eye sockets holding poor night-vision eyes; narrow nasal passages with noses that protrude off our faces; mouths that are flat rather than prognathous; we have chins; and we are bipedal."

To be continued in one last installment.

 

[Gaijin 06]

"Now, let?fs examine the Darwinist dogma that humans descended from primates (chimps and gorillas)

This guy doesn't have a clue, this is the most common misconception about Darwinism and one he launches into straight away. Hard to take anyone seriously when he doesn't have a clue about what "Darwinism" says.

Darwin does not say we are descended from chimps and gorillas, full stop.

 

[Gaijin 06]

I am also fascinated to know how this person Mr Pye can confidently assert the number of genetic disorders in humans and gorillas.

Given there are thousands of times more humans on earth than gorillas, and thousands of times more research money has been invested in studying human diseases than gorilla diseases can he begin to a possible reason?

Pretty much all of his arguments can be destroyed by someone with a common sense and a basic understanding of evolution and natural selection.

Oh, another one about genetic disorders and fatality before reproducing... someone introduce Mr Pye to the concept of recessive genes.

 

[Mycernius]

Sounds like Mr.Pye is a creationist in another form. Just replaced God with aliens. A mish mash of evolution and ID put togther as one

 

[bossel]

Hard to take anyone seriously when he doesn't have a clue about what "Darwinism" says.

Just what I thought.

 

[Brooker]

I think intelligent design is a valid theory, but not really something that can be taught in schools, because it's just a theory, there aren't any facts to teach.

 

[Revenant]

It is a somewhat valid theory, just not a scientifically valid theory.

 

[No-name]

If Aliens created us, who created the aliens?

Science classes in school should be limited to teaching the best science that is widely accepted. We have already commented on the difference between a scientific "theory" and a popular "theory" and how the differ in connotation and denotation. Students need to have their feet under them- scientific theories are part of the basics you need today- thermodyanamics, motion, atomic, and evolution theories are valuable for their organizational and predictive values.

I believe God created me as a unique creature. I also believe that I am a biological product from genetic material donated by my parents. There are two explanations that I believe wholeheartedly and that have reconciled themselves quite well in my large but primitive primate brain.

 

[No-name]

Why is it always aliens? Why not "the gods" or fairies and sprites or intelligent dinosaurs or beings sent back in time from our own future? What would make Mr. Pye come to the conclusion that the influence had to be extraterrestrial? Simply because there was an unexplained gap does not logically follow that you need to throw aliens into the mix.

 

[Pachipro]

This guy doesn't have a clue, this is the most common misconception about Darwinism and one he launches into straight away. Hard to take anyone seriously when he doesn't have a clue about what "Darwinism" says.

Darwin does not say we are descended from chimps and gorillas, full stop.

Just what I thought.

But Darwin himself does conclude that man descended from the primates, or from other species on earth, as I will show later on. However, I do now have a greater respect for what Darwin did say in his writings as you guys (and gal) have forced me to do some pretty heavy reading on Darwin these past few weeks. I think he just needed a little more time and research on his theories. If Darwin were alive today I believe that he may have again changed his mind as he modified his original theory 5 times previously. He may well have come to believe in "Intelligent Intervention".

I think intelligent design is a valid theory, but not really something that can be taught in schools, because it's just a theory, there aren't any facts to teach.

It is a somewhat valid theory, just not a scientifically valid theory.

Not really a theory per se if you examine the ancient Sumerian tablets and the legends of most ancient cultures. There are "facts", but no one, save a few renegades, are willing to write about them. It is not a scientifically valid theory because mainstream science refuses to examine the facts and just waves them off as legend or myth.

If Aliens created us, who created the aliens?

Excellent question. Zecharia Stichen answered this in one of his books, but I will have to review it before I answer this one. After all someone had to start the whole ball of intelligent species' rolling!

Why is it always aliens? Why not "the gods" or fairies and sprites or intelligent dinosaurs or beings sent back in time from our own future? What would make Mr. Pye come to the conclusion that the influence had to be extraterrestrial? Simply because there was an unexplained gap does not logically follow that you need to throw aliens into the mix.

Because the "gap" is what all ancient cultures and the Sumerian tablets refer to. The "gap" is what mainstream science refuses to address or acknowledge but is mentioned by all cultures in their myths and legends. Why would all ancient cultures refer to alien intervention or "beings from the heavens" or "those that descended to earth"? Mr. Pye's conclusion follows for what it's worth.

 

[Pachipro]

Further quoting Lloyd Pye:

"Apart from those skeletal differences, we don?ft have primate brains (that is an understatement!), throats (we can?ft eat or drink and breathe at the same time; they can); voices (they can make loud calls, but we can modulate them into the tiny pieces of sound that make up words); body covering (they all have pelts of hair from head to toe, thick on the back and lighter on the front; we have no pelt and our thickness pattern is reversed); we cool ourselves by sweating profusely (they tend to pant, though some sweat lightly); we shed tears of emotion (no other primate does); we do not regulate our salt intake (all other primates do); we have a layer of fat of varying thickness attached to the underside of our skin, which primates do not have; that fat layer prevents wounds to our skin from healing as easily as wounds to primate skin; human females have no estrus cycle, as do all primates; but the number one difference between humans and primates is that humans have only 46 chromosomes while all higher primates have 48!

"This last fact is the clincher. You can?ft lose two entire chromosomes (think how much DNA that is!) from your supposedly ?gparent?h species and somehow end up better. And not just better, a light year better! It defies logic to the point where any reasonable person should be willing to concede that something ?gspecial?h happened in the case of humans, something well beyond the ordinary processes of life on Earth. And it did. The ?gmissing?h chromosomes, it turns out, are not actually missing. The second and third chromosomes in higher primates have somehow been spliced together (there is no other term for it) by an utterly inexplicable—some might call it ?gmiraculous?h— technique.

"Once again, the only plausible explanation seems to be intervention. But by whom? The same hyperdimensional entity or entities that might have created life in the first place? Not necessarily. Certainly that would have to be considered as a possibility, but humans were probably a breeze to create relative to initiating life and engineering all subsequent forms. That leaves room for three-dimensional assistance. In other words, we could have been created as we are by other three-dimensional beings who for reasons of their own decided to make us ?gin their own image, after their own likeness.?h

"Accepting such a heretical explanation would certainly go a long way toward resolving these anomalies about humanity: (1) our many inexplicable differences from primates; (2) our all-too-sudden appearance in the fossil record; (3) our much-too-recent speciation; (4) our lack of a clear ancestor species; (5) our astounding number of genetic flaws; and (6) the unmistakable splicing done to our second and third chromosomes. The last two are, not surprisingly, hallmarks of hybridization and genetic manipulation, which is exactly how human origins were accounted for by—get this—the ancient Sumerians! We began this essay with them, and now we will end it with them.

"As was noted at the beginning, the Sumerians were Earth?fs first great culture, emerging fully-formed from the Stone Age around 6,000 years ago (shades of Bishop Ussher!). They utilized over 100 of the ?gfirsts?h we now attribute to a high civilization, among them the first writing (cuneiform), which they inscribed on clay tablets that were fired in kilns (another first) into stone. Thousands of those tablets have survived, and in many of them the Sumerians describe a period wherein hundreds of three-dimensional ?ggods?h (with a small ?gg?h) came to Earth from another planet orbiting in a long clockwise ellipse around the Sun rather than in a counterclockwise circle like the other planets.

"While on Earth, those vastly superior beings decided to create for themselves a group of slaves and servants they would call Adamu. It was written in stone over 4,000 years ago (1,500 years before the Old Testament) that those ?ggods?h agreed to ?gmake the Adamu in our own image, after our own likeness.?h They did it by processes that sound remarkably like genetic engineering, in vitro fertilization, and hybridization. Perhaps most remarkable of all, they said they did it around 200,000 years ago, precisely when our mitochondrial DNA—against all expectations—says we originate as a species!

"When the task of creating the Adamu was complete, the first of them were put to work in the Lower World of deep, hot mineshafts in southern Africa, where—not to put too fine a point on it—nearly every modern authority agrees that humankind originated. Eventually a surplus of slaves and servants became available, so that group was sent to work in the lush Upper World home of our alleged creators, which they called the E.Din (?ghome of the righteous ones?h) located in the Tigris-Euphrates Valley of modern Iraq.

"All went well until the end of the last Ice Age, around 15,000 years ago, when the gods realized the immense icecap covering Antarctica was rapidly melting, and at some point in the future its massive edges would drop into the surrounding oceans and cause gigantic tidal waves to sweep across Earth?fs lowlands, where their cities were. Because all Adamu could not be saved, several of the best were chosen to survive in a specially constructed boat able to withstand the immense tsunamis that were certain to strike.

"When the time came, the gods boarded their spacecraft and lifted off into the heavens, from where they watched the devastation below and were shocked by the level of destruction. But when the waters receded enough for them to come down and land in the Zagros Mountain highlands, above the now mud- and sludge-covered E.Din valley, they joined the surviving Adamu to begin rebuilding their decimated civilization.

"Again, not to put too fine a point on it, but most scholars now agree that modern civilization (settlements, farming, etc.) inexplicably began around 12,000 years ago in the Zagros Mountain highlands, where settlements would be extraordinarily difficult to build and maintain, and where terrace farming in poorly watered, sparse mountain soil (not to mention arid weather) would be vastly more demanding than in any fertile, well-watered lowlands. Yet the same scholars do not accept that there was any kind of worldwide flood event which may have caused a prior civilization to have to reboot itself in dry highlands.

"In general, modern scholars scoff at all similar correlations to the Sumerian texts, considering them nothing more than an extended series of coincidences. They insist the Sumerians were merely being ?goverly creative?h while forming incredibly sophisticated, richly detailed ?gmyths.?h After all, the myriad wondrous things they described over four thousand years ago simply could not be an accurate record of their ?gprimitive?h reality.

Or could it?"

End of Essay.

He further provides proof of his theory of "Intelligent Intervention" in a series of slide shows under "Intervention" comparing the chromosomes of humans with that of other species among some other excellent slide shows.

Take it for what you will, pure bull, speculation, or a viable theory. However, he does offer some interesting perspectives that mainstream science and religion refuses to acknowledge or address. Their refusal to refute his theories in a public forum or to address the Sumerian tablets translated by Mr. Stichen, or to address the common belief of all cultures of a worldwide deluge and "those that descended from the skies/heavens" leads me to believe that there must be some truth to what they have written. Where there is smoke, there is fire and if no one is willing to publically put out the fire once and for all (and not just on the internet, but on TV or similar venue) forces me to believe that there is something "they" don't want us to think about. Call me naive or simpleminded if you will, but until a named individual or organization steps up to the plate to refute these "outlandish" theories, based on facts, I will believe that there is a grain of truth to them.