Your feigned exasperation

It’s not feigned at all. Your lack of knowledge about what evolutionary theory teaches is extraordinary. I’m sure you’re happy with your dinosaur/human footprints and crystal skulls, but keep them out of my science classroom.

as they battle to eliminate His words, images, devotions and remembrances.

No one is preventing you from teaching ID (did you notice that you admit it is about the Christian religion?). You are only prevented from falsely presenting it as science within a science classroom.

Unless I missed it…I concur with Ryland. Please cite a source disproving/debunking the Gypsy Moth story.

One more thing…how do you account for the fact that we share over 99% of our DNA with Chimpanzees? (Or, in the case of George W. Bush, 100%.)

JK

All this bickering aside, my concern is with the nature of the decision — its tone, its “precedents”, and as I’ve mentioned before, the idea that acknowledging the existence of God is supporting an establishment of religion.
Nearly all those who claim (rightly or wrongly) that the Founding Fathers were not Christians, will concede that they were Deists: “one who believes that God exists and that He created the world, but now stands completely aloof from it.”
So, if the Founding Fathers believed that God created the world, how could they also believe that the government can’t support the position that God created the world?
I know some good answers to that question that argue against it, but I’m just sayin’.

Finally, what I find ironic about liberals is that they feel comfortable flaunting their “knowledge” of Christ’s teachings as they battle to eliminate His words, images, devotions and remembrances.

According to your example, the woods may be, over time, full of beagles, or german shepherds. Why not jellyfish or hawks?

By extrapolation, the globe should be swarming with black squirrels 1 million years from now.

Either evolution requires too little time…or too much time

sigh

Second, I wasn’t referring to your analogy of beagles and german shepards, but to whether or not the process of evolution was systematic. According to your example, the woods may be, over time, full of beagles, or german shepherds. Why not jellyfish or hawks?

What’s random mean? Can apes mate with chimps? They’re very similar.

Now, back to the artificial DNA

http://lslwww.epfl.ch/~tempesti/Documents/2001/ICES01-Prodan.pdf

A human being is made up of some 60 trillion (60×1012) cells. Key for the survival of the organism is the relentless decoding of the genome, a ribbon of 2 billion characters, to produce the necessary proteins [14]. The parallel execution of 60 trillion genomes in as many cells occurs ceaselessly from the conception to the death of the individual. At any given moment, many protecting mechanisms keep an eye on the
well operating of the whole organism. Eventual faults, though rare, are in the majority of cases, successfully spotted and repaired. The inspiration of the Embryonics (embryonic electronics) project [3, 4, 10, 11] is this astounding degree of parallelism present in nature. Embryonics tries to adapt some of the development processes of multicellular organisms to the purpose of designing novel, robust architectures for massive parallelism in silicon.
It is biology that made possible the miracle of contemplating the successfully operating human organism. It is a miracle indeed to have trillions of cells operating in parallel, forming intricate structures (tissues and organs) only to perform a single goal, that is, the living organism.

* * *

As a long-term research project, Embryonics is going well on track for many years now. Throughout this time, we have been accumulating considerable experience and were witnesses to the advent of technology that enabled us to actually experiment our ideas. While we adapt continuously to the technological advances, it may be possible that these advances will render some of our specific mechanisms obsolete. But with self-replication [8] being one of the key issues in nanotechnology, we feel that our efforts through the Embryonics project on creating and perfecting bio-inspired computing systems are rewarded.
Though Embryonics is quite at an advanced stage, the technological limits prevent us from experimenting with a great number of cells. A lot of work remains to be done in this direction.

Either evolution requires too little time (black squirrels — who seemed to have increased in number in my lifetime) or too much time ( see above).

Nothing has evolved in the 150+ years since Darwin s work was published. The “adaptation” of the gypsy moths in England was shown to be bad science.

Please cite a source that disproves the gypsy moths.

And if you don’t like gypsy moths, how about black squirrels? And the talk.origins FAQ has a whole section dedicated to examples of observed speciation.

And while we’re at it, how about selective breeding of animals? Evolution doesn’t just happen with natural selection – we’ve been causing accelerated evolution of species through artificial selection for many thousands of years. Poodles didn’t occur in nature, you know. Breeders looked for a mutation that showed the characteristics they wanted, bred the mutated specimens together to conserve those characteristics, and eliminated the culls. That’s what nature does, only slower.

And, as far as I know, no one has ever duplicated the conditions whereby inert, inanimate molecules become lifelike.

Um, hello? Did you read my comment above, where I suggested a Google search for “artificial DNA“?

But, until the 1850 s, no reputable scientist would have suggested that heavier than air objects could fly. Conspiracy?

Cure Polio? Tuberculosis? Before 1950. scientists would have told you there was no cure. Conspiracy?

So what? Scientists aren’t the ones denying that evolution exists today, are they? You argue against your own case; you’re belittling the people who always say “there ain’t no such animal” when some new idea comes along… which is what creationists are doing now. What point are you trying to make? That the people you’re defending are anti-intellectual sticks in the mud? We already know that, thanks.

Way ahead of you, Rhys:
http://www.flyingmachines.org/fmach.html

The whole argument is bogus for one simple reason. I read as much of the decision as I could stomach

decision here: http://www.pamd.uscourts.gov/kitzmiller/kitzmiller_342.pdf

I always take issue with the idea that proposing that the Universe has a Creator is endorsing an establishment of religion. Which religion do you know of that preaches only that the universe was created by a supernarural being, and that’s it.

From the conclusion (pp. 136 -139)
“… Repeatedly in this trial, Plaintiffs scientific experts testified that the
theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.
To be sure, Darwin s theory of evolution is imperfect…
… we will enter an order permanently enjoining Defendants from maintaining the ID Policy in any school within the Dover Area School District… ”

I find that troubling on several levels.

But the Theory of Evolution proposes that  Nature never gets it right the first time. Yet, the  mistakes are nowhere to be found.

That’s actually two very common misconceptions about evolution, 1) to assign motives to evolution, and 2) to assume that organisms that survive are good and organisms that go extinct are “mistakes”. This is a natural error, partially due to somewhat misleading phrases like “survival of the fittest.” “Fittest” does not equal “best,” not in any qualitative sense. It merely means that a set of genes will (or will not) be conserved and propagated in a given group of organisms in a given environment. If you had a bunch of beagles and a bunch of German shepherds and dropped them down in a wilderness, and came back 10 years later to find that the German shepherds died and the beagles survived, does that mean that nature “got it right” with beagles, or that German shepherds are a mistake? Not at all, it just means that for whatever reason, German shepherds didn’t have what it takes to survive, in the environment you dropped them in. In another environment, it may have been the other way around, or it may be that both species survived. And that’s all it means. Nature doesn’t care. Assigning motives to nature is a religious idea that is false-to-fact.

Care to back that claim up with some historical evidence? Any scientist pre-1850 would have been able to point to millions of heavier than air objects that could fly. They’re called birds, Frank.

A disreputable scientist is one who refuses to accept the evidence in front of his face even when it is shown to him.

Once the evidence of powered flight, polio vaccines, etc, were provided, the scientists stopped disbelieving in them. Contrast this with the ID proponents who insist on notions like “irreducable complexity” even when their examples have been fully debunked.

I m not comfortable being  stuck with evolution

Fine. Then when someone begins to present scientific evidence to provide a better explanation we’ll all be better off. Proponents of ID have yet to provide any testable scientific hypotheses that support their claims.

As far as the conspiracy question is concerned, I repeatedly bring it up because whenever the accurate claim that ID is religious rather than scientific is brought up, the supporters of ID return with the claim that belief in evolution is also dogmatic and religious in nature. If that is the case, then clearly there must be a conspiracy among scientists like myself to hide the true nature of science. Either that, or we really don’t understand what science is since we keep publishing articles that we think provide testable and verifiable results about evolutionary processes.

It’s interesting that I have seen that line so many times before. i don’t believe there is a conspiracy; that’s silly: Millions of lab – coated co – conspirators sitting around university coffee shops, saying, “You don’t believe that Darwin crap, do you?” “Nah!” “Me. neither!”

But, until the 1850’s, no reputable scientist would have suggested that heavier than air objects could fly. Conspiracy?

Cure Polio? Tuberculosis? Before 1950. scientists would have told you there was no cure. Conspiracy?

Before the 1850’s, there was no way doctors would have guessed that they were transmitting germs that were killing women in childbirth Conspiracy?

No, simply the limits of science.

I’m not comfortable being “stuck with evolution”, anymore than I would be comfortable looking at a curved horizon every single day from 800 AD to 1200 AD, while being told by scientists that the world was flat.

Exactly. ID is not science so it should not be taught in a science class. Science is not a religion because science is not based on faith, it is based on skepticism. The scientific method requires a scientist to disprove their hypothesis, not prove it. The Christian right’s attempt to suggest that there is some kind of equivalence between evolution and ID and the science is a religion for scientists is the height of sophistry. This is integrally connected to the separation of church and state debate. The Christian Right is simply trying to expand the sphere of its authority into areas where it simply does not belong and has no claims.

Teach evolution as inadequate…

As soon as it is shown to be inadequate. Currently, it does a reasonable job of explaining how millions upon millions of pieces of evidence fit together…unless you think there is a huge conspiracy within the scientific community to deceive the public. The specifics of evolutionary theory will always be debated and improved, but until a series of explanations is provided that does a better job…we’re stuck with evolution.

I learned about dinosaur tracks and footprints in the same stone, indicating they were there simultaneously.

Er…Frank, modern creationists don’t use the footprint argument anymore. It was easily debunked long ago. In fact, the major creationist groups (like Answers in Genesis) specifically ask creationists not to bring it up because it discredits their other arguments.

As far as “crystal skulls” are concerned, I’m not sure how you think they are relevant to evolutionary theory.

The  failures are not around because they  failed

Well, if you don’t want to consider becoming extinct as an example of “failure,” then maybe you could give me a definition that would satisfy your search for evolutionary “failures.” Then I could point some out.

if they are extinct, exactly how are they known

They’re in all those “gaps” in the fossil record.

there can t be any harm in suggesting to children that evolutionary theory does not hold all of the answers

No scientist would suggest otherwise. In fact, there would be no point in continuing to study evolution if all the answers were known.

The harm comes from treating a non-scientific, religious philosophy as science. Or do you propose we also teach astrology in science class since our current knowledge in astronomy is incomplete?

ID can be taught in a religion or philosophy class. Teach science in science class.