On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:

On 16 Jan 2005 04:05:25 -0800,

Secondly, I would have to know what fields the 330 "scientists" who
signed the petition were in. I doubt if any of them were biologists.

That can be easily checked via google. I think you're right none of
them were biologists.

I just read up on it last night, though I didn't save the URL. It
turns out that some of them _are_ biologists, though the list is much
padded with the usual range of irrelevant professions.

On 16 Jan 2005 Gary Bohn <garybohn@REMOVETHISaccesscomm.ca> wrote:

"Richard Forrest" <richard@plesiosaur.com> wrote in news:1105874745.645555.46540@f14g2000cwb.googlegroups.com:

Jason Spaceman wrote:

[snip]

In the same article, they refuted the theory of evolution, saying,
"More than 330 scientists, including professors from institutions
such as M.I.T, Yale and Rice universities, along with the Smithsonian
Institution, have signed a statement authored by the Discovery
Institute in Seattle that questions the creative power of the
selection/mutation mechanism."

It should be made clear every time someone makes this claim that the
statement signed by these people does *not* refute the theory of
evolution. It says that they should be skeptical about it. Skepicism
about a theory does not imply refutation.

Richard, most people do not think that way, they have no training in
critical thinking, do not research specific claims, nor do they question
their authority figures. Anything that makes common sense (even though
it isn't common or necessarily valid) to them is correct and if large
numbers doubt some particular idea, it has become common sense therefore
it must be wrong. Furthermore if large numbers of authority figures
believe something is right, they believe those authority figures.

Good. Let's tell them about the 1,215,314 scientists who believe in
evolution. That ought to convince them.

Even if those 330 scientists do not believe evolution should be
abandoned, AiG meakes it sound as if they do. To them 330 is a large
number.

They probably think that the 330 scientists who share their beliefs are
way more important that a milllion who don't. That's because they are
idiots. (They're also idiots because they're wrong about the 330
scientists.)

Ever suspicious about anyone who signs themselves "PhD", I did a
double-take. Stephen Meyer, isn't he the one who wrote that review piece
about ID for a minor peer-reviewed journal of taxonomy and they had to
retract it, because he side-stepped the actual process of peer review?

Richard Forrest wrote:

Jason Spaceman wrote:

From the article:
--------------------------------------------------------------
An article titled "Students should learn to assess competing
theories," by Steve Meyer, Ph.D., and John Campbell, professor at

the

University of Memphis, says, "A good education presents students

with

competing perspectives held by credible experts, and offers them

skills to judge these views themselves." And "teachers should

describe

differing views to students and explain the arguments for and

these views as made by their chief proponents. We call this

"teaching

the controversy." This makes perfect sense to me; that is if we

want

to teach the kids to think.

In the same article, they refuted the theory of evolution, saying,
"More than 330 scientists, including professors from institutions

such

as M.I.T, Yale and Rice universities, along with the Smithsonian
Institution, have signed a statement authored by the Discovery
Institute in Seattle that questions the creative power of the
selection/mutation mechanism."

It should be made clear every time someone makes this claim that

statement signed by these people does *not* refute the theory of
evolution. It says that they should be skeptical about it.

about a theory does not imply refutation.

RF

----------------------------------------------------------------

Apparently lists of scientists refute scientific theories.

The wording of the notorious statement in question makes it clear

DI was looking for propaganda, no more-- and it's dishonest to imply
that a person who agrees we should think critically about a theory
somehow finds the theory flawed. I think most scientists would agree
that we should be "skeptical" about the theories of gravity or

Science is about finding better answers; it's not unquestionable
"revealed truth."
--
[The address listed is a spam trap. To reply, take off every zig.]
Richard Clayton

"The world needs more Starscream." -- Stephenls

Richard Forrest wrote:

Jason Spaceman wrote:

From the article:
--------------------------------------------------------------
An article titled "Students should learn to assess competing
theories," by Steve Meyer, Ph.D., and John Campbell, professor at

the

University of Memphis, says, "A good education presents students

with

competing perspectives held by credible experts, and offers them

the

skills to judge these views themselves." And "teachers should

describe

differing views to students and explain the arguments for and

against

these views as made by their chief proponents. We call this

"teaching

the controversy." This makes perfect sense to me; that is if we

want

to teach the kids to think.

In the same article, they refuted the theory of evolution, saying,
"More than 330 scientists, including professors from institutions

such

as M.I.T, Yale and Rice universities, along with the Smithsonian
Institution, have signed a statement authored by the Discovery
Institute in Seattle that questions the creative power of the
selection/mutation mechanism."

It should be made clear every time someone makes this claim that the
statement signed by these people does *not* refute the theory of
evolution. It says that they should be skeptical about it. Skepicism
about a theory does not imply refutation.

RF

----------------------------------------------------------------

Apparently lists of scientists refute scientific theories.

Read it at http://ydr.com/story/op-ed/55596/




J. Spaceman

There have been several "statements" signed by scientists issued from
the Discovery Institute. None of them deny that the theory of
biological evolution is accepted by the vast majority of scientists.
Instead they get these guys to sign a statement that essentially says
that they claim that one of the proposed mechanisms of biological
evolution is not believed by them to be sufficient to explain the
observed evolution of life on earth. The statements do not include

other mechanisms that have been proposed and are known to be working

nature along with natural selection and mutation. It is pure
propaganda junk. Even though I agree with the statement because I

of other mechanisms that have been proposed and have been observed to
be working in nature, I wouldn't sign this piece of junk. It is
essentially a lie to mislead people into thinking that they are

about biological evolution when they are talking about natural
selection as being the primary means of the observed biological
evolution. There are a lot of serious scientists that argue about how
large of a part natural selection plays in evolution, but they don't
deny that evolution happened. Even guys like Dembski and Behe have
claimed that common descent is pretty much a fact of nature, so if

signed this piece of junk they are scamming the people that they are
misleading.

There is no other reason for signing a statement like
this, when you know that its main purpose is to obfuscate the issues.
If they don't want to obfuscate the issues they should have demanded a
rewrite to make the claims more specific and less misleading. All

have to do is state that they are not arguing about the theory of
biological evolution, but one of the mechanisms observed to exist in
nature that has been proposed by some scientists as the primary
explanation for the observed biological evolution of life on earth.
Only someone that was brain dead would deny that natural selection and
mutation didn't have something to do with the evolution of life on
earth. The debate is currently about how much.

If they want to get people to sign a statement explicitly stating that
they do not think that evolution of life occurred on this planet, then
they can put such a statement forward and see how many "scientists"
sign it. If Behe, Denton, and Dembski aren't lying, then they would
not sign such a statement. Those are the big three as far as I know,
and if they won't sign such a statement, what is their signatures on
the current statements worth? Actually, I don't know if these guys
signed the 330 scientist scam. If I recall correctly they did sign

first scam where "Darwinian" was placed as a qualifier to evolution.
It was just the same scam with different wording.

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 09:58:27 -0500, Uncle Buck wrote:

Okay, here you go:

The controversy about evolution:

Group A: Based on hundreds of thousands of direct observations
repeatable by anyone with an IQ above "fundamentalist Christian" level
(i.e., an amoeba) and carefully constructed hypothesis based on
countless hours of analysis by hundreds of thousands of the brightest
minds on the planet, some people believe in the undeniable fact that
evolution occurs to all living things, and in the inescapable
conclusion of that fact that we, as living things, must also have
evolved.

Group B: Based on a collection of atrociously mangled cut-and-paste
jobs thrown haphazardly together from the myths of a few dozen
goat-fucking bronze-aged nomadic goat herders with absolutely no
knowledge of science whatsoever - not to mention no teeth, fingernails
encrusted with ***** and extremely offensive body odor - and with
absolutely no direct observations to back them up, Group B thinks that
Group A are a bunch of uneducated ninnies that should permit the
education of Group A's children to be decided by the superstitious
flights of fancy of Group B.

There. Controversy explained, nothing left to say.

This is proof that even people on ones own side of an argument can be
complete and utter assholes. I would appreciate it if you would refrain
for making any futher "explanations" on behalf of evolution. You make
evolution look like a bad thing.