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Abraham Redux: Please Focus on the Issue

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In the post below Dr. Dembski brought the Abraham case to our attention and asked whether it is legitimate to fire an employee merely because of his beliefs as opposed to his job performance.  The discussion rapidly deteriated into speculation about possible reasons Woods Hole might have terminated Abraham for poor performance.  All of those speculations are idle and beside the point.  Dr. Dembski asked, “Is it legitimate to fire someone because of their beliefs?”  It is simply no answer to that question to say, “Well maybe they fired him for reasons other than his beliefs.”

The purpose of this post is to attempt to focus the discussion back on the issue Dr. Dembski raised, which is a very profound issue in my view.

A copy of Abrham’s federal court complaint is here.   I would like to focus on the following sworn allegations:

16. Plaintiff’s work with Defendants focused on zebrafish developmental biology, toxicology and programmed cell death areas of reseach which required no acceptance, or application of , the theory of evolution as scientific fact.

17. Plaintiff at all times, before his employment began while helping to design and construct the lab and during his employment, performed exemplary work and was often praised and commended by [his supervisor] and other staff members for the quality of his research, commitment and scientific presentations.

20.  Plaintiff assured Defendants that he was willing to analyze aspects of his research using evolutionary concepts if warranted . . . but his sincerely held religous belief did not allow him to accept the theory of evolution as a scientific fact.

30.  Plaintiff was fired even though acceptance of evolution as scientific fact rather than theory (in contravention of his sincerely held religious beliefs) was in no way a bona fide occupational qualification of employment, was not previously mentioned or implied as a requisite for hiring, and was never listed among necessary critera for the advertised position by Defendants.

 I am not saying these sworn allegations are true.  We do not know if Abraham will be able to prove them at trial.  However, in order to focus the discussion on the issue Dr. Dembski raised, all commenters to this thread should assume for the sake of argument that the sworn allegations are in fact true.

The debate question for this post is:  “Assuming paragraphs 16, 17, 20 and 30 of Abraham’s complaint are true, Woods Hole’s termination of Abraham was wrong.”

Comments
-----Jerry, writes, "As I said Galileo was an arrogant a–hole. In England they would have had him beheaded for making the king look bad. In Florence he only got house arrest during a time of major crisis.' This is true. He pushed the envelope almost to the point of a dare, stepping out of his role as scientist and claiming theological expertise. He even presumed to reinterpret the meaning of scripture so that it would harmonize with his yet-to-be-confirmed theory, even as the Church was fending off charges about not taking scripture seriously. He was doing the very thing that he had promised not to do. The politically correct versions of this event are spectacularly misleading.StephenB
December 11, 2007
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Joseph, That happened in 1615. He was given a mild censure in 1615. Galileo was sentenced 18 years later by the Inquisition in 1633 to house arrest for a book that was written that year and was in the middle of the 30 Years War and purposely made the pope, his friend, look bad. It turns out a lot of the science in his book was bad but he wanted to reinterpret scripture anyway which was a source or real tension then. I suggest you get two courses from the Teaching Company by scholars in the History of Science. Most are available form local libraries. Each debunks the claims that Galileo was hounded or unfairly sentenced. He was told to not claim his ideas were theories but hypotheses. The popes and most of the powerful cardinals were his friends and he repaid them by disobeying them on how he was to present his ideas. The two Teaching Company courses are "Science and Religion" by Lawrence M. Principe from John Hopkins. and "Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How They Know It " by Stephen Goldman of Lehigh and probably one of the most knowledgeable professors in the country on the history of science. He is a fountain of information about just everything having to do with science. Goldman spends a half hour on Galileo and Principe spends an hour on the controversy. Goldman on the Teaching Company website says about Galileo; "But the church was actually correct that he had no basis for claiming the heliocentric theory was true, rather than simply an interpretation of experience." Here is what is said on Principe's Teaching Company website "Moving from the early centuries of the Christian era and the Middle Ages to our own day, he exposes the truth about the Galileo Affair..." As I said Galileo was an arrogant a--hole. In England they would have had him beheaded for making the king look bad. In Florence he only got house arrest during a time of major crisis.jerry
December 11, 2007
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DaveScot, Solid, liquid, and gas are labels scientists have assigned to observed states of matter. A defunct scientific fact is that all matter is in exactly one of those states. Physicists have found it useful to designate various other states. Given the proliferation of names for states of matter, it is conceivable that there will come a day when physicists find it useful to adopt a simpler nomenclature. The states might be defined as properties of fundamental stuff like strings (not to say that string theory is viable). We have no basis for saying that solid, liquid, and gas will have any more scientific utility over the long term than earth, air, fire, and water. People know the fact (in the plain-language sense of fact) that water may be solid, liquid, or gas by a process that stands outside of science proper. The scientific fact is a matter of definition, but the corresponding fact is taken as reality. Interestingly, the scientific fact that most matter in the visible universe is in the plasma state has no reality for most people. It used to be that stars were made of gas, but now they're "really" made of plasma. People often believe facts that derive from outdated scientific facts. These considerations should not seem like mere pedantry to Nathaniel Abraham, whose doctorate is in philosophy.Semiotic 007
December 11, 2007
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The following is from The Crime of Galileo: "It has been known for a long time that a major part of the church intellectuals were on the side of Galileo, while the clearest opposition to him came from secular ideas." The following is a review of the book:
A great book! It appears that Galileo is not the perfect icon, after all, for atheistic, modern day academia. The book shows how academia itself, with complete indifference for truth, erupted against Galileo in an effort to protect cherished allegiances to long held Aristotelian philosophies and misguided ideas. It demonstrates how academia was primarily responsible for the inquisitions and suppressions filed against Galileo, and how they used rhetoric and demagoguery to incite church authorities to become involved.
See also Galileo and the Church:
The rising agitation on the subject, fomented for their own purposes by the rabid Aristotelians of the schools, was heightened rather than allayed by these manifestoes, and on the fourth Sunday of the following Advent found a voice in the pulpit of Santa Maria Novella. Padre Caccini’s denunciation of the new astronomy was indeed disavowed and strongly condemned by his superiors; nevertheless, on the 5th of February 1615, another Dominican monk named Lorini laid Galileo’s letter to Casteili before the Inquisition.
Wow it looks like what I originally stated is in-sync with what happened. Go figure...Joseph
December 11, 2007
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Joseph, I am sorry but that is not in sync with what happened. The pope was a personal friend of Galileo and approved the printing of his book and supported his work if he would make the stipulation that it was a hypothesis yet to be proven. That way there would be no pressure on how scripture should be interpreted at the moment which was in the middle of a major war between Catholics and Protestants. In the book Galileo had a dialog between three people and one was portrayed at a simpleton and that is where the pope' hypothesis stipulation went, into the mouth of a simpleton. There was a fight between the French and the Hapsburgs going on at the time and The French wanted to replace the pope and were using this dispute as part of their campaign to replace the pope. The French Catholic were helping the Protestant Germans fight the Catholic Haspburgs. It was all about power and politics and nothing about science. Galileo's book came out in the midst of this fight and made the pope look like a simpleton when in fact the pope had supported Galileo in his scientific efforts. The theory of the day that fit the data the best was that of Tycho Brahe which was geo centric. Brahe data was better than Galileo's data. Kepler's data was even better but not as well know. Galileo knew of Kepler but did not use it. He also knew of Brahe's data which was better than his. Also no one could solve the parallax problem nor the wind problem. A rotating earth had to be spinning a 1000 miles per hour at the equator and this should have generated huge winds but there were none and these two phenomena supported a geo centric solar system. Eventually these would be solved but not for a long time. The parallax problem was solved in 1838. So until that time Galileo's ideas were just a hypothesis and his particular one was a bad one. Galileo was very smart but an arrogant a--hole who was full of himself and pushed the wrong way too hard and was justifiably shut down. He essentially thought he could undermine a pope during a major war. He was sentenced to a cruel life in the comfy chair at his luxurious estate. We owe a lot to Galileo including his finding of Jupiter's moons and that they revolved around Jupiter and thus supported the Comperican theory. However, Galileo's greatest achievments were in gravity. History 301jerry
December 11, 2007
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Galileo's run-in with the Church had everything to do with the Aristoleans at the universities who did not want their world-view challenged. It was those academics who convinced the Church that their world-view and the Bible were in-sync. And it was they who had the Church go after Galileo. History 101Joseph
December 11, 2007
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semiotic It's nothing but pedantry to say there is no such thing as a fact in science. Do you think it's just a strong theory that water can exist as a solid, liquid, or gas? That's a scientific fact. Science is chock full of what anyone but a pedant would call facts. Historic biology is really hypothetical if you want to be precise about it - it doesn't even rise to the level of theory to say nothing of considering it to be a fact such as the solid, liquid, and gas phases of H2O. DaveScot
December 11, 2007
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Galileo dispute with the Church had nothing to do with science or any resistance to a change in thinking by the Church. Galileo undermined the authority of the pope who was in the midst of the 30 Years War and trying to deal with conflicts between two Catholic Powers, France and the Hapsburgs who were on opposite sides in the war. As such Galileo had to be squelched because not for scientific reasons but for political ones as he took it upon himself that he knew best how scripture should be interpreted and this made it difficult for the Catholic Church in handling Protestantism which places a much higher importance on literal reading of the scriptures than the Catholic Church did. Most fail to recognize that many of Galileo's astronomy predictions were actually wrong as was a lot of his other theories. Kepler made better predictions and he preceded Galileo. The heliocentric theory was not fully supported till about 200 years later when the parallax problem was solved. What Galileo did best was formalize thinking on gravity which led to Newton's laws some 30 years after he died. One could even argue that without Galileo's work on gravity, we would not have had Newton's laws so quickly.jerry
December 11, 2007
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It appears that Woods Hole has reached the apogee of the fanaticism begun by Galileo in his joust with the Church. Prior to that incident, hypotheses were commonly seen as mere reasoning and/or calculating devices used to “save the appearances”, a philosophical position nowadays called instrumentalism. Note that “saving the appearances” had nothing to do with truth, it was nothing more than an intellectual game that did have practical consequences: for instance, you could predict eclipses. This instrumentalist approach had been used for millennia (for example, see Ptolemy's Almagest, dated around 150 Anno Domini). This is exactly what Dr. Abraham in fact did; he treated Darwinian evolution ex hypothesi, operating within a tradition millennia old. (I think lawyers do the same kind of “for the sake of argument” thing in court on a daily basis. Barry could affirm or deny, I would accept his authoritative judgment.) Now, Galileo sought to replace this instrumentalism with the notion that a hypothesis that “saves all the appearances” is the Truth (big T). Woods Hole seems to have called Galileo and raised him one. You are expected to believe the Truth of Darwin without any demonstration that the appearances are saved. I call this Gnosis, not science and it’s a science stopper.D.A.Newton
December 10, 2007
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BarryA, You have made the allegations drafted by an attorney and attested to by Abraham into Abraham's own allegations. I think this is unfair to Abraham, but I will play along for the sake of argument.
Plaintiff was fired even though acceptance of evolution as scientific fact rather than theory (in contravention of his sincerely held religious beliefs)...
For Abraham to frame the allegation in such terms is a sure sign that he is a scientific and philosophical cretin. In the language of scientists, a scientific fact is no more than a well-supported scientific theory. Whether or not the instruction sticks, most Americans attending public schools are told repeatedly that the "fact" in "scientific fact" does not have the plain-language meaning of "fact." If Abraham cannot demonstrate that his religious beliefs dictate that he diverge from his scientific colleagues in the meanings he assigns to two terms of art, scientific theory and scientific fact, then he has demonstrated low competence by harping on a distinction without a difference. I emphasize that this may well be unfair to Abraham. The words are clearly his attorney's, and not his. I would not guess that the attorney is a scientific cretin. He or she probably caught on to the meaning of scientific fact as a child, and is likely using the term fact equivocally to stir up a cloud of dust. My attorney friends admit to doing such things.Semiotic 007
December 10, 2007
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First, he wasn’t out of a job long, and he’s now an associate biology professor at Liberty University (the late, unlamented Jerry Falwell’s fundie school), so we can assume he’s got a steady income.
It appears that Mr. Irons is not only a smarmy lawyer, but a religious bigot to boot. I wonder whether he has made the trek to Virginia and danced on Falwell’s grave. As a quid quo pro, one might suggest that there’s still an empty seat on that bus full of lawyers.
When Abraham filed his MCAD complaint, he was represented by Mike Johnson of Alliance Defense Fund, which is (despite my distaste for its gay-bashing) a firm with half-way decent lawyers.
I looked up the Alliance Defense Fund; it’s a family values law firm, which opposes homosexual marriage, and “gays in the military.” Presumably, gay bashing now means that one may not seek to preserve an institution that has served the human race well, albeit in a variety of forms, at least since Abraham was called out from Ur of the Chaldees, and when one is keeping an eye out for incoming lead, you have to cover your back also.D.A.Newton
December 10, 2007
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PS: If you doubt Larry, just Google the name of the book and that of the report, and see what that turns up. Larry is right as rain, and has been on the ball for a long time on this.kairosfocus
December 10, 2007
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Larry: Pow! The other shoe drops:
Paul R. Gross, a former head of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, is a co-author — with Barbara Forrest — of Creationism’s Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design and is also the lead author of the fanatically pro-Darwinist Fordham Institute Report on State Science Standards . . . Creationism’s Trojan Horse promotes the preposterous theory that Intelligent Design is part of a fundy conspiracy to take over the USA . . . . The fact that Gross is a co-author of Creationism’s Trojan Horse and the lead author of the Fordham Institute report is one of the worst conflicts of interest that I have ever seen.
Birds of a dishonest, abusive and oppressive feather, flock together! Great catch Larry! Congratulations! [And I notice you carrying on the good fight in the evo mat spin zones, charging straight up the mouths of the fast-fire evo mat spin guns.] GEM of TKIkairosfocus
December 10, 2007
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Here is one that shocked me out of my wits: Paul R. Gross, a former head of the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, is a co-author -- with Barbara Forrest -- of Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design and is also the lead author of the fanatically pro-Darwinist Fordham Institute Report on State Science Standards. As most of us know, Creationism's Trojan Horse promotes the preposterous theory that Intelligent Design is part of a fundy conspiracy to take over the USA. Even though evolution education accounts for only 3 points out of 69 in the Fordham report's rating system, Gross threatened to drop Ohio's overall grade from a B to an F because of Ohio's evolution lesson plan -- see http://science2.marion.ohio-state.edu/ohioscience/ The Fordham report has been used to pressure states into adopting excessively pro-Darwinist science education standards. So it should come as no surprise that this incident happened at Woods Hole. Small world, isn't it? The fact that Gross is a co-author of Creationism's Trojan Horse and the lead author of the Fordham Institute report is one of the worst conflicts of interest that I have ever seen. Has anyone else been aware of this?Larry Fafarman
December 10, 2007
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I get it now. Since evolutionocrats don't generally have mental dexterity, they don't really believe it exists. That would explain a lot. So, you have to believe the stuff, because that's the only way they know how to do it.jjcassidy
December 9, 2007
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Russ & Poachy Here are some clues: D'Alessandro and Buttiëns report :
“The first reports confirming P. falciparum resistance to CQ came almost simultaneously in the early 1960s from South America and South-East Asia, where direct or indirect (through use of medicated cooking salt) mass drug administration (MDA) had been implemented."
History and importance of antimalarial drug resistance D'Alessandro U.; Buttiëns H. Tropical Medicine & International Health, Vol. 6, Nr. 11, Nov. 2001 , pp. 845-848(4) The CDC states:
Chloroquine resistant P. falciparum (CRPF) first developed independently in 3 to 4 foci in Southeast Asia, Oceania , and South America in the late 1950's and early 1960's.
Happy hunting on who discovered it first. Regarding Evolutionary Medicine, evolutionists need advocate evolution in medicine is remarkable. It is evidence of how unimportant evolution actually is in medicine. See: Skeptics of the claims of Darwinian evolution, especially considering only 40% of medical doctors believe in evolution with no intelligent intervention. Abraham's case reveals how absolutely intolerant evolutionists are of any dissent or questioning of their dogma. Firing Abraham also reflects evolutionists deep insecurity. ------------------- PS "Plasmodiumfalciparum from SubSaharan Africa started showing resistance to this drug in late 1950s which was followed in other parts of the World1-4." Genetic alteration in drug resistance markers of Plasmodium falciparum, Indian Journal of Medical Research, Jan 2005 by Sharma, Y D * 1. Payne D. Spread of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum. Parasitai Today 1987; 3 : 241-6. * 2. Moore DV, Lanier JE. Observations on two Plasmodium falciparum infections with an abnormal response to chloroquine. Am J Trop Med Hyg 1961; IO : 5-9. * 3. Wellems TE, Plowe CV. Chloroquine-resistant malaria. J Infect Dis 2001; 184 : 770-6. * 4. Wongsrichanalai C, Pickard AL, Wernsdorfer WH, Meshnick SR. Epidemiology of drug-resistant malaria. Lancet Infect Dis 2002; 2 : 209-18.DLH
December 9, 2007
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Dizzy asked: "OK, all I want to know then is, what does ID contribute to experimental biology?" The TRUTH Dizzy,,, The TRUTH! Although the scientific method and advances in technology are the main and primary force responsible for the majority of significant breakthroughs in science, having a more complete understanding of the truth enables breakthroughs to happen at a more rapid pace than when you have a false hypothesis leading you down wrong paths and wasting money, as neo-evolution is currently doing for science. I have stated before that quantum non-locality is at a advanced enough stage, technologically, to allow many major breakthroughs in eradicating many pathogenic diseases by targeting specific "entangled" complex molecules of pathogens in the entire body of the victim at one time and thus destroying them all non-locally in one fell swoop. The interpretation, of this coming breakthrough in treating diseases, will be severely clouded by the "materialistic" philosophy, But in the ID camp it will provide much food for thought in how the complex specified information was implemented into life in the first place. Will either ID or neo-Evolution be able to take credit for the breakthrough? Although both camps would probably love to have this feather in their cap, the truth is that technological advances in man's ability to manipulate large complex molecules, non-locally, is what will be the driving force to this breakthrough. Plus the very human desire to eradicate suffering will be the primary driving motivation to do as such quickly as possible. It truly is funny, we always here about the scientist who make breakthroughs, but we never really here about the nameless engineers who enabled the breakthrough in the first place, by designing a state of the art piece of scientific equipment. In my opinion the engineer who designs the cutting edge scientific equipment should at least get as much billing as the scientists does for the breakthroughs he makes.bornagain77
December 9, 2007
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Larry Fafarman Can you enlighten me as to how "punctuated equilibrium" is not just an evolutionary gloss on an ID event - by those who recognize the evidence, but do not have the guts of Abraham to declare its true cause?DLH
December 9, 2007
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"Science commits suicide when it adopts a creed." -- Thomas Henry Huxley, 1885:j
December 9, 2007
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You said that Darwinists are unjustified in trying to take credit for the discovery that bacteria develop resistance to drugs and I asked who?
http://www.evolutionandmedicine.org/ This website is for scientists, scholars and clinicians working at the interface of evolution and medicine. While evolutionary biology has long provided a foundation for studies of antibiotic resistance and population genetics,russ
December 9, 2007
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A lot of science is not research but is philosophizing. For example, so far as I know, the theory of punctuated equilibrium was not based on any new research -- it was just a new interpretation of old information.Larry Fafarman
December 9, 2007
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ID would be very interested in experiments that discover the exact limitations of Darwinian mechanisms when considered separately, and as combinations. How 's that for an ID research program?Patrick
December 9, 2007
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Poachy, here is another site that you may find interesting: Evolutionary theory contributes little to experimental biology By: Philip S. Skell http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2816 Of special note: Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming's discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No. I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss. Please note this Poachy: "such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides." neo-Darwinism is great at explaining any evidence you can throw at it after the it is discovered and is notorious for being unfalsifiable by any evidence that is discovered (need I say Cambrian). But as far as providing insights that lead to breakthroughs, this is just a another fairy tale that Darwinists use to prop up their empirically bankrupt theory in the face of the tax paying American public.bornagain77
December 9, 2007
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Russ, that is interesting, but it doesn't answer the question I asked. You said that Darwinists are unjustified in trying to take credit for the discovery that bacteria develop resistance to drugs and I asked who?poachy
December 9, 2007
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poachy- please read the following articles: Is Bacterial Resistance to Antibiotics an Appropriate Example of Evolutionary Change? and The “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution” Myth: An Empirical Study and EvaluationJoseph
December 9, 2007
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Here's the URL for the above. Its been discussed here before, I think. http://www.theoryofevolution.us/russ
December 9, 2007
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Poachy, I realized my post might have sounded prickly, but it was unintentional. Actually, my backtracking was sincere. I actually would like to know if there's an account of how the discovery of antibiotic resistance was guided by NDE, since its offered up so often as a triumph of NDE. I did find this counter-argument to the Darwin-gets-credit-for-AB-resistance-discoveries. I welcome rebutting evidence.
Writing in the August, 2005 edition of the Scientist, National Academy of Sciences member Philip S. Skell writes: "I recently asked more than seventy eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No. I also examined the outstanding discoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss."
russ
December 9, 2007
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DLH The thing is, Title VII 42 U.S.C. §§2000e, which you cite, is unconstitutional on its face. The 1st Amendment says, as plain as the nose on my face, Congress shall make no law... It restricts no one else. Not the states, not private citizens. This is borne out by the 10th Amendment, which states, The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. If Woods Hole is a private company funded by private resources, it should be able to hire and fire anyone it pleases for any reason whatsoever. I don't care what the statute holds or what the Supreme Court has upheld. I can read English.jstanley01
December 9, 2007
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Russ, You really don't need to get all prickly. I am asking you a serious question.poachy
December 9, 2007
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Poachy, you are right. I posted rashly in response to your sarcasm, which is never a smart thing to do. Certainly, we would never have discovered drug resistance to bacteria (or its causes) without the insights of Darwin's theory. Can you post a URL that describes how NDE guided researchers in this discovery? Thanks.russ
December 9, 2007
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