Why Darwinism is Protected by the First Amendment

Our opponents are seriously handicapped. I am starting to feel sorry for them. Their position needs protection and cannot handle scrutiny. Heck if we recruited enough high school students we could shut down the teaching of evolutionism in science classes. All we have to do is get them to ask questions about the efficacy of natural selection. ET

as to this claim from Seversky, "High school science teachers should be presenting what is the current state of knowledge and thinking in the various scientific disciplines. In biology,,," Then why do they not allow "current" evidence against evolution into biology textbooks? And why do they continue to recycle false "Zombie Icons of Evolution" that are known to be false?

‘Icons Of Evolution’ – Tenth Anniversary – video clip playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS2RPQAPifs6t__mIAqITpYy Jonathan Wells Presents Zombie Science at National Book Launch – video – 2017 https://youtu.be/I2UHLPVHjug?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1rO4HiEiRBLalzTx-TaKYC&t=79

As for the rest of your post, You want desperately to deny that your atheism is a religion just so you can play semantics and say that 'religion' is not being taught in the classroom with Darwinism. But any theory of origins necessarily impinges on metaphysical 'religious claims'. Far deeper metaphysical 'religious claims' than any atheist in a prison library may wish to invoke for his personal belief system. That you would try to deny that Darwinism "takes a position on Divinity" reveals either that you have not read Darwin's book "Origin of Species", and subsequent books by leading evolutionary apologist, or else that you are completely ignorant of the (bad liberal) religious foundation that undergirds Darwinian thought. (After all Darwin's only college degree was in liberal theology was it not?). (See post 1 for references) bornagain77

Seversky:

High school science teachers should be presenting what is the current state of knowledge and thinking in the various scientific disciplines.

Except there isn't any knowledge when it comes to blind watchmaker evolution. Its claims can't even be tested. It is pseudoscience at its finest.

In biology, the current orthodoxy is the theory of evolution...

Except there isn't any scientific theory of evolution. Darwin had people trying to prove a negative to falsify his claims. That is a first-grader mistake

whether you like it or not, and intelligent design is a fringe movement with a clear religious purpose which has yet to gain any significant scientific traction.

You are a clown. ID makes testable claims- unlike your position which is pure BS. ID doesn't have any of the attributes of religion and you will never be able to make a case that shows otherwise. You are just a clueless troll. ET

bornagain77 @ 12

Seversky implies that the constitution gives atheists the unalienable right to teach their unsubstantiated pseusoscientific Darwinian creation myth in the public schools because to allow otherwise, i.e. to allow the possibility that the unfathomable complexity we see in life might have been intelligently designed, is to teach religion.

High school science teachers should be presenting what is the current state of knowledge and thinking in the various scientific disciplines. In biology, the current orthodoxy is the theory of evolution, whether you like it or not, and intelligent design is a fringe movement with a clear religious purpose which has yet to gain any significant scientific traction.

“We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion. See Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 934 (7th Cir. 2003) (‘If we think of religion as taking a position on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.’)” “The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a ‘religion’ for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions”

The courts have decided to treat atheism as equivalent to a religion in specific cases and for specific purposes - the other case that comes to mind was atheist inmate access to a prison library - but they have not declared atheism to be a religion in that it possesses all the attributes which have been agreed to define a religion generally. Seversky

Natural selection works at the population level.

Evos don't even understand their own position. How pathetic is that? You guys don't understand ID. You don't understand your own position. Perhaps you should get educated and then come back when you have something of substance to post. ET

Seversky- Natural selection has proven to be a bust. So they should stick to teaching biology in biology class. If students started asking their teachers how they can test the claim that natural selection is a designer mimic the teachers would stop teaching it. That is all it would take- students demanding that their teachers provide the answers or stop teaching such obvious nonsense. Would that be OK with you, Seversky?

Should secularists be allowed into the religious studies classroom to present the atheist case against God and Christianity?

What are they going to do, drool? ET

Seversky's infamous Dawkins' quote against God at post 24, in regards to the false revisionist history of atheists, (i.e. "enlightenment thinking" saving us from Christianity), is a sad and pathetic joke that doesn't even address the main issue at hand. (i.e. that the 'randomness/chaos presupposition of' Atheism cannot ground rationality and science in the first place.) A few more notes, (in addition to post 6), on the false revisionist history of Atheists:

The Two Guys to Blame for the Myth of Constant Warfare between Religion and Science - February 27, 2015 Excerpt: Timothy Larsen, a Christian historian who specializes in the nineteenth century, notes: The so-called “war” between faith and learning, specifically between orthodox Christian theology and science, was manufactured during the second half of the nineteenth century. It is a construct that was created for polemical purposes. No one deserves more blame for this stubborn myth than these two men: Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), the founding president of Cornell University, and John William Draper (1811-1882), professor of chemistry at the University of New York. http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2015/02/27/the-two-guys-to-blame-for-the-myth-of-constant-warfare-between-religion-and-science/ Why Are the Middle Ages Often Characterized as Dark or Less Civilized? - Tim O'Neill, M.A. in medieval literature and has studied most aspects of the medieval period for many years: Excerpt: The idea of the whole Middle Ages as a "dark age" therefore actually comes from the early modern Renaissance and humanist movements and their denigration of their immediate forebears and idolization and idealization of the Greeks and Romans. Thus, the period between the Romans and this idealization in the early modern era became called the medium aevum—the "ages in the middle," or the Middle Ages. They became traditionally characterized as a backward step, where art became "primitive" (because only realistic art could be "good" art), architecture was "barbaric" or "gothic," and innovation was stagnant. These false ideas are still current partly because historians have only begun to revise our understanding of the Middle Ages quite recently and this is taking some time to seep into popular consciousness. But the prejudice against the Middle Ages is also driven by some strong cultural currents in our own time. Those with an animus against Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular like to cling to the old idea of the Middle Ages as a "dark age" because it suits their preconceptions about religion and forms a neat little fable where modernity is "good" and the medieval period is "bad." Historians avoid these simplistic value judgments and reject the assumptions on which they are made, but simple pseudo historical fairy tales are hard to budge. http://www.slate.com/blogs/quora/2015/01/15/medieval_history_why_are_the_middle_age_often_characterized_as_dark_or_less.html “THE DARK AGES” – POPERY, PERIODISATION AND PEJORATIVES - Tim O'Neill - 2016 Excerpt: The concept of “the Dark Ages” is central to several key elements in New Atheist Bad History. One of the primary myths most beloved by many New Atheists is the one whereby Christianity violently suppressed ancient Greco-Roman learning, destroyed an ancient intellectual culture based on pure reason and retarded a nascent scientific and technological revolution, thus plunging Europe into a one thousand year “dark age” which was only relieved by the glorious dawn of “the Renaissance”. Like most New Atheist Bad History, it’s a commonly held and popularly believed set of ideas that has its origin in polemicists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but which has been rejected by more recent historians. But its New Atheist adherents don’t like to hear that last part and get very agitated when they do.,,,,, Concluding paragraph It should be clear by now that value-laden terms like “dark ages” and “Renaissance” belong to a period of dusty historiography that modern scholarship has long since outgrown. The very early medieval centuries certainly did see fragmentation, technology loss and the break down of long distance trade and an acceleration of the ongoing collapse of learning in western Europe. But to characterise the entire medieval period as a “dark age” because of this is clearly absurd. And while the nineteenth century idolisation of Classical art meant that they were inevitably going to see the art and architecture movement we call “the Renaissance” as “superior” to more stylised and native medieval forms, for anyone post-Picasso or Le Corbusier to do so is fairly philistinic. Anyone with even a passing grasp of history now understands that the Medieval Period was a long and diverse one thousand year span of remarkable change and development, in which Europe went from being a backwater that suffered most from the collapse of the Western Empire, to an economic, technical and military powerhouse that was on the brink of a global expansion. https://historyforatheists.com/2016/11/the-dark-ages-popery-periodisation-and-pejoratives/

bornagain77

Granville Sewell @ 11

I once suggested, here: https://evolutionnews.org/2015/06/how_to_teach_th/ that some HS biology teacher might share the contents of this article with their students, and only reveal the source at their disciplinary hearing. It might be too late by then to save their job, but if they were fired just for sharing a N.Y.Times News Service account of a Chicago Field Museum meeting, that might help people understand how badly needed are the academic freedom laws Discovery Institute is promoting around the country.

If that is what you believe then you were no doubt comforted and encouraged by the survey of high school biology teachers which found that around 70% did not even mention evolution in class by name for fear of an adverse reaction from students and their parents and that 13% admitted to openly advocating creationism in flagrant violation both of their contractual and ethical duties as teachers and the First Amendment. So who should decide what is taught in the high school science class? The parents and their pastors? Should only science which is judged to be consistent with the doctrines of their church be allowed? Or, if your purpose is to require that science teachers provide a fair summary of the strengths and weaknesses of a current theory - something I would not object to in principle - would you extend that requirement to religious studies? Should secularists be allowed into the religious studies classroom to present the atheist case against God and Christianity? Seversky

As well, instead of antibiotic resistant genes being something new, as Darwinists assume they are, it is now found that 'those vexing (antibiotic resistance) genes turn up everywhere in nature that scientists look for them',,,

Antibiotic resistance genes are essentially everywhere - May 8, 2014 Excerpt: The largest metagenomic search for antibiotic resistance genes in the DNA sequences of microbial communities from around the globe has found that bacteria carrying those vexing genes turn up everywhere in nature that scientists look for them,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/05/140508121347.htm

Also of note; there also appears to be a in-built (designed) mechanism in bacteria, which kicks in during starvation, which allows wild type bacteria to more robustly resist antibiotics than 'well fed' bacteria in the laboratory;

Starving bacteria fight antibiotics harder? - November 2011 Excerpt: Bacteria become highly tolerant to antibiotics when nutrients are limited. https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/news/starving-bacteria-fight-antibiotics-harder/

As antibiotic resistance itself indicates, supposed beneficial adaptations that are often touted by Darwinists as proof of evolution are actually the result of degraded molecular abilities. Lee Spetner, in his book 'Not By Chance' remarked that, 'Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume.'

"The neo-Darwinians would like us to believe that large evolutionary changes can result from a series of small events if there are enough of them. But if these events all lose information they can’t be the steps in the kind of evolution the neo-Darwin theory is supposed to explain, no matter how many mutations there are. Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume." Lee Spetner (Ph.D. Physics - MIT - Not By Chance - 1997) http://theoutlet.us/SummaryofSpetnersNotbyChance.pdf

In 2016, Lee Spetner went on to remark, 'there is no example of a random mutation that adds heritable information to the genome, and that statement still stands.'

Gloves Off -- Responding to David Levin on the Nonrandom Evolutionary Hypothesis - Lee M. Spetner - Sept. 2016 Excerpt: I wrote in this book (as well in an earlier book) that there is no example of a random mutation that adds heritable information to the genome, and that statement still stands. The statement is important because evolution is about building up information (Spetner 1964, 1968, 1970). Some have offered what they think are counterexamples of my statement, but they are often not of random mutations at all, or they otherwise fail to be valid counterexamples. Levin finds the statement astonishing, and it may well astonish someone who believes evolutionary theory represents reality. But it happens to be true, and I am not surprised that it astonishes him because it deals a deathblow to evolutionary theory. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/09/gloves_off_--_r103168.html

As to citrate metabolism, Scott Minnich falsified that claim in 2016

Rapid Evolution of Citrate Utilization by Escherichia coli by Direct Selection Requires citT and dctA. - Minnich - Feb. 2016 The isolation of aerobic citrate-utilizing Escherichia coli (Cit(+)) in long-term evolution experiments (LTEE) has been termed a rare, innovative, presumptive speciation event. We hypothesized that direct selection would rapidly yield the same class of E. coli Cit(+) mutants and follow the same genetic trajectory: potentiation, actualization, and refinement. This hypothesis was tested,,, Potentiation/actualization mutations occurred within as few as 12 generations, and refinement mutations occurred within 100 generations.,,, E. coli cannot use citrate aerobically. Long-term evolution experiments (LTEE) performed by Blount et al. (Z. D. Blount, J. E. Barrick, C. J. Davidson, and R. E. Lenski, Nature 489:513-518, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature11514 ) found a single aerobic, citrate-utilizing E. coli strain after 33,000 generations (15 years). This was interpreted as a speciation event. Here we show why it probably was not a speciation event. Using similar media, 46 independent citrate-utilizing mutants were isolated in as few as 12 to 100 generations. Genomic DNA sequencing revealed an amplification of the citT and dctA loci and DNA rearrangements to capture a promoter to express CitT, aerobically. These are members of the same class of mutations identified by the LTEE. We conclude that the rarity of the LTEE mutant was an artifact of the experimental conditions and not a unique evolutionary event. No new genetic information (novel gene function) evolved. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26833416 Richard Lenski and Citrate Hype -- Now Deflated - Michael Behe - May 12, 2016 Excerpt: ,,, for more than 25 years Lenski's lab has continuously grown a dozen lines of the bacterium E. coli in small culture flasks, letting them replicate for six or seven generations per day and then transferring a portion to fresh flasks for another round of growth. The carefully monitored cells have now gone through more than 60,000 generations, which is equivalent to over a million years for a large animal such as humans.,,, In 2008 Lenski's group reported that after more than 15 years and 30,000 generations of growth one of the E. coli cell lines suddenly developed the ability to consume citrate,,, the authors argued it might be pretty important.,,, They also remarked that,,, perhaps the mutation marked the beginning of the evolution of a brand new species.,, One scientist who thought the results were seriously overblown was Scott Minnich, professor of microbiology at the University of Idaho ,,, So Minnich's lab re-did the work under conditions he thought would be more effective. The bottom line is that they were able to repeatedly isolate the same mutants Lenski's lab did as easily as falling off a log -- within weeks, not decades.,,, Richard Lenski was not pleased.,,, In a disgraceful move, Lenski impugned Scott Minnich's character. Since he's a "fellow of the Discovery Institute" sympathetic with intelligent design,,, (Regardless of the ad hominem) With regard to citrate evolution, the Minnich lab's results have revealed E. coli to be a one-trick pony.,,, The take-home lesson is that,,, (Lenski's overinflated) hype surrounding the (implications of the citrate adaptation) has seriously misled the public and the scientific community. It's far past time that a pin was stuck in its (Lenski's citrate) balloon. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/05/richard_lenski102839.html

Thus, despite repeated empirical falsification of their claims, Darwinists still refuse to ever accept falsification of their “theory/religion” (but I repeat myself). If fact, I can almost guarantee that these falsified examples will be repeated ad naseum by Darwinists as “Zombie” examples of evolution that refuse to die (see Jonathan Wells, “Zombie Science”) bornagain77

In other words, it turns out that instead of creating anything new, antibiotic resistant bacteria always degrades or modifies some preexisting molecular ability in order to gain antibiotic resistance. This following site provides a list of some of the degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria

List Of Degraded Molecular Abilities Of Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria: Table 1 excerpt: Actinonin - Loss of enzyme activity Ampicillin - SOS response halting cell division Azithromycin - Loss of a regulatory protein Chloramphenicol - Reduced formation of a porin or a regulatory protein Ciprofloxacin - Loss of a porin or loss of a regulatory protein Erythromycin - Reduced affinity to 23S rRNA or loss of a regulatory protein Fluoroquinolones - Loss of affinity to gyrase Imioenem - Reduced formation of a porin Kanamycin - Reduced formation of a transport protein Nalidixic Acid - Loss or inactivation of a regulatory protein Rifampin - Loss of affinity to RNA polymerase Streptomycin - Reduced affinity to 16S rRNA or reduction of transport activity Tetracycline - Reduced formation of a porin or a regulatory protein Zittermicin A - Loss of proton motive force http://www.trueorigin.org/bacteria01.asp

In 2016, a video was made of bacteria rapidly adapting to higher and higher doses of antibiotics and they claimed to have captured 'evolution in action'

Stunning Videos of Evolution in Action - Sept. 8, 2016 The MEGA-plate allows scientists to watch bacteria adapting to antibiotics before their eyes. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/stunning-videos-of-evolution-in-action/499136/

Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne went so far as to claim that the video was a creationist's nightmare

The creationist’s nightmare: evolution in action - Jerry Coyne - Sept. 9 2016 Excerpt: Over at the Atlantic, Ed Yong shows and describes some stunning videos of “evolution in action”: in this case bacteria evolving resistance to antibiotics. It’s a clever way to visualize the accumulation of mutations over time as bacteria evolve to survive increasingly large doses of antibiotics,, https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/evolution-in-action/

Yet, the fact of the matter is that no new information was generated in the rapid adaptations. Moreover, Michael Behe noted that the “Antibiotic-resistant bacteria demonstrate evolution by breaking stuff,, what we have here is devolution, not evolution, the opposite of what needs to be explained”

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria May Be a Health Nightmare, but Not an Evolutionary One - September 9, 2016 Excerpt: If anything gives us nightmares, it’s not this.,,, Why? Because no newly evolved complex information has been demonstrated. https://evolutionnews.org/2016/09/antibiotic-resi/ Michael Behe: Is That MEGA-Plate Antibiotic Resistance Video Evidence for Evolution, or Devolution? - September 13, 2016 (with podcast) Excerpt: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria demonstrate evolution by breaking stuff — not by building it and certainly not by creating complex new biological information. On the contrary, information is lost. In other words, says Behe, what we have here is devolution, not evolution, the opposite of what needs to be explained by Darwinian theory. https://evolutionnews.org/2016/09/michael_behe_is/

Moreover, the fact that antibiotic resistance was being gained so rapidly in the video, as well as being gained rapidly in nature,,

A Tale of Two Falsifications of Evolution - September 2011 Excerpt: “Scientists were surprised at how fast bacteria developed resistance to the miracle antibiotic drugs when they were developed less than a century ago. Now scientists at McMaster University have found that resistance has been around for at least 30,000 years.” http://crev.info/content/110904-a_tale_of_two_falsifications_of_evolution Antibiotic resistance is ancient - September 2011 http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v477/n7365/full/nature10388.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20110922

,,, should have been a solid clue for Darwinists that adaptations to antibiotics are not being generated by random Darwinian processes as they assume they are, but that antibiotic resistance is already 'programmed' into bacteria. And indeed, contrary to Darwinian thought, it is now found that antibiotic resistance, instead of being an ability that is new for bacteria, is an ability that is ancient. An ability that bacteria have had all along. In fact, one researcher, who found antibiotic resistance in four million year old bacteria, remarked 'that antibiotic resistance is hard-wired into bacteria and could be billions of years old.'

(Ancient) Cave bacteria resistant to antibiotics - April 2012 Excerpt: Antibiotic-resistant bacteria cut off from the outside world for more than four million years have been found in a deep cave. The discovery is surprising because drug resistance is widely believed to be the result of too much treatment.,,, “Our study shows that antibiotic resistance is hard-wired into bacteria. It could be billions of years old, but we have only been trying to understand it for the last 70 years,” said Dr Gerry Wright, from McMaster University in Canada, who has analysed the microbes. http://www.scotsman.com/news/health/cave-bacteria-resistant-to-antibiotics-1-2229183# Scientists unlock a 'microbial Pompeii' - February 23, 2014 Excerpt: "...The researchers discovered that the ancient human oral microbiome already contained the basic genetic machinery for antibiotic resistance more than eight centuries before the invention of the first therapeutic antibiotics in the 1940s..." http://phys.org/news/2014-02-scientists-microbial-pompeii.html

bornagain77

R J Sawyer falsely claims that ,,,

"the literature has plenty of examples of random mutation and selection resulting in new traits being fixed in a population. Nylonase, chloroquine resistance, antibiotic resistance, aerobic citrate metabolism"

And yet, all these examples he cited are actually examples that prove the inherent dishonesty of Darwinists in dealing forthrightly with the evidence, in that these examples falsify Darwinian claims and yet Darwinists refuse to accept those empirical falsifications of their theory and/or religion (but I repeat myself)..,, As to Nylonase, Nylonase is not a ‘new trait’ but is actually adaptation of a preexisting ability.

The Nylonase Story: When Imagination and Facts Collide - Ann Gauger - May 4, 2017 Excerpt: Thus, EII? and EII did not have frameshifted new folds. They had pre-existing folds with activity characteristic of their fold type. There was no brand-new protein. No novel protein fold had emerged. And no frameshift mutation was required to produce nylonase.,,, Tests revealed that both the EII and EII? enzymes have carboxylesterase and nylonase activity. They can hydrolyze both substrates. In fact it is possible both had carboxylesterase activity and a low level of nylonase activity from the beginning, even before the appearance of nylon. https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/05/the-nylonase-story-when-imagination-and-facts-collide/

Moreover, random mutations were not responsible for the Nylonase adaptation. ‘Directed’ mutations were responsible for it.

Debate Debrief: The Two-Prong Canard Demonstrated Within 24 Hours - The Curious Case of Nylonase – March 20, 2016 - Cornelius Hunter Excerpt: Such adaptation to nylon manufacture byproducts has been repeated in laboratory experiments. In a matter of months bacteria acquire the ability to digest the unforeseen chemical. Researchers speculate that mechanisms responding to environmental stress are involved in inducing adaptive mutations. That is not evolution. In fact it refutes evolution. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2016/03/debate-debrief-two-prong-canard.html

Chloroquine resistance is particularly disingenuous for a Darwinist to use. Chloroquine resistance, (along with HIV), is one of the two main evidences that Dr Michael Behe used to establish the “Edge of Evolution”. Dr. Behe states in hes book “The Edge of Evolution” on page 135:

"Generating a single new cellular protein-protein binding site (in other words, generating a truly beneficial mutational event that would actually explain the generation of the complex molecular machinery we see in life) is of the same order of difficulty or worse than the development of chloroquine resistance in the malarial parasite."

On page 146 Dr. Behe goes on to state:,,,

"The immediate, most important implication is that complexes with more than two different binding sites-ones that require three or more proteins-are beyond the edge of evolution, past what is biologically reasonable to expect Darwinian evolution to have accomplished in all of life in all of the billion-year history of the world. The reasoning is straightforward. The odds of getting two independent things right are the multiple of the odds of getting each right by itself. So, other things being equal, the likelihood of developing two binding sites in a protein complex would be the square of the probability for getting one: a double CCC, 10^20 times 10^20, which is 10^40. There have likely been fewer than 10^40 cells in the world in the last 4 billion years, so the odds are against a single event of this variety in the history of life. It is biologically unreasonable." - Michael Behe - The Edge of Evolution - page 146

In 2014 Dr. Behe was empirically vindicated on his inference from chloroquine resistance

A Key Inference of The Edge of Evolution Has Now Been Experimentally Confirmed - Michael Behe - July 14, 2014 (first of a three part essay) Excerpt: However, at the time the book's chief, concrete example,,, was an inference, not yet an experimentally confirmed fact.,, the deduction hadn't yet been nailed down in the lab. Now it has, thanks to Summers et al. 2014. It took them years to get their results because they had to painstakingly develop a suitable test system where the malarial protein could be both effectively deployed and closely monitored for its relevant activity,,, Using clever experimental techniques they artificially mutated the protein in all the ways that nature has, plus in ways that produced previously unseen intermediates. One of their conclusions is that a minimum of two specific mutations are indeed required for the protein to be able to transport chloroquine.,,, The need for multiple mutations neatly accounts for why the development of spontaneous resistance to chloroquine is an event of extremely low probability -- approximately one in a hundred billion billion (1 in 10^20) malarial cell replications -- as the distinguished Oxford University malariologist Nicholas White deduced years ago. The bottom line is that the need for an organism to acquire multiple mutations in some situations before a relevant selectable function appears is now an established experimental fact. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/07/a_key_inference087761.html

Moreover, Chloroquine Resistance, as hard as it is for Darwinian processes to account for, is not even a gain in functional complexity for the malaria parasite in the first place but is a loss of functional complexity for the parasite.

Metabolic QTL Analysis Links Chloroquine Resistance in Plasmodium falciparum to Impaired Hemoglobin Catabolism - January, 2014 Summary: Chloroquine was formerly a front line drug in the treatment of malaria. However, drug resistant strains of the malaria parasite have made this drug ineffective in many malaria endemic regions. Surprisingly, the discontinuation of chloroquine therapy has led to the reappearance of drug-sensitive parasites. In this study, we use metabolite quantitative trait locus analysis, parasite genetics, and peptidomics to demonstrate that chloroquine resistance is inherently linked to a defect in the parasite's ability to digest hemoglobin, which is an essential metabolic activity for malaria parasites. This metabolic impairment makes it harder for the drug-resistant parasites to reproduce than genetically-equivalent drug-sensitive parasites, and thus favors selection for drug-sensitive lines when parasites are in direct competition. Given these results, we attribute the re-emergence of chloroquine sensitive parasites in the wild to more efficient hemoglobin digestion. http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1004085

As to Antibiotic resistance: Many times Darwinists will claim that minor adaptations in bacteria, such as antibiotic resistance, are proof that Darwinian evolution is true. Yet, that simply is not the case. In fact, when examined in detail, we find that antibiotic resistance provides evidence against Darwinian claims. The following video, at the 2:15 minute mark, shows that there is always a 'fitness cost' associated with bacteria gaining antibiotic resistance.

Investigating Evolution: Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-Peboq0AqA

In the following article, Casey Luskin states, '(an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution.'

Thank Goodness the NCSE Is Wrong: Fitness Costs Are Important to Evolutionary Microbiology - Casey Luskin - March 8, 2010 Excerpt: it (an antibiotic resistant bacterium) reproduces slower than it did before it was changed. This effect is widely recognized, and is called the fitness cost of antibiotic resistance. It is the existence of these costs and other examples of the limits of evolution that call into question the neo-Darwinian story of macroevolution. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/03/thank_goodness_the_ncse_is_wro.html Helping an Internet Debater Defend Intelligent Design - Casey Luskin - May 3, 2014 Excerpt: ,,, antibiotic resistant bacteria tend to "revert" to their prior forms after the antibacterial drug is removed. This is due to a "fitness cost," which suggests that mutations that allow antibiotic resistance are breaking down the normal, efficient operations of a bacterial cell, and are less "advantageous. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/05/helping_an_inte085171.html

bornagain77

R J Sawyer:

Natural selection works at the population level.

Nonsense. Natural selection pertains to the individuals in the population.

Nylonase, chloroquine resistance, antibiotic resistance, aerobic citrate metabolism… For many of these we know the specific mutations that resulted in these new traits.

Except for the fact that no one has any idea if those changes were chance events or not. Look, it is clear that you are clueless and refuse to understand what is being debated. ET

bornagain77 @ 6

A few more notes: Contrary to the false revisionist history from atheists of ‘enlightenment’ reasoning saving us from the ‘dark ages’ Christianity,,,

Christians – Not the Enlightenment – Invented Modern Science – Chuck Colson – Oct. 2016 Excerpt: Rodney Stark’s,,, book, “For the Glory of God,,,, In Stark’s words, “Christian theology was necessary for the rise of science.” Science only happened in areas whose worldview was shaped by Christianity, that is, Europe. Many civilizations had alchemy; only Europe developed chemistry. Likewise, astrology was practiced everywhere, but only in Europe did it become astronomy. That’s because Christianity depicted God as a “rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being” who created a universe with a “rational, lawful, stable” structure. These beliefs uniquely led to “faith in the possibility of science.”

And that's Christianity indulging in a little revisionism of its own. As we all know, Richard Dawkins wrote, with some justification, that God as depicted in the Old Testament was, "...arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” Contemporary Christians may desire and believe in a God who is "rational, responsive, dependable" but that means revising the OT image. In my youth I read the Bible and I don't recall God ever offering a detailed rationale for any of His decisions. It was more a case of Him saying "Jump!" and good Christians were not allowed to ask "Why?", only "How high?". Seversky

BA77

R J Sawyer has no empirical evidence of the Darwinian mechanism of random mutation and natural selection producing “new traits” that were not already existent in the parent species.

Natural selection works at the population level. And the literature has plenty of examples of random mutation and selection resulting in new traits being fixed in a population. Nylonase, chloroquine resistance, antibiotic resistance, aerobic citrate metabolism... For many of these we know the specific mutations that resulted in these new traits.

It is not so much that Darwinism is not falsifiable as it is that Darwinists refuse to ever accept falsification of their theory.

So which is it? Evolution is not falsifiable, as you said previously, or is it falsifiable, as you are now saying? R J Sawyer

Darwin, in his unscientific way, said we had to prove a negative to falsify his concept which he never even tested. ID is not anti-evolution, RJ. So perhaps you should educate yourself ET

R J Sawyer is misleading people. There are 196 countries and only 1 has the establishment clause. ET

R J Sawyer has no empirical evidence of the Darwinian mechanism of random mutation and natural selection producing "new traits" that were not already existent in the parent species.

Darwin vs. Microbes - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntxc4X9Zt-I

In fact, both natural selection and random mutations have been all but effectively falsified.

(Refutation of) Natural Selection and Randomness vs. Intelligent Design; https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/if-you-are-going-to-reject-something-at-least-take-the-time-to-understand-what-you-are-rejecting/#comment-661664

Yet, despite the falsification by math and empirical evidence of natural selection and random mutation, Darwinists still refuse to accept falsification of their theory. In fact, Darwin's very own criteria for falsification, that he himself laid out, has now been empirically met.

Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rzw0JkuKuQ

It is not so much that Darwinism is not falsifiable as it is that Darwinists refuse to ever accept falsification of their theory. Darwinism, contrary to what the current UD troll R J Sawyer so desperately wants to believe, is a pseudoscience, not a testable/falsifiable science (at least how Darwinists treat it). bornagain77

BA77

He is wrong. ID is falsifiable, Darwinism is not.

When Darwin proposed his theory it could have been falsified if it was shown that new traits were not heritable. If there was no source for new variation. Once DNA was discovered it could still have been falsified if there were no mechanisms for increasing variation. Thankfully, there are mutations, inversions, insertions, HGT, meiosis, etc. It could be falsified if it was shown that new traits could not be fixed in a population by differential reproduction. And none of that talks about the finding of a rabbit fossil in the Cambrian. R J Sawyer

R J Sawyer thinks Darwinism qualifies as a science. He is wrong. ID is falsifiable, Darwinism is not. Thus, according to the main criteria of falsification (Popper) for determining whether something is a science or not, ID is a science whereas Darwinism is not. (see bottom of post 6)

Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rzw0JkuKuQ

Besides falsification, Darwinian Evolution simply fails to qualify as a science by any reasonable measure of science one might wish to invoke

“There are five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis. Has anyone observed the phenomenon — in this case, Evolution — as it occurred and recorded it? Could other scientists replicate it? Could any of them come up with a set of facts that, if true, would contradict the theory (Karl Popper’s “falsifiability” tests)? Could scientists make predictions based on it? Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science? In the case of Evolution… well… no… no… no… no… and no.” – Tom Wolfe – The Kingdom of Speech – page 17 Darwinian Evolution Fails the Five Standard Tests of a Scientific Hypothesis – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7f_fyoPybw

In fact, Darwinian evolution is more properly classified as a unfalsifiable pseudoscience whose main substantiating evidence turns out to be based on unrestrained imagination rather than on any compelling empirical evidence.

Excerpt:,,, more often than not, in Darwinian evolution unrestrained imagination has somehow, in the minds of Darwinists, become the confirming empirical evidence for the theory. As Stephen Jay Gould himself noted, “When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. Sociobiology: The Art of Story Telling – Stephen Jay Gould – 1978 – New Scientist Excerpt: Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers “Just So stories”. When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. https://books.google.com/books?id=tRj7EyRFVqYC&pg=PA530 Mull over Gould’s statement for a few seconds “Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.” https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/intelligent-design/evolutionary-psychology-explains-why-men-pay-on-the-first-date-and-dont/#comment-664433 Darwinian Evolution: A Pseudoscience based on Unrestrained Imagination and Bad Liberal Theology – video https://youtu.be/KeDi6gUMQJQ

bornagain77

@Granville Sewell #11 You were quite serious about someone else sacrificing their career for your cause? How nice of you. Deputy Dog

ET, "What students need to do is ask their teachers how to test the claim that ATP synthase evolved by means of natural selection and drift, or any other blind and mindless process. The teacher will choke and realize they are teaching BS" That's a good idea. PaoloV

bornagain77, very informative comments as usual. Thanks. PaoloV

BA77

Seversky implies that the constitution gives atheists the unalienable right to teach their unsubstantiated pseusoscientific Darwinian creation myth in the public schools because to allow otherwise, i.e. to allow the possibility that the unfathomable complexity we see in life might have been intelligently designed, is to teach religion.

It may be true that a significant majority of evolution’s proponents are atheists, but you can’t extrapolate from that fact to conclude that evolution is an atheist creation myth. If this were true, then we must also conclude that ID with regard to biology is a Christian creation myth. R J Sawyer

ET

You want to know the most ignorant thing about the law we are discussing? Other countries are free to discuss and promote ID in their science classrooms which put us even further behind the rest of the world.

ET is correct. Saudi, Iran, Afghanistan, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and the Vatican are all free to teach their versions of ID. Personally, I wouldn’t look to any of these countries as acceptable role models. R J Sawyer

Seversky implies that the constitution gives atheists the unalienable right to teach their unsubstantiated pseusoscientific Darwinian creation myth in the public schools because to allow otherwise, i.e. to allow the possibility that the unfathomable complexity we see in life might have been intelligently designed, is to teach religion. Seversky is, as usual, wrong in his belief. For purposes of "religion" "The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a 'religion' for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions"

Atheism and the Law - Matt Dillahunty Excerpt: "... whether atheism is a 'religion' for First Amendment purposes is a somewhat different question than whether its adherents believe in a supreme being, or attend regular devotional services, or have a sacred Scripture." "Without venturing too far into the realm of the philosophical, we have suggested in the past that when a person sincerely holds beliefs dealing with issues of 'ultimate concern' that for her occupy a 'place parallel to that filled by . . . God in traditionally religious persons,' those beliefs represent her religion." "We have already indicated that atheism may be considered, in this specialized sense, a religion. See Reed v. Great Lakes Cos., 330 F.3d 931, 934 (7th Cir. 2003) ('If we think of religion as taking a position on divinity, then atheism is indeed a form of religion.')" "The Supreme Court has recognized atheism as equivalent to a 'religion' for purposes of the First Amendment on numerous occasions" http://www.atheist-community.org/library/articles/read.php?id=742

Thus, IMHO, the most effective tactic for the next teacher or school being sued by Atheists over the Intelligent Design issue is to point out that Atheism is a religion in and of itself. And that Darwinian evolution, more or less, directly implies teaching a religion, i.e. teaching atheism, to students.

Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented. ~ William Provine "Although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" - Richard Dawkins - 1986 Evolution Is Religion--Not Science Excerpt: Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality,,, Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. Darwinian atheist Michael Ruse - Prominent Atheistic Philosopher https://uncommondesc.wpengine.com/education/a-friend-writes-to-ask-why-he-cant-have-an-event-on-a-local-campus-because/ A Neurosurgeon, Not A Darwinist - Michael Egnor Excerpt: The fight against the design inference in biology is motivated by fundamentalist atheism. Darwinists detest intelligent design theory because it is compatible with belief in God. But the evidence is unassailable. The most reasonable scientific explanation for functional biological complexity–the genetic code and the intricate nanotechnology inside living cells–is that they were designed by intelligent agency. There is no scientific evidence that unintelligent processes can create substantial new biological structures and function. There is no unintelligent process known to science that can generate codes and machines. I still consider religious explanations for biology to be unscientific at best, dogma at worst. But I understand now that Darwinism itself is a religious creed that masquerades as science. Darwin’s theory of biological origins is atheism’s creation myth, and atheists defend their dogma with religious fervor. - Michael Egnor is a professor and vice chairman of the department of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/06/neurosurgeon-intelligent-design-opinions-darwin09_0205_michael_egnor.html Atheism,,, is certainly far more than the mere absence of faith.  - David Bentley Hart God, Gods, and Fairies by David Bentley Hart - June 2013 Excerpt: All of which is to say (to return to where I began) that it is absurd to think that one can profess atheism in any meaningful way without thereby assenting to an entire philosophy of being, however inchoate one’s sense of it may be. The philosophical naturalist’s view of reality is not one that merely fails to find some particular object within the world that the theist imagines can be descried there; it is a very particular representation of the nature of things, entailing a vast range of purely metaphysical commitments. Principally, it requires that one believe that the physical order, which both experience and reason say is an ensemble of ontological contingencies, can exist entirely of itself, without any absolute source of actuality. It requires also that one resign oneself to an ultimate irrationalism: For the one reality that naturalism can never logically encompass is the very existence of nature (nature being, by definition, that which already exists); it is a philosophy, therefore, surrounded, permeated, and exceeded by a truth that is always already super naturam, and yet a philosophy that one cannot seriously entertain except by scrupulously refusing to recognize this. It is the embrace of an infinite paradox: the universe understood as an “absolute contingency.” It may not amount to a metaphysics in the fullest sense, since strictly speaking it possesses no rational content—it is, after all, a belief that all things rest upon something like an original moment of magic—but it is certainly far more than the mere absence of faith. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2013/06/god-gods-and-fairies

bornagain77

I once suggested, here: https://evolutionnews.org/2015/06/how_to_teach_th/ that some HS biology teacher might share the contents of this article with their students, and only reveal the source at their disciplinary hearing. It might be too late by then to save their job, but if they were fired just for sharing a N.Y.Times News Service account of a Chicago Field Museum meeting, that might help people understand how badly needed are the academic freedom laws Discovery Institute is promoting around the country. As far as I know, no one ever took me up on the idea, but I was quite serious. Granville Sewell

Seversky:

What would be the point in declaring that all US citizens have certain “unalienable” rights if you were going to allow individual states to set them aside whenever they chose?

Hey chicken little, what rights are being set aside? Please be specific or shut up ET

vmahuna @ 4

The Bill of Rights are RESTRICTIONS on the FEDERAL government by the individual SOVEREIGN States. And so what is forbidden is the establishment of a single NATIONAL religion by the government in Washington. (E.g., The Church of England) This restriction does NOT apply (or DID NOT apply) to the individual Sovereign States, who always had the Right to establish a government-supported religion WITHIN THEIR STATE. And several States did that

What would be the point in declaring that all US citizens have certain "unalienable" rights if you were going to allow individual states to set them aside whenever they chose? The same arguments against the Federal government establishing a state church must also apply to the individual states. Allowing them to establish state churches would inevitably disadvantage any citizen of that state who was not a member of that church and violate his or her right to free exercise of their faith. So it is hardly surprising that we find that the FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT has been the basis for extending the restraints on Federal government powers to those of state governments. Seversky

Seversky needs a history lesson and a dose of reality: What is Intelligent Design?: Design theory—also called design or the design argument—is the view that nature shows tangible signs of having been designed by a preexisting intelligence. It has been around, in one form or another, since the time of ancient Greece. Well before Paley and Creationism. "The Design Revolution", page 25, Dembski writes:

Intelligent Design has theological implications, but it is not a theological enterprise. Theology does not own intelligent design. Intelligent design is not a evangelical Christian thing, or a generally Christian thing or even a generally theistic thing. Anyone willing to set aside naturalistic prejudices and consider the possibility of evidence for intelligence in the natural world is a friend of intelligent design.

He goes on to say:

Intelligent design requires neither a meddling God nor a meddled world. For that matter, it doesn't even require there be a God.

Willfully ignorant evos always try to rewrite history and have a severe aversion to the facts. ET

mike1962 @ 2

ID is not a religious idea. It’s compatible with religion, and so is Darwinism. The way the U.S. Supreme court is shaping up, there may be a better outcome to this silly problem.

It has not been difficult to trace the line of descent from, say, William Paley through creationism and creation science to Intelligent Design. And the published works of a founding father of ID, Philip Johnson, and one of its leading lights, William Dembski have made the religious purposes of the movement quite clear. Seversky

A few more notes: Contrary to the false revisionist history from atheists of 'enlightenment' reasoning saving us from the 'dark ages' Christianity,,,

Christians – Not the Enlightenment – Invented Modern Science – Chuck Colson – Oct. 2016 Excerpt: Rodney Stark's,,, book, "For the Glory of God,,,, In Stark's words, "Christian theology was necessary for the rise of science." Science only happened in areas whose worldview was shaped by Christianity, that is, Europe. Many civilizations had alchemy; only Europe developed chemistry. Likewise, astrology was practiced everywhere, but only in Europe did it become astronomy. That's because Christianity depicted God as a "rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being" who created a universe with a "rational, lawful, stable" structure. These beliefs uniquely led to "faith in the possibility of science." So why the Columbus myth? Because, as Stark writes, "the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack of faith." Opponents of Christianity have used bogus accounts like the ones I've mentioned to not only discredit Christianity, but also position themselves as "liberators" of the human mind and spirit. Well, it's up to us to set the record straight, and Stark's book is a great place to start. And I think it's time to tell our neighbors that what everyone thinks they know about Christianity and science is just plain wrong. http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/chuck-colson/weve-been-lied-christians-not-enlightenment-invented-modern-science

,,, the fact of the matter is that modern science finds its origination in Christian Europe in the 13th century from “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God and also from the belief that humans are capable of understanding nature, since they believed man to be made in God's image.

The Threat to the Scientific Method that Explains the Spate of Fraudulent Science Publications - Calvin Beisner | Jul 23, 2014 Excerpt: It is precisely because modern science has abandoned its foundations in the Biblical worldview (which holds, among other things, that a personal, rational God designed a rational universe to be understood and controlled by rational persons made in His image) and the Biblical ethic (which holds, among other things, that we are obligated to tell the truth even when it inconveniences us) that science is collapsing. As such diverse historians and philosophers of science as Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Duhem, Loren Eiseley, Rodney Stark, and many others have observed,, science—not an occasional flash of insight here and there, but a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world—arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme. That is no accident. Science could not have arisen without that worldview. http://townhall.com/columnists/calvinbeisner/2014/07/23/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-that-explains-the-spate-of-fraudulent-science-publications-n1865201/page/full Several other resources backing up this claim are available, such as Thomas Woods, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, and Christopher Dawson. The truth about science and religion By Terry Scambray - August 14, 2014 Excerpt: In 1925 the renowned philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead speaking to scholars at Harvard said that science originated in Christian Europe in the 13th century. Whitehead pointed out that science arose from “the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher”, from which it follows that human minds created in that image are capable of understanding nature. The audience, assuming that science and Christianity are enemies, was astonished. http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2014/08/the_truth_about_science_and_religion.html

Moreover, the setting of the philosophical atmosphere in Europe, which enabled the rise of modern science, can be traced directly back to the medieval years of 1215 and 1277 where it was declared, by the church, that the universe was created out of nothing at the beginning of time, and where the Aristotelian propositions of a deterministic and necessitarian view of creation were condemned.

The War against the War Between Science and Faith Revisited - July 2010 Excerpt: Fr. Paul Haffner writes:,,, If science suffered only stillbirths in ancient cultures, how did it come to its unique viable birth? The beginning of science as a fully fledged enterprise took place in relation to two important definitions of the Magisterium of the Church. The first was the definition at the Fourth Lateran Council in the year 1215, that the universe was created out of nothing at the beginning of time. The second magisterial statement was at the local level, enunciated by Bishop Stephen Tempier of Paris who, on March 7, 1277, condemned 219 Aristotelian propositions, so outlawing the deterministic and necessitarian views of creation. These statements of the teaching authority of the Church expressed an atmosphere in which faith in God had penetrated the medieval culture and given rise to philosophical consequences. The cosmos was seen as contingent in its existence and thus dependent on a divine choice which called it into being; the universe is also contingent in its nature and so God was free to create this particular form of world among an infinity of other possibilities. Thus the cosmos cannot be a necessary form of existence; and so it has to be approached by a posteriori investigation. The universe is also rational and so a coherent discourse can be made about it. Indeed the contingency and rationality of the cosmos are like two pillars supporting the Christian vision of the cosmos. http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/08/the-war-against-the-war-between-science-and-faith-revisited/

This birth of modern science within the Christian cultures of western Europe was no accident. Science simply is not possible without Theistic presuppositions in general and Christian presuppositions in particular. As Robert C. Koons put it, Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible,

Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b3ffffd524.pdf

In 1995 Paul Davies stated that: even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”

Physics and the Mind of God: The Templeton Prize Address - by Paul Davies - August 1995 Excerpt: “People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.” https://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24

And again in 2007 Paul Davies went on to state, “All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed.,,, ,,, the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe,”

Taking Science on Faith - By PAUL DAVIES - NOV. 24, 2007 Excerpt: The problem with this neat separation into “non-overlapping magisteria,” as Stephen Jay Gould described science and religion, is that science has its own faith-based belief system. All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified. The most refined expression of the rational intelligibility of the cosmos is found in the laws of physics, the fundamental rules on which nature runs. The laws of gravitation and electromagnetism, the laws that regulate the world within the atom, the laws of motion — all are expressed as tidy mathematical relationships. But where do these laws come from? And why do they have the form that they do? When I was a student, the laws of physics were regarded as completely off limits. The job of the scientist, we were told, is to discover the laws and apply them, not inquire into their provenance. The laws were treated as “given” — imprinted on the universe like a maker’s mark at the moment of cosmic birth — and fixed forevermore. Therefore, to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You’ve got to believe that these laws won’t fail, that we won’t wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour. Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science. Can the mighty edifice of physical order we perceive in the world about us ultimately be rooted in reasonless absurdity? If so, then nature is a fiendishly clever bit of trickery: meaninglessness and absurdity somehow masquerading as ingenious order and rationality. Although scientists have long had an inclination to shrug aside such questions concerning the source of the laws of physics, the mood has now shifted considerably. Part of the reason is the growing acceptance that the emergence of life in the universe, and hence the existence of observers like ourselves, depends rather sensitively on the form of the laws. If the laws of physics were just any old ragbag of rules, life would almost certainly not exist.,,, ,,, the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html

Hopefully it is now VERY clear that ALL of science, every discipline within science, (especially including Darwinian evolution itself), is dependent on basic Theistic presuppositions about the rational intelligibility of the universe and the ability of our mind to comprehend that rational intelligibility. Modern science was born, and continues to be dependent on, those basic Theistic presuppositions. Science is simply impossible without those presuppositions. Where Darwinian evolution goes off the rails, theologically speaking, as far as science itself is concerned, (and as was referenced in post 1),is that it uses bad liberal theology to try to establish the legitimacy of its atheistic claims, all the while forgetting that it itself is absolutely dependent on basic Theistic presuppositions about the rational intelligibility of the universe and of our minds to comprehend it. Yet, if we cast aside those basic Theistic presuppositions of the rational intelligibility of the universe and the ability of our mind to comprehend that rational intelligibility, and try to use Atheistic Materialism, i.e. methodological naturalism, as our basis for understanding the universe, and for practicing science, then everything within that atheistic/naturalistic worldview collapses into self refuting, unrestrained, flights of fantasy and imagination.

Darwin’s Theory vs Falsification – 39:45 minute mark https://youtu.be/8rzw0JkuKuQ?t=2387 Excerpt: Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris), who has unreliable beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the reality of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Bottom line, nothing is real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, Paper with references for each claim page; Page 37: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pAYmZpUWFEi3hu45FbQZEvGKsZ9GULzh8KM0CpqdePk/edit Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist firmly believes he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for methodological naturalism), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.

Bottom line, Darwinism is not a science but is a religion based on unrestrained imagination masquerading as a science. It certainly has no legitimate place within a science class! Verse

2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

bornagain77

You want to know the most ignorant thing about the law we are discussing? Other countries are free to discuss and promote ID in their science classrooms which put us even further behind the rest of the world. ET

"forbidden by the “freedom from religion” amendment" The Bill of Rights are RESTRICTIONS on the FEDERAL government by the individual SOVEREIGN States. And so what is forbidden is the establishment of a single NATIONAL religion by the government in Washington. (E.g., The Church of England) This restriction does NOT apply (or DID NOT apply) to the individual Sovereign States, who always had the Right to establish a government-supported religion WITHIN THEIR STATE. And several States did that. But this has all gotten lost and confused. Several signers of the Declaration of Independence were Protestant ministers. Congress has ALWAYS had a Chaplain, as have the Army and Navy. Some decades ago, the City of San Diego (and/or the State of California) used tax money to build a replica of an Aztec (Mayan?) temple in a public park so that modern practitioners of the long dead religion could RE-ENACT somebody's idea of what some non-specific ceremony MIGHT have looked like, although as far as I know nobody got their beating hacked out of their chest with a stone knife. Modern violations of "separation of church and state" ONLY applies to Christian groups, most especially Catholics. vmahuna

Everyone understands that the only conceivable alternative to Darwinism is intelligent design...

What? Darwinism isn't a conceivable alternative to ID. It isn't even a viable option. And ID doesn't have anything to do with religion. What students need to do is ask their teachers how to test the claim that ATP synthase evolved by means of natural selection and drift, or any other blind and mindless process. The teacher will choke and realize they are teaching BS ET

ID is not a religious idea. It's compatible with religion, and so is Darwinism. The way the U.S. Supreme court is shaping up, there may be a better outcome to this silly problem. mike1962

It is interesting to note that, beneath all the fake "Icons of Evolution" that constantly infest grade-school textbooks,

'Icons Of Evolution' - Tenth Anniversary - video clip playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS2RPQAPifs6t__mIAqITpYy Jonathan Wells Presents Zombie Science at National Book Launch – video - 2017 https://youtu.be/I2UHLPVHjug?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1rO4HiEiRBLalzTx-TaKYC&t=79

,, beneath all the fake "Icons of Evolution" that constantly infest grade-school textbooks, that Darwinian evolution, (far from being 'religiously neutral' as is required by the Supreme court), is itself based on (bad liberal) theology and therefore (according to the current standards that Darwinists themselves try to use to exclude ID from public school), Darwinian evolution should itself not be taught in science class (again, according to their standards).

CHARLES DARWIN: VICTORIAN MYTHMAKER By A.N. Wilson (Book Review By Jonathan Wells) - - Wednesday, January 31, 2018 Excerpt: Darwin called “The Origin of Species” “one long argument,” and it was a theology-laden argument against creation by design. Many people have the mistaken impression that Darwin’s theory was accepted because he provided so much scientific evidence for it (he didn’t). Instead, his theory was accepted because it fit the increasingly secular spirit of the times.,,, So Darwinian evolution is not so much a scientific theory as it is a secular creation myth. According to Mr. Wilson, “Darwinism, as is shown by the current state of debate, is resistant to argument because it is resistant to fact. The worship of Darwin as a man, the attribution to him of insights and discoveries which were either part of the common scientific store of knowledge or were the discoveries of others, this is all necessary to bolster the religion of Darwinism.” Mr. Wilson’s book is not flawless, but on this point he’s right. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/jan/31/book-review-charles-darwin-by-an-wilson/ Charles Darwin, Theologian: Major New Article on Darwin's Use of Theology in the Origin of Species - May 2011 Excerpt: The Origin supplies abundant evidence of theology in action; as Dilley observes: I have argued that, in the first edition of the Origin, Darwin drew upon at least the following positiva theological claims in his case for descent with modification (and against special creation): 1. Human beings are not justified in believing that God creates in ways analogous to the intellectual powers of the human mind. 2. A God who is free to create as He wishes would create new biological limbs de novo rather than from a common pattern. 3. A respectable deity would create biological structures in accord with a human conception of the 'simplest mode' to accomplish the functions of these structures. 4. God would only create the minimum structure required for a given part's function. 5. God does not provide false empirical information about the origins of organisms. 6. God impressed the laws of nature on matter. 7. God directly created the first 'primordial' life. 8. God did not perform miracles within organic history subsequent to the creation of the first life. 9. A 'distant' God is not morally culpable for natural pain and suffering. 10. The God of special creation, who allegedly performed miracles in organic history, is not plausible given the presence of natural pain and suffering. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/05/charles_darwin_theologian_majo046391.html Charles Darwin's use of theology in the Origin of Species - STEPHEN DILLEY Abstract This essay examines Darwin's positiva (or positive) use of theology in the first edition of the Origin of Species in three steps. First, the essay analyses the Origin's theological language about God's accessibility, honesty, methods of creating, relationship to natural laws and lack of responsibility for natural suffering; the essay contends that Darwin utilized positiva theology in order to help justify (and inform) descent with modification and to attack special creation. Second, the essay offers critical analysis of this theology, drawing in part on Darwin's mature ruminations to suggest that, from an epistemic point of view, the Origin's positiva theology manifests several internal tensions. Finally, the essay reflects on the relative epistemic importance of positiva theology in the Origin's overall case for evolution. The essay concludes that this theology served as a handmaiden and accomplice to Darwin's science. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=376799F09F9D3CC8C2E7500BACBFC75F.journals?aid=8499239&fileId=S000708741100032X

Contrary to what Darwinists may believe, Charles Darwin was NOT one of the “greatest scientists who has ever lived.” Far from it. Darwin was primarily a liberal theologian who practiced bad theology rather than a great scientist who practiced good science. (In fact, with the adoption of neutral theory via population genetics, population genetics has now cast Natural Selection, which was supposedly Charles Darwin's greatest contribution to science, under the bus as to being a major player in the theory of evolution). To this day, beneath all the fake 'Icons of Evolution' that are in textbooks and on the web, Darwinian evolution is still very much dependent on (bad liberal) theology.

Methodological Naturalism: A Rule That No One Needs or Obeys - Paul Nelson - September 22, 2014 Excerpt: It is a little-remarked but nonetheless deeply significant irony that evolutionary biology is the most theologically entangled science going. Open a book like Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution is True (2009) or John Avise's Inside the Human Genome (2010), and the theology leaps off the page. A wise creator, say Coyne, Avise, and many other evolutionary biologists, would not have made this or that structure; therefore, the structure evolved by undirected processes. Coyne and Avise, like many other evolutionary theorists going back to Darwin himself, make numerous "God-wouldn't-have-done-it-that-way" arguments, thus predicating their arguments for the creative power of natural selection and random mutation on implicit theological assumptions about the character of God and what such an agent (if He existed) would or would not be likely to do.,,, ,,,with respect to one of the most famous texts in 20th-century biology, Theodosius Dobzhansky's essay "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" (1973). Although its title is widely cited as an aphorism, the text of Dobzhansky's essay is rarely read. It is, in fact, a theological treatise. As Dilley (2013, p. 774) observes: "Strikingly, all seven of Dobzhansky's arguments hinge upon claims about God's nature, actions, purposes, or duties. In fact, without God-talk, the geneticist's arguments for evolution are logically invalid. In short, theology is essential to Dobzhansky's arguments.",, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/methodological_1089971.html Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of theology? - Dilley S. - 2013 Abstract This essay analyzes Theodosius Dobzhansky's famous article, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution," in which he presents some of his best arguments for evolution. I contend that all of Dobzhansky's arguments hinge upon sectarian claims about God's nature, actions, purposes, or duties. Moreover, Dobzhansky's theology manifests several tensions, both in the epistemic justification of his theological claims and in their collective coherence. I note that other prominent biologists--such as Mayr, Dawkins, Eldredge, Ayala, de Beer, Futuyma, and Gould--also use theology-laden arguments. I recommend increased analysis of the justification, complexity, and coherence of this theology. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23890740

In the following article, the theological double standard of Darwinists within the law is noted,

In Court Rulings on Teaching Origins Science, Law Review Article Finds a Double Standard - Sarah Chaffee – May 6, 2016 Excerpt: In a newly published law review article, "Darwin's Poisoned Tree: Atheistic Advocacy and the Constitutionality of Teaching Evolution in Public Schools," attorney and former Discovery Institute research coordinator Casey Luskin examines the way courts have struck down the teaching of alternatives to evolution because of their historical associations with religion. At the same time, he notes that courts typically ignore anti-religious historical associations with Darwinism. As Luskin documents, these associations are prevalent and well known. The result is a double standard, as courts hold alternatives to evolution unconstitutional to teach, but evolution constitutional. Luskin notes that the solution to this problem is not removing evolution from schools. He vigorously opposes having evolution declared unconstitutional. Instead, he argues that religious associations of scientific views on origins science should not be constitutionally fatal, but rather should be considered an "incidental effect." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/05/in_court_ruling102826.html

The failure of public schools to maintain the requisite neutrality involving religion and the government is touched upon in the following article

Southwestern University Law Review: DEALING WITH THE ENTANGLEMENT OF RELIGION AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE IN AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS Excerpt: But each time we present a theory of life's origin to our schoolchildren, we are showing preference. And by actually looking at the theories and what they represent, as well as looking at what religion provides for people, we can see that the government, even in limiting the teaching to only evolution, is endorsing a religious ideology. A message exists behind this endorsement - the same message people feared would exist if we allowed schools to teach biblical creationism theories or even intelligent design theory. The message itself is an endorsement. Accordingly, the government is endorsing a particular religious belief - the belief that no supernatural being exists. In effect, this endorsement not only advances that particular religious belief and inhibits other religious beliefs, but also it shows an utter failure of maintaining the government's requisite neutrality involving religion and the government. https://litigation-essentials.lexisnexis.com/webcd/app?action=DocumentDisplay&crawlid=1&doctype=cite&docid=37+Sw.+U.+L.+Rev.+1&srctype=smi&srcid=3B15&key=90873d971bf3d768563adad5bf41fe28

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