Darwin in the schools lobby assaults Bangor, Maine

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 11, 2015

News, science education}

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The theory of “intelligent design” holds that the universe and living beings are so complex that they must have been created by an “intelligent” force typically identified as a deity. Conservative Christian opponents of teaching evolution have advocated that “intelligent design” be taught as an alternative.

Perzanoski in a phone interview Tuesday dismissed the basis for the complaint.

“We categorically deny we were teaching anything about creationism,” he said, adding that many of the allegations “transpired from a discussion [Sullivan] had with the kids” during which they asked him about his personal beliefs.

Also: Superintendent Paul Perzanoski denied the ACLU’s allegation and said the 26-year veteran teacher was just responding to a question from a student who asked Sullivan about his personal beliefs.

In the progressive United States, personal beliefs can destroy a career of any kind. Vote for it, pay for it, suck it up. Don’t blame your Canadian news hound unless you need useless grief on top of that.

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One of my favourite songs from the 1960s mentions Bangor:

Comments

Seversky
There is a considerable gap between the narrow value ranges of observed fundamental physical constants and the extravagant claim that this entire universe was designed specifically for us.
Just an observation from having read several of your objections to fine tuning arguments. You always seem to add a phrase like "specifically for us" at the end - with "us" meaning human beings. As BA points out, fine tuning for life itself - and especially terrestrial life, is significant. Carbon, water, oxygen, CO2 - with the diverse capabilities and properties they have and they way they can combine and support life are indications of design. It's not what one would expect from a randomly formed universe. An excellent, detailed paper on biological fine tuning (although it does refer to and Anthropocentric view) is Michale Denton's "The Place of Life and Man in Nature: Defending the Anthropocentric Thesis". In that, there are several evidences of fine tuning for life itself, not just human life. http://bio-complexity.org/ojs/index.php/main/article/viewFile/BIO-C.2013.1/BIO-C.2013.1 [I think BA77 first linked that paper - so many thanks to him for that.]Silver Asiatic_{April 13, 2015
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OT: Well this is a pleasant surprise, a Ross Douthat speech was just recently uploaded on Veritas Forum videos: Faith Is Not a Sideshow - Ross Douthat at the University of Michigan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCWIB0RZXyc Here is one of my favorite articles by Ross Douthat in which he takes militant atheist Jerry Coyne down a peg or two: The Confidence of Jerry Coyne - Ross Douthat - January 6, 2014 Excerpt: One of the problems with belonging to a faction that’s convinced it’s on the winning side of intellectual history is that it becomes easy to persuade oneself that one’s own worldview has no weak points whatsoever, no internal contradictions or ragged edges, no cracks through which a critic’s wedge could end up driven. This kind of overconfidence has been displayed, at various points in the human story, by everyone from millenarians to Marxists, inquisitors to eugenicists. But right now its vices are often found in a certain type of atheistic polemicist, and in a style of anti-religious argument that’s characterized by a peculiar, almost-willed ignorance of why reasonable people might doubt the scientific-materialist worldview.,,, Well and good. But then halfway through this peroration, we have as an aside the confession that yes, okay, it’s quite possible given materialist premises that “our sense of self is a neuronal illusion.” At which point the entire edifice suddenly looks terribly wobbly — because who, exactly, is doing all of this forging and shaping and purpose-creating if Jerry Coyne, as I understand him (and I assume he understands himself) quite possibly does not actually exist at all? The theme of his argument is the crucial importance of human agency under eliminative materialism, but if under materialist premises the actual agent is quite possibly a fiction, then who exactly is this I who “reads” and “learns” and “teaches,” and why in the universe’s name should my illusory self believe Coyne’s bold proclamation that his illusory self’s purposes are somehow “real” and worthy of devotion and pursuit? (Let alone that they’re morally significant: But more on that below.) Prometheus cannot be at once unbound and unreal; the human will cannot be simultaneously triumphant and imaginary.,,, http://douthat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/06/the-confidence-of-jerry-coyne/?_r=0bornagain77_{April 11, 2015
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BA77, showing in a public High School Science Class the DrCraig vid you posted here would be considered unconstitutional to some in the ACLU. Boy, are they out of touch with Science or what.ppolish_{April 11, 2015
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In a subject about what is true EITHER the truth is allowed or its not. If censorship is invoked then they are either saying such and such is not true or the truth is not a priority. If saying its not true then its a official state opinion on some subject. There is no such thing as official state opinions. Its pure state censorship after the old stamp. If some bad group like ACLU says there should be censorship then such a group is officially illegal for breaking the law of freedom and its offspring. Think harder Yanks. How can there be a law against the truth!! In a nation with laws defending the right to truth by speecj etc. Either the truth or such and such subject is not discussed. No discussions on origin issues folks. A absurdity of human curiosity.Robert Byers_{April 11, 2015
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Seversky: Who claims that "this entire universe was designed specifically for us"? Certainly there is nothing in ID theory that demands that any design we find in nature was for *human* benefit. And to switch the discussion from ID to creationism, even the Genesis account does not claim that the whole universe was created specifically for man; some things, e.g., the plants, also serve the ends of animals, for their food. Also, it was not uncommon for Christian writers in the early modern era to speculate about other inhabited worlds which God might have created; presumably creation was for the benefit of those worlds as well as ours. If anyone was claiming that "every single thing that exists in nature serves human ends," you would have a point. But I don't know any Christian or any ID proponent (and the ranges covered by those two terms are not identical) who makes that claim. The point of the fine-tuning argument is that, of all the imaginable universes, only a very small fraction of them have the right parameters to sustain intelligent life. This could be explained, of course, by sheer chance; the universe just happened to "luck out" by having the right initial properties so that intelligent beings could arise. No can refute a hardened materialist if he insists on that argument. But no one has to accept the argument, either. It's just as reasonable to suppose that the parameters of the universe are not accidental, as it is to suppose that they are. The fine-tuning argument isn't absolutely irresistible, but it can't be dismissed, either. And the fact that even unbelievers like Fred Hoyle couldn't stop it from crossing their minds, is proof that it isn't an argument cooked up by Bible-toting fundamentalists, but an argument that has some appeal for even the non-religious mind.Timaeus_{April 11, 2015
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Seversky: There is a considerable gap between the narrow value ranges of observed fundamental physical constants and the extravagant claim that this entire universe was designed specifically for us. Mung: If it were not so, we would not be here to observe it.Mung_{April 11, 2015
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Seversky you state,,,
There is a considerable gap between the narrow value ranges of observed fundamental physical constants and the extravagant claim that this entire universe was designed specifically for us.
Actually there is not. First, the fact that the universe is fine-tuned for life in the first place, ANY life at all, renders materialistic explanations for that fine-tuning for life epistemologically self-defeating:
The Fine Tuning of the Universe - drcraigvideos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UpIiIaC4kRA Multiverse and the Design Argument - William Lane Craig Excerpt: Roger Penrose of Oxford University has calculated that the odds of our universe’s low entropy condition obtaining by chance alone are on the order of 1 in 10^10(123), an inconceivable number. If our universe were but one member of a multiverse of randomly ordered worlds, then it is vastly more probable that we should be observing a much smaller universe. For example, the odds of our solar system’s being formed instantly by the random collision of particles is about 1 in 10^10(60), a vast number, but inconceivably smaller than 1 in 10^10(123). (Penrose calls it “utter chicken feed” by comparison [The Road to Reality (Knopf, 2005), pp. 762-5]). Or again, if our universe is but one member of a multiverse, then we ought to be observing highly extraordinary events, like horses’ popping into and out of existence by random collisions, or perpetual motion machines, since these are vastly more probable than all of nature’s constants and quantities’ falling by chance into the virtually infinitesimal life-permitting range. Observable universes like those strange worlds are simply much more plenteous in the ensemble of universes than worlds like ours and, therefore, ought to be observed by us if the universe were but a random member of a multiverse of worlds. Since we do not have such observations, that fact strongly disconfirms the multiverse hypothesis. On naturalism, at least, it is therefore highly probable that there is no multiverse. — Penrose puts it bluntly “these world ensemble hypothesis are worse than useless in explaining the anthropic fine-tuning of the universe”. http://www.reasonablefaith.org/multiverse-and-the-design-argument BRUCE GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – October 2010 Excerpt: What is worse, multiplying without limit the opportunities for any event to happen in the context of a multiverse - where it is alleged that anything can spontaneously jump into existence without cause - produces a situation in which no absurdity is beyond the pale. For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the “Boltzmann Brain” problem: In the most “reasonable” models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science.,,, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/ The End Of Materialism? - Dr. Bruce Gordon * In the multiverse, anything can happen for no reason at all. * In other words, the materialist is forced to believe in random miracles as a explanatory principle. * In a Theistic universe, nothing happens without a reason. Miracles are therefore intelligently directed deviations from divinely maintained regularities, and are thus expressions of rational purpose. * Scientific materialism is (therefore) epistemically self defeating: it makes scientific rationality impossible. - Dr. Bruce Gordon - The Absurdity of Inflation, String Theory and The Multiverse - video http://vimeo.com/34468027
Moreover, contrary to your claim that there is a 'considerable gap' between the fact that the universe is fine tuned for life and the 'extravagant' claim that it was designed specifically for humans, we find, when scrutinizing the details of chemistry and physics that, on top of the universe being fine-tuned for life, the universe is fine-tuned specifically for life like human life:
Dr. Michael Denton Interview Excerpt Question 14: Q: ,,,you also detail that nature isn’t fine-tuned for just any kind of life, but life specifically like human life. Would you expound on this for our readers? A: there are certain elements of the fine-tuning which are clearly for advanced beings like ourselves.,, http://successfulstudent.org/dr-michael-denton-interview/ Privileged Species - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoI2ms5UHWg The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability - Robin Collins - March 22, 2014 Predictive and Explanatory Power of Discoverability - Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Excerpt: The most dramatic confirmation of the discoverability/livability optimality thesis (DLO) is the dependence of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) on the baryon to photon ratio.,,, ...the intensity of CMB depends on the photon to baryon ratio, (??b), which is the ratio of the average number of photons per unit volume of space to the average number of baryons (protons plus neutrons) per unit volume. At present this ratio is approximately a billion to one (10^9) , but it could be anywhere from one to infinity; it traces back to the degree of asymmetry in matter and anti - matter right after the beginning of the universe – for approximately every billion particles of antimatter, there was a billion and one particles of matter.,,, The only livability effect this ratio has is on whether or not galaxies can form that have near - optimally livability zones. As long as this condition is met, the value of this ratio has no further effects on livability. Hence, the DLO predicts that within this range, the value of this ratio will be such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers. According to my calculations – which have been verified by three other physicists -- to within the margin of error of the experimentally determined parameters (~20%), the value of the photon to baryon ratio is such that it maximizes the CMB. This is shown in Figure 1 below. (pg. 13) It is easy to see that this prediction could have been disconfirmed. In fact, when I first made the calculations in the fall of 2011, I made a mistake and thought I had refuted this thesis since those calculations showed the intensity of the CMB maximizes at a value different than the photon - baryon ratio in our universe. So, not only does the DLO lead us to expect this ratio, but it provides an ultimate explanation for why it has this value,,, This is a case of a teleological thesis serving both a predictive and an ultimate explanatory role.,,, http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Fine-tuning/Greer-Heard%20Forum%20paper%20draft%20for%20posting.pdf Greer Heard Forum: Robin Collins – “God and the Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Discovery” – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBWmMU7BXGE
Verse and Music:
Isaiah 45:18-19 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘seek me in vain’; I, the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.” Third Day – God of Wonders http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CBNE25rtnE
bornagain77_{April 11, 2015
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There is a considerable gap between the narrow value ranges of observed fundamental physical constants and the extravagant claim that this entire universe was designed specifically for us.Seversky_{April 11, 2015
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OT: podcast - Dr. Frank Turek interviews Stephen Meyer on the 4 fatal flaws of macro-evolution. https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/stephen-meyer-4-fatal-flaws/id402803400?i=321212376&mt=2bornagain77_{April 11, 2015
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specified complexity, not just complexity.kairosfocus_{April 11, 2015
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When discussions of Fine Tuning trickle down to Grade School & High School Science curriculum, God will have to be discussed as one explanation. God and/or Multiverse.ppolish_{April 11, 2015
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