3XNTGRAD
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GoMeanGreen.com
Posts posted by 3XNTGRAD
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While we are on "Necessary Roughness" trivia and the Biology Building, the lady professor's office was actually filmed on the 2nd floor of the Biology Building.
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Okay, random question... just this week, they've started throwing up these squares, about 6'x6' or a touch larger, all over campus near the entrances to several buildings. They're essentially roped off concrete squares at the moment... anyone have any idea what these are?
locations for new bicycle racks
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There is now a webcam showing the demolition/construction process as Masters Hall get replaced by the new Life Science Complex (this camera updates every 10 secs):
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There is a phase-in period. Pay by the early renewal deadline and those new rules don't apply.
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Now if only they could take the Biology building with it.....
.... seriously, are they planning on building a skybridge between this great new facility and that rustbox from hell next to it?? The Bio building is a classic dump. No charm, not attractive, barely functional.
I'm onboard 100% with beautification of the campus (we really need it, IMHO), and I hope the BIO building is on the short list...
The Biology Building isn't that bad. The outside is nothing fancy, but it isn't an ugly building in my opinion. The interior is pretty much your standard institutional cinder block design, but it is built solid and really does the job it is supposed to do. It could do with some updating for sure, but I don't think it is the dump you portray it as.
The building plans are to have the new building and the old connected along the middle by an atrium. The first three floors of each building will be accessible from the other by walkways. A portion of the old building will be renovated along the atrium on the ground floor as well to connect some offices suites to the atrium area.
By the way, you should have seen the 3 story pile of trash behind Masters Hall this week. They started chunking all the interior items (walls, ducts, discarded furniture, etc.) out of the building and the pile eventually filled most of the courtyard and reached up to the 3rd floor. They've now hauled a lot of it away, but they are definitely in full swing getting ready to destroy the building.
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--Even worse, when I was a student I regularly walked across the "future site" of Master's Hall about every day. It was still a parking lot then.
You know you are getting old when good buildings that were constructed during your lifetime are falling apart and declared obsolete.
Geeez..
Are you sure about that? I noticed your message has your graduation year as 1966. The Biology Building was built in 1965, so maybe that is the one you are thinking about.
Masters Hall was built around 1950.
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Yes - I bought one last Sat. night because we had some extra guests in town. 4 people (2 adult/2 child I think, but doesn't really matter since the price per ticket is the same I think), 4 soft drinks and a pizza. I think it was $30 total.
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So can I play or not?
Don't know if it would help or not, but I could probably "convince" my 10 year old to play as well to balance out the teams, if it is determined that these young guys can play. I'm pretty sure we can make that date.
So, what is the verdict?
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UNT and Texas Tech compete for a lot of the same students, so we should keep this prominently displayed on the board (might make their choice a little easier since UNT was recently FULLY REACCREDITED by the same accrediting body)!
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All I was saying is that you were foraying into an area with which I am not very familiar. I couldn't really comment one way or the other on what you had said. And what about the remainder of what I had to say? Again, I am no biologist, but is not science capable of determining criteria to evaluate whether an object shows evidence of purposeful design?
However, I would appreciate it if you could at least address my question regarding a possible means of testing evidence for design.
Evolutionary theory is a strong and robust explanation of the life we see and is based on the natural processes we can measure and describe. To support intelligent design, you would have to show that something could not have arisen from those processes. No research has shown that, and instead the intelligent design/creation proponents have just made claims that something is too complex and must therefore have been designed. Natural processes produce all kinds of complicated and intricate products, but that doesn't mean those products are being purposefully designed (as a simple example, just look at the beautiful color patterns of a rainbow in the sky, which can be fully explained by the physics of light). If intelligent design proponents want to challenge the current paradigm, then they must provide scientific evidence for their case that stands up to the same scientific rigor as the evidence for the current theory. Just saying that "God did it" is not scientific.
Intelligent design/creationism is a religious viewpoint that does not have any scientific underpinnings. As such, it is not a valid alternative that should be discussed in a public school science course.
I too have spent way too much time on this discussion. I hope we can leave it at this.
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Interesting point. I am not sure how you make the argument “testable.”
If it isn't testable, then it isn't science. Thank you for making my point as to why intelligent design has no place in a science classroom.
Scientific theories do not promote religious ideas. They are explanations of the natural world. And, yes, studies have found that a higher percentage of scientists are non-religious compared to the general population. So, does that mean that the Theory of General Relativity is also not "neutral" or Germ Theory, etc., since scientists who study those are also less religious than the general population? This recent study that surveyed scientists about religion notes that it seems to be less a case of the science making these people less religious, and more the case that people who enter science tend to be less religious to begin with.If it is "neutral," as you say, would you be willing to say that as large a percentage of evolutionary biologists are religious (not counting secular humanism) as in the general population?
You may not be familiar with what happens in debates. Although one side might clearly win, this does not mean that all adherents to the opposing view promptly drop it. I would encourage you to watch or read that debate—I think you would find it enlightening, as I did.
I have said several times that science isn't determined by debates in front of crowds. It is determined by the evidence that supports a concept. How does over 29,000 peer-reviewed evolution articles to 0 for intelligent design do anything except show that ID is not a valid scientific theory.
Have we come full circle in this discussion yet? I'm sure the others reading this exchange probably feel that we aren't adding anything new at this point that we haven't already said.
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Some group of DNA scientist came forward a couple years ago and traced human DNA back to one set of parents. Of course they named those parents Adam and Eve. Naturally, evolutionists disagreed.
Even human DNA is a little different in some people and take for example people who are hydrocephalic (enlarged skulls/water on the brain) who either have an extra DNA or one less DNA chromosome.
Please check the original sources before you make these claims. Scientists (evolutionary biologists, to be exact) have studied DNA to trace back to a female progenitor (based on mitochondrial DNA which is primarily passed down from the mother only) and a male progenitor (through Y chromosome studies) of all modern humans. However, nothing indicates that the two were a couple, or even lived within thousands of years of one another (the time range for both studies points to each having lived 100,000-200,000 years ago -- so science has not definitively identified a single couple as the parents of the human race).
Secondly, additional or missing chromosomes is a huge deal, most such conditions are fatal. An extra copy of chromosome 21 is the cause of Down Syndrome, which is not a minor condition.
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It doesn't really matter to me if through evolution God created man from a unicellular organism in six God-days, or if He created every species as it exists right now out of thin air in 15 minutes.
There is nothing in the first part of your statement that contradicts anything that I've said.
Science cannot prove or disprove anything outside of the natural world. If God created everything and did so using all the natural laws we observe, then science would be unable to distinguish this. That is why science in general and evolution in specific is really neutral on religious issues.
Science is not neutral when it comes to literal readings of the bible, because there are contradictions there that we can observe in the natural world (6 human days is not compatible with our measurements of the age of the Earth, etc.).
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This is not an affirmative argument for intelligent design.
Could you please provide me with an affirmative argument for intelligent design that can be tested in a scientific way? I thought that was the point of "irreducibly complex", for which, despite your protestations to the contrary, the prime example (the bacterial flagellum) has been refuted by the evidence.
So the hand with less dexterity, limited range of motion, inability to repair itself of cuts and burns, and a frail replica of the original is the only one with skilled design behind it?This was just one of the many arguments that led to a clear defeat for atheism/evolution at that debate.
I will not disagree that all life is wonderful and complex. This diversity and intricacy is part of the joy of studying biology. But, complexity can be the result of natural processes and common descent, so this does not conflict in any way with the Theory of Evolution. (And, just for the record, not all biologists or people who accept evolutionary theory are atheist, and the theory itself is neutral with respect to religion or lack of religion)
If evolution is defeated, why is it still a major driving force in modern biological study and research publications? If you go back to the original letter that was the cause for this thread in the first place, you will note that a search of 12 leading science journals found 29,639 peer-reviewed scientific papers on evolution published since 1975. The same search done for "Intelligent Design" finds only 24 articles, all of which are critical of the concept. The science of evolutionary research is alive and well, contrary to your reports of its death.
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UNTflyer:
You hit the nail on the head. She was fired for doing her job - promoting science. That is scary.
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I am a little surprised that you are unfamiliar with out-of-sequence strata and misplaced fossils, not to mention polystrate fossils. The Heart Mountain Thrust in Wyoming and Matterhorn Mountain in Switzerland are two examples of the out-of-sequence strata.
Despite a long-time interest (from childhood) of geology, I am most definitely not a geologist. I have looked into some of these examples and found quite reasonable explanations of how faults and other disturbances can create the appearance of out-of-order strata. However, I will defer to someone else more knowledgeable than myself to discuss these claims if they wish.
I found a very detailed article debunking this claim through analysis of the evidence at such sites (in this case, the Paluxy river sites near Glen Rose primarily). Anyone who wishes to read it may do so on the National Center for Science Education website.Human footprints have been found in Carboniferous strata (supposedly 250 million years old) throughout the interior U.S.
That is not what I am asking, that is what Darwinian evolution demands.
The very existence of DNA is a strong argument for a Designer. The very definition of "code" contradicts "random." But your explanation for the similarity of the DNA is not the only explanation, although a possible one. The nematode worm shares 75% DNA similarity. So are we in the same family tree?
I just don't see how evolution demands, as you say, that a bird becomes a bat. Evolutionary theory is not deterministic.
And, in answer to your last question, yes - we are on the same family tree (not the same branch) as worms. All animals are on the same branch, which is but a smaller part of the same earlier branch where we shared a common ancestor with trees and fungi, and back to the earliest of the eukaryotic cells. This is the concept of "common descent" and it is also a central part of the theory of evolution.
As you can see, I have no problem with having a unicellular ancestor those many billions of years ago.
There were other members of the genus Homo on our family tree that did not survive to the present, the neanderthals, for example.There are so many countless variations in habitat and conditions, that if we evolved from chimpanzees, would there not be innumerable variations of chimpanzee-humans? Why one or the other?
That said, how has (intelligent) design been disproven?
The only testable explanation I've seen put forth for intelligent design has been the idea of "irreducibly complex", which I believe I covered in an earlier post as being refuted by the evidence.
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I don't know that this necessarily is at odds with current evolution, given that I have yet to see any fossil records that conclusively link modern humans to amphibians.
That is probably the crux of the matter - human evolution. Many people would have no problem with the scientific explanations of evolution if humans were left out of the discussion.
Rationally, for me, I just don't see how you can discuss humans separately from any other creature on the Earth. We share the same DNA, we can be mapped on the Tree of Life (using molecular sequence data) the same as any other organism, we share many similarities with the other primates and the general traits of other mammals. There are also clear fossils showing large portions of the primate line of descent (and further back you can trace general mammalian development as well all the way back to amphibians). Sure, there are some gaps in the fossil record, but science continues to identify additional pieces of the puzzle (a gap in knowledge is not the same as an absence of information -- we just haven't found it all yet). I'm definitely not an expert in mammalian evolution, but everything I have looked at has given me a good picture to see how this progression is understood.
To me, this issue that humans must be specially created or hold a central "God-given" position among all life is much like the problems Galileo faced. Biblical interpretation at the time said that the Earth held a special place in the cosmos, so his work that showed the Earth went around the sun was seen as opposition to "Truth". That is no longer a problem for physics and persons of faith, as I hope some day the biological concept of evolution is not seen as in conflict with religion. It is already a non-issue for many people, but obviously not all. Evolution of humans does not lessen what or who we are in any way, in my view.
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Personally, I am a scientific creationist (I guess you can say I straddle the fence).
I think you may be identifying yourself as subscribing to "theistic evolution". Correct me if I'm wrong.
Personally, I have no problem with that as a way of approaching the issue. "Theistic evolution" basically says that evolution occurs and has occurred the way that science describes it in our current understanding, but that God had a hand in making it all happen (many people take this to mean God set things in motion and everything was in place for it to proceed in the manner it has). For many people, this is a good method for reconciling the science and their religious beliefs. Nothing in this approach necessarily conflicts with our scientific understanding of the natural world, so I don't have any issue with it. Note: this is quite different from intelligent design, which essentially says that each thing must have been designed "actively" (my word) by a supernatural designer for a specific purpose.
There are people who find theistic evolution to be just as unacceptable as intelligent design/creationism. Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous (he has written a book called "The God Delusion"). He definitely represents the other extreme end of the spectrum in this debate as compared to the creation/flat earth types.
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None of which proves evolution from one species into another.
- "The various methods by which geologists can date different strata." Why are the strata different in different locales? How is it possible that an "earlier" stratum can lie atop a "later" stratum? Why are "earlier" fossils found embedded in "later" strata, and vice versa?
Could you please provide examples of these, with the source identified?
Darwin's observations led him to identify a mechanism by which evolution could occur. The concept of biological evolution predates Darwin, but his Theory of Natural Selection provided evidence for a mechanism (lack of a mechanism by which this could occur had been a previous criticism against this concept). While they remained finches, they had evolved to adapt to different niches within their habitat in the time that they had been on the island. There are 13 different Finch species in the Galapagos Islands that evolved from a single Finch ancestor species.- "Examples of adaptation of organims to their habitats." You note Darwin's observation of finches on the Galapagos. Well, if Darwinian evolution were true, why did the finches stay finches? Yes, there were changes that occurred, but this hardly justifies the blind leap of faith to evolution between species.
If you ask me to have a finch magically become a bat to prove evolution, then that would be impossible. That isn't how it works.
- "The DNA sequence data that confirms relationships that had been previously inferred from the fossil record." Many of those data have been revised as the years have gone by. What was originally asserted to be a 98-99% DNA similarity between human beings and chimpanzees is now believed to be 95%, and may prove less. And what does the similarity prove, anyhow? If chimpanzees and human beings began from the same parent, how did they evolve into two completely distinct species? If one evolutionary route were better than the other, would not both groups have to take it? Would they not continue to mate with each other to remain one muddled species? Or how did it happen that the one could no longer mate with the other?
Your use of the term "confirm" is somewhat unclear - do you mean "prove"? You can't, because it proves nothing. It merely allows the possibility of what had been previously inferred. Someone else made a post on this thread about examining the evidence while already holding a bias - this seems to apply to your used of "confirmed."
I don't have the latest numbers, but even 95% is an astonishly high degree of similarity. Why does that matter? Well, heredity is the passing of traits down to offspring. The information for those traits is stored in the DNA. The more similar the DNA, the more closely related two species are to each other.
Why do both chimps and humans still exist? Well, each population (individuals do not evolve, populations do) would have been adapted to their particular environment. Your assumption is that they always shared the exact same habitat and conditions. Divergent species does not mean that all their relatives or the descendants of those relatives cannot also evolve down a different path.
I use the word "confirm" because it is the appropriate word to use. Theories in science are never really "proven", they are supported by the evidence. Hypotheses can be disproven when evidence shows they could not happen and theories are disproven when new evidence shows that they were wrong (this happens in all the sciences, not just biology). Using your logic, the atom doesn't exist because it has only been inferred from the evidence. And, about the issue of bias, my use of "confirm" rather than "prove" is part of the open approach of examining the evidence, not an example of some percieved close-mindedness.
- "Modern examples of selection such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria." Yet how many of those bacteria turned into cows? Again, limited change within a kind does not justify the blind leap of faith those of you who profess evolution have taken. I am slightly taller than my father, who was slightly taller than his father. This trend is not limited to my family. While it may be possible that my great-great-grandson will be 8 feet tall, I am not willing to allow the possibility that he might be a giraffe.You appear to be talking about magic, not science in your "bacteria to cow" example. Of course no one can show you that happen. You are trying to ask for science to prove within a human lifetime something that required over 3.5 billion years for evolution to accomplish.
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Who is grasping at straws? You find fossil evidence, and assume it's "transitional" and "intermediate." Apparently you never consider the possibility that it might be its own species? To say it's transitional, you still need fish to flop out of the water, live, thrive, and ultimately give live birth to something that is in no way, shape, or form a fish. No one has ever observed a fish giving live birth to, or even sowing eggs of, something that is not a fish.
I was not clear from your post. Did you say you would be willing to debate your position publicly with a biologist who holds the intelligent design view (somewhat redudant, as design implies intelligence, but nonetheless)?
Are you aware that there are examples of fish with lungs that exist today? Here is a nice description of one species (with a good background on other species in this group and when they are first seen in the fossil record) at the Australian Museum Online. Also of note, evolution occurs in populations, not individuals, so you won't jump from fish to non-fish in one generation. But the traits of a population of fish can modify over time due to selective pressure to eventually produce a species that is different than that original population (but this is a not something that happens over night).
I'd love to see an intelligent design biologist who would actually provide scientific evidence FOR the intelligent design hypothesis. I have no problem with participating in a debate. However, experimentation is where arguments in science are really won. Until an experiment shows that evolution of species cannot happen or a preponderance of experiments provides greater support for an alternate hypothesis, biologists are not going to be convinced that anything other than evolution occurred. This is because experimentation over the last 150 years has produced evidence that continues to bolster the case of evolution.
To discount evolution you have to:
- ignore the fossil record and all the various methods by which geologists can date different strata
- ignore the examples of adaptation of organisms to their habitats (Darwin's observations of finches in the Galapagos is the most famous example)
- ignore the DNA sequence data that confirms relationships that had been previously inferred from the fossil record
- ignore modern examples of selection such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria
I'm sure there are other things that I am forgetting or don't even know that I have left off of this list.
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3xntgrad--
I will have to agree with you on your statement. I admire anyone who can state a point, like yours, and support it. However, we will have to agree to disagree on this topic because I know there is no way that I can change your views on this subject and visa versa. I do wish you the best of luck with any and all debates with your peers. One day we will find out for sure. As Agent Mulden (on X-Files) once said, "The truth is out there."
as always best regards.
ee
At least we can agree to disagree
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eulesseagle:
Nothing I can say or show you will convince you if your mind is already made up. I'm sure someone will try to say I'm avoiding something by not responding point by point to your post, but I don't think I'd be covering any ground that I haven't already discussed in my previous posts by doing that.
Rather than try to do so, I just want to make one very specific comment about a main point of your post.
The word "theory" in the common usage can mean a guess or estimate. The word for a guess (or more precisely, a potential answer to a stated problem) in science is a hypothesis.
In the scientific sense, a theory is a strongly-supported scientific idea. I can't just throw out any idea in science and call that a theory (which is, by the way, what the intelligent design people try to do). It must start as a hypothesis that is tested, refined, retested and then must have a weight of evidence behind it before it gains the status of "Theory" through the acceptance of that body of knowledge in the scientific community.
A theory in science is as good as it gets.
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(in response to Mean Green 93-98's earlier post)
I don't understand why there is an assumption that biologists "fear" intelligent design or that publicly stating our support for a scientific theory somehow means we have a weak case and little evidence. The only thing I fear is that our public school children will be fed a pseudoscientific religious position in the guise of science. I am obviously willing to stake my professional credibility on this issue as shown by my willingness to post here in a very public forum and to have my name listed on a letter that has received national media attention. Science is not decided by "debates" or popular votes, but rather by a body of work that supports or disproves stated hypotheses. Although debating the issue doesn't prove anything, I have no problem discussing the scientific evidence for evolution with anyone. I would like to see the body of evidence that stands behind intelligent design, because there really isn't any (the intelligent design/creation proponents have put out lots of information that tries to poke holes in evolution, but have not contributed new scientific evidence to support their own position). And, I would counter your "orthodox" argument by stating that the peer-review process in science is quite rigorous. Only evidence and hypotheses that pass muster through critical review are going to survive to become established. Intelligent design has the same opportunity to provide evidence as any other hypothesis in biology. It has not done so to date. There is no conspiracy against intelligent design, there just is not a convincing case of supporting scientific evidence.
One of the big pillars stated as proof for evidence of intelligent design is the concept of "irreducibly complex". This is basically the idea that a complex structure in biology could not have arisen except by design because it fails to work if any one part is removed. Thus it must all have been created as a unit, since natural selection should seemingly not be able to produce the whole at one time. The popular example the intelligent design movement tries to uses is the bacterial flagellum. However, research has shown that parts of the flagellum could have evolved independent of a complete whole, since these individual parts could have had other functions in the cell (for the scientifically-minded, this article on evolution of the bacterial flagellum from Nature Reviews Microbiology in 2006 notes the components of the flagellum that have been found to be comparable to other proteins having different functions in the cell). These data support the evolutionary origin of flagellum, and refute that example of the intelligent design concept of "irreducibly complex".
As to your comments about fish, you really are grasping at straws. Evidence of transitional fossils show that intermediate forms existed between fish and animals that can live on land. Of course you cannot take a fish that is fully adapted to live in water and place it on land and expect it to live. However, a fish that has the ability to live for some time out of water might have offspring who are a little better at doing that (or at surviving to reproduce because they gain an advantage by being able to do so). Eventually after many generations of natural selection working with the available natural variation in the population, new species can emerge. This takes incredibly long times in most organisms because of the times between generations, but can be seen in the fossil record. Although I am not a fish biologist, I have looked at several examples in the scientific literature relating to this topic. One example of a transitional fossil is an organism called Acanthostega that is an amphibian with internal gills and lungs (later fossils of amphibians do not have gills, only lungs).
Science examines the natural world and tries to understand it. This is not a religious agenda, and the study of evolution is no more a religion than is heliocentrism (remember that dangerous idea, the one that got Galileo in so much trouble with the Catholic Church -- the theory that the sun was the center of the solar system). I don't see many people today giving up their religion because science showed that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Why should evolution and common descent of organisms be any more dangerous to someone's faith than heliocentrism is in today's world?
One other thing: It is common to see people caught in the middle of this issue to say "what is the harm in teaching both sides?". Well, that would be true if there were actually two sides of scientifically-supported concepts that were in opposition here. But that is not true. Evolution is a strongly-supported theory with tremendous amounts of corroborating data from diverse scientific approaches (fossils, molecular sequences, developmental patterns, ecological studies, etc.). Intelligent design is a hypothesis with little support outside of a small group with a stated religious agenda (do a little research and look up the "Wedge" document from the intelligent design folks). There is a real danger is supplanting science with pseudoscience, so the "equal time" argument is not really a good way to approach this issue.
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As one of the UNT biologists who also signed that letter, I have to respond to some of the comments on this thread.
First, although I am not a physicist, I have to say that Newton's Law of Gravitation is a mathematical formula that explains and predicts the effect of gravitational forces between objects. However, to my knowledge, the exact mechanisms/forces that cause gravity are still not fully understood (hence the "theory of gravity"). So, there is nothing wrong in calling our understanding of gravity a theory. However, that also lessens nothing about gravity or the understanding of this phenomenon in science because a THEORY in science is defined as a concept that is strongly supported by evidence. There are actually few LAWS in biology. Germ theory (that diseases can be caused by microorganisms), cell theory (all organisms are composed of cells), etc. are all on equal footing with the theory of natural selection (Darwin did not conceive the idea of evolution, he identified a mechanisms by which it could occur, natural selection). All are strongly supported by evidence, and in the cases I just mentioned, I would have to say they are overwhelmingly supported by evidence and are soundly accepted in the scientific community. That does not mean they are "perfect" or "final" in any sense, because they can and will be modified if evidence is found that warrants a change (theories are tweaked all the time in science as new information becomes available).
In biology, there is no controversy about evolution (change over time), nor on the concept of common descent (all organisms share a common ancestor). The fossil record clearly shows progressions of species over time and numerous transitional types (fish to amphibian, land mammal to whale, etc), though anti-evolutionists will often say there are "gaps" (no matter how small) in the fossil record, as if that means everything else should be ignored. Fossil evidence continues to grow and support the evolution of speciec. In molecular biology, DNA sequence and protein sequence comparisons show divergence of proteins over time among species. Phylogeny (the study of the evolutionary relationships among organisms) can use the changes at the molecular level to draw phylogenetic trees (you can think of these sort of like family trees of species) showing how organisms relate to one another. In fact, phylogenetic study provides exceptional evidence for another theory, the endosymbiotic theory (that some parts of the eukaryotic cell -- we are eukaryotic by the way -- arose from bacterial ancestors). Phylogenetic studies of mitochondria (the "powerhouse" of eukaryotic cells) show that this part of the cell actually is genetically related to bacteria.
One poster said there is a "law of biogenesis" that "demands" that no life can originate without life. That is incorrect. There is a THEORY of biogenesis that states "life arises from life" and basically refutes the idea of spontaneous generation which said that life OFTEN arose from non-living sources (this idea was actually not fully disproven until the 18th century through the work of Pasteur). The theory of biogenesis does not attempt to answer the question of where that first cell came from, but simply says that all current cells have come from a previously existing cell. If you wish to talk about that very first cell, then you are getting into origin of life research, which is another robust research field that obviously has great implications for the study of cellular life and evolution. However, just because we cannot describe exactly how that first cell came into being (though there are numerous hypotheses on different abiotic conditions that could have led to this development that are being rigorously studied by scientists throughout the world), does not cast any more doubt on the process of evolution than our not knowing the exact mechanism of gravity does on gravitation.
When you see reports of "scientists" who support ideas like intelligent design, look carefully at their credentials. They are almost never biologists, and the reported numbers are usually ridiculously small (for every 100 "scientists" who support intelligent design, I could find thousands of biologists who think it is pseudoscience, for a tongue-in-cheek example of this, look at "Project Steve". To call the dissent of a few on the fringe a "controversy" about evolution would mean there is also a controversy about the Earth not being flat, or that the sun goes around the Earth, simply because a few odd people say it is so.
Evolution is a scientific concept. It makes no claims one way or the other on religious beliefs. Intelligent design (aka creationism) IS a religious concept that has not been supported by the scientific evidence. There are a lot of "claims" made by creationist websites that say they refute evolution, but I challenge you to critically analyze those claims against the scientific evidence. It doesn't take much work to see through the smoke and mirrors.
The bottom line:
Biological research has overwhelmingly found evidence of evolution.
Creationism is a religious concept which cannot legally be taught in public school science classrooms.
Intelligent design is an attempt to put science sounding terminology on creationism and to introduce a religious concept into public school teaching (a strategy soundly denounced by the Kitzmiller vs. Dover case in Pennsylvania in 2005).
Lee Hughes
Ph.D with a major in Microbiology, UNT 1998
Another Season Ticket Question
in Mean Green Football
Posted
My understanding of the notice was that you had to pay in full by April to lock in the current price and donation rules. You may want to check, but that could mean the 7 month plan puts you under the new price structure.