Kitzmiller v. Dover Board of Ed. -- aka the "Panda Trial" - Page 2

I've been trying to just ignore you, because I do believe you're acting in a very troll-like manner, but this is ridiculous... you agreeing that students need to be taught thinking skills?

You've demonstrated very little ability at clear thinking yourself. (And please, can you even try to stifle for just a moment the reflexive "Me? What about you!?" that's probably immediately bursting forth in your head at this very moment?)

I have attempted to engage you on numerous occassion to get you to really explain what you mean -- especially about what is and is not "scientific" -- and have never gotten anything out of you but dodging, bobbing, weaving, and very tired rhetorical tricks.

All of which you may think clever, all of which may lead you to believe you're "winning" by avoiding any confrontation with any deficiency in the case you're making -- but none of which are signs of a mind gifted with clear, rational thought. This is not a skill you demonstrate. I say that not because you disagree with me on any specific issue, but because of how you go about those disagreements, in ways that strike me as not only irrational, but (perhaps not deliberatly) intellectually dishonest.

If you really want to play with the Search function on these forums, be my guest. In the meantime, I'll just re-ask something you never satisfactorily engaged in or dealt with which I have asked (in more or less the same form) before.

First of all, you repeat (ad naseum) that evolution has "never been proven" -- and then typically site as an example for this lack of proof some experiment which has never been done, or some particular bit of evidence which has never been gathered. These all basically amount to "Show me this evolution thing (and it's got to be more than 'microevolution') happening right before my eyes -- apes turning into people, fish growing legs, cells bursting forth from a vat of non-living chemical (a request which shows no understanding that evolution and biogenesis are two different fields)... or you evolutionists haven't proved your case."

You act as if this is the "proper" scientific pose, and that everyone else who can't see your wisdom on this has blinders on or is hiding something. (Don't you think it's odd that even people like Behe and Dembski give evolution more credit for being scientific than you do?)

So, before I go further, is this indeed where you stand on whether evolution is sufficiently scientific or not?

Please note that I used the word "proof" in quotes before, and I did that for a reason. Too often this word is taken as meaning "100%, no way out of it, everything else absolutely ruled out" -- and that's not what science is about.

Science is about preponderance of evidence, about finding consistent patterns, about finding the best explanation you can that fits available data.

I would re-ask the question this way: Has evolution proven to be the best explanation so far for the diversity of life as it exists now, the geographic distribution and genetic make-up of life as it exists now, and for the fossil record of life in the past?

To that question, I'd say the answer is a resounding yes. Two "yeses" actually, because there are two meanings of "evolution" to deal with -- the what and the how of evolution.

The "what" of evolution is the basic time line of life on this planet, running over a course of billions of years, showing many species to have come and gone, showing changes over time with much of that change being gradual shifts in the forms of living creatures, with many species appearing in the fossil record looking like variations upon previously existing species. Let's call this "what" "historical evolution".

The "how" of evolution is the mechanism or mechanisms proposed to explain the "what" of evolution. While scientists still debate the specifics and the relative importance of various mechanisms, the overall consensus can be summed up as descent with modification mediated by natural selection. Let's call this "how" the "theory of evolution".

My greatest impatience with those who deny evolution is when they deny historical evolution. You want to believe that only God or alien robots from Andromeda are smart enough to have managed creating all these life forms? Go ahead, knock yourself out. But denying historical evolution takes either incredible ignorance or irrational denial.

Of course, anyone can deny anything that isn't right in front of their faces -- some can manage to maintain their denial even then -- so the mere fact that someone can hold out against whatever references to evidence another person might bring forth is hardly surprising.

Please answer me this: Do you outright deny science any say over the historical? When you clamor that evolution hasn't been tested, what, in your mind, constitutes a test for any historical event?

Hypothesis: George Washington was the first president of the United States.
Test: What goes here? This idea simply can't be tested? Believing that George Washington was the first President can't be anything other than a mere matter of faith?

If you applied the same standards to "proving" Washington's presidency that you apply to evolution, it's as if the only valid proof would be re-creating the revolutionary United States in a laboratory, watching it for a few years, and checking to see if Washington becomes President again. If you applied the same standard to "proving" a murder case, you'd be demanding that forensic scientists make the suspect re-kill the same victim he's accused of killing.

If you can't accept that valid "testing" includes examination of existing artifacts and data -- the chemistry of ink in historical documents, DNA sampling of blood stains found in a carpet, fossils found in a dry lake bed -- and that validation comes from finding patterns and significant correlations among those artifacts and data, that validation comes from making prediction of what kinds of things you expect to find later and then indeed finding those thing... if you can't accept this, you're essentially saying that the past is closed off to science, and that science can only speak to the immediate present.

If you do accept this kind of testing and validation and don't wish to close off the past to science -- for everything except historical evolution -- then you're merely exhibiting a hostile prejudice against this particular area of science.

I'll have to get to the theory part of evolution later.

More terribly unskilled and inept lying from a member of the Dover, PA Board of Ed.:

And we're supposed to believe it when this guy, and the equally mendacious Buckingham, claim to have never, ever mentioned "creationism", and that any such account is someone else's bad memory, someone else's bad note taking, someone else's deceit, or the collusion of two reporters from two different newspapers with some shared nefarious agenda?

I want to be absolutely, perfectly clear on this. Your claim is that the scientific method can have no bearing on a question such as "Was George Washington the first president of the United States?", and that anyone's belief or disbelief in this historical fact can only be characterized as a matter of faith?