I've been remiss in keeping up with events at the Panda's Thumb, the group science blog I helped found a year and a half ago. I'm happy to say that it has become one of the blogosphere's most widely read. In fact, as Wes Elsberry noted the other day, we've just passed the one million hit mark (and this blog passed a quarter million hits around the same time). There is much news to report as well on the ID front.
Larry Caldwell's nuisance suit against Genie Scott and the NCSE, it turns out, was dropped back in July but he didn't bother to tell anyone that. Now that Genie is no longer under a lawsuit-induced gag order, expect the truth to come out more fully in that regard.
In more significant lawsuit news, the Dover case is now set to go to trial on September 26th. The Thomas More Law Center's motion to have the case dismissed was predictably rejected by the judge, who ruled that "genuine issues of material fact exist regarding as to whether the challenged policy has a secular purpose and whether the policy's principal or primary effect advances or inhibits religion." My fellow MCFS board member Rob Pennock is scheduled to testify in the case and has been working tirelessly in preparation.
And in less significant but highly amusing news, Prof. Steve Steve, the Panda's Thumb mascot, is now travelling down under. John Wilkins took him back to Oz with him and he's now visiting with an even crazier set of Aussies than Wilkins, including Jim Foley, who comments here from time to time, and Ian Musgrave, who will no doubt take the Professor out into the bush to stare at the stars and howl at the moon. Do pandas have the ability to metabolize Irish whiskey?
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Um, I'm floored. They are actually taking Dover to trial? It should have been determined on summary judgement.
The debasement of science by these people is astounding. Science will--and has--moved outside of the US.
They should be careful what they wish for. It will come home to bite them.
Dr. Steve Steve could of course hang out with some koalas and discover how to metabolize the leaves of the wattle tree(a psychoactive acacia) thus enjoying the trip down under in ways that irish whiskey could never fully express.
It has been fun watching the Daily Show this week tackle the theme of Evolution Schmevolution. The reigning idiocy of ID could never have been more fully satirized than when Kurt Vonnegut suggested that we should praise the Designer for creating the clap along with other dubious species.
Do pandas have the ability to metabolize Irish whiskey?
Only if they are distilled in bamboo stills.
Gotta love PT. I didn't realize you were a founder, Ed, my opinion of you just keeps going up.
Katrina and the reaction to it have been weighing on my mind recently (I'm from Louisiana originally). Reading your post and PT inspired me to create a cartoon capturing my feelings about Katrina and Intelligent Design at the same time: http://www.heromachine.com/pandaflood.gif
Hope y'all enjoy it.
Hmmm... distilled pandas...
Intelligent Design may be unscientific, but so is Darwin's theory of
natural selection, a metaphysical proposition as starkly vulnerable as the claims of their opponents. There is no way to test the claims of Darwin on the descent of man. The assertion that evolution is the result of random variation and natural selection in an unguided and unplanned process is ambiguous, and poses the false antithesis guided/unguided. Evolution could show directionality, falsifying Darwin's theory, but affirming evolution.
Then science and religious faith are held to be not mutually exclusive. The major monotheisms are based on belief in the intervention of a supernatural agent. It seems they ought to teach gymnastics in biology classes, since backflips at this point are going to essential. The letter is incoherent. As long as these Darwinian claims are made the foundation of biology this kind of outside dissent is inevitable. It should be the job of the scientific community to be promoting openness, and criticism, self-criticism.
The confusion is almost hopeless, since it is indefensible to disallow
criticism of a theory such as Darwin's, or any other, but in the dynamics of the situation this openness wished for by the Bible Belt would result in its opposite, suppression of any criticism of ID if it ever gained a foothold. The claims of guided history in the Old and New Testament are evidently compatible with insistence on unguided evolution.
Mr. Wiesel should know by now that Darwin's theory is a dangerous dogma and its place in the history of the Holocaust is the generally untold scandal of evolutionary biology.
What is the hangup over Darwin's theory? If they just dropped it, and taught the facts of evolution in class, along with the debates over theory, a full history of those theories stretching backwards to sources of modern biology, plus including the historical debriefing of biblical history using modern Biblical Criticism as a challenge to false faith in religious historical myths equal to the similar challenge to Darwin, they might actually have classrooms worth their students' time and effort.
Darwiniana
'There is no way to test the claims of Darwin on the descent of man.'
Many aspects of evolutionary theory are testable.
'Evolution could show directionality, falsifying Darwin's theory, but affirming evolution.'
It could but it doesn't.
'Mr. Wiesel should know by now that Darwin's theory is a dangerous dogma and its place in the history of the Holocaust is the generally untold scandal of evolutionary biology. '
To stupid for a reply. Hitler was and is to this day a Catholic. Evolution is a science theory. It had nothing to do with the holocaust.
'What is the hangup over Darwin's theory?'
religious beliefs indoctrinated into people since childhood.
'If they just dropped it, and taught the facts of evolution in class,'
The facts include natural selectiona and common descent. Things Darwin proposed.
'along with the debates over theory, a full history of those theories stretching backwards to sources of modern biology,'
There is no real debate over the theory of evolution.
'plus including the historical debriefing of biblical history using modern Biblical Criticism as a challenge to false faith in religious historical myths equal to the similar challenge to Darwin, they might actually have classrooms worth their students' time and effort.'
That would be fun in a religion class.
'It should be the job of the scientific community to be promoting openness, and criticism, self-criticism.'
It does. ID and creationism fail on these fronts.
John Landon at September 16, 2005 11:36 AM
Intelligent Design may be unscientific, but so is Darwin's theory of
natural selection, a metaphysical proposition as starkly vulnerable as the claims of their opponents.
The first is correct, the second is ridiculous. Those of us who actually know something about science, know that there are a number of ways in which evidence for a scientific theory can be adduced. For many sciences, not just evolutionary biology, experimentation is not possible, and observation is needed. That is true not only of evolutionary biology. It is also true of anthropology. It is also true of astrophysics. It is also true of plate tectonics. It is true in many branches of science.
The problem that you have, Mr. Landon, is that proponents of ID have never provided any evidence for ID. If and when they do, I'll sit up and take notice. They never have, and it is probable that--since the issue has been around for over two hundred years--they never will.