Just Say "No" to Phony "Balance"

As the narrator said in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "And there was much rejoicing." "Yaaaayyyy...."

How much of that comment has to do with the recent court cases stating that ID is not to be taught as science? I wonder what statement we would have read if the courts upheld ID in Pennsylvania and California?

"Science has managed to answer one of the most profound questions aroundwhere does the human species come from?"
Please answer the question then..."How did life originate from non-life?" Is Pasteur's tenent not science? If you cite Miller's experiment, you'll only show your ignorance.
In four pages of your book on line, you've convinced me that your book is baseless.

Thus, from Mr. Hackmann's comment we find the need for saying "No" to phony "balance." Thank you Mr. Hackmann for pointing that out so well.

In four pages of your book on line, you've convinced me that your book is baseless.

Now, that is an endorsement. I'll go buy the book at once.

the article as it appeared in the Seattle Times was short and buried in a middle page. Thankfully, I was reading cover to cover today. The NYTimes article has much more to say.

Still, it's not entirely definitive. It's not an "official church position."

I really find the later part of the article interesting. It seems (from my initial reading) that they are saying evolution is the process by which God guides the development of man kind and the earth:

In the Osservatore article, Dr. Facchini wrote that scientists could not rule out a divine "superior design" to creation and the history of mankind. But he said Catholic thought did not preclude a design fashioned through an evolutionary process.

"God's project of creation can be carried out through secondary causes in the natural course of events, without having to think of miraculous interventions that point in this or that direction," he wrote.

Definitely something to consider. Interesting step for the Vatican.

Greg, I don't think the court ruling had any effect on what the Times reported. There is a serious debate among some journalists about how the media has covered evolution in the past, and I would argue many have found it lacking.

Now, what if the court ruled in IDs favor? I don't think the reporters would have changed what they wrote, but they would have added -- as a disclaimer -- that ID was upheld in court and can be taught in certain schools. That would have been just a statment of fact that doesn't bear on the truth of the "theory."

"ID is not a scientific theory"

I just returned from a science policy class on a rather notoriously liberal campus. We reached a bizarre consensus: As hard as we might try, we could not define boundaries for "scientific theory" which would kick out ID, but let in string theory and dark matter theory.

We agreed with the Dover and Cobb County decisions that teaching ID amounts to an unconstitutional endorsement of religion, but on a philosophical level, why is it not science?

Please give this a try- A definition for science which excludes ID but includes string theory and dark matter theory. It makes my head hurt.

I didn't notice until today that Orson Scott Card is spewing nonsense again: http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-01-08-1.html

Daniel,
From what I've seen of dark matter theory and string theory, both of those are specific theoretical ideas that are tailored to specific real world equations and physical constraints. If we find something that explains the universe without the need for those theoretical ideas, then they become superfluous and are thrown out.

ID, on the other hand, has not even come up with a hypothesis beyond, "Goddidit", which can be used to explain anything and everything. So, try as you might, every new finding could be used to strengthen ID, thus making it utterly meaningless and not science.

What's so new about the Catholic Church accepting evolution? It happened already a few years ago. It's only that NYTimes didn't notice it until now.