"This is in the name of the First Amendment. In order to protect freedom of speech and religion, we must censor speech and expression of religion."

I thought that this was about the establishment clause of the 1st Amendment. I know your statement sounds more clever if you add the free speech thing, but I don't think it applies.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

my bad, I thought he ordered them on.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

The (co-) author of the textbook in question is one Dr. Kenneth Miller. His personal Web page is http://bms.brown.edu/faculty/m/kmiller/. Yes, he is a Professor of Biology at Brown University. He's written more published papers and textbooks than most of us have read. He's debated Behe, and I guarantee that he knows more about evolution than anyone reading this thread. If you learn about him, and still think his textbook is likely to be junk, then, well, I won't say what I'm thinking.

Go to his Web site. Click on textbooks; follow the links to the publisher's site, and you'll find summaries of the chapters. There's a lot of cool information there that supports evolution, if you care to look.

Enjoy.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

Here's some good stuff

http://bms.brown.edu/faculty/m/kmiller/ What does Evolution Teach About a Creator?

Nothing. Evolution is a scientific theory, and it, like other scientific theories, has nothing to say about spiritual matters. Evolution, properly taught, tries to explain how present-day organisms might have originated from their ancestors by natural processes. In seeking to explain present-day living organisms through natural processes, evolution is merely following the trail blazed by Newton, Copernicus, Pasteur, and others who sought to explain motion, astronomy, and disease by experiment and direct observation of the natural world.

Evolution is sometimes criticized because it makes no mention of a creator, and therefore might be understood as atheistic. But no natural science makes mention of a creator. Textbooks on algebra, physics and organic chemistry make no reference to a creator, nor should they. Evolution cannot account for the existence of the Universe, for the nature of good and evil, nor can it be used to fashion a system of ethics and morality. On the contrary, these issues are rightly the province of religion, not science. Does Evolution Threaten Religious Beliefs?

No. Most Western religions emphasize the importance of faith, and evolution does not challenge religious faith. Instead, evolution merely attempts to apply what we have learned about the natural world to explain the facts of natural history. When we apply the tools of science to investigate the origins of living species, we do not contradict the view that the Universe and creatures within it were divinely created, nor do we challenge any other aspect of religious belief.

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If the fundies really wanted this truth, they are smart enough to find it themselves. They don't want you or anyone else trying to tell them that facts exist that are contrary to their beliefs. This is really an emotional hurdle for them, not an intellectual one. They will tell you it is a spiritual hurdle, but I'm having none of it. Some people need to believe in supernatural phenomena so badly they will kill themselves rather than accept some simple science. Incredible and very, very sad.

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

"Some people need to believe in supernatural phenomena so badly they will kill themselves rather than accept some simple science."

And some people are so sure of their simple science that they are incapable of acknowledging the idea that there might be something more.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Ken Miller is also the author of a great book I just read called "Finding Darwin's God". Miller is a theistic evolutionist [evolution is God's method of creating life], and a devout Christian. Did I mention the book was great? He has debated Phillip Johnson (The law professer at Berkeley that heads the ID movement), Henry Morris (ICR) and, as Ken mentioned, Michael Behe (Darwin's Black Box). In the book, FDG, Miller makes some of Behe's comments look childish b/c Behe could have found some answers to his questions by looking in already published articles in profressional journals. Behe's book was published in '96 full of "irreducibly complex" structures that could not have evolved (must be designed) and by '97, scientists had come up with plausible mechanisms on how they could have evolved. Simply, DBB, was "much ado about nothing". I was under the impression that Behe made a big impact on the scientific community. I was wrong, he merely allowed evolutionists to "show off".

He had a very interesting non-debate conversation with Morris concerning the debate, where Morris essentially said "You're young, you don't know what's at stake here." Morris and others interpret evolution as being "atheism". I essentially made the same inaccurate correlation. Miller goes on to describe the scenario where prominent evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins (The Blind Watchmaker), Lewontin, O. Wilson ("The Ant Guy"), Dennett, and Gould, further exacerbate the correlation by injecting their personal beliefs (atheism) into the mix, by suggesting that evolution does "remove God", when in actuality, it does not. Miller simply suggests that if these guys would just "shut up about theology" (my words) that evolution would be much more readily accepted by everyone. [I have read accounts of where Dwkins, Gould, etc have been ambushed and misquoted blatantly by creationists, to the point to where there is genuine animosity between the personalities involved].

Miller has some excellent insights about studying evolution to learn more about God [some will obviously disagree]. He correlates the randomness of evolution (simply put) to the free-will distributed by God. That if there was not randomness, everything would be predictable/unalterable and "not of free-will". He also suggests something that is likely to rub people the wrong way (but may be accurate) ... that God does not necessarily care "what man looks like" and is only concerned with an intelligent life that God can have a relationship with.

The book is a very good read ... especially for those that wonder why creationism (not be confused with 'creation') and ID don't make an impact on the scientific community ... but do in the media and society.

I will, on occassion, bring up ideas from this book for discussion.

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-- Every morning brings opportunity;
Each evening offers judgement. --

Well, what is wrong with saying that something is the best theory going that explains many of the available facts, but that it might be completely wrong?

How could someone teach about "dark matter" any other way? It is the predominate material in the universe according to theory, we just can't find any. This could obviously turn out to be nonsense, or it could turn out to be true. It sounds an awful lot like the pre Einstein omnipresent ether that determined the one true reference frame to me.

This is a fine passage, and I am quite sure Mr. Miller is well informed and a fine writer. Correct me if I am wrong, but this passage is not from the textbook.

The creation of a textbook for school use is a long and political process. It often happens that a book gets edited so heavily that the end result is not recognizable by the authors. This may be the case here. Of course it may not.

Now Robert has to chime in about stupid and uneducated "fundies" (is that slang for Christian fundamentalists?). I guess they were too stupid to get this quote, but I won't comment on his incisiveness on realizing this quote is probably not applicable to the current discussion.

No one in the thread took any pot shots at the author. It sometimes happens in textbooks that noted scholars are named as authors who deny having anything to do with the book.

"No one in the thread took any pot shots at the author. It sometimes happens in textbooks that noted scholars are named as authors who deny having anything to do with the book."

You previously said:

"The more I hear about this textbook, the more it sounds like the stupid sticker is needed. A better solution would be to just get a decent textbook though. "

No, no potshots here. You said that the book at issue, about which you knew nothing, was not a decent textbook. Dr. Miller appears to be quite proud of his textbook, so I doubt very much that it was edited to his dissatisfaction.

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"Go yell at an M&M"

"Well, what is wrong with saying that something is the best theory going that explains many of the available facts, but that it might be completely wrong? "

What's wrong with that is that the scientific community doesn't believe that evolution might be completely wrong. I haven't read a high school textbook recently, but I doubt that they address dark matter. Experimental science that is that far from being proven generally isn't taught to H.S. kids.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Yeah, but there's a difference.

Lets use the (lame I know) example of oranges. Are they orange or are they purple? The hardcore atheist is like a guy who says: all oranges are orange, and it's stupid to imagine there could be a purple one. The creationist says: oranges are purple - I simply know it to be true. (or his book Oranges are Purple told him so)

It's one thing to refuse to acknowledge something that can never be observed/tested etc... It's quite another to willfully ignore obvious scientific facts.

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Really bad analogy. The creationists don't say the oranges are purple, they say the oranges got orange by the will of God, whereas the scientists say it was a natural adaptation. Most creationists don't argue that creatures adapt and mutate, they argue that life was originally placed on this planet by God, not by chance.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Young Earth Creationists say the orange is purple.

But yes, there are other schools of thought and my analogy doesn't cover a lot of them.

Most creationists don't argue that creatures adapt and mutate, they argue that life was originally placed on this planet by God, not by chance

Not how I would define creationist, but again there's a semantics issue. Ask Triple Threat is he is a creationist (hint, his thread "YEC to Theistic Evolution" gives away the likely answer). Yet he clearly believes that God is beinhd everything.

My analogy was really directed towards those who deny evolution (as defined seprately from abiogenesis).

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Most creationists don't argue that creatures adapt and mutate, they argue that life was originally placed on this planet by God, not by chance.

YECs, for example, believe in the fastest, most abundant evolution ever conceived. They believe that from the 16,000 animals on the ark (and those that managed to survive off the ark), all the millions of species we see today evolved. Simply, all bear species came from the "bear kind" on the ark, etc.

That is some "rapid" (understatement) evolution. The difference is that evolutionists believe in "uphill" evolution where things gain in complexity, and creationists typically believe in "downhill" eovlution where things evolve by losing complexity/traits. Example: Polar bears are whie b/c they are unable to produce pigment. Polar bears have webbed feet because they lack the protein that "eliminates the skin between digits".

That's where things like "similarity among DNA" and "embryology" and "morphology" (anatomy) aren't necessarily evidence unique to 'evolution' [from that point of view].

The whole information agrument is one that I am not knowledgable enough to comprehend. I think there is are so many premature assumptions being made about "information" that it reminds me of the erly 1900's when humans were thought to have between 100-120 "vestifgial (useless) organs".

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-- Every morning brings opportunity;
Each evening offers judgement. --

What a bunch of fucking wankers. I hope that if the repubs get their wish for strong church-state ties, that catholics or muslims or scientologists take over and make their lives hell. Then again, I'm a bitter atheist.

I'm a bitter atheist.

Thank God you told us, we would never have guessed.

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

You thought I was a rostafarian, didn't you?

I think you might be smoking something . . .

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

No, I don't believe this is a potshot at Dr. Miller at all. Yes, I have previously expressed frustration that the media reports the story without bothering to include even a single objectionable quote. The media did report that the textbook presented evolution as the accepted mechanism for the development of life on this planet.

I have been excorriated on this page for using the term evolution in exactly this way, since by definition evolution does no such thing. It turned out that my proffered common usage definition and the textbooks apparent definition are one and the same, but I digress.

Dr. Miller wouldn't likely make stupid statements like that. That doesn't mean this his writings didn't get dumbed down by his coauthor and the publisher to the point of utter nonsense in the fourth grade (I think) textbook.

No insult to Dr. Miller from here at all, absent much better information.