Dennis Prager: Professors as inquisitors

from Dennis Prager's weekly column:

In the year 2005, nearly four centuries after Galileo was forced to recant observable scientific facts about our solar system, the president of Harvard University was forced to do a similar thing. He was compelled to apologize for advancing an idea about men and women supported by scientific research and likely to be true.

But for most professors, neither finding truth nor seeking wisdom nor teaching is the primary goal of the university; promoting leftist ideas is. Most Americans know this to be true -- hence the chasm between most Americans and the university. But many Americans do not wish to acknowledge this. To come to realize that the highest institutions of learning often do not value learning but seek to propagandize their children (largely against everything they, the parents, believe in) is too painful. Most people can't confront the fact that, unless their child is studying the natural sciences, they have paid huge sums of money for their child to be able to share bathrooms with members of the opposite sex, read columns in college newspapers about American evil and tongue techniques for better oral sex, binge drink and, with a few noble exceptions, be propagandized.

What is most amazing about the Harvard story is that by and large neither the Harvard community nor any other university seems to be embarrassed by it. And one can only weep for America over the president of its most prestigious university fully caving in and apologizing for saying what he knows to be true.

Imagine the good that could have been achieved had Lawrence Summers said this:

Under my tenure as president of this university, never will a capable woman be turned away from teaching at Harvard. And we will scour the earth for women who will teach math and science at Harvard. But under this same tenure, no serious idea will ever be censured and its author forced to apologize. The motto of this university is 'Veritas,' 'Truth,' and I will not allow it to be changed.

No wonder the Democratic Party is so keen on sending billions more dollars of taxpayer money to universities through tuition tax credits. They know that the university is a factory churning out leftists.

As readers are aware, this year I am writing a series of columns making the case for Judeo-Christian values. The secular university provides one of the most cogent arguments for those values: This institution, which is the most opposed to Judeo-Christian values, is also the least committed to truth."

Of course they'll teach in class that Christians are narrow minded. Sigh.

The Finger

www.daybydaycartoon.com

Jarvis Iraq Round Up

Jeff Jarvis sums up reaction:

The Eeyore Analysis of Iraq

: I'll be on MSNBC in the 5p hour with Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft, who tries to wrap-up blogger reaction to the election from the antiwar camp (I won't call it the liberal side).

Problem is, there isn't much. Oliver did the Chicken Little dance yesterday but hasn't acknowledged the success today. Jerome Armstrong of MyDD argues that this opens the door to an Iranian-like rule of fundamentalists but doesn't say how he makes that prediction when the clerics decided to stay out of the Iraqi government and every poll makes it clear the people don't want that. Armando at Kos does the Eeyore thing (see also Juan Cole, below); Kos is still silent, as is Atrios.

Whether it's Kerry or any of these bloggers, it would be the grownup, mature, generous, humanistic, caring -- yes, dare I say, liberal -- thing to do to be glad that people who lived under tyranny are now giving birth to democracy.

Democracy isn't a right-or-left thing, folks. It's a right-and-left thing, remember?

The Election in Pictures

WHERE WERE ALL THESE PEOPLE GOING!? THE MEN, THE WOMEN, THE CHILDREN! WHY IN THE WORLD ARE THEY ALL STANDING IN LINE!

They are voting. Compiled in a wonderful slideshow, aptly set the "Theme for the Common Man".



I may paste my finger in purple, to stand with Iraq, and to honor the American Soldiers who helped make it possible.

Loving Mark Steyn

You've got to love Mark Steyn! Quoted at Instapundit.

I'm with you James

James Lileks on the elections in iraq:

"I’m just glad I’m stupid enough to be hopeful. I’m glad I’m naive enough to suspect Iraqis actually wanted to vote. I’m very glad I’m not so aslosh with solipsistic hatred that any success in Iraq makes me trot out a cynical riposte so the rest of my buddies on Olympus will nod in wry assent. I’m glad that a picture of a mother holding her daughter to cast the ballot reminds me that this is number two in a series. All other things aside – which is a difficult thing to posit, I know – I’m glad to be on the side of holding elections. In the end I’m glad to be glad. And now I will go skip through the daisies and sing happy songs about bunnies, because I am obviously a fool. What was the cover story of the Village Voice I saw in the library today? “Bush’s plan to destroy the world.” Destroy it some more, George.

Then again, things can’t be going that well, if New York artists have been mocking it with welcome mats. Next thing you know they’ll be weaving dish towels that show Iraqi women’s pay disparity increasing after the invasion, if you look very closely at the pattern. Or it could be just some figs."

I'm with you James.

The Election

Roger Simon is blogging the Iraqi Election. Of course Instapundit will have links and analysis.

This is a historic day. May God grant peace and safety to the people of Iraq.

Starbucks for Lent

LarkNews.com has this important idea, just in time for the Lenten season.

Looks like I'll be spending Mardi Gras with a caramel Machiatto.

Turin Shroud may be 3000 years old

Jerusalem Post | Breaking News from Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World: "A chemist who worked on testing of the Shroud of Turin says new analysis of the fiber indicates the cloth that some say was the burial linen of Jesus could be up to 3,000 years old.

The analysis, by a scientist who was on the original 1978 team that was allowed to study tiny pieces of the cloth, indicates the shroud is far older than the initial findings suggesting it was probably from medieval times, and will likely be seized on by those who believe it wrapped the body of Jesus after his crucifixion.

'I cannot disprove that this cloth was the burial shroud that was used on Jesus,' Raymond N. Rogers, a retired chemist from the University of California-operated Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, said in a telephone interview Friday from his home.

'The chemistry says it was a real shroud, the blood spots on it are real blood, and the technology that was used to make that piece of cloth was exactly what Pliny the Elder reported fort his time,' about 70 A.D., Rogers said, referring to the naturalist of ancient Roman times."

Interesting.

CU Churchill 2: Welcome through the Looking Glass of your local Univerisity

The Daily Camera: Sports Columnists: "Woelk: Does Barnett have less rights than professor?

January 29, 2005

Notes, quotes, queries and observations heading into the weekend ...

A question for CU prez Betsy Hoffman and her regent pals:

Just last year, Hoffman suspended a football coach for saying, 'Katie was a girl and not only was she a girl, she was terrible.'

But less than a year later, the CU administration defends the rights of a professor to call the victims of the World Trade Center attacks 'little Eichmanns.'

Gary Barnett was immediately suspended for his comments and prevented from doing a very important part of his job.

Ward Churchill, however, is protected by the First Amendment, according to CU administrators, and is allowed to continue spewing hate speech whenever and wherever he chooses.

My question is, what's the difference (other than the fact that Barnett told the truth and Churchill voiced an opinion)?

Is Barnett also not protected by the First Amendment? Or, do some folks have more constitutional rights than others? If you make Hoffman mad, does that limit those constitutional rights? Is political correctness a factor in gauging those rights?

Or, could it be that when Barnett made his statement, Buffalo Betsy's job was also on the line?"

Let's not forget that CU is a school were hundreds of students publically smoke pot in the center of the campus every April 12th at 4:12 in the afternoon.

Yeah it's the football coach who needs to be disciplined. Off with his head!

Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper

LILEKS (James) The Bleat:
"I bought some, because it seemed unlikely that so many flavors could be jammed into one receptacle without creating some new uberflavor that opened new dimensions and let through the howling minions of hell. It’s as if they didn’t know when to stop. Cherry is no strangers to cohabitation with other flavors; vanilla has a new role as an ingredient adjunct for Coke. Cherry Vanilla sounds like the name of a 60s model who worked with Warhol. Cherry Vanilla Dr Pepper throws it all up in the air – literally, perhaps – when you consider that Dr Pepper itself is the flavor that cannot be readily identified, but you wouldn’t be surprised if it’s prunes. Any additional flavor will simply smother the Pepper flavor. It’s like Cherry Vanilla coffee. No one ever takes a sip and says “boy, you can really taste the coffee.”

LOL!

CU Churchill Controversy

Instapundit.com: "Still more on Churchill here. And perhaps the best take comes from reader Harvey Schneider:

The irony of the Churchill episode is that Colorado University gets federal money. You would think with his radical Anti-American outlook, The money he makes as an instructor would burn in his hands like Holy Water in a demons hands. He seems to be guilty of the same crime as many in the WTC that day. Being a part of the system."

This from Instapundit's roundup on the Ward Churchill controversy.

The Party of Kennedy

HughHewitt.com: "The party of Truman and JFK has a problem when its advance media guard does not celebrate the rise of a democracy from the ashes of a dictatorship. More than a problem, actually, a collapse at the core. It is now, at best, the party of Henry Wallace and Teddy Kennedy, and that's not a party remotely close to the American mainstream."

This is Hugh's conclusion regarding the silence of leftist bloggers on the importance of elections in Iraq. He has a roundup of links so that you can see for yourself.

"What has Michael Moore got to say? A big picture of Saddam, an artilce on former Baathists running in the elections, and a letter about his 9/11 picture winning a People's Choice award --I kid you not."

Beer - Is there anything it can't do?

Ananova - Man peed way out of avalanche: "A Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche freed himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.

Rescue teams found Richard Kral drunk and staggering along a mountain path four days after his Audi car was buried in the Slovak Tatra mountains.

He told them that after the avalanche, he had opened his car window and tried to dig his way out.

But as he dug with his hands, he realised the snow would fill his car before he managed to break through.

He had 60 half-litre bottles of beer in his car as he was going on holiday, and after cracking one open to think about the problem he realised he could urinate on the snow to melt it, local media reported.

He said: 'I was scooping the snow from above me and packing it down below the window, and then I peed on it to melt it. It was hard and now my kidneys and liver hurt. But I'm glad the beer I took on holiday turned out to be useful and I managed to get out of there.'"

This man is undoubtably, the greatest hero in world history.

More quotes from Chrenkoff

Chrenkoff:

"Sheikh Fawzan Al-Fawzan, a professor at the Al-Imam University in Saudi Arabia confuses Christmas with season's holidays:

'These great tragedies and collective punishments that are wiping out villages, towns, cities, and even entire countries, are Allah's punishments of the people of these countries, even if they are Muslims.

'Some of our forefathers said that if there is usury and fornication in a certain village, Allah permits its destruction. We know that at these resorts, which unfortunately exist in Islamic and other countries in South Asia, and especially at Christmas, fornication and sexual perversion of all kinds are rampant. The fact that it happened at this particular time is a sign from Allah. It happened at Christmas, when fornicators and corrupt people from all over the world come to commit fornication and sexual perversion.'
It came as a shock to me, having been brought up as Polish Roman Catholic that it was really supposed to be all about fornication and perversion. Thanks to Sheik Al Fawzan, at least I now know the true meaning of Christmas."

I guess the Sheikh would have us believe something innappropriate about the term "stocking stuffer".

What are we going to do about underpopulation?

Foreign Affairs - The Global Baby Bust - Phillip Longman: "Summary: Most people think overpopulation is one of the worst dangers facing the globe. In fact, the opposite is true. As countries get richer, their populations age and their birthrates plummet. And this is not just a problem of rich countries: the developing world is also getting older fast. Falling birthrates might seem beneficial, but the economic and social price is too steep to pay. The right policies could help turn the tide, but only if enacted before it's too late."

Wait a minute, I thought we were supposed to be working hard to solve the terrible problems of overpopulation. Does this mean everything else I learned in school is false?

Hmmm.

Sex Blogging Part 2

Years ago, before my children were able to understand the English language, I was a huge addict of the Simpsons. I still love the show but my kids are not yet old enough to appreciate the satire and sarcasm, so I don't watch it much anymore. But now that I have Tivo I can watch the Simpsons on my time. Anyhoo...

I was watching the Simpsons tonight and as usual they summed up a cultural issue with more truth and brevity than Shakespeare himself. Marge and her two sisters were watching TV and Patty and Selma announce that "Nookie in New York" is about to be on BHO. "It's about four single women behaving like gay men." Patty and Selma, claim to love the show because "that is so like our lives!"

Devastating.

One of the startling revelations in "Taking Sex Differences Seriously" is the revelation that promiscuous women who are happy, like those depicted on "Nookie in New York" (or as we all know it "Sex in the City") almost don't exist, statistically:

"Seventy-one percent of teenage girls report being in love with their last sexual partner but only 45 percent of boys do. And teen girls are far less likely than boys to report being happy with their sexual experiences and far more likely to report that they wished they had waited longer to have sex. On the other hand, married women report that marital sex is the best they ever had, and far more regularly than men they say the sex is better two years after marriage than it was on the honeymoon.

The picture doesn't get prettier for more mature singles. The Samanthas of the world are few. According to the research of Syracuse University anthropologist John Townsend, the most sexually experienced single women, while still believing that casual sex is fine, find that their feelings will not cooperate. They feel used, hurt and demeaned after sleeping with men uninterested in relationships. Many of the most sexually active men, on the other hand, regularly engage in pleasurable sex with women they barely know and sometimes don't even like.

The real world of thirty-something, single women bounces from books like How to Heal the Heart By Hating to those with advice about How Not To Stay Single. In 1999, 29 percent of 35-to-44-year-old females were unmarried; in 1960 fewer than 13 percent were. These facts are best explained by men enjoying unencumbered sex while hoping that a more appealing and equally willing woman may be right around the corner.

Too often, in today's culture, women stroll off to the playground of casual sex only to be hurt. They conclude, wrongly, that they are too sensitive to enjoy what their favorite female TV characters seem to love. Rather,the feeling that casual sex makes them unhappy is too common among women to be idiosyncratic. It's a normal, healthy reaction to a bad idea. To get what they want most -- a committed, loving relationship and good sex -- women should start by saying, "No."

I guess Patty and Selma are closer to the truth than "Sex in the City" There are indeed promiscuous women, but apparently precious few are happy about it. I guess that reality is too hard hitting for BHO. That's why the Simpsons will go on and on. Sometimes it takes a cartoon to show the real world.

And the part about gay men is right on the money. I don't have time to go into it right now but I've said it before and I'll say it again: I as a heterosexual man have far more in common with a homosexual man than with a woman. Because men and women are different. I take that seriously. As Billy Crystal said to Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally : "Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place." If it weren't for women providing a brake to the runaway male libido, men would have sex all the time. There is sex in the city but it doesn't look like the TV show would have us believe.

I love the Simpsons.

Sex Blogging

I was going to call this gender blogging but that's exactly the problem. A new book (hat tip: Instapundit) about the importance of sex: Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences
by Leonard Sax

This book is another that helps us get over the foolishness about gender. You see sex is fixed (e.g. male or femalee). Gender is constructed and chosen (or so we are told). Yet let's hear Sax on sex:

From Publishers Weekly
In the feminist conception of gender flexibility, no set rules apply: girls can play with trucks; boys can play with dolls. But pediatrician and psychologist Sax argues that our theories about gender's fluidity may be wrong and to apply them to children in their formative years is quite dangerous. Sax believes the brains of boys and girls are hardwired differently: boys are more aggressive; girls are more shy. And deliberately changing a child's gender—in cases of intersex (hermaphrodism) or accident (as in the case of David Reimer, who was raised as a girl after a hideous circumcision mishap)—can ruin a child's life. Sax also believes modern gender philosophy has resulted in more boys being given behavior-modifying drugs and more girls being given antidepressants. Much of his argument makes sense: we may have gone to the other extreme and tried too hard to feminize boys and masculinize girls.

This book is similar to another phenomenal book called Taking Sex Differences Seriously by Steven E. Rhoads. His book and many wonderful articles can be found at www.sexdifferences.net.

Rhoads and Sax argue that new studies prove that men and women are biologically biased by their sex and ignoring this fact leads to ruin.

Another example can be found here, ripped from the headlines:

It has long been known that there are strong differences between boys and girls in their literary preferences. According to reading interest surveys, both boys and girls are unlikely to choose books based on an "issues" approach, and children are not interested in reading about ways to reform society -- or themselves. But boys prefer adventure tales, war, sports and historical nonfiction, while girls prefer stories about personal relationships and fantasy. Moreover, when given choices, boys do not choose stories that feature girls, while girls frequently select stories that appeal to boys.

Unfortunately, the textbooks and literature assigned in the elementary grades do not reflect the dispositions of male students. Few strong and active male role models can be found as lead characters. Gone are the inspiring biographies of the most important American presidents, inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs. No military valor, no high adventure. On the other hand, stories about adventurous and brave women abound. Publishers seem to be more interested in avoiding "masculine" perspectives or "stereotypes" than in getting boys to like what they are assigned to read.

At the middle school level, the kind of quality literature that might appeal to boys has been replaced by Young Adult Literature, that is, easy-to-read, short novels about teenagers and problems such as drug addiction, teenage pregnancy, alcoholism, domestic violence, divorced parents and bullying. Older literary fare has also been replaced by something called "culturally relevant" literature -- texts that appeal to students' ethnic group identification on the assumption that sharing the leading character's ethnicity will motivate them to read.

Apparently boys will be boys and they aren't as interested in relavance or race as those who "educate" them are. Until the confusion clears regarding the significance of sex (not gender) I will sex blog.

Seems even Harvard could use some sex blogging.

A Pastor tells why he blogs...

Ted Bolsinger, a Pastor, gives a compelling perspective on why pastors should blog:

In my last post I argued that pastors, of all people, should blog because we have a vested interest in something that the blogosphere makes more readily available: To more effectively, cheaply and regularly communicate the elements of Christian faith to a wider number of people. This will also, I argued, encourage our long-term pastorates and presence in our home churches (and families) by making it easier to reach larger numbers of people each week without leaving home.

Today I want to also add that blogging allows us to be far more effective at communicating Christian truth in depth, and responding to challenges to the faith effectively, broadly and without delay. Let me highlight both briefly by focusing on two terms that Blog helps us better understand.

In Blog, Hugh Hewitt uses a number of political examples to demonstrate the way in which bloggers can give attention to crucial issues that are often overlooked by the “mainstream media”. Very often TV news, magazines and such are not only victims of the biases (aren’t we all), but are handcuffed by the perception of the public’s “short attention span.” So, complicated news stories are quickly eclipsed by the sound bite.

We pastors fall into this trap also. When our congregants expect us to deliver sermons filled with strong exegesis, relevant examples and a joke or two all in 25 minutes or less (ok, I’m a Presbyterian…some of you get a lot more time than that.) It is easy to develop the habit of reducing everything to the ridiculous. Pretty soon our theology is nothing more than slogans or acronyms or representative stories. And communicating the depths of crucial issues and doctrine go by the way side. (By the way, publishers are doing the same thing with books. Unless you are NT Wright, it’s pretty hard to publish something that is long, in-depth and requiring serious study. So most books are necessarily short (and often shallow).

With a web log, I don’t have to worry about “sales” and “numbers,” I can offer a “serial” of teachings that can go as far or as deep as I need to go. I don’t worry about running out of time or getting the service over before the childcare team is pulling their hair out, instead I just pick up the discussion in the next post. Long deep conversations are more readily available to more people who are eager to go deeper, and those who aren’t can move on and check back in later.

As a guy with a Ph.D. in the “ecclesiastical and transformative implications of the doctrine of the Trinity,” it’s nice to have a place to actually write about the Trinity without fearing that 500 people will skip church next week. When I want to probe a subject, I can linger as I long as I like.

In the few weeks that I been doing this blog thing, I have been really blessed to read and link to a number of incredibly thoughtful, easily accessible posts by pastors and theologians that have strengthened and inspired me.

If we pastors are going to blog, then let’s fulfill our calling and equip the saints and teach the church. Let’s not limit this blogging thing to just “promotion” of our “stuff”, but instead allow it to be a true extension of our ministries to mature the faithful.

The second and most dramatic example of the power of blogging, is demonstrated in Hugh’s discussion of the speed of the blogosphere, “swarming” and the “long tail”. Speed is just the reality of how information can be linked instantly around the globe. Swarming is the way in which a number of people from a number of different positions “swarm” a challenge or opportunity and maximize the effectiveness of their position. The “long tail” refers to the huge, cumulative effect of a number of small opinion makers to make a difference over a long term.

If you followed the blogs immediately after the annual “let’s demythologize and debunk Christianity just in time for the holiday editions” of Time and Newsweek, then you saw the overwhelming and rapid effectiveness of literally hundreds of pastors who posted thoughtful, cogent, articulate responses to the unscholarly and, in some instances, irresponsible articles published by the newsmagazines. The blogosphere allowed even those who would never be quoted by the LA Times an opportunity to respond and then be linked and disseminated across the world in minutes.

No longer do we have to our faith-affirming responses relegated to the “letters to editor” pages a week after the fact while the front pages are filled with long-debunked scandals that might sell a few papers. Instead by writing and linking and writing and linking, we can respond to the challenges posed by skeptics, not with the hue and cry of the hurt, but with the rapid, clear and sober answers that reveal the truth.

(I have already been thinking of how powerful the blogosphere will be next year when the movie version of “The Da Vinci Code” is released. We can now address the questions that film will inevitably raise by bringing people solid accessible teaching right to their home computers.)

Another example of how blogs help us respond to challenges, now oft-cited has been the history-making response of internet donations to relief efforts in the wake of the Tsunami disaster. While I needed to wait until Sunday to encourage my congregation to give generously, I (along with virtually every other pastor-blogger I know) posted a link on my blog to World Vision as soon as I could and within hours of the disaster, money was pouring in.

My friends, the blogosphere offers us opportunities to faithful put forth clear witness for Christ in large and influential numbers. So perhaps the final word is appropriately a warning. Like any technology, it can be used for good or evil. In his book Hugh reminds us, “The blogosphere is about trust.” Let’s pray for each other, dedicate ourselves to be worthy of the trust that our readers give us. Let’s hold each other accountable and pray that our postings will only encourage more and more people to trust both the messengers—and more importantly, the message that we bring.

Blog on.

An Apt Response

A woman in my church recently sent a letter to the Boulder Camera in response to a guest opinion on science and faith. For those who don't subscribe her letter follows. The original piece appears at the bottom.



FAITH/SCIENCE

Both systems rely on belief

In his essay, "Faith is outside realm of science," Joel Selbin (Guest Opinion, Jan. 8) says, "Science seeks answers without creating or tolerating myths or calling upon faith ... since it [faith] is by definition not based upon any evidence, it is outside the realm of science. This is the primary reason intelligent design should not appear in a science class."

However, Professor Selbin needs to find another argument against teaching intelligent design, because faith is already in the science classroom via teachers and textbook writers who base their understanding of science on philosophical naturalism, the unproved belief that nature is a closed system of cause and effect (nature is all that exists and all that has ever existed).

Over 60 years ago historian Jacques Barzun wrote, "The so-called warfare between science and religion [should really] be seen as the warfare between two philosophies and perhaps two faiths." The battle over evolution is merely one incident "in the dispute between the believers in consciousness and the believers in mechanical action; the believers in purpose and the believers in pure chance." (Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: "Critique of a Heritage.")

More recently, in a notorious speech at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, avowed evolutionist Michael Ruse candidly stated, "I think that philosophically one should be sensitive to what I think history shows, namely, that ... evolution, akin to religion, involves making certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions, which at some level cannot be proven empirically." Ruse also thoughtfully advises his colleagues not to admit this in a court of law. (A transcript of Ruse's speech is online at www.arn.org/docs/orpages/or151/mr93tran.htm.

GAYLE NOWELL
Lafayette

-----------------------------

Selbin: Faith is outside realm of science

By Joel Selbin
January 8, 2005

School boards around the country are considering whether to put faith-based Intelligent Design alongside science-based evolution in science classes.

In fact, in October, the Dover, Penn. school board, by a 6-3 vote, ordered biology teachers at Dover Area High School to include in the curriculum the "theory of intelligent design." This represents the first such mandate in the United States. Similar proposals questioning the teaching of evolution and proposing the teaching of ID are being dealt with in about 40 states.

The recent re-election of an administration that advocates "creation science" and often makes political decisions on faith-based philosophies rather than on hard, cold reality, only reinvigorates the nationwide efforts to inject religion into science classes. Religion has a clear place in the home, in comparative religion courses and in churches, synagogues, mosques, etc., but it has no place in science courses.

After the Supreme Court in 1987 banned the teaching of creationism in public schools on grounds of separation of church and state, creationists have changed their call for teaching "creationism" to the teaching of "intelligent design." Only the words are different. The so-called "theory" is not.

The claim by creationists that evolution is merely a theory, is quite simply, and outrageously, false. Evolution has been observed and very extensively established by thousands of scientists, many thousands of times over about 140 years and at sites around the world. The results have been published in thousands of independent articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Evolution, under attack by certain fundamentalist Christians, is very well established by scientific observations.

Scientific theories are not like the average person's casually saying "I have a theory about this or that." Scientific theories are constructs of an educated human based upon study and observations of nature. But a theory, an idea generated within the mind of one scientist, is very different from the continuing observations and experimental facts obtained by many, usually independent, scientists. These facts may or may not conform to or support the theory. Thus, theories and experimental results/facts (which often turn into laws of science) are very different things.

There is not just one theory of evolution, but several competing ones. Like any other scientific theories, a single theory of evolution can never be proven beyond all doubt. However, scientific evidence (factual information) may favor or support one theory while that evidence may end up causing a competing theory to be revised or discarded. A specific example would be Newton's theory of gravity to explain a well known observed phenomenon we call gravity. His theory has been replaced by Einstein's theory of gravity, but of course the observed effects of gravity have not changed one bit.

A theory must be able to do two powerful things. It must be able to satisfactorily explain what we already know, and it must be successful in predicting things we do not yet know. When scientists do not understand something, they set up observations and experiments and seek independent and reproducible results. When the proponents of ID (the creationists) do not understand or cannot explain something, they simply attribute the unknown to an even more, albeit magnificent and glorious, unknown, an "intelligent designer." . Science seeks answers without creating or tolerating myths or calling upon faith. There is nothing wrong or unsatisfying with faith. However, since it is by definition not based upon any evidence, it is outside the realm of science. This is the primary reason intelligent design should not appear in a science class.

Finally, the ID folks insist that all things, including life and the incredible universe around us, require a creator. I and no one I know yet fully understand how the universe and life came into being. But these are part of the great challenges to the human intellect that make science so fascinating. And considering how utterly complex and magnificant both life and the universe are, how much more complex, magnificant and incredible must be an "intelligent creator."

But since the ID people require that all things must have a creator, I would ask them to explain to us: Who or what created the intelligent designer? Was it an even more complex and incomprehensible intelligent designer? And who or what designed that and....

Joel Selbin is a retired professor of chemistry who lives in Boulder.

I'm back...finally

Well after being sick for almost 3 weeks and traveling to three separate conferences, I'm back. And in the two days since I've been home I've joined the Firefox Revolution. I read about Firefox in the Wired Magazine that came in the mail on Friday.

I decided to move to Firefox for two reasons. One, because it sounded fast and cool and it is. Two, because I'm so mad at Microsoft for their arrogant mistreatment of customers as evidenced in the SP2 debacle. I heard one of my organizations IT managers say that the misery of SP2 would sink any other company and should sink Microsoft. He also said his next laptop will likely be a Apple because Microsoft has become such a nightmare.

I figure Firefox is a market force brought to bear on the lazy, arrogant monopoly at Microsoft.

Join the resistance.

Sick

I was planning on blogging tonight but I'm sick as a dog. I have the worst cold in a long time. Back Soon.

Chrenkoff: The 12 most stupid tsunami quotes

Chrenkoff has "The 12 most stupid tsunami quote. "

Stupid is actually being kind to these quotes.

If you didn't see this, enjoy!

Back to Blog

I've been working at DCC so I had not blog time. However my life is changing as we speak. I begin in earnest preparations to move to Boston. I should have more time to squeeze in some blogging.