Web Page: www'jamesgregory'org

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Web Page www.jamesgregory.org
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James Gregory Public Lectures
Future Programme
1. October 29 2009 -- Keith Ward "God,
Science and the New Atheism" 2. February 18, 2010
-- David Wilkinson "God and the Big Bang 3.
April 29, 2010 -- Bill Newsome "The Mind
Brain or Spirit?"
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Finding Darwins God -A scientists search for
common ground between God and Evolution
1999 edition 2007 edition
Price 8.99
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Only a Theory --Evolution and the battle for
Americas soul
No 2 on Amazons list of Best Science Books,
2008 Hardback 16.99 Paperback appearing in May
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Life - Creation or Evolution? Thoughts on
God,Darwin, Design
Ken Miller Molecular Cellular BiologyBrown
UniversityProvidence, RI USA
30 April 2009
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(No Transcript)
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Evolution is an Issue that Divides Americans
If you believe in God, creation, true
science, vote for Debbie. .... If you believe
in evolution, abortion, sin, vote for her
opponent.
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Increasingly, Evolution is an issue that divides
Europeans as well
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But, surely, not in Britain?
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Nearly 40 of Britons chose creationism or
Intelligent Design over Evolution
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Scotland
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Museum in censorship rowover Darwin
sign Monday, 1st September 2008 Censorship of an
exhibition on evolution at a Northampton museum
has led to claims organisers are pandering to
Christian fundamentalist sensibilities. An
information sign, which is part of Abington Park
Museum's display about Charles Darwin and
fossils, was covered up after a visitor's
complaint. Two parts of the sign, concerning
'Changing Attitudes to Evolution', are obscured
with black paper, but only four lines of text
are actually covered over. It details how
Charles Darwin used the study of fossils to help
formulate his theory of evolution, set out in On
the Origin of Species, which angered fundamental
Christians and Creationists. But following a
complaint to the museum, part of the sign was
covered over to avoid giving offence and to
conceal the poor prose.
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2004 The Dover (PA) school board votes for
an intelligent design lesson in biology.
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What does Intelligent Design mean?
Theists, by definition, believe in a
transcendent intelligence, sometimes expressed as
a view that there is an intelligent design to the
universe.
ID is the proposition that design, in the
form of outside intelligent intervention, is
required to account for the origins of living
things.
This distinguishes ID from more general
considerations of meaning and purpose in the
universe, and makes it a doctrine of special
creation.
But this is not what is meant by ID.
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For ID proponents, the trial was their chance, in
front of a conservative judge, to present the
science of design.
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Actual Result? The trial demonstrated the
collapse of ID as scientific theory.
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The icons of ID were exposed as false
Specifically Refuted at trial the bacterial
flagellum the blood clotting cascade
evolution of immune system
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IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE
MIDDLE DISTRICT OF PENNSYLVANIA TAMMY
KITZMILLER, et al. Case No. 04cv2688
Plaintiffs Judge Jones v. DOVER AREA
SCHOOL DISTRICT, et al., Defendants.
MEMORANDUM OPINION December 20, 2005
INTRODUCTION On October 18, 2004, the
Defendant Dover Area School Board of Directors
passed by a 6-3 vote the following resolution
Students will be made aware of gaps/problems in
Darwins theory and of other theories of
evolution including, but not limited to,
intelligent design. Note Origins of Life is not
taught. On November 19, 2004, the Defendant
Dover Area School District announced by press
release that, commencing in January 2005,
teachers would be required to read the following
statement to students in the ninth grade biology
class at Dover High School The Pennsylvania
Academic Standards require students to learn
about Darwins Theory of Evolution and
The trial also exposed ID as a religious doctrine
masquerading as science.
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Intelligent Design means that the
various forms of life began abruptly through an
intelligent agency, with their distinctive
features already intact fish with fins and
scales, birds with feathers, beaks, and wings,
etc. Of Pandas and People, 1993, pp. 99-100
Creation means that the various forms
of life began abruptly through an intelligent
creator, with their distinctive features already
intact fish with fins and scales, birds with
feathers, beaks, and wings, etc. Biology
Origins, 1986, pp. 2-13, 2-14.
The History of the ID textbook Pandas was
decisive.
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Something remarkable must have happened in 1987!
creationism
intelligent design
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(No Transcript)
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The Dover Trial was featured in a BBC Program
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Judgment Day
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December 20, 2005Decision Announced
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The evolution battle is not finished.
Its the result of a continuing attack against
scientific rationality.
It matters for our scientific future.
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Common Claim No Transitional Forms!
How many different transitional species
were required to bridge (this) gap... we dont
know. But we do know that no such transitional
species have been recovered.
Weapon 1 Intentional Distortion
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...no such transitional species have been
recovered.
Reality The gap is part of a well-understood
evolutionary transition.
Land Vertebrates
Ichthyostega
Eusthenopteron
Fish
A unbridgeable gap between fish and amphibians?
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Geologic Time Tells Where to Look
Can we find a transitional form at the exact
fish-to-amphibian transition?
A Specific Prediction
Transitional Features between Fish Amphibians
Evolution Predicts Morphology
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October, 2006
In October 2006, yet another intermediate form
was found in the same evolutionary transition
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Evolution and the Human Genome
More than a century ago Darwin and Huxley
posited that humans share recent common ancestors
with the African great apes. Modern molecular
studies have spectacularly confirmed this
prediction and have refined the relationships,
showing that the common chimpanzee (Pan
troglodytes) and bonobo (Pan paniscus) are our
closest living evolutionary relatives.
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Testing the Evolutionary Hypothesis of Common
Ancestry Chromosome Numbers in the great
apes human (Homo) 46chimpanzee (Pan) 48gorilla
(Gorilla) 48orangutan (Pongo) 48
Testable prediction If these organisms share
common ancestry, the human genome must contain a
fused chromosome.
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Ancestral Chromosomes
Chromosome Numbers in the great apes
(Hominidae) human (Homo) 46chimpanzee
(Pan) 48gorilla (Gorilla) 48orangutan (Pongo) 48
Centromere
Telomere
Testable prediction The marks of that fusion
must appear in one of the human chromosomes.
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Human Chromosome 2 shows the exact point at
which this fusion took place
Chromosome 2 is unique to the human lineage of
evolution, having emerged as a result of
head-to-head fusion of two acrocentric
chromosomes that remained separate in other
primates. The precise fusion site has been
located in 2q132q14.1 (ref. 2 hg 16114455823
114455838), where our analysis confirmed the
presence of multiple subtelomeric duplications to
chromosomes 1, 5, 8, 9, 10, 12, 19, 21 and 22
(Fig. 3 Supplementary Fig. 3a, region A). During
the formation of human chromosome 2, one of the
two centromeres became inactivated (2q21, which
corresponds to the centromere from chimp
chromosome 13) and the centromeric structure
quickly deterioriated (42).
Homo sapiens
centromere 13 (inactive)
Telomere sequences
centromere 12 (active)
Hillier et al (2005) Generation and Annotation
of the DNA sequences of human chromosomes 2 and
4, Nature 434 724-731.
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Weapon 2Fear of Evolution Itself
If we are the result of chance, if were simply
a mistake of nature, then that puts a different
moral demand on us. In fact, it doesnt put a
moral demand on us.. than, if in fact we are a
creation of a being that has moral demands.
It has huge consequences for society. I
mean, its where we come from. Does man have a
purpose? Is there a purpose for our lives? Or
are we just simply, you know, the result of ..
chance?
Sen. Rick Santorum
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Is evolution really driven by mistakes?
Imagine an organismthat never mademistakes No
mutations? No evolution. No survival. Perhaps
evolution isnt really a mistake of nature.
Could evolution actually be an essential element
of the design of nature?
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Doesnt Evolution Also Say that Our Lives are
Without Meaning Purpose?
Do we have to answer the ID argument by claiming
there is no design in nature?
They arent
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Reality Life is material, and the capacity for
life is built into the physics and chemistry of
matter.
Evolution, therefore, is an inherent and
predictable property of nature. Not a mistake.
Evolutionary processes explore adaptive space
driven by non-random natural selection and
natural law.
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Meaning an evolutionary design to life is
part of the inherent fabric of the natural world.
Lesson Design is not a
theologically-inspired illusion to be dismissed.
It is a scientific reality to be embraced. Why?
Because the Argument from Design is
ultimately an argument for evolution.
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Does the Human Body have a Design?
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Do Proteins have Designs?
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Does the Human Genome Have a Design?
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The true design of life is the evolutionary
process, and the world of matter and energy that
makes it possible.
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To religious people, the source of the order
design in nature that science investigates is
clear. It is God.
To the non-religious, the order in nature
must have another source.
But in either case, the study of that nature
is the same. And this (ultimately) is why science
is compatible with faith.
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The organic diversity of life becomes,
however, reasonable and understandable if the
Creator has created the living world not by
caprice but by evolution propelled by natural
selection. It is wrong to hold creation and
evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives. I
am a creationist and an evolutionist.
Evolution is Gods, or Natures method of
creation. Creation is not an event that happened
in 4004 BC it is a process that began some 10
billion years ago and is still under way.
Theodosius DobzhanskyAm. Bio. Teacher 35,
125129 1973
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Towards the end of his life Darwin wrote It
seems to me absurd to doubt that a man may be an
ardent Theist and an evolutionist.
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The contrast is an absurdity, because there
are many scientific tests in favor of evolution,
which appears as a reality that we must see and
enriches our understanding of life being.
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Does this mean that the Bible should be read as a
scientific textbook?
Even a non-Christian knows something about the
earth, the heavens, the kinds of animals,
shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge
he holds to as being certain from reason and
experience. Now it is a disgraceful and
dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a
Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy
Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics and
we should take all means to prevent such an
embarassing situation, in which people show up
vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to
scorn. St. Augustine, 411 AD On the Literal
Meaning of Genesis, 119
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Abbot of the Augustinian Monastery of St. Thomas
in Brünn
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There is grandeur in this view of life with its
several powers having been originally breathed
into a few forms or into one and that, whilst
this planet has gone cycling on according to the
fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning
endless forms most wonderful and most beautiful
have been, and are being evolved.