"Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory"

It is not mere happenstance when the sparrow falls from the sky (Matthew 10:29).

“KANSAS CITY, KS–As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held “theory of gravity” is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

….

Proponents of Intelligent Falling assert that the different theories used by secular physicists to explain gravity are not internally consistent. Even critics of Intelligent Falling admit that Einstein’s ideas about gravity are mathematically irreconcilable with quantum mechanics. This fact, Intelligent Falling proponents say, proves that gravity is a theory in crisis.
//////

OK, I admit it, it’s from The Onion

http://theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2

But it is such a perfect parady of intelligent design. I had to point it out.

I find it interesting, and I am not being mean, that the people who have the most primal reactions are the ones who are least willing to acknowledge the connection between themselves and the primal. Look at the people outside poor Terri Schaivo’s hospice. Completely primal – going in to pour water in the mouth of a woman unable to swallow. Beyond logic. Pure emotion. But somehow determined to distance themselves from anything as animal as emotion.

10 Comments

tampopo on August 18, 2005 at 6:54 pm

Reading the title of your diary, I thought it was going to be an explanation on how the “rapture” would work.

Thanks for the laugh and the link.

deano on August 18, 2005 at 6:58 pm

I posted this in a few open threads a few days ago. Hilarious.. what a great way to respond to ID’ers.

Limelite on August 19, 2005 at 12:22 am

is that the advocates and supporters of so-called “Intelligent Design” are too blind(?) to see that by their own argument they’re stupid because god wanted them to be. Not just by genetic accident.

Is that what their loving god would do? If that’s what they believe, wouldn’t you kinda think they’d wanna skip the whole rapture thing?
- deano on August 19, 2005 at 10:05 am
  
  lol, never thought of it that way.

Recordkeeper on August 18, 2005 at 8:11 pm

but check out this real letter in an actual newspaper, written by the ironically named Shawn Smart:

There is a question regarding evolution that, up to this point, has been missing from the debate in the letters to the editor section of The Free Lance-Star.

Given the complexity of certain biochemical processes (for instance, the ability of the human body to form blood clots involves 17 different enzymes, proteins, or biochemical actions/reactions), how does evolution account for the complexity of this process and the fact that all of these proteins, enzymes, and biochemical actions/reactions are necessary as an irreducible process for the clotting of blood?

If this process is irreducible to a simpler subset of any combination of the necessary ingredients for clotting, how does evolution account for the creation of the blood-clotting process without the death of the organism (from either bleeding out or total clotting of the blood) that would arise from the simpler subset?

In other words, the blood-clotting process could not have evolved over time, because the entire process would have had to suddenly appear for it to work due to its irreducible nature.

To imply that this incredibly complex process could possibly take place without direction is in itself a bit like saying that a VCR could somehow be formed out in the desert without intelligent guidance if all the necessary ingredients just happened to come together over time.

If that’s science, I’ll stick with God.

Poor Shawn. I think it’s very sad that she can’t grasp the obvious truth that we were created by a great Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Sven Triloqvist on August 18, 2005 at 9:08 pm

Exactly. Too few people understand that evolution is governed by changes in cell ‘clocks’ – the result of mutations brought on by radiation.

There are two main types of radiation – background and cataclysmic.

Background radiation (from rock eg) throws up occasional genetic variants that may be better adapted and therefore follow basic Darwinian survival rules as they reproduce.

Cataclysmic radiation events not only throw up vastly different and radical mutations but also often have changed the entire biosphere and thus the environment in which life survives. Most dramatic mutations, of course, do not survive, but over millions of years there have been enough of these events to produce not slow cumulative evolution, but entirely ‘new’ biofunctions based on fundamental changes in the way stem cells make more refined cells.

It does seem that there are certain ‘powerful’ cell aptitudes such as a tendency to symmetry, but everything else seems to be on the 1000 monkeys with typewriters-type of randomness
- Egarwaen on August 19, 2005 at 10:24 am
  
  There’s also reproduction, which can both introduce “transcription errors” and create new traits by combining genes in different ways.
  - Sven Triloqvist on August 19, 2005 at 11:08 am
    
    Actually there are not as many ‘innovations’ produced chromosonally as you would think. In the broader picture of mutation, humans are fairly stable genetically, and have been for many thousands of years.
    
    What you do get is some minor mistranslations in the 800 books worth of info in the DNA.
    
    The most important aspect is the slow breakdown of the DNA string over a lifetime. Both ends of the DNA string contain long strips of ‘nonsense’ rather like the margins of a book. It doesn’t make any difference if these margins are incorrectly transcribed. But endless copying seems to reduce these margins, and when the ‘bodytext’ of the book starts getting garbled you start to see breakdown in crucial specialized cells
    
    But this has little bearing on generational mutation. It is simply part of dying a ‘natural death’.
    
    The main factor in producing ‘innovative’ mutation, is changes in cell clocks ie the speed/frequency at which they divide. Radiation (background or cataclysmic) appears to be the engine of such changes.
  - Sven Triloqvist on August 19, 2005 at 11:11 am
    
    I refer you to the excellent and very readable book ‘Genome’ by Matt Ridley. It is the first book which lays out the whole genome story for a general, but untelligent audience. It certainly changed my views about a lot of things.

OkieByAccident on August 19, 2005 at 3:35 pm

Very Good!

Reminded me of this, I had to search a bit:

Georgia Schools to Stop Teaching Law of Gravity

Murphy’s Law Could Be Next, District Warns

A suburban school district in Georgia has thrown itself into the vortex of a legal controversy after deciding to stop teaching the law of gravity as part of its science curriculum.

The Dunnsville Unified School District fired the first salvo in the ongoing debate over the law of gravity last year when it mandated that stickers be affixed to all science texts in the district’s schools indicating that “the law of gravity is a theory, not a fact.”

District superintendent Charles Leverall said that initially it was not Dunnsville’s plan to eliminate teaching the law of gravity altogether, but merely to inform students that there were other equally plausible explanations for why things fall down.

“The law of gravity supposedly began when Sir Isaac Newton saw an apple fall off a tree,” Mr. Leverall said. “We think students are entitled to know that another way an apple comes off a tree is if a talking serpent tells a naked woman to take a bite from it.”

But after coming under fire for the stickers, Mr. Leverall said that the district decided to stop teaching the law of gravity entirely, and was now moving to ban the teaching of the law of supply and demand, as well as Murphy’s Law.

“There’s absolutely no proof that Murphy’s Law is true, except maybe Iraq,” said Mr. Leverall.

tampopo on August 18, 2005 at 6:54 pm

Reading the title of your diary, I thought it was going to be an explanation on how the “rapture” would work.

Thanks for the laugh and the link.
deano on August 18, 2005 at 6:58 pm

I posted this in a few open threads a few days ago. Hilarious.. what a great way to respond to ID’ers.
- Limelite on August 19, 2005 at 12:22 am
  
  is that the advocates and supporters of so-called “Intelligent Design” are too blind(?) to see that by their own argument they’re stupid because god wanted them to be. Not just by genetic accident.
  
  Is that what their loving god would do? If that’s what they believe, wouldn’t you kinda think they’d wanna skip the whole rapture thing?
  - deano on August 19, 2005 at 10:05 am
    
    lol, never thought of it that way.
Recordkeeper on August 18, 2005 at 8:11 pm

but check out this real letter in an actual newspaper, written by the ironically named Shawn Smart:

There is a question regarding evolution that, up to this point, has been missing from the debate in the letters to the editor section of The Free Lance-Star.

Given the complexity of certain biochemical processes (for instance, the ability of the human body to form blood clots involves 17 different enzymes, proteins, or biochemical actions/reactions), how does evolution account for the complexity of this process and the fact that all of these proteins, enzymes, and biochemical actions/reactions are necessary as an irreducible process for the clotting of blood?

If this process is irreducible to a simpler subset of any combination of the necessary ingredients for clotting, how does evolution account for the creation of the blood-clotting process without the death of the organism (from either bleeding out or total clotting of the blood) that would arise from the simpler subset?

In other words, the blood-clotting process could not have evolved over time, because the entire process would have had to suddenly appear for it to work due to its irreducible nature.

To imply that this incredibly complex process could possibly take place without direction is in itself a bit like saying that a VCR could somehow be formed out in the desert without intelligent guidance if all the necessary ingredients just happened to come together over time.

If that’s science, I’ll stick with God.

Poor Shawn. I think it’s very sad that she can’t grasp the obvious truth that we were created by a great Flying Spaghetti Monster.
- Sven Triloqvist on August 18, 2005 at 9:08 pm
  
  Exactly. Too few people understand that evolution is governed by changes in cell ‘clocks’ – the result of mutations brought on by radiation.
  
  There are two main types of radiation – background and cataclysmic.
  
  Background radiation (from rock eg) throws up occasional genetic variants that may be better adapted and therefore follow basic Darwinian survival rules as they reproduce.
  
  Cataclysmic radiation events not only throw up vastly different and radical mutations but also often have changed the entire biosphere and thus the environment in which life survives. Most dramatic mutations, of course, do not survive, but over millions of years there have been enough of these events to produce not slow cumulative evolution, but entirely ‘new’ biofunctions based on fundamental changes in the way stem cells make more refined cells.
  
  It does seem that there are certain ‘powerful’ cell aptitudes such as a tendency to symmetry, but everything else seems to be on the 1000 monkeys with typewriters-type of randomness
  - Egarwaen on August 19, 2005 at 10:24 am
    
    There’s also reproduction, which can both introduce “transcription errors” and create new traits by combining genes in different ways.
    - Sven Triloqvist on August 19, 2005 at 11:08 am
      
      Actually there are not as many ‘innovations’ produced chromosonally as you would think. In the broader picture of mutation, humans are fairly stable genetically, and have been for many thousands of years.
      
      What you do get is some minor mistranslations in the 800 books worth of info in the DNA.
      
      The most important aspect is the slow breakdown of the DNA string over a lifetime. Both ends of the DNA string contain long strips of ‘nonsense’ rather like the margins of a book. It doesn’t make any difference if these margins are incorrectly transcribed. But endless copying seems to reduce these margins, and when the ‘bodytext’ of the book starts getting garbled you start to see breakdown in crucial specialized cells
      
      But this has little bearing on generational mutation. It is simply part of dying a ‘natural death’.
      
      The main factor in producing ‘innovative’ mutation, is changes in cell clocks ie the speed/frequency at which they divide. Radiation (background or cataclysmic) appears to be the engine of such changes.
    - Sven Triloqvist on August 19, 2005 at 11:11 am
      
      I refer you to the excellent and very readable book ‘Genome’ by Matt Ridley. It is the first book which lays out the whole genome story for a general, but untelligent audience. It certainly changed my views about a lot of things.
OkieByAccident on August 19, 2005 at 3:35 pm

Very Good!

Reminded me of this, I had to search a bit:

Georgia Schools to Stop Teaching Law of Gravity

Murphy’s Law Could Be Next, District Warns

A suburban school district in Georgia has thrown itself into the vortex of a legal controversy after deciding to stop teaching the law of gravity as part of its science curriculum.

The Dunnsville Unified School District fired the first salvo in the ongoing debate over the law of gravity last year when it mandated that stickers be affixed to all science texts in the district’s schools indicating that “the law of gravity is a theory, not a fact.”

District superintendent Charles Leverall said that initially it was not Dunnsville’s plan to eliminate teaching the law of gravity altogether, but merely to inform students that there were other equally plausible explanations for why things fall down.

“The law of gravity supposedly began when Sir Isaac Newton saw an apple fall off a tree,” Mr. Leverall said. “We think students are entitled to know that another way an apple comes off a tree is if a talking serpent tells a naked woman to take a bite from it.”

But after coming under fire for the stickers, Mr. Leverall said that the district decided to stop teaching the law of gravity entirely, and was now moving to ban the teaching of the law of supply and demand, as well as Murphy’s Law.

“There’s absolutely no proof that Murphy’s Law is true, except maybe Iraq,” said Mr. Leverall.

"Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New ‘Intelligent Falling’ Theory"

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