3XNTGRAD

AWESOME SHOT!!!!!

Before jumping to conclusions, look at this artist's rendition (link below) of the new Life Science Building that will replace Masters Hall (the current Biology Building is the 3 story building on the left hand side of the drawing): 2007 President's Report - Expansion section From some discussion I have heard, there is a real attention to how this building will fit in with the surrounding buildings since this is a main sight-line for the university and the McConnell Tower (thought I'd throw that name in there for those of you who didn't know the clock tower had it's own name, while the building is named the Hurley Administration Building).

Yes - our numbers still include the Dallas campus and will do so until that campus attains the minimum full-time equivalent to become a free-standing university.

UH counts all of their professional school enrollment on the main campus in the total enrollment figures. Since we have no professional school on the Denton campus, that puts them ahead of us on the total count even though we beat them in both undergraduate and graduate enrollments.

Something similar to this type of preservation is occurring right now with the destruction of Masters Hall and the construction of the new life science complex. The relief design on the north gable of Masters was removed and will be incorporated into some area of the new complex. The Masters reliefs were made of individual blocks, so were fairly easy to remove. Aren't the Fouts reliefs cast pieces, or are they segmented? That will probably have a lot to do with the ability and cost of removing them.

Tuition is required by the state and cannot be waived. In this case, a scholarship can pay for it, but someone has to pay the tuition. UNT has a program that waives/reduces certain FEES for employees and their families, but everyone has to pay tuition.

My understanding of the notice was that you had to pay in full by April to lock in the current price and donation rules. You may want to check, but that could mean the 7 month plan puts you under the new price structure.

There is a phase-in period. Pay by the early renewal deadline and those new rules don't apply.

Yes - I bought one last Sat. night because we had some extra guests in town. 4 people (2 adult/2 child I think, but doesn't really matter since the price per ticket is the same I think), 4 soft drinks and a pizza. I think it was $30 total.

Don't know if it would help or not, but I could probably "convince" my 10 year old to play as well to balance out the teams, if it is determined that these young guys can play. I'm pretty sure we can make that date. So, what is the verdict?

UNT and Texas Tech compete for a lot of the same students, so we should keep this prominently displayed on the board (might make their choice a little easier since UNT was recently FULLY REACCREDITED by the same accrediting body)!

Evolutionary theory is a strong and robust explanation of the life we see and is based on the natural processes we can measure and describe. To support intelligent design, you would have to show that something could not have arisen from those processes. No research has shown that, and instead the intelligent design/creation proponents have just made claims that something is too complex and must therefore have been designed. Natural processes produce all kinds of complicated and intricate products, but that doesn't mean those products are being purposefully designed (as a simple example, just look at the beautiful color patterns of a rainbow in the sky, which can be fully explained by the physics of light). If intelligent design proponents want to challenge the current paradigm, then they must provide scientific evidence for their case that stands up to the same scientific rigor as the evidence for the current theory. Just saying that "God did it" is not scientific. Intelligent design/creationism is a religious viewpoint that does not have any scientific underpinnings. As such, it is not a valid alternative that should be discussed in a public school science course. I too have spent way too much time on this discussion. I hope we can leave it at this.

If it isn't testable, then it isn't science. Thank you for making my point as to why intelligent design has no place in a science classroom. Scientific theories do not promote religious ideas. They are explanations of the natural world. And, yes, studies have found that a higher percentage of scientists are non-religious compared to the general population. So, does that mean that the Theory of General Relativity is also not "neutral" or Germ Theory, etc., since scientists who study those are also less religious than the general population? This recent study that surveyed scientists about religion notes that it seems to be less a case of the science making these people less religious, and more the case that people who enter science tend to be less religious to begin with. I have said several times that science isn't determined by debates in front of crowds. It is determined by the evidence that supports a concept. How does over 29,000 peer-reviewed evolution articles to 0 for intelligent design do anything except show that ID is not a valid scientific theory. Have we come full circle in this discussion yet? I'm sure the others reading this exchange probably feel that we aren't adding anything new at this point that we haven't already said.

Please check the original sources before you make these claims. Scientists (evolutionary biologists, to be exact) have studied DNA to trace back to a female progenitor (based on mitochondrial DNA which is primarily passed down from the mother only) and a male progenitor (through Y chromosome studies) of all modern humans. However, nothing indicates that the two were a couple, or even lived within thousands of years of one another (the time range for both studies points to each having lived 100,000-200,000 years ago -- so science has not definitively identified a single couple as the parents of the human race). Secondly, additional or missing chromosomes is a huge deal, most such conditions are fatal. An extra copy of chromosome 21 is the cause of Down Syndrome, which is not a minor condition.

There is nothing in the first part of your statement that contradicts anything that I've said. Science cannot prove or disprove anything outside of the natural world. If God created everything and did so using all the natural laws we observe, then science would be unable to distinguish this. That is why science in general and evolution in specific is really neutral on religious issues. Science is not neutral when it comes to literal readings of the bible, because there are contradictions there that we can observe in the natural world (6 human days is not compatible with our measurements of the age of the Earth, etc.).

Could you please provide me with an affirmative argument for intelligent design that can be tested in a scientific way? I thought that was the point of "irreducibly complex", for which, despite your protestations to the contrary, the prime example (the bacterial flagellum) has been refuted by the evidence. I will not disagree that all life is wonderful and complex. This diversity and intricacy is part of the joy of studying biology. But, complexity can be the result of natural processes and common descent, so this does not conflict in any way with the Theory of Evolution. (And, just for the record, not all biologists or people who accept evolutionary theory are atheist, and the theory itself is neutral with respect to religion or lack of religion) If evolution is defeated, why is it still a major driving force in modern biological study and research publications? If you go back to the original letter that was the cause for this thread in the first place, you will note that a search of 12 leading science journals found 29,639 peer-reviewed scientific papers on evolution published since 1975. The same search done for "Intelligent Design" finds only 24 articles, all of which are critical of the concept. The science of evolutionary research is alive and well, contrary to your reports of its death.

UNTflyer: You hit the nail on the head. She was fired for doing her job - promoting science. That is scary.

Despite a long-time interest (from childhood) of geology, I am most definitely not a geologist. I have looked into some of these examples and found quite reasonable explanations of how faults and other disturbances can create the appearance of out-of-order strata. However, I will defer to someone else more knowledgeable than myself to discuss these claims if they wish. I found a very detailed article debunking this claim through analysis of the evidence at such sites (in this case, the Paluxy river sites near Glen Rose primarily). Anyone who wishes to read it may do so on the National Center for Science Education website. I just don't see how evolution demands, as you say, that a bird becomes a bat. Evolutionary theory is not deterministic. And, in answer to your last question, yes - we are on the same family tree (not the same branch) as worms. All animals are on the same branch, which is but a smaller part of the same earlier branch where we shared a common ancestor with trees and fungi, and back to the earliest of the eukaryotic cells. This is the concept of "common descent" and it is also a central part of the theory of evolution. As you can see, I have no problem with having a unicellular ancestor those many billions of years ago. There were other members of the genus Homo on our family tree that did not survive to the present, the neanderthals, for example. The only testable explanation I've seen put forth for intelligent design has been the idea of "irreducibly complex", which I believe I covered in an earlier post as being refuted by the evidence.

That is probably the crux of the matter - human evolution. Many people would have no problem with the scientific explanations of evolution if humans were left out of the discussion. Rationally, for me, I just don't see how you can discuss humans separately from any other creature on the Earth. We share the same DNA, we can be mapped on the Tree of Life (using molecular sequence data) the same as any other organism, we share many similarities with the other primates and the general traits of other mammals. There are also clear fossils showing large portions of the primate line of descent (and further back you can trace general mammalian development as well all the way back to amphibians). Sure, there are some gaps in the fossil record, but science continues to identify additional pieces of the puzzle (a gap in knowledge is not the same as an absence of information -- we just haven't found it all yet). I'm definitely not an expert in mammalian evolution, but everything I have looked at has given me a good picture to see how this progression is understood. To me, this issue that humans must be specially created or hold a central "God-given" position among all life is much like the problems Galileo faced. Biblical interpretation at the time said that the Earth held a special place in the cosmos, so his work that showed the Earth went around the sun was seen as opposition to "Truth". That is no longer a problem for physics and persons of faith, as I hope some day the biological concept of evolution is not seen as in conflict with religion. It is already a non-issue for many people, but obviously not all. Evolution of humans does not lessen what or who we are in any way, in my view.

I think you may be identifying yourself as subscribing to "theistic evolution". Correct me if I'm wrong. Personally, I have no problem with that as a way of approaching the issue. "Theistic evolution" basically says that evolution occurs and has occurred the way that science describes it in our current understanding, but that God had a hand in making it all happen (many people take this to mean God set things in motion and everything was in place for it to proceed in the manner it has). For many people, this is a good method for reconciling the science and their religious beliefs. Nothing in this approach necessarily conflicts with our scientific understanding of the natural world, so I don't have any issue with it. Note: this is quite different from intelligent design, which essentially says that each thing must have been designed "actively" (my word) by a supernatural designer for a specific purpose. There are people who find theistic evolution to be just as unacceptable as intelligent design/creationism. Richard Dawkins is probably the most famous (he has written a book called "The God Delusion"). He definitely represents the other extreme end of the spectrum in this debate as compared to the creation/flat earth types.

Could you please provide examples of these, with the source identified? Darwin's observations led him to identify a mechanism by which evolution could occur. The concept of biological evolution predates Darwin, but his Theory of Natural Selection provided evidence for a mechanism (lack of a mechanism by which this could occur had been a previous criticism against this concept). While they remained finches, they had evolved to adapt to different niches within their habitat in the time that they had been on the island. There are 13 different Finch species in the Galapagos Islands that evolved from a single Finch ancestor species. If you ask me to have a finch magically become a bat to prove evolution, then that would be impossible. That isn't how it works. I don't have the latest numbers, but even 95% is an astonishly high degree of similarity. Why does that matter? Well, heredity is the passing of traits down to offspring. The information for those traits is stored in the DNA. The more similar the DNA, the more closely related two species are to each other. Why do both chimps and humans still exist? Well, each population (individuals do not evolve, populations do) would have been adapted to their particular environment. Your assumption is that they always shared the exact same habitat and conditions. Divergent species does not mean that all their relatives or the descendants of those relatives cannot also evolve down a different path. I use the word "confirm" because it is the appropriate word to use. Theories in science are never really "proven", they are supported by the evidence. Hypotheses can be disproven when evidence shows they could not happen and theories are disproven when new evidence shows that they were wrong (this happens in all the sciences, not just biology). Using your logic, the atom doesn't exist because it has only been inferred from the evidence. And, about the issue of bias, my use of "confirm" rather than "prove" is part of the open approach of examining the evidence, not an example of some percieved close-mindedness. You appear to be talking about magic, not science in your "bacteria to cow" example. Of course no one can show you that happen. You are trying to ask for science to prove within a human lifetime something that required over 3.5 billion years for evolution to accomplish.

Are you aware that there are examples of fish with lungs that exist today? Here is a nice description of one species (with a good background on other species in this group and when they are first seen in the fossil record) at the Australian Museum Online. Also of note, evolution occurs in populations, not individuals, so you won't jump from fish to non-fish in one generation. But the traits of a population of fish can modify over time due to selective pressure to eventually produce a species that is different than that original population (but this is a not something that happens over night). I'd love to see an intelligent design biologist who would actually provide scientific evidence FOR the intelligent design hypothesis. I have no problem with participating in a debate. However, experimentation is where arguments in science are really won. Until an experiment shows that evolution of species cannot happen or a preponderance of experiments provides greater support for an alternate hypothesis, biologists are not going to be convinced that anything other than evolution occurred. This is because experimentation over the last 150 years has produced evidence that continues to bolster the case of evolution. To discount evolution you have to: - ignore the fossil record and all the various methods by which geologists can date different strata - ignore the examples of adaptation of organisms to their habitats (Darwin's observations of finches in the Galapagos is the most famous example) - ignore the DNA sequence data that confirms relationships that had been previously inferred from the fossil record - ignore modern examples of selection such as antibiotic resistance in bacteria I'm sure there are other things that I am forgetting or don't even know that I have left off of this list.

At least we can agree to disagree

eulesseagle: Nothing I can say or show you will convince you if your mind is already made up. I'm sure someone will try to say I'm avoiding something by not responding point by point to your post, but I don't think I'd be covering any ground that I haven't already discussed in my previous posts by doing that. Rather than try to do so, I just want to make one very specific comment about a main point of your post. The word "theory" in the common usage can mean a guess or estimate. The word for a guess (or more precisely, a potential answer to a stated problem) in science is a hypothesis. In the scientific sense, a theory is a strongly-supported scientific idea. I can't just throw out any idea in science and call that a theory (which is, by the way, what the intelligent design people try to do). It must start as a hypothesis that is tested, refined, retested and then must have a weight of evidence behind it before it gains the status of "Theory" through the acceptance of that body of knowledge in the scientific community. A theory in science is as good as it gets.

(in response to Mean Green 93-98's earlier post) I don't understand why there is an assumption that biologists "fear" intelligent design or that publicly stating our support for a scientific theory somehow means we have a weak case and little evidence. The only thing I fear is that our public school children will be fed a pseudoscientific religious position in the guise of science. I am obviously willing to stake my professional credibility on this issue as shown by my willingness to post here in a very public forum and to have my name listed on a letter that has received national media attention. Science is not decided by "debates" or popular votes, but rather by a body of work that supports or disproves stated hypotheses. Although debating the issue doesn't prove anything, I have no problem discussing the scientific evidence for evolution with anyone. I would like to see the body of evidence that stands behind intelligent design, because there really isn't any (the intelligent design/creation proponents have put out lots of information that tries to poke holes in evolution, but have not contributed new scientific evidence to support their own position). And, I would counter your "orthodox" argument by stating that the peer-review process in science is quite rigorous. Only evidence and hypotheses that pass muster through critical review are going to survive to become established. Intelligent design has the same opportunity to provide evidence as any other hypothesis in biology. It has not done so to date. There is no conspiracy against intelligent design, there just is not a convincing case of supporting scientific evidence. One of the big pillars stated as proof for evidence of intelligent design is the concept of "irreducibly complex". This is basically the idea that a complex structure in biology could not have arisen except by design because it fails to work if any one part is removed. Thus it must all have been created as a unit, since natural selection should seemingly not be able to produce the whole at one time. The popular example the intelligent design movement tries to uses is the bacterial flagellum. However, research has shown that parts of the flagellum could have evolved independent of a complete whole, since these individual parts could have had other functions in the cell (for the scientifically-minded, this article on evolution of the bacterial flagellum from Nature Reviews Microbiology in 2006 notes the components of the flagellum that have been found to be comparable to other proteins having different functions in the cell). These data support the evolutionary origin of flagellum, and refute that example of the intelligent design concept of "irreducibly complex". As to your comments about fish, you really are grasping at straws. Evidence of transitional fossils show that intermediate forms existed between fish and animals that can live on land. Of course you cannot take a fish that is fully adapted to live in water and place it on land and expect it to live. However, a fish that has the ability to live for some time out of water might have offspring who are a little better at doing that (or at surviving to reproduce because they gain an advantage by being able to do so). Eventually after many generations of natural selection working with the available natural variation in the population, new species can emerge. This takes incredibly long times in most organisms because of the times between generations, but can be seen in the fossil record. Although I am not a fish biologist, I have looked at several examples in the scientific literature relating to this topic. One example of a transitional fossil is an organism called Acanthostega that is an amphibian with internal gills and lungs (later fossils of amphibians do not have gills, only lungs). Science examines the natural world and tries to understand it. This is not a religious agenda, and the study of evolution is no more a religion than is heliocentrism (remember that dangerous idea, the one that got Galileo in so much trouble with the Catholic Church -- the theory that the sun was the center of the solar system). I don't see many people today giving up their religion because science showed that the Earth was not the center of the universe. Why should evolution and common descent of organisms be any more dangerous to someone's faith than heliocentrism is in today's world? One other thing: It is common to see people caught in the middle of this issue to say "what is the harm in teaching both sides?". Well, that would be true if there were actually two sides of scientifically-supported concepts that were in opposition here. But that is not true. Evolution is a strongly-supported theory with tremendous amounts of corroborating data from diverse scientific approaches (fossils, molecular sequences, developmental patterns, ecological studies, etc.). Intelligent design is a hypothesis with little support outside of a small group with a stated religious agenda (do a little research and look up the "Wedge" document from the intelligent design folks). There is a real danger is supplanting science with pseudoscience, so the "equal time" argument is not really a good way to approach this issue.