Posted on 05/22/2006 8:14:10 AM PDT by RightWingAtheist
that's not a counter-argument, it's just making fun of my rhetoric. Giving misleading information to children, forced by the law to listen to you, to their eventual material disadvantage is abusing your authority.
No, that's not the problem. I readily admit it. Established scientific paradigms rule to a certain measure on their own momentum, and tend to choose to look at things that said paradigm implies.
However, as history shows--that is not a mechanism that ultimately allows creaky or false paradigms to survive forever. Eventually the cracks in the dam get to be too much to bear. And, once again, we have circled back to my first line of defense. When doubters who've done their homework, and can stand up in the scientific court and give witness without effective counterargument, then science turns the crank and moves on.
When people who haven't done their homework, and therefore can't hold their water in a technical scientific discussion demand consideration, they are quite properly ignored, because that's exactly what makes them useless, annoying cranks. All you have pointed out, to demand a hearing, is that science relies on imperfect, prejudiced, inductive tools--big deal, we already know that--that's why we run technical journals the way we do. Unfortunely for your case, you have nothing better to offer. Despite your incredibly wordy, dismissive take on this subject.
That might be an interesting argument, if you were demanding that the mechanism of mathematical proofs be proved flawless. However, you are applying the argument to natural science, which stops far short of claiming that it's conclusions, or it's mechanism, is flawless. The perceived reliability of natural science doesn't derive from it's theoretical underpinnings, it derives from specific results from specific observations that have proved fruitful. The theoretical top of the science tree has proved kind of flexible, but the important successful experiments have survived these philosophical earthquakes largely intact--demonstrating, for those who care, that Bishop Berkeley, and the rest of the various schools of solipsistic, subjective uber-alles probably have their heads tucked neatly up their sphincters. There really is stuff outside our perceptions. And, more particularly, demonstrating that the purity of our abstract models do not run the science show--what stuff actually does is what runs the science show. Putting it another way--experiment and observation are what is, in the long run, at the controls of the science train, not human prejudices, or grand idealistic abstractions.
Which is why parents object to the forced teaching of evolution in schools. Evolution may fit with presently accepted science but it doesn't mean it's right; it just means that it fits with presently accepted science.
This is yet another over-reach. Some aspects of the relations between various scientific schools of thought are derived from each other, but to claim that you can therefore dismiss great gobs of science due to circular reasoning is extremely fey. Let's look for example, at the killer case. The micro-biological tree derived from the mutational clock is the result of of work in a field pretty functionally isolated from the tree of life derived by paleontological geologistss and zoologists. And the claim that the mutational tree and the paleontological tree are somehow myopic co-dependant illusions is pretty hard to demonstrate: they look at parts of the biota that aren't in the least apparent from the related mophologies of preserved dead creatures, and the tools and intellectual constructs they look with do not cross-pollinate to any significant degree.
This is a dramatically pursuasive example of functionally independent routes to the same conclusion--and, a prime ingredient of good science: there was every likelihood that, if evolutionary theory is a delusion, the mutational clock would not have matched up. This is a prime example of why tangible experiment trumps meta-theorizing about how science works to re-enforce our confidence in any given theory. If you like, there is a third "experiment" in this sequence. If all the "kinds" of creatures on the earth had a separate genesis, you'd think it wouldn't be the case that they can all eat each other with, at most, one or two intermediaries on the food chain. Obviously, God didn't have to make our body parts of stuff polio virus finds tasty, so that our children could die long, agonizing deaths from polio, but he did. It doesn't make a lot of sense--unless God actually just whipped us all up with one fancy miracle, instead of hundred's of thousands of nearly identical miracles--as most scientists, including Darwin, consider a reasonable take on the question.
Driving on the right is just the presently accepted rule. That doesn't mean its right, it just means that if fits with presently accepted driving practices. Do you think this is a good excuse to a) teach students that driving on the left is approved to some people to the extent that it is a viable option. or b) remove driver education from the high school curriculum?
No, it's not a matter of preference; it's the law. If you drive on the left it's illegal. Big difference.
Creation was taught in the schools long before evolution was and it doesn't seem to have hurt any of the scientists and inventors who were raised and taught that way. With the advent of the public school system as we know it, evolution was forced in and creation gradually forced out all against the majority of the parents wishes, otherwise it would have not taken lawsuits to accomplish it. Parents want creation back in the schools. It's not like it's a new concept that's being introduced for the first time.
"Which is why parents object to the forced teaching of evolution in schools. Evolution may fit with presently accepted science but it doesn't mean it's right; it just means that it fits with presently accepted science."
Ok, so isn't that also true for religion? So we can insert religion for evolution, and get the same thing. Like this: Which is why parents object to the forced teaching of creation in schools. Creation may fit with presently accepted religion but it doesn't mean it's right; it just means that it fits with presently accepted religion.
Not that I do not have a faith in God, but I don't want my kids taught religion by a left wing nut case.
I don't want religion taught by a liberal leftist either but creation isn't a religion. Creation is the account of how God created the universe, it doesn't teach doctrine, worship, salvation, or moral living, it just states what happened. And I don't want evolution taught by a liberal leftist either because they will teach it with the religion of humanism.
Like I said before, I'd vote for teach both or neither.
Welcome to FR. You sure picked a dandy thread to get initiated on.
Dart of Harkness??? got me there.
It sure made me thirsty and I'm going to get a bottle of Jack next week......a good placemaker while writing here. Helps me think better and batter and bitter...:))
Based on what objective measure? Or do you mean except for Galileo, who was imprisoned for life, and Bruno, who was burned at the stake? And the scientists who didn't publish much of their work until after their deaths for fear of serious consequences?
At any rate, my argument is not about evolution vs. creation, which is a battle that only exists in the minds of creation scientists. My argument is about non-scientists trying to get schools to teach science as they would prefer it be taught, which is a non-starter.
With the advent of the public school system as we know it, evolution was forced in and creation gradually forced out all against the majority of the parents wishes, otherwise it would have not taken lawsuits to accomplish it. Parents want creation back in the schools. It's not like it's a new concept that's being introduced for the first time.
Which, plus a dollar and a half, will buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I'm sure schools used to teach that witches were evil, and needed to be burned at the stake, that the earth was the center of the universe, and that woman didn't vote because they were weak-willed and mentally impoverished. Antiquity is not a trump issue in deciding what should be taught in public schools.
It is not the function of public schools to teach the average opinions of the average dolts running around loose. It is the function of the schools to try to improve on the average level of skill and understanding. Curriculum choice is not, inherently, a democratic institution; it is an overtly elitist institution. If we only wanted our children to attain the levels of education they are exposed to in their neighborhoods, there'd be no point in sending them off to school.
It's a pun, complete with a visual aid, related to the most famous works of Vachel Lindsay, and Joseph Conrad, and your physical location, and preference in libations. And if I have to explain more than that, you deserved the raps with the ruler the Sister gave you for inattention in school.
No, it's not a matter of preference; it's the law. If you drive on the left it's illegal. Big difference.
It is and was a matter of preference before it was a matter of law. The law does not govern non-public roads, yet convention overwhelmingly prevails there. Unlike tort laws, where someone suffers a clear harm, laws like this, that presume to codify customs humans worked out without the help of king and crown, are optional, and could obviously be dispensed with without the Republic disintegrating. So, not really such a "Big Difference".
Religious humanism is not taught in science class. Nothing about evolutionary theory precludes the existence of the God of the Western Bible, except in the minds of diehard literalists who, when inappropriately trying to alter the curriculum of science classes, qualify as scientific crackpots. Why don't you take your battle over to civics class, where it might have some relevance?
Well, if you're sure of that, there should be some evidence to support that. Let's see some examples of curriculum from schools in this country that dictate that be taught. So the work of everybody who was educated in the United States before the Scopes trials was inherently inferior and should be tossed aside. How was it that scientists like Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo, Pasteur, to name a few, were able to lay the very foundations of modern science if their brains were so warped by the belief in creation? It sure didn't interfere with their abilities, so why should it now?
More like habit. But still that is a matter of life and death if an accident occurs. Yes, that is a big difference from preference.
All that demonstrates is that it's a good preference, not that it isn't a preference. Ever driven in the Mexican or Indian countryside? As we speak, 50,000 people a year are killed or crippled on our roadways. How do you know that the increase in speed the right-hand rule allows for doesn't take more lives than it preserves?
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