Posted on 11/29/2004 6:52:41 AM PST by PatrickHenry
In a poll released last week, two-thirds of Americans said they wanted to see creationism taught to public-school science pupils alongside evolution. Thirty-seven percent said they wanted to see creationism taught instead of evolution.
So why shouldn't majority rule? That's democracy, right?
Wrong. Science isn't a matter of votes -- or beliefs. It's a system of verifiable facts, an approach that must be preserved and fought for if American pupils are going to get the kind of education they need to complete in an increasingly global techno-economy.
Unfortunately, the debate over evolution and creationism is back, with a spiffy new look and a mass of plausible-sounding talking points, traveling under the seemingly secular name of "intelligent design."
This "theory" doesn't spend much time pondering which intelligence did the designing. Instead, it backwards-engineers its way into a complicated rationale, capitalizing on a few biological oddities to "prove" life could not have evolved by natural selection.
On the strength of this redesigned premise -- what Wired Magazine dubbed "creationism in a lab coat" -- school districts across the country are being bombarded by activists seeking to have their version given equal footing with established evolutionary theory in biology textbooks. School boards in Ohio, Georgia and most recently Dover, Pa., have all succumbed.
There's no problem with letting pupils know that debate exists over the origin of man, along with other animal and plant life. But peddling junk science in the name of "furthering the discussion" won't help their search for knowledge. Instead, pupils should be given a framework for understanding the gaps in evidence and credibility between the two camps.
A lot of the confusion springs from use of the word "theory" itself. Used in science, it signifies a maxim that is believed to be true, but has not been directly observed. Since evolution takes place over millions of years, it would be inaccurate to say that man has directly observed it -- but it is reasonable to say that evolution is thoroughly supported by a vast weight of scientific evidence and research.
That's not to say it's irrefutable. Some day, scientists may find enough evidence to mount a credible challenge to evolutionary theory -- in fact, some of Charles Darwin's original suppositions have been successfully challenged.
But that day has not come. As a theory, intelligent design is not ready to steal, or even share, the spotlight, and it's unfair to burden children with pseudoscience to further an agenda that is more political than academic.
That is a proper way of stating things. The word "represents" leaves the basis in fact more or less unanswered.
You can't falsify "that's just the way millions of years did it." But that's not the entire content of the modern theory of evolution. The modern theory of evolution is fairly specific about how the various species evolved and how they are interrelated. For example, the modern theory states that birds and mammals both evolved from a reptilian ancestor. This is a falsifiable statement. We have found fossils that have both reptilian and mammalian characteristics. We have found fossils that have both avian and reptilian characteristics. If you found a fossil that had both avian and mammalian characteristics, you would have falified this portion of the theory. Admittedly, this would not falsify the entire theory, but there are other predictions made by evolution that are more fundamental. Finding that these were false would be more problematic for evolution. For example, evolution predicts that all life forms are related to each other. Therefore, all life forms should use polynucleotides as their genetic material. Scientists are finding new species all the time. If a new species were found that did not use polynucleotides as a genetic material, evolution would be in serious trouble. Similarly, if we found a life form that didn't use polypeptides as its biochemical catalysts, it would be problematic for evolution. Heck, even finding a one billion year old fossilized modern rabbit would be problematic. The point is that there is a falsification for evolution. God, on the other hand, is omnipotent. Therefore, any observation we could possibly imagine could have been caused by God. Therefore, no possible observation could falsify the idea that God created everything.
Okay, so you've shown how the fossil record can be used to support design. Big deal. Everything supports design. There's no observation that would serve to falsify it. If I am wrong, then please provide such an observation.
I missed the great snowflake debate, I will need to go back over the thread to better understand these snowflake violations.
http://www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/design_evidences/designevidenceupdate1998.shtml
It doesn't take a special kind of reading comprehension to see the circular reasoning in your statement. Cornerstones are by nature true and verifiable. Just because a fossil layer exists does not mean it took millions of years to get there. Neither you nor any scientist will ever be able to observe the process when the fossil record was laid down. Therefore your assertions regarding that process must be treated as conjecture and no more.
This is not at *all* what one would expect to see from an "intelligent process".
So you see no sign of design or intelligence where the Law of Gravity is concerned? Do you you any people intelligent enough to design, execute, and sustain such a law?
As you can see, the fossil record actually supports a naturalistic sequence.
It sure does. It appears exactly as it should if the world were at one time completely flooded with water. I would expect the smaller creatures to shift downward - especially those that were better suited to a water environment. The larger, less dense creatures would struggle to stay at the top and live. This agrees very well with ancient records from more than one culture that testify to a world wide flood. That's a hell of a lot more evidence than evolutionists can cobble up with their "millions of years" fairy tales.
That Scott Peterson killed his wife and unborn child and that they died as a result of a divine bolt of lightning are both theories. Neither can be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. Therefore, we should just let Scott go free, right?
Perhaps if they are static. Since we are talking about once living creatures we should expect some dynamism. At any rate, since you were not there to witness the creation of the fossil record I will treat your conjectures as I do other conjectures, namely with a grain of salt.
That's what I've always wondered about those who insist it took millions of years for the earth to form as we know it.
Just as there is no evidence to falsify "millions of years" of unrecorded, unobserved "history."
Or there is no real boundary. Species is, at least to some degree, a human-invented arbitrary concept. When two organisms become different enough, we call them different species. One definition of "too different" is inability to interbreed. This definition doesn't always work too well, though, such as with organisms that reproduce asexually.
Please reread post 1062.
May I ask why it must be assumed or asserted as fact that, just because certain creatures have similar characteristics, they are descended from one another? Should I assume, when I see a Ford and a Chevy that both came from the same factory? After all, they agree much more in the number of similarities than a bird and a lizard.
Modern evolution theory has only the leg of conjecture to stand on in making such assertions when no transitions from bird to lizard or vice versa have been observed on such a wide scale. Of course there are, have been, and will be, moderate changes within species. The world would be a boring place without them.
"Species is, at least to some degree, a human-invented arbitrary concept."
Genesis 1:25
God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to reproduce more of its own kind. And God saw that it was good.
I don't know how those items are taught. I haven't reviewed any school textbooks to check. I don't know even if they are taught in the same class.
However, Google can be your friend: Link Link Link.pdf Link
Most of the articles point out that it's not known whether the lung evolved from the swim bladder or vice verse but the current opinion favors the latter.
You keep getting hung up on the word "fact". Comfort yourself in knowing that that the word fact rarely appears in the literature. Just use a filter so that when people use the word fact in a layman's discussion, you know that they mean "know it to be true as much as we can know anything to be true in science". That should help you with your problems.
True of Germany and China, at least before the movies/TV/radio age. The Deutsch of Berlin used to shade imperceptibly to the Dutch of Amsterdam to the west and the Scaninavian German languages to the north. China supposedly has several distinct dialects (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hakka ...) but apparently boundaries are not sharp. I have heard that from anywhere you could go one village in any direction and not notice much difference. Two villages and people seemed to be talking a bit strangely. Four or five villages and it was getting hard to communicate.
There is a global tendency now to standardize education around the speech of the capital. That's homogenizing a lot of the regional flavors.
Note that "creation" is not a theory. It makes no predictions and is not falsifiable. No amount of evidence can contradict that Zeus created the World this morning at 0900 Zulu. For this reason, Creationism is not science and should not be taught as if it were. (Other than to point out that Creationism doesn't rise to the level of an hypothesis, much less a theory.)
What is your definition of "kind" as opposed to "species"? Is "kind" a property of an entity? What distinguishes one "kind" from another?
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