Posted on 12/20/2005 7:54:38 AM PST by snarks_when_bored
Fox News alert a few minutes ago says the Dover School Board lost their bid to have Intelligent Design introduced into high school biology classes. The federal judge ruled that their case was based on the premise that Darwin's Theory of Evolution was incompatible with religion, and that this premise is false.
In our state, education is, as you say, covered primarily by property taxes.
Interestingly, as a pastor, I can opt out of social security and never have to pay a dime into it if I were to consider it in conflict with some belief that I have.
If that were treated the same as parents who choose religious, private, or homeschooling, then many would say that the government is giving ME a check for the amount that I don't have to send them.
Odd, isn't it?
Islam believes in Jesus Christ, David, Isaiah, Noah, Abraham, monotheism, and a host of other things.
ID opens up the possibility of a personal greater intelligence. That's all. (And it doesn't necessarily insist that it be "personal.")
No. Behe did not admit to being a Christian. He admitted that he thought the designer was God. The Court inferred that it must be the Judeo Christian God.
Examine the decision's discussion on page 128:
Professor Behe remarkably and unmistakably claims that the plausibility of the argument for ID depends upon the extent to which one belives in the existence of God (P-718 at 705).
The mere fact that Behe believes in the "existence of God" combinded with the contrived consonance of Behe's science with the Discovery institute and other's who see Behe's practice as affirming Christianity is enough to prove establishment. The loose manner of proving Behe's Christian conspiracy is ripe for legal abuse.
Be that as it may. After the statement about ID holding that the universe has a designer, one can simply drop the issue. It would only be the establishment of a religion if it went farther to state which deity, and any teacher worth their salt could avoid that argument. It would certainly be appropriate at that point then to say that that topic is not open for further discussion. The reason that I object to religion being TAUGHT in the school is that someone would need to decide which religion; Catholicism? Baptist? Pentecostal? Native American? I do object to excluding it and teachers and students should have the freedom to discuss religion without the fear of being accused of proselytizing.
Shhh! Don't give them any ideas.
Line ABC and line CDE have one point in common. Does that make them the same line?
If I promote republican candidates for president, does that mean that the Republican party is a Christian initiative? (If I promote ID as a theory, does that mean that ID is a Christian initiative?)
How is it an establishment of atheism....because of the same logic: Atheists advocate evolution; therefore, Evolution is an atheistic endeavor.
Apparently Ichneumon disagrees with you.
At least it appears so from this post.
Just stirring the pot, as I am bored with wrapping Christmas presents.
Full Disclosure: When was Darwin's birthday? Maybe folks can send each other various amino acids, nucleotides and such to celebrate. Then, X number of years later, their gifts will (given the proper conditions) appear under the fossil tree? :-)
Cheers!
Thus far, however, all ID movements are decidedly Christian in origin . ..
This is not true and this is very much part of the problem. Once Christian supporters of an idea are found, that becomes the legal basis of exclusion. Science is regularly intermingled with non-scientific nonsense including religious views and they are not attacked by science purists-- at least not in the highly dramatic way that creationist and ID proponents.
At my own state university, courses promoting the integration of Buddhism and biology are applauded and encouraged without separation accusations.
I am ordained clergy in a major mainline denomination. I admit to promoting republicans because they align better with my beliefs.
Does that mean that the republican party is a Christian initiative?
Isaac Asimov does'nt agree -
"It is probably no exaggeration to claim that the laws of thermodynamics represent some of the best science we have today. While the utterances in some fields (such as astronomy) seem to change almost daily, the science of thermodynamics has been noteworthy for its stability. In many decades of careful observations, not a single departure from any of these laws has ever been noted." 11
If Evolution is true, there must be an extremely powerful force or mechanism at work in the cosmos that can steadily defeat the powerful, ultimate tendency toward "disarrangedness" brought by the 2nd Law. If such an important force or mechanism is in existence, it would seem it should be quite obvious to all scientists. Yet, the fact is, no such force of nature has been found.
A number of scientists believe the 2nd Law, when truly understood, is enough to refute the theory of Evolution. In fact, it is one of the most important reasons why various Evolutionists have dropped their theory in favor of Creationism.
open systems/closed systems: open thermodynamic systems exchange heat, light, or matter with their surroundings, closed systems do not. No outside energy flows into a closed system. Earth is an open system; it receives outside energy from the Sun.
Is Energy the Key?
To create any kind of upward, complex organization in a closed system requires outside energy and outside information. Evolutionists maintain that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics does not prevent Evolution on Earth, since this planet receives outside energy from the Sun. Thus, they suggest that the Sun's energy helped create the life of our beautiful planet. However, is the simple addition of energy all that is needed to accomplish this great feat?12
Compare a living plant with a dead one. Can the simple addition of energy make a completely dead plant live?
A dead plant contains the same basic structures as a living plant. It once used the Sun's energy to temporarily increase its order and grow and produce stems, leaves, roots, and flowers - all beginning from a single seed.
If there is actually a powerful Evolutionary force at work in the universe, and if the open system of Earth makes all the difference, why does the Sun's energy not make a truly dead plant become alive again (assuming a sufficient supply of water, light, and the like)?
What actually happens when a dead plant receives energy from the Sun? The internal organization in the plant decreases; it tends to decay and break apart into its simplest components. The heat of the Sun only speeds the disorganization process.
Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith in the ORIGINS video series.
The distinguished scientist and origins expert, Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith, puts it this way:
"What is the difference then between a stick, which is dead, and an orchid which is alive? The difference is that the orchid has teleonomy in it. It is a machine which is capturing energy to increase order. Where you have life, you have teleonomy, and then the Sun's energy can be taken and make the thing grow - increasing its order" [temporarily].13
teleonomy: Information stored within a living thing. Teleonomy involves the concept of something having a design and purpose. Non-teleonomy is "directionlessness," having no project. The teleonomy of a living thing is somehow stored within its genes. Teleonomy can use energy and matter to produce order and complexity.14
Where did the teleonomy of living things originate? It is important to note that the teleonomy (the ordering principle, the know-how) does not reside in matter itself. Matter, itself, is not creative. Dr. Wilder-Smith:
"The pure chemistry of a cell is not enough to explain the working of a cell, although the workings are chemical. The chemical workings of a cell are controlled by information which does not reside in the atoms and molecules."15
Creationists believe cells build themselves from carefully designed and coded information which has been passed from one life to the next since their original inception.
[See below for further evidence that the 2nd Law is a major problem for Evolution]
Recommended book from Eden Communications. The Illustrated ORIGINS Answer Book by Paul S. Taylor. [info]
References and Endnotes
Heat is the name of energy when it is moved from one area to another. [Allen L. King, Thermophysics (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Company, 1962), p. 5.]
Heat is transferred by virtue of a temperature difference. Work is energy transferred by virtue of a force.
Emmett L. Williams, editor, Thermodynamics and the Development of Order (5093 Williamsport Drive, Norcross, 18.
Lord Kelvin as quoted in A.W. Smith and J.N. Cooper, Elements of Physics, 8th edition (New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1972), p. 241.
Emmett Williams (1981), p. 19 (endnote above).
World-renowned Evolutionist and avid anti-Creationist Isaac Asimov confirmed that:
"Another way of stating the second law then is, 'The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!' Viewed that way we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself - and that is what the second law is all about."
[Isaac Asimov, "In the Game of Energy and Thermodynamics You Can't Even Break Even", Smithsonian Institution Journal (June 1970), p. 6 (emphasis added).]
"The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the amount of available work you can get out of the energy of the universe is constantly decreasing. If you have a great deal of energy in one place, a large intensity of it, so that you have a high temperature here and a low temperature there, then you can get work out of that situation. The smaller the difference in temperature, the less work you can get out of it. Now, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, there is always a tendency for the hot areas to cool off and the cool areas to warm up -- so that less and less work can be obtained out of it. Until finally, when everything is one temperature, you cannot get any work out of it, even though all the energy is still there. And this is true for EVERYTHING in general, the universe all over."
[Isaac Asimov in The Origin of the Universe in the ORIGINS: How the World Came to Be video series (PO Box 200, Gilbert AZ 85299 USA: Eden Communications, 1983).]
Technically and most succinctly, the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics says that:
"The total amount of entropy in nature is increasing."
[S. Gasstone, Textbook of Physical Chemistry (New York: D.
R.B. Lindsay, "Physics - To What Extent Is It Deterministic?" American Scientist, Vol. 56, No. 2 (1968), pp. 100-111.
So....if a Christian comes up with an idea that also aligns with his Christian faith, then that idea is necessarily "about" Christianity.
What if he believes "cleanliness is next to Godliness" and comes up with a new vacuum cleaner.
Should schools not be allowed to buy them?
If you check some of my later posts, i addressed some of this junk posing as science; I don't know anyone but evolutionists who bring up snowflakes or crystals as complex. Stop with the stupid comments.
Yes, but rest assured that if huge public rallies were held affirming the consumate consonance of Darwin with Christianity-- which is intellectually possible-- a reactionary community would immediately embark on a legal mission to remove such study from public schools.
This pattern of reactionary behavior is well established for the past 50 years of church-state jurisprudence. Public education has become a target for the concerted misinterpretation of the establishment clause. The establishment clause has become one of the most important censorship tools at work in America today.
It is quite reasonable for scientists to argue about what science is. It is less reasonable to use the much abused establishment clause problems of current legal practice to take a short cut on the problem. That is what happened here. It may not have been science, but it was not an establishment of religion. More ominously, if it was, the Court may have been obliged to leave it alone.
God will decide when the case has been settled.
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