Posted on 07/27/2006 3:00:03 PM PDT by BrandtMichaels
What are Darwinists so afraid of?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: July 27, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern
By Jonathan Witt © 2006
As a doctoral student at the University of Kansas in the '90s, I found that my professors came in all stripes, and that lazy ideas didn't get off easy. If some professor wanted to preach the virtues of communism after it had failed miserably in the Soviet Union, he was free to do so, but students were also free to hear from other professors who critically analyzed that position.
Conversely, students who believed capitalism and democracy were the great engines of human progress had to grapple with the best arguments against that view, meaning that in the end, they were better able to defend their beliefs.
Such a free marketplace of ideas is crucial to a solid education, and it's what the current Kansas science standards promote. These standards, like those adopted in other states and supported by a three-to-one margin among U.S. voters, don't call for teaching intelligent design. They call for schools to equip students to critically analyze modern evolutionary theory by teaching the evidence both for and against it.
The standards are good for students and good for science.
Some want to protect Darwinism from the competitive marketplace by overturning the critical-analysis standards. My hope is that these efforts will merely lead students to ask, What's the evidence they don't want us to see?
Under the new standards, they'll get an answer. For starters, many high-school biology textbooks have presented Haeckel's 19th century embryo drawings, the four-winged fruit fly, peppered moths hidden on tree trunks and the evolving beak of the Galapagos finch as knockdown evidence for Darwinian evolution. What they don't tell students is that these icons of evolution have been discredited, not by Christian fundamentalists but by mainstream evolutionists.
We now know that 1) Haeckel faked his embryo drawings; 2) Anatomically mutant fruit flies are always dysfunctional; 3) Peppered moths don't rest on tree trunks (the photographs were staged); and 4) the finch beaks returned to normal after the rains returned – no net evolution occurred. Like many species, the average size fluctuates within a given range.
This is microevolution, the age-old observation of change within species. Macroevolution refers to the evolution of fundamentally new body plans and anatomical parts. Biology textbooks use instances of microevolution such as the Galapagos finches to paper over the fact that biologists have never observed, or even described in theoretical terms, a detailed, continually functional pathway to fundamentally new forms like mammals, wings and bats. This is significant because modern Darwinism claims that all life evolved from a common ancestor by a series of tiny, useful genetic mutations.
Textbooks also trumpet a few "missing links" discovered between groups. What they don't mention is that Darwin's theory requires untold millions of missing links, evolving one tiny step at a time. Yes, the fossil record is incomplete, but even mainstream evolutionists have asked, why is it selectively incomplete in just those places where the need for evidence is most crucial?
Opponents of the new science standards don't want Kansas high-school students grappling with that question. They argue that such problems aren't worth bothering with because Darwinism is supported by "overwhelming evidence." But if the evidence is overwhelming, why shield the theory from informed critical analysis? Why the campaign to mischaracterize the current standards and replace them with a plan to spoon-feed students Darwinian pabulum strained of uncooperative evidence?
The truly confident Darwinist should be eager to tell students, "Hey, notice these crucial unsolved problems in modern evolutionary theory. Maybe one day you'll be one of the scientists who discovers a solution."
Confidence is as confidence does.
These standards, like those adopted in other states and supported by a three-to-one margin among U.S. voters, don't call for teaching intelligent design. They call for schools to equip students to critically analyze modern evolutionary theory by teaching the evidence both for and against it.
Anyone that supports a balanced look at Darwinist theories does not necessarily support a religious answer just like one does not need to have any religious pedigree to be against abortion.
So to those that label anyone that has questions about Darwin theories are only engaging in the same tactic that the left uses to label anyone racist that questions affirmative action policy.
I'm going to have to guess wildly at this one, as I honestly don't know. Was it because Noah & family had to have something to eat?
Ah, but the slime. That was a Masterpiece.
What do you have to say to people who say God was so incompetent at design that he threw the table over when his first people disobeyed him, or so intemperate that he destroyed all his toys when some of them didn't suit him?
Of course it looks round when viewed from above - it's shaped like a pancake
I cannot imagine an infinitely powerful and wise being would be affected, let alone upset, about something so trivial. Just 1s and 0s in someones head.
On the subject of learning/teaching different views.
Have you seen the Joseph Campbell interviews on PBS (years ago, because he's dead now) about Mythology ?
I found it excruciatingly boring, and at the same time, I was fascinated with his breadth of knowledge and how from the beginning of recored time Man has always looked for a meaning to life.
It is in our human nature to explore, be curious and seek out solutions to the human condition.
I found Joseph Campbell, when I was agnostic, I left as an atheist, I continued my journey and became a Christian.
There is not one thing in the scientific world that I am afraid to deal with.
You are actually referring to my post #4.
The four points in the article at the beginning of this thread have been rebutted many times. They are nonsense. I posted a link to a website which has the details on these four, and many other creationist claims.
In my initial post I had a typo and the link appeared correctly but didn't work. The correct and working link is:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html.
And, by the way, I insulted nobody. I called some of the claims in the article nonsense, but I did not insult the poster. There is a difference.
The answer has to do with animal sacrifice. They could sacrifice only clean animals.
Competition of ideas.
Biggest case of genocide, and intentional mass extinction in history: All but one family wiped out (in the case of humans), all but 7 breeding pairs of clean animals, and all but one breeding pair of unclean animals.
"The BIG problem is that atheistic Darwinists (the controlling faction) deny that ANY questioning of Darwinism represents balance."
Because ID ISN'T scientific. It wants the label of science though in order to do so the definition of science would have to be altered to include untestable claims.
Ah! I have often wondered, but my curiosity never rose to the level of "Ok, that's it, I have to know the why of it" before. Thanks!
Assertion is not evidence.
Finally just look at your hand and tell me it wasn't designed.
Stand in a Kansas cornfield and tell me the earth is round. Drop a lead ball and a feather and tell me that gravitational acceleration is independent of the falling object's mass. Shoot an electron at a barrier with two slits and tell me it can go through both of them simultaneously. Reality does not have to conform to your intuition.
Wouldn't do to sacrifice one of the last breeding pair. Somebody can probably figure out how many animals they had to set aside depending on how long they expected to stay afloat.
Competition of ideas.
What competition of ideas? That's the wrong answer. The answer is ignorance and irrationality. Rational people fear the influence, advance, triumph, and tyranny of ignorance, for very good reasons. This is based on the history of human behavior under the influence of ignorance, superstition, irrational fear, and religious fanaticism.
The Bible does not say that.
If one wants to count the generations of Man (as counted in the Bible) from the time of Adam to the current day, one might come up with a figure resembling that (4004 BC) number.
I do not expect people to get the distinction, but there certainly is one between the 4004 BC date, and what ever else may have happened before that Biblical Day.
Get up in a grain silo and the curvature is obvious.
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