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.
I regret that you have become hostile. I decline to engage in personal vituperation. Please regard this conversation as ended.
Survival of the fittest is so 19th century, don't you agree?
How about "reproductive advantage" or something else a little closer to modern thought?
I am merely trying to get a grasp of where in the Bible some of these things are supposed to be...my Bible does not say that many different men and women of all the different races were created on the 6th day...it says Adam and Eve were created, and that is the traditional Christian belief, that on the 6th day of creation one man and one woman were created, not men and women of all the races...
And where is this 8th day that Murray talks about..this 8th day, where the 2nd Adam was created...he was not discussing Genesis in the lecture part of his program, but rather was answering some questions from the viewers...and someone asked about was this 2nd Adam created on the 8th day, and Murrays response was 'Bingo, you have got that right'...
I just cannot find these things in any Bible that I have...
Didn't ask what gravity does, asked how it does it ;)
Show me one post where I called someone stupid. Do it now or I WILL have you banned.
No, it doesn't say that. Where are you getting the phrase "and then The Adam was formed" from? It says "God formed man out of...".
Genesis 2:
[5] And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.
[6] But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.
[7] And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
How many "scientific illiterates" do you think work as engineers.
Many.
Do you know how much science is in an engineering curriculum?
Yes, I do, and the answer is none. Engineering is applied science for economic gain. It is not the practice of science. Engineering is not concerned with exploring the unknown, it is concerned with applying accepted scientific knowledge for economic gain. Applying scientific theories to produce economically profitable products is not 'science'.
Look up what the word "man" means.
Suddenly.
Gravity sucks.
Gravity sucks.
However, you can fight gravity with levity...
Or the correct kind of bra.
Are you sure it doesn't hold it down? If there was no gravity, would the moon crash to the earth, or take off into space?
So, since the scientific understanding of DNA shows that all the people on earth today, cannot have come from just two people, it is permissible to extrapolate from that, that what the Bible actually says is wrong, about God creating one man and one woman, Adam and Eve, and that what is really meant is that way more than just one man and one woman were created? I thought it was actually written in Genesis, that Adam, one man was created, and after that, one woman Eve..that is what my Bible says...
If you are serious...
Google Graviton
The rudeness was in not pinging him -- it is FR etiquette.
And of course, evoids are hardly the ones to give lectures on "rudeness."
Please don't make me prove that when it comes to insults, CR/Iders throw them early and often. Those of us who understand TToE actually show amazing restraint in the face of straight insults, ad hominem "reasoning," non sequitur "logic," guilt by association and pretty much every logical fallacy in the book.
The so-called "Christians" are the worst and most vituperous of the bunch.
Those of us on the science merely are exasperated with willful ignorance. If we use a little sarcasm to make our point, at least it is based in logic.
Ah, so now we are down to what certain words mean, and how they are interpreted..I have been told that the Scriptures are not subject to interpretation(a view I do not subscribe to)...
What does the word 'man' mean in this context?
Also please explain about this 8th day when the 2nd Adam was created...I cannot find that either...
Him calling me a liar in post 288, and then that sexist crap in post 1,032 should help with that.
I always heard there is no Gravity -- the Earth sucks.
Beat me by 47 seconds.
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