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.
Indeed, as you put it, that might be the way..however, this points out a fact that I have been trying to bring out, which is often denied by some...my point is, much of what people say the Bible says, is a matter of interpretation...some people deny this...they deny that much of what is in the Bible is a matter of interpretation...that what they say, the Bible says, is really what God meant...
I say, no one speaks for God, that what people struggle their best to do, is understand what the Bible says, as best as they can...but it does seem, that what people say the Bible actually says, is based upon their own reading and interpretation...
I am just trying to understand Murrays interpretations, as they are so different from mainstream Christianity...
This presentation of evolution states that evolution, in conclusion, demonstrates there is no God.
Dawkins does that....uses evolution to conclude there is no God.
Not in anything you have posted so far.
Perhaps you have some other statements by Dawkins that really do say that?
I went to a rigorous secondary school, where everyone was prepping for college. The people who were on scientific career tracks not only didn't study evolution, they didn't study any kind of biology. Biology was regarded as a derived science, better taken later. Instead, they all took physics and chemistry, and math of course. Somehow, that didn't keep many of them from becoming physicians (which is largely applied biology) and PhD. physical scientists (including dept. chairmen and Harvard faculty). So the idea that not teaching evolution in middle school will cripple American science just doesn't impress me much.
People can learn evolution and geology in college, when they have more choice about where they go. The problem is that 1) public school is compulsory and 2) many parents find teaching evolution to their kids to be repugnant. I think force-feeding fellow citizens' kids stuff they find anathema to be totalitarian, regardless of how foolish some people may think the parents are. Sneering at other people's beliefs is the elitist liberal's game.
Dawkins, who holds the Charles Simonyi Chair of Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, is known for his books The Blind Watchmaker, The Selfish Gene, River out of Eden and Climbing Mount Improbable. In all of his work he successfully explains how complex forms of life evolved from simple forms of life. In a number of lectures and debates, notably the Voltaire Lecture "Viruses of the Mind", he demands that scientists and other rational people stop waffling and accept the lack of evidence for religious claims and draw the obvious conclusions: there is no god, and religion is a pack of lies.
I have never read anything penned or spoken by Dawkins which indicates he considered the ToE to be a disproof of the existence and/or activity of divinity.
please provide a citation, in full, in its context, which confirms your assertion.
At yet you sneer at the life's work of tens of thousands of biologists and geologists and anthropologists and paleontologists and astronomers who have lived and worked over the last 200 years.
What knd of elitist does that make you? One of the Elect?
It goes deeper than just not teaching evolution. It is an attack on science by religion, for religious, rather than scientific, reasons.
The attack is broad, not just on the particular items they disagree with, but on the very methods of science. "Its just a theory" and the stickers are a case in point. That distorts the methods of science, and while true, conveys such a false impression that it amounts to a lie. "Teach the controversy" is another example; the controversy is not within science, but between science and a particular brand of religion. Again, this amounts to a lie because of its dishonest misdirection. (There are many more ways to lie than telling a flat-out falsehood.)
So, I guess you advocate dropping evolution and who knows what else for religious reasons; I advocate keeping them for scientific reasons.
I'm not a creationist, by the way.
The quote from Hitler in no way proves that Hitler believed in "special creation." For all you can tell from this quote, he might have thought Jews were Australopithecines. Not saying he did think that, but you can't tell anything from this quote.
I've already stated how leftist propaganda uses rhetorical devices, like Biblical phrases or allusions, to achieve deceptive ends. Apparently you haven't studied much communist or Nazi propaganda (or that of the liberal left, which is similar). You really need to get away from this obsession with "us scientists vs. the great ignorant unwashed" stuff and read some history for a change.
See #'s 1092 & 1106
EXACTLY! Frankly it would be wonderful if evolution were overthrown. (If there were a genuinely superior theory out there, even though I happen to doubt it, it would be exciting to be proved wrong.)
Unfortunately the antievos won't even try to come up with a better theory, or with (genuine) evidence falsifying evolution. They're too busy harassing school boards and science teachers and developing vacuous "wedge" entities like ID. Alas.
If you will accept a little unsolicited advice, you should be more careful in what you assert. 'Sensitivity' is a very odd way of putting it.
I do not personally support dropping them for "religious reasons." I sympathize with those who support dropping them, but my reasons are political and ethical. I think the idea that dropping them will cripple science, and many of the other arguments for pushing evolution, are sheer hype.
I think the correct conservative position is to get rid of monopolistic government schools, but I'm a realiist enough not to see that happening soon, if ever.
the key phrases are "image of God, the Eternal" and "image of the Devil"
direct reference to "created in His image"
game. set. match.
since you don't like what this DIRECT QUOTE indicates about Hitler's beliefs, you spin it, stating that it doesn't "prove" anything.
well, it proves he said exactly that, and history (oh, you messed up with that "read some history" crack) indicates that his Christian audience lapped it up like mother's milk.
You don't consider 'em Christians. Fair enough. Bear in mind that they considered themselves Christians, in the same way as did the Inquisition, pogrom-prone Russian idiots, and various European kingdoms and states which ALSO enacted/supported institutional antisemitism while simultaneously calling themselves Christian.
you don't like what that says about some Christians, so you deny that they were Christians.
sad.
let me know when you get out of the minors and are ready to make another stab at the Show.
I keep having visions of Lysenko and what he did to science in the Soviet Union. I don't want to see a version of that here.
If the folks who have specific fundamentalist religius beliefs succeed in forcing evolution out of high school science classes, will that satisfy them? Will they then be satisfied and call it a day?
Somehow I doubt it.
I think Heinlein said it best:
It is a truism that almost any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so, and will follow it by suppressing opposition, subverting all education to seize early the minds of the young, and by killing, locking up, or driving underground all heretics.Robert A. Heinlein, Postscript to Revolt in 2100, 1953
Squish that bug!
1106 is a statement about what he wrote made by another author.
1092 is an excerpt from S.J. Gould concerning Dawkins, yet again not a citation of Dawkins' work itself. moreover, that excerpt does NOT indicate that Dawkins used the ToE or empirical science to DISPROVE DIVINITY.
do try again.
the stipulation was:
"I have never read anything penned or spoken by Dawkins which indicates he considered the ToE to be a disproof of the existence and/or activity of divinity.
please provide a citation, in full, in its context, which confirms your assertion."
Let me restate that, to avoid any wiggle-roo... ah! "misunderstanding"
please provide a citation:
1. which is penned or spoken by Dawkins,
2. in full,
3. in its context,
4. which confirms your assertion that he considered the ToE to be a disproof of the existence and/or activity of divinity.
Certainly worked for the Jews, who delighted in crucifying Christ.
There is always the M'Bunji theory of how things are held together.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.