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.
Or that yellow citrus-tasting stuff they give you the night before a scope.
That'll clean yer riflings. Yecchhhh!
:>)
The (m)uslims saved and translated the Greek texts while Europe was in the Dark Ages. Well documented. If they hadn't, we wouldn't even know who Aristotle, Plato, et al, were.
It was their one-and-only contribution to civilization.
Archeopteryx came after the bird and was a dead end fossil. It is no transition at all. Fake but True, where have we heard this.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel
>> There is no such thing as a "religion of Darwinism".<<
Yes there is. Ann makes the point better than I can. Read Godless...
Teach the controversy.
Seriously, congratulations on passing academic milestones.
All the major Christian denominations agree on the nature of Jesus Christ and his mission and teaching, and all use basically the same Bible. Everything else in minor, although human beings do like to find trivia to argue over. The differences are chiefly about liturgy, church organization, and the like. The threat to our freedom today comes not from believing Christians, but from people who actively, belligerently attack those of Judeo-Christian faiths. I repeat: Christianity is the foundation of the Western culture which produced our free institutions and the science so beloved of some posters here.
There were no atheists, and only a handful of deists, among the Fouding Fathers, although they did adhere to several Christian denominations.
Your thought leads to a question...do you believe that ones views concerning evolution/literal creation/ID belief, are matters of salvation?
Many on these CREVO threads, do indeed, tell those who support evolution, that by doing so, they are risking their souls, they will surely go to Hell and burn forever(and to my chagrin, they actually seem to delight in this notion)...
Others, who do not support evolution, and may support literal creation or ID, that I have chatted with via Freepmail, do not seem to take this same stand...they believe that those who support evolution are mistaken, but they do not also believe that the support of evolution alone, condemns ones soul...
There seems to be a split among those who do not support evolution, as to whether or not, support of evolution leads one to damnation...
I find this quite curious...
Get ready for this heresy: ANN WAS WRONG! She was so caught up in her thesis she missed the "facts" part.
Too bad, because I love Ann -- she is right 94% of the time. But the attack on TToE was both under-reasearched and sorta silly.
Human pride and vanity are what reject evolution and endorse the current "global warming" scare. Pride and vanity and NOTHING ELSE.
If you can read between the lines, Here's one.
No, it's not. If you had read the article before pointing us to that webpage, you'd see that talkorigins.org in fact does not address finches etc....
LOL!!! A non-testable, non-investigatable jumble of psychobabble "offers new insights?"
In philosophy class, no doubt. But it can't expand scientific knowledge and is thus moot in a science context.
I am going to disagree with you here...we see all the time on FR, where one person from one 'Christian' religion will tell another person from another 'Christian' religion that they are not really Christians at all, because their religion is just too different or too weird...according to some of the so-called FR religion experts, one cannot actually be a Christian if the belong to the Mormon religion, or the Christian Scientist religion, or the Jehovahs Witnesses religion, or the Catholic Religion, and on and on and on...yet each one of these religions does exactly as you suggest, they probably do agree on the nature of Jesus Christ and his mission and teachings...
That does not stop one person from one 'Christian' religion telling another person from another 'Christian', religion, that they are not really Christians after all..
I disagree completely with your analysis that there are only minor differences....
Nobody of sound mind denies that natural selection happens but natural selection, in and of itself, is not a mechanism that moves evolutuion along it's merry way.
It's all about the benjamins and the mechanisms.
Heres one:And if you either don't do it His way, or refuse to believe that it even is His way He throws you into a lake of fire for all of eternity. He is only loving when worshipped. Petulant.
Course that is not an insult if your an atheist.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel
If you can read between the lines, Here's one.
LOL. Well, if you thought that's your best argument, better try again.
Then why are the creationists/ID'ers so fearful of understanding? There are a large number of scientists on this forum (I ain't one) who are more than willing to explain things, and go to great lengths to do so. A book could be written with just Ichneumon's posts. Creationists and ID proponents wont read it. Their fear of knowledge and understanding is palpable.
Proverbs 1:
[5] A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:
Proverbs 3:
[13] Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.
[14] For the merchandise of it is better than the merchandise of silver, and the gain thereof than fine gold.
[15] She is more precious than rubies: and all the things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her.
[16] Length of days is in her right hand; and in her left hand riches and honour.
[17] Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.
[18] She is a tree of life to them that lay hold upon her: and happy is every one that retaineth her.
I clearly showed in an earlier post, that the "4000+" number includes divisions which are not churches in any meaningful sense. For example, "tribes' were counted in that number.
Lets stick to what's typical and representative of most of modern man, OK? There simply are not that many truly distinct religions, with millions of adherents each. Many would question calling something like Buddhism a religion, because most Buddhists do not believe in a supreme being. Confucianism is not a religion either, but an ethical system.
Most people who adhere to a theistic belief are either Christian or Muslim. Most Christians agree on major points and differ on minor ones. The church is diverse, because humanity is diverse. The Bible compares the church to a human body, which has different organs for different purposes. Different people want to emphasize different doctrines, or practice different styles of worship, that's all. So the idea that there are myriad Christian churches all differing on what is "truth" is specious, and carries a clear intent to besmirch the church.
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