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.
It does not bother me much to have you address me as such. But I doubt you would want to say the same thing to the One Who created you and your family, and gave you all the wonderful gifts you've enjoyed through life. Based on your post I should count you and your family some of many gifts to come my way. Thank you. Bless you.
Ah, but you have made my point...you have made a judgement that certain religions that consider themselves to be Christian, do not rank as Christian because they differ from other Christian religions...you are not the one to be the judge of whether they are Christians or not...
I still disagree completely with your contention that differing churches have only minor differences..you yourself, have seemed to have decided that certain relgions cannot be considered as Christian based on your own personal beliefs...
You have completely proved my point..and I am not a Christian Scientist, nor a Mormon, nor a Jehovahs Witness, but I find your characterization of them to be merely your own personal observation and you have come to your own personal views regarding them...These three religions encompass millions and millions of people they are not minor religions...that does not make them nor their dogmas right, simply based on numbers, any more than it makes any other religion right, based on their numbers...
As I said, I disagree completely with what you have to say...you and I just dont see this in the same way...
The only liar here is you.
Typical Fundamentalist,
I never called anybody that. Period.
my religion has more holes than a strainer
I never said that either.
You have far more faith than I do.
I never said that either
Your god is science and you follow it like a Mooselip bashing his head with a sword.
Total horsesh*t.
Are you sure ?
I used to believe. Then I actually read the Bible. Then I realized that the pastor was lying. Then I read the Bible again, and again, and realized that it contradicts itself on so many points that it is impossible to know what to believe. This is why there are so many different faiths. Some believe one part, some believe another. I made a decision, and that decision took some years to make. It is not easy undoing years of programming.
If the past 150 years have been an "intellectual rut" how do you explain the great leaps in science and tech we have made during that time period?
And one wonders if she got here ideas on Clinton from original work or from newspapers.
Thanks for your kind words...I think you are right, that most children do remain in the religion that they were born into...true, many folks do change religions, many folks become religious even tho they were not raised so, and some, even tho raised to be religious, throw off religion...
It is true I think, that a child, raised up from a very young age, within a particular religion, usually stays within that religion...now, that is my view, and apparently your view as well...I wonder if there has every been any extensive study done on this...it would be quite interesting...
Check my response to it.
Some Christian groups do have problems with the TOE, some don't. I think all of them would have problems with a view of human nature based on nothing but the TOE and other scientific concepts. I also think the history of the 20th century, with scores of millions killed by atheistic totalitarian systems heavily influenced by Darwinian thinking, shows why. Again, ideas and worldviews have consequences.
I think you can find numerous mocking, sarcastic jibes at organized Christianity in this thread and in many other crevo threads.
Weird how this one issue causes so many on here to behave exactly like liberals, eh? If you question evolution, you're a "flat-earther." Kinda like if you question the wisdom of the homosexual lifestyle, liberals instantly label you a bigot. Precisely the same tactic.
MM
Actually that link has several hundred individual creationist claims and associated rebuttals. Here is the link again: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html.
The Lutheran Book of Concord, which some Lutheran Church bodies accept as essential confessions of the Christian Faith, explicity equates the office of the papacy with that of the antichrist inasmuch as it attempts to supplant the righteousness earned by Christ with a righteousness earned by men, especially since that office takes its place within the Church, just as the Apostle Paul says of the antichrist.
Nevertheless, history being what it is, Lutherans continually engage in dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church and other churches in order to test what may or may not be in accord with what the biblical texts enunciate. Ultimately it is God who creates and sustains the Church, just as He created and sustains the world. But He does not do so on the basis of half truths perpetrated by his creatures.
Easy. Anything but Darwinism.
Why?
Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel
It really doesn't matter what you think about the bible, what pastors say, what professors say.....
What matters is what you do when God brings you into the glide path to salvation.
You will resist. Or you will accept.
And it's already known which you will do. There's nothing going to change that.
"But as many as received Him to them gave He power to become children of God, even to those who believed on His name."
The Grape that can with Logic absolute
The Two-and-Seventy jarring Sects confute:
The subtle Alchemist that in a Trice
Life's leaden Metal into Gold transmute.
A vision of loveliness just entered my brain:
E) Because God wanted it that way.
There just might be something to this ID stuff after all! ;-)
To be more specific: creativity, and making possible what was thought to be impossible.
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