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.
Thank you. I was addressing your post one piece at a time, as I disagreed with most of it. I came to the part about service and it made my blood boil. It really did. I had a very difficult time showing restraint. I wish that one of my cousins still had his website up, which had pictures of all of "The Boys" in uniform, from Grandpa to present (just on my father's side of the family). When I said "well over a dozen", I wasn't kidding. His site is down, darnit.
We have had a number of discussions on FR, and they have been quite civil for the most part. I would like that to continue.
I meant "homework" figuratively. I gave you the facts. If you want the details, you can study history. Totalitarian socialist movements are invariably atheistic, and both Marxism-Leninism and National Socialism were influenced by evolutionary thinking. Hitler thought the Germans were the master race, the highest achievement of evolution. He simply wanted to give a push to the natural process, to speed things up, to improve the collective human gene pool, so to speak. Both he and the Soviet and Chicom leaders were completely uninhibited by Christian beliefs, which would have made them unwilling to slaughter millions of people.
I think heres a great lesson to learn...dont start knocking what one might perceive as a another posters lack of military experience either personally, or within their family....start doing that, and the person doing the knocking is likely to find themself, quite embarrassed by the true facts when they come out...
Seams to me that Hitler, the Soviet's and the Chicom's tried to design what they considered a better way of life.
Not much evolutionary or ID theory in anything they did.
TToE is silent on the designer of the Universe. In fact, I as well as many on this thread, marvel at the vastness and glory of a designer (who we also believe loves us personally, and that is made even more astounding).
A God that goes "*whap* Here is Adam" is a God that is personal and understandable -- Gandalf writ large. A God that could stand outside the Universe (or all Universes as it were) and design every little tiny aspect is a God that is way too awesome and uncomprehendable.
I, for one, will not diminish God.
I think Satan is served when people believe anything other than God.
Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me."
In short, there is no problem with Truth. Faith in God says that God's way will be perfectly aligned with Truth.
Folks simply need to slide right into God's salvation that He's purchased for them through the sacrifice of His Son. If they resist they continue in their lost state.
From that perspective of faith, those who are sincere in their faith in Christ can rest in the knowledge that God's in control of everything....including origins and endings.
Hitler thought the Germans were the master race, the highest achievement of evolution.
Since you persist in being nasty...."Hitler thought the Germans were the master race, the highest achievement of creation evolution"...I fixed it for you. I don't think Hitler thought Jews and Aryans had a common ancestor, do you?
Actually once I saw "Pekingman" I knew that you had a bunch of fakes. But if you want to believe in a bunch of fake rocks thats your business.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel
Excuse me, but where do you see in my words that I specifically questioned somebody's military experience? Did I even bring up the subject? No. The subject was tyranny, particulary the accusation that God and those who speak on His behalf are tyrants. Get a grip.
So I have you trapped. You are an insult artist and a little child who can't truly reason or argue anything.
Ad hominem is your stock in trade. You talk a good gane (I even complimented your religious post earlier), but you are a hypocrite.
I thank you for giving us the best example of the species: CRIDERus HYPOCRITus INSULTus.
Then please elaborate.
Are we now having a Bible quiz?....I would ask you this...since you will no doubt say that you believe it, do you completely keep yourself and your family and your animals from any work at all, as is told in the verse?
I will contemplate this further...I tried to get away from this thread earlier, and need to really do so now...but surely I will return and we can continue, should we wish to...
Have a nice evening...
Those who do bad in the name of God are the best tools of Satan.
If I understand correctly, there is no "or else". Every knee shall bow, including those destined for hell. P-Marlowe, please correct me if I'm wrong on this.
I have been able to show these threads to my very "liberal/progressive" roommate and she is blown away that this kind of discussion can happen here on a "Conservative web site".
Now that's something I liked to hear.
You need to read something about what those people believed in, and how they arrived at their hellish view of the world. For example, there was an interesting post on FR recently, showing how dominant intellectual fashions in 19th century Germany directly led to communism, National Socialism, and anti-Semitism. As I said before, "ideas have consequences." That's why everyone who values our kind of nation should worry about stuffing a simplified version of evolution into the heads of very young kids, while simultaneously driving all traditional Judeo-Christian belief out of the schools and out of public life.
And nobody can prove we are even here, what a farce. You guys are really reaching now. Most of science has more evidence than your cult. How did the eye "evolve"? What good is an eye that doesn't work do? Let me hear your "theory".
Why did everything evolve all at once and hasn't evolved since??
Darwin is to science what The Treason Times is to Truth.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel
As should we all.
Human instruments are about as comparable to an intelligence that could actually engineer speciation as a stone ax is to a plasma etcher...
We aren't that freakin' smart really...
There is no more evidence that life evolved on this earth than there is for life to have been delivered or engineered here by extraterrestrials (in our midst)...
And, no, I am not an ID proponent (whatever the hell that means).
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RFC_Gal: Quite a few large bio related companies use evolution theory and other derived theories to make new drugs and treatments.
What happens when some of those "geniuses" create something we cannot get rid of??? (You don't want to go there, because the idiots already have...)
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