I use .... drum roll .....
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.
Really? I didn't evolve. I was made in the image and likeness of God. There is ONLY one Truth - God's Truth.
>>How can it be well supported when she got so much of it wrong? <<
Simple! It is because she also got so much of it RIGHT!
>> "wow. have you ever looked at your hand? I mean have you really looked at your hand? Man It's like - wow!<<
Well, technically, it depends on WHICH drug you took...
I found these reasons particularly compelling fro trusting the fossils in evidence:
Electron microscope pictures show fossilized bacteria attached to the feather area. No one in the nineteenth century could have detected these, much less faked them: they are pretty well impossible to fake today.
All of the fossils (specimens owned by a German family) were found when flat pieces of rock were split in half lengthwise. So, each fossil has an upper half, and a lower half. The whole rockbed fractured long ago, and the hairline fissures filled with a white mineral. These fissures extend right through the fossil bones and through the feather area, and they match up perfectly on the two half-slabs. No forger could fake the match, and since some of the fissures only show up under ultraviolet light, no nineteenth century forger would have known they were there.
Thanks for pointing me to the evidence. It really helps to get opposing assertions, but this time the record is supported by detail impossible to fake and or completely reasonable explanation for oddities found in the specimens.
freedumb2003 didn't say that, I did. It could only be considered an insult if you are God. Are you God?
" Which evidence do you consider fake?"
Piltcown man, Lucy, Spotted moth, Kennewick man, etc.
Actually, Lucy isn't technically "fake". What she is is some "bones and stuff" surrounded by a huge pile of "speculation" about what she was. It is the speculation that is fake.
Another poster posted: ... Hitler thought the Germans were the master race, the highest achievement of evolution.
Me: ."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?
You: Hitler was a big follower of Eugenics and was attempting to make a Master Race through evolution.
Me: First, eugenics is not evolution. And Hitler already thought the Aryans were a Master Race. He was trying to refine it and make sure it wasn't polluted and corrupted.
Now do you have a point to make in this context or not?
seems to be a lot more articles floating around to debunk the THEORY of evolution than there are to support it.
like a the lone guy in the office who is a fan of the superbowl champs...and he spends the next 364 days telling his coworkers the team is good even though some people think they didn't desevere to win.
I use .... drum roll .....
I take it then that you reject the whole of fossil evidence based on a small number of fakes.
With all the internet sites I use, I really don't feel a need for any stand-alone software. It's incredible how easy it is to find exactly what I need when I need it.
>>I take it then that you reject the whole of fossil evidence based on a small number of fakes.<<
No more than people throw out the whole of what Ann says because they think she is wrong about a couple of things.
Besides, it is not the evidence I contest. It is the conclusions.
Actually Hitler did not think he was the final race. He believed he could take the human race to the next level or god by forcing evolution. He believed that there was a higher race than us since he thought blacks were between man and monkey with Jews higher and Aryans at the top.
You can skew what you want but those are the facts.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel
We don't know what we don't know, and it is intellectual arrogance to believe otherwise.
Try reading history. The monks translated it into Latin from Arabic. Who do you suppose wrote it in Arabic?
There is ONLY one Truth - God's Truth.
Then why are there about a thousand different Christian sects? And uncounted non-Christian religions and sects?
You'll have to ask them.
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