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.
The Sanhedrin of Darwin says Stone Him! Everyone ignore him because he is speaking heresy of the god Science.
Drunk? Another weak attack by someone who has already lost. Now show us some actual fossil evidence that has been verified. Hint: there isn't any.
All the Sanhedrins man and all the Sanhedrins horses can't put Darwin back together again. Too bad, so sad!
Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel
evolution is a theory. if you think muslims being behind 9-11, that's your problem
Fact is Hitler was a huge evolutionist/eugenicist as was Stalin and Mao.
Did Hitler think Aryans and Jews had a common ancestor? Invoking eugenics (which is not evolution), Stalin, and Mao does not answer that question. Why won't you answer it?
Naw, bray and I were sitting next to each other with our laptops and passing the joint.
(just kidding)
Ok, now I really AM off to bed. There I'm hitting the little red x at the upper right. C'mon robroy, you can do it. Just move the mouse over to the corner. A little farther, almost th.....
So what do you make of those paleontologists who recently used the theory of evolution to predict what to look for and where to look and found Tiktaalik
Where did creationism say to dig? what did it say they would find? Why should scientists pay any attention to it until it can be used to guide scientific discovery?
So is gravity. Are you unaware of what "theory" means in science, or are you being deliberately deceptive?
No kidding, too funny!
Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel
It is exactly this kind of willful ignorance that plays into the stereotype of conservatives as anti-science fundamentalists.
The fact you are drunk is an obesrvation, not an argument. You have been presented with evidence. You ignore it (you don't even bother to pretend to refute it). You bang your feet on the floor like a four year old and scream "it isn't true because I don't like it."
Be willfully ignorant if you wish. The Left needs moonbats on our side so you and your ilk present them with such.
I will not be talking to you again in this thread.
Show me the proof....
You must be a proponent of Karst topography.
But you do not understand the problem--they are not running out of limestone, they are running out of virgins.
Well at least you will never have to worry about being called that.
Pray for W and Our Troops
Shalom Israel
What are you talking about? I just said no he did not believe they had a common ancestry. He believed they were from an ancient Nordic race.
So obviously Hitler was a creationist.
With enough divine "explanations", everything can be explained.
When I was a kid, my sister and I would walk past the bakery on the way home from school and knock on the window. He always had a bag of donut holes for us. Now they sell donut holes, instead of giving them to kids on their way home from school.
I feel sorry for the kids of today.
And, no, our parents didn't know. :-)
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