Free Republic Poll on Evolution

Free Republic ^ | 22 September 2006 | Vanity

[PatrickHenry]

Free Republic is currently running a poll on this subject:

Do you think creationism or intelligent design should be taught in science classes in secondary public schools as a competing scientific theory to evolution?

You can find the poll at the bottom of your "self search" page, also titled "My Comments," where you go to look for posts you've received.

I don't know what effect -- if any -- the poll will have on the future of this website's science threads. But it's certainly worth while to know the general attitude of the people who frequent this website.

Science isn't a democracy, and the value of scientific theories isn't something that's voted upon. The outcome of this poll won't have any scientific importance. But the poll is important because this is a political website. How we decide to educate our children is a very important issue. It's also important whether the political parties decide to take a position on this. (I don't think they should, but it may be happening anyway.)

If you have an opinion on this subject, go ahead and vote.

[freedumb2003]

You're the one who hangs around with the Young Earth crowd, not me. In fact, I'd go so far as to suggest they are, in religious terms, beyond the pale of orthodoxy.

Umm, I have no idea what you mean. I find the YECers kind of funny but mostly pathetic. Check your IFF indicator.

Guess I shouldn't be surprised to find a animist hanging with them eh?!

I don't know what an "Animist" is (I assume it isn't someone who has sex with animals).

I am serious -- your posts have degenerated into meaninglessness. I suggest you sign off for the night and post again tomorrow when you only see one screen.

[SoldierDad]

"This is not equivalent to saying he is generally uneducated, but that he is uneducated in the subject under discussion."

When a poster posts a comment in which they claim someone is uneducated and provides no clarity as to what they mean by that, then they have wronged the other person. A more correct term to use in such an instance is the word "ignorant" of the subject as opposed to uneducated in general (which is what that post implied). This is especially true when the poster's comment has no clarification, wouldn't you say?

[freedumb2003]

Evolution, the religion of socialism.

Physics, the religion of Fascism.

Astronomy, the religion of Communism.

Hey, anybody can play.

[muawiyah]

YOu mean you aren't part of the regular "Evolution or death" crowd?

Coulda' fooled me?

[Liberal Classic]

Animist is a term for the beliefs of some primitive cultures that believes everything has a soul. Spirits of the wind, of rain, the trees, the bear, etc. In short, he's calling you an idolator for worshipping evolution.

[muawiyah]

There are several posters (on the Evo side usually) who have a deficit in English comprehension.

Odds are this dispute started when one of them tried to say something ~ usually it's "You are liar" or "you ignorant".

[tomzz]

Evolution is not about "science". If it were, it would have been jetissoned decades ago since all meaningful evidence refutes it. Evolution is about protecting lifestyles and about feeling good about being sinners which is more or less the opposite of Christianity; Christians figure they should have the decency to act like they regret being sinners once in a while...

[freedumb2003]

When a poster posts a comment in which they claim someone is uneducated and provides no clarity as to what they mean by that, then they have wronged the other person. A more correct term to use in such an instance is the word "ignorant" of the subject as opposed to uneducated in general (which is what that post implied). This is especially true when the poster's comment has no clarification, wouldn't you say?

LOL!! OK -- from now on we will call people "ignorant" instead of "uneducated." (FWIIW -- most people [IMHO] prefer the latter)

But if you want to invoke the "SoldierDad" rule to call ignorant people ignorant, we can try. But the mods seem to see "ignorant" as an insult and "uneducated" as an unfortunate circumstance.

What say ye, b_sharp?

[editor-surveyor]

"Please provide proof for any valid alternative to TToE that explains the literally billions of pieces of evidence in existence."

God has already provided it: DNA, that prevents evolution, and the remains of the judgement of the earth that the uninformed simply dismiss as a 'geologic column.'

"We await the peer-reviewed journal links."

Truth and reality need no such house of cards, only lies and deception rely on the fearful opinions advanced in controlled peer-reviewed journal articles to support them in the absence of evidence. It's a controlled circus.

[Coyoteman]

Evolution is not about "science". If it were, it would have been jetissoned decades ago since all meaningful evidence refutes it. Evolution is about protecting lifestyles and about feeling good about being sinners...

You have become a caricature of yourself.

You are posting that Evolution is not about "science" while all the real universities in the country, and around the world, consider evolution to be a legitimate study.

I think you are about three sigmas out of it.

[freedumb2003]

Animist is a term for the beliefs of some primitive cultures that believes everything has a soul. Spirits of the wind, of rain, the trees, the bear, etc. In short, he's calling you an idolator for worshipping evolution.

I ewkne atthat but he was making such a oolfay of imhay I wanted him to asay selfimhay

When someone and-hays you an ammerhay you don't want to right away askay-may emthay!!

*elbow bump* elbow bump*

[Virginia-American]

[the genesis of Hitler's race policies]

Stultis: The point of Nazi race policy was to restore the original created order: to restore the purity of the blood and thereby the purity of the racial soul. This had nothing to do with evolution, but to the extent you can put it in those terms the purpose of the Nazis was not to advance evolution, but to reverse it.

Indeed, I challenge anyone to show where any of Hitler, Rosenberg, Himmler et al ever advanced the thought that Jews and Aryans shared a common ancestor. I don't think it's useful to call someone an "evolutionist" if they don't accept the common ancesry of all people.

betty boop: You miss my point here, Stultis. The fundamental claim of the Nazi ideologists was that man could decide, respecting his fellow men, who was "fit" and who was not. And therefore, what living beings were privileged to continue in a living state, and which were not. Whatever "excuse" the Fascist makes to support his claim -- the recovery of a "lost" Eden, the construction of a perfect utopia in spacetime reality, whatever -- is almost entirely beside the point. That's the PR angle designed to smokescreen the reality that is actually taking place, to give it an ersatz "justification." At this level of description of the problem, you are looking at pure B.S....

The only way to justify such a scheme of things is on the basis of power: We might say "species" power. For Hitler's theory of racial superiority rested on the consensus of a "favored species," determining the fate of the lesser-favored species effectively at its whim. The notion of "survival of the fittest" excuse was paramount, even if shall we say not evident from first principles.

Hitler thought his destiny was, among other things, to free Germany of the Jews. This, he thought, would be good for public morals (ridding the Reich of syphilis and porn), the economy, and the purity of Aryan blood. Why did this platform win elections in Germany? I claim it had a lot more to do with Martin Luther than Darwin. In fact, I bet you can't find a single snti-Semitic statement from Darwin, but there are plenty from Luther.

[tomzz]

Perhaps it would have been better to ask if the creation account should be taught as an alternative explanation of how life arose on the earth, even if it's taught in science classes along with the ToE. It would be interesting to see the poll results for that wording, as I know several others have expressed the same difficulties in voting as you did.

The way the question is usually asked is something like "Should religion be placed on an equal footing with evolution in the classroom?"

The real answer is, only if the religion you choose is the RIGHT one. In other words, in order to have an apples to apples comparison, you'd need a religion which operated on an intellectual level similar to that of evolution and the only candidates I know of would be voodoo, rastafari, and santeria. Rastafari in fact would lend itself to certain kinds of team-teaching situations in that a biology teacher looking for a way to put 30 teenagers into the right frame of mind for indoctrination into a brain dead ideology like evolution, could walk across the hall to the rasta class for a box of spliffs.

[SoldierDad]

For me this started when I requested evidence that things/animals/whatever evolved into something else entirely and was put down for not accepting the evidence they tried to use as evidence. Since then I've asked them to answer a simple question of where are the transitional fossils between those they say became something else, and they have not answered the question. They just called me bigoted and uneducated. Then they wanted me to provide my evidence for some claim I never made.

[freedumb2003]

YOu mean you aren't part of the regular "Evolution or death" crowd? Coulda' fooled me?

Umm -- no just part of the "science isn't philososphy" and "philosophy shouldn't be taught as science" crowd.

[tomzz]

Don't forget, both Marxism and fascism take their view of man from neoDarwinist principles.

The most major statement of the problem is probably still Sir Arthur Keith's Evolution and Ethics.

[SoldierDad]

When I first found FR someone told me that if I followed a thread long enough eventually a mention of Hitler would appear regardless of the actual topic. I guess they were right.

[b_sharp]

"You cannot refute that which is junk science. The circular logic (or rather lack of) doesn't permit a cogent discussion, let alone refutation. If I say anything, you'll find some fault (as evidenced in your inability to answer the earlier questions I raised and instead engaged in an ad hominen attack against my position). Therefore, I cannot refute what you refuse anything as you refuse to look at another possibilities."

If I remember correctly, and I know you will correct me if I'm wrong, your argument against Evolution was that there is no evidence that shows common descent. When presented with fossil sequences, and the mention of shared DNA sequences, rather than counter those pieces of information you simply and baldly declared them to not be evidence.

Declaring them to not be evidence is not an argument.

We can and have supplied quotes and links that trace back to either the primary literature, or popularizations of the primary literature by the authors of that literature. You are in effect arguing against that primary literature. To argue against that takes more than just an assertion.

If you make assertions that the information we supply cannot be taken as evidence, without providing cogent and coherent reason, we have no alternative but to believe you simply do not have reason to claim foul but are doing so from personal bias.

Prove me wrong. Explain why the Archaeopteryx is not a transitional. Explain why the sequence of fossils claimed to be transitionals between archaic Artiodactyls and Cetaceans should not be accepted. Perhaps give us a link to the research that based identification of relationships on small similarities while ignoring large differences. Perhaps explain why small similarities, if diagnostic in nature, should not be given more weight than non-diagnostic larger differences?

Or are we to take 'no it isn't' as a valid argument?

[betty boop]

could you please tell me who this person is, and from which work this quote comes?

andysandmikesmom, I'm so glad you asked. I confess I had to truncate the quote to fit the available space. The full passage reads:

Beautiful are the things we see;
More beautiful those we understand;
Much the most beautiful those we do not comprehend.

These are the words of the brilliant Danish polymath Niels Steensen (1638-1686, a/k/a Steno [most probably of Lutheran confession]), who made "fundamental discoveries in anatomy, such as 'Steno's duct,' the excretory duct of the salivary glands, and in minerology ('Steno's law'). He was one of the founders of geology. Steno devoted the last twenty years of his life to serving the Catholic Church, first as a priest, then as bishop, leading all the while a severely ascetic life. He is the only prominent scientist I [Abraham Paix] know of who has been beatified (in October 1988) [by the Roman Catholic Church].

I loved the insight, and hated to truncate it. It reminds me of something that Saint Anselm of Canterbury said: "O Lord, you are not only that than which a greater cannot be conceived, but you are also greater than what can be conceived." Still Anselm followed the light, the flame of spirit and truth. And so found grace and beauty and justice in this world -- and presumably in the next. As I imagine Steensen did also....

I cherish both Anselm and Steensen in my soul....

But to answer your question, I strongly doubt there is much published by Steensen outside the Danish language these days. More's the pity....

Thank you so very much for writing, andysandmikesmom!

[freedumb2003]

God has already provided it: DNA, that prevents evolution, and the remains of the judgement of the earth that the uninformed simply dismiss as a 'geologic column.'

I am going to go out on a limb and suggest you don't know anything about DNA. There are already DNA markers that point us clearly at a common origin to many animals.

Truth and reality need no such house of cards, only lies and deception rely on the fearful opinions advanced in controlled peer-reviewed journal articles to support them in the absence of evidence. It's a controlled circus.

So what do you think should be accepted in the alternate? Are you willing to allow your children, Mom, Dad or whomever to be operated on by someone who comes up with a new medical procedure to just be allowed to do it, irrespective of its scientific authority?

Is science to you just another opinion channel? If so, then we are finished as the scientific forerunner.