Why We Must Teach Evolution in the Science Classroom

Red Orbit ^ | Saturday, 2 August 2008 | Laura Lorentzen

[Soliton]

don't remember when I first learned about the theory of evolution, but nowadays I find myself reading of it a great deal in the popular press and hearing it discussed in the media. As my daughter enters elementary school, I find myself anxious to discuss with her teachers what they will cover in science class and where in their curriculum they plan to teach evolution. OUR COUNTRY HAS LAWS THAT SEPARATE church and state. Public institutions like schools must be neutral on the subject of religion, as required by the Constitution's First Amendment. Our courts have mandated that creationism is not an appropriate addition to the science curriculum in public schools; yet supporters of intelligent design press to have antievolutionary discussions enter the science classroom. Creationists even advocate that, when leaching evolution, educators should add the disclaimer that it is "just a theory."

Let's consider why all of us as educated persons, scientists and nonseientists alike, should take note of what science is taught - and not taught - in our public schools. In common language, a theory is a guess of sorts. However, in scientific language, a theory is "a set of universal statements that explain some aspect of the natural world... formulated and tested on the basis of evidence, internal consistency, and their explanatory power."1 The theory of evolution meets all of these criteria.

[Texas Songwriter]

Canis latrans, my friend. Hello. I hope this day finds you well. Here in east Texas it is 103. We are dry as a powder keg.

I don't know,....sometimes when you say that to some on your posts you seem to be a little disrespectful, don't you think. Maybe I am being too sensitive. I guess sort of like you don't like being referred to as a darwinist. Darwinist is a term used in several academic books I have read. It, too, means no disrespect, just meant to be descriptive. You have been a little mean to my Christian friends today. I have been watching you. YOu be nice to them and they will return the favor.

Have a nice day. I'll be glad to take some questions to clear up your misunderstandings if you like. We can make it quick and painless. You can't and shouldn't stay in ignorance forever regarding these matters. I am your friend. I'll give you some bupivicaine to make it painless.

[Dog Gone]

I agree with that, and an appeal that THIS IS THE LAW is no longer an argument about what should be taught. It’s true, but it’s a different and largely irrelevant reason.

It would be like a conservative here arguing that the DC gun laws must be enforced because they are the law.

Well, no. The teaching of evolution must hinge on whether it’s the best science available, and certainly in the abstract, nobody could plausibly argue that we shouldn’t teach that. But the argument strays from that issue all the time, and that’s the problem.

[mrjesse]

Everyone always says or does what he/she thinks is the best decision at the time to further whatever goal they have. It can't be otherwise.

Which is why worldview matters: If one's world view is that all came from nothing and there is no such thing as wrong and self fullfillment is their main goal, then "The best thing" for them will be to do whatever they want to ultimately serve themselves regardless of wrongful acts towards others. On the other hand, if one's world view is that GOd exists and will judge every man in the end, then it is still true that one will response in a way which they consider best - but that way will be in a way that is to please God, since in the end, God will judge everybody, and since God says to not do wrongful acts against other people and to not lie, now the ultimate best thing to do no longer includes lying or cheating -- even if those would otherwise seem the most self serving ultimately. (And I realize that there is a self serving which appears to serve others.)

But there's an underlying assumption in your position which I don't think is correct, and that is that atheists are incapable of being moral or having an internal code of conduct defining right from wrong.

An atheist can certainly agree with what Jesus said about doing unto others as you would want them to treat you without buying into the concept of heaven or an eternal lake of fire for the wicked.

Oh, sure, atheists can choose to live by certain moral codes but my point is that they have no logical reason to do so except to the degree to further their own self interests.

My original question of "what's an atheist's best logical reason to never lie" still stands.

-Jesse

[Livin_large]

Refund the money we are forced to pay for your Darwinian indoctrination centers so we can apply it to our own schools, and you will get no argument from creationists.

Do you have to pay for Sunday School?

The better question would be "Does any of your tax money go to the pay for Sunday School?" GGG was making the statement, and rightly so, that the reason some argue for the teaching of ID\Creationism, is that they are forced to fund the schools.

[BenLurkin]

Anthropogenic global warming is “science”.

[GodGunsGuts]

Excellent point!

[Dog Gone]

And my point is that the most devout Christian will still do whatever he/she thinks is in their best own interest. The difference might be that the Christian is motivated because of the promise of eternal life but that doesn’t mean that the moral code differs much, if any, from an atheist perspective. They can have the same sense of right and wrong and react to situations in the exact same manner.

The principles that Christ espoused are universal, and they are the truth whether or not one believes in the rest of the rest of the stuff. One can believe those principles whether or not they have ever even heard of Jesus.

Atheists certainly can be amoral, but that doesn’t automatically mean that they are. If your point is that “right and wrong” cannot logically exist outside of a context of God, I think I have to fundamentally disagree. There is no dispute that muslim suicide bombers fervently believe in God, but that really has no bearing on whether their actions are right.

Jesus’s words would be correct even if there is no God at all. Right and wrong are concepts that stand alone. Whether they’re eventually enforced by a divine being is a somewhat separate issue.

[Kevmo]

my point was that vitriol is so often put out there. If you go back and dispassionately look at your posts 39, 54, 62, 87, 89, 108, 132, you will see a little vitriol. I will say of the atheists/evolutions posting remarks you are a little more ‘kind’ than most.
***In an earlier thread you also stated, “I am not big into derision, but some of the atheists are really rude to the creationists.” I agree with your comments and so I have decided to open this same thread with the ecumenical tag so that there are more civil expectations to the discussion.

Here’s the first time I took this approach.
Should Scientism be considered a religion on Free Republic? [ecumenical thread]
Free Republic ^ | June 30, 2008 | Kevmo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2038869/posts
Posted on Monday, June 30, 2008 4:44:00 PM by Kevmo

[Kevmo]

Here’s the link to the new ecumenical thread:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2055569/posts?page=2

So if anyone would prefer to have this discussion in a more polite manner, the opportunity is available.

[mrjesse]

And my point is that the most devout Christian will still do whatever he/she thinks is in their best own interest. The difference might be that the Christian is motivated because of the promise of eternal life but that doesn’t mean that the moral code differs much, if any, from an atheist perspective.

The problem with your idea is that people do things for reasons, and based on their world view. And the atheist has no foundation or logical reason to do what is right, and even can argue that his world-view does not acknowledge the existence universal right and wrong.

They can have the same sense of right and wrong and react to situations in the exact same manner.

But people do things for reasons. Ideas have consequences. I realize that there are many atheists who live far better lives then they can logically argue for. Often they have been influenced growing up by somebody who was influenced by somebody who at some point had moral Christian principles. But as time goes on, and Atheists become more comfortable with being right and they become more and more isolated from any moral influence, we will see more and more lying and cheating - the very stuff that makes the world the way it is today.

The principles that Christ espoused are universal,

Except the part about the evil being judged in the end. Jesus gave many parables where he illustrated that in the end there will be the judgment. If you're not familiar with what I'm talking about let me know and I'll get some more material on it, but in general I'm thinking of the parable of the sower, and of the wheat and the tares, at the moment.

But the principles that Christ taught were only compulsory because of the principle that in the end we would be judged for our evil deeds.

and they are the truth whether or not one believes in the rest of the rest of the stuff. One can believe those principles whether or not they have ever even heard of Jesus.

So are you saying that Jesus' principles of judgment and Him giving his life to redeem us from sin are truth whether or not one believes in the rest of the stuff?

Atheists certainly can be amoral, but that doesn’t automatically mean that they are. If your point is that “right and wrong” cannot logically exist outside of a context of God,

My point is that universal right and wrong cannot exist outside of a context of God. (or some moral law giver who is supreme over all humans)

Without a supreme moral lawgiver, there is no such thing as universal right or wrong. A group of people may agree that it is okay for them to kill innocent people and by their own law it is right (for example your example of a "muslim suicide bombers" - to him Alah is God and his holybook well may and many of his peers do condone what he does. But that doesn't make it right - and without one absolute moral lawgiver, what the suicide bomber does is not wrong either, because universal wrong doesn't exist.

I think I have to fundamentally disagree. There is no dispute that muslim suicide bombers fervently believe in God, but that really has no bearing on whether their actions are right.

The muslim God is not the Biblical God. At most, one is true - they are contradictory in so many ways. As a matter of fact, of all the religions of the world, at most one is true. It may be they are all wrong, but at most one is right.

Jesus’s words would be correct even if there is no God at all. Right and wrong are concepts that stand alone. Whether they’re eventually enforced by a divine being is a somewhat separate issue.

But as I said, people do things for reasons, and the concept of universal right and wrong (And the only alternative to universal right and wrong is might makes right) does require a supreme moral lawgiver.

-Jesse

[wintertime]

I get it. But...Evolutionists will be deliberately dense.

It's in the evolutionist best interest to be dense. Hey! Maybe if they remain dense, government will continue extracting from the taxpayers the money needed for indoctrinating other people's children in their anointed godless worldview in our government godless temples ( misnamed “schools”).

Ah! But...It is catching on! Conservatives are now aware that it is impossible to have a religiously neutral education.

The compulsory, police enforced, godless worldview is not religiously neutral. No indeed! Instead it teaches children that their religion is irrelevant in evaluating cultural, and political issues. It teaches them that their religious beliefs need to be hidden as if they were shameful like some bathroom activity. It teaches them that the government holds their religious belief in disdain.

Evolution is merely one of thousands of issues in the government schools over which opposing groups can **NOT** compromise. To compromise over these **many** issues would mean denying what they see is the truth. Doing so is a wound on their conscience.

Of course the solution is to begin the process of getting government out of the K-12 education business. We need to begin the process of privatizing K-12 education and establishing complete separation of school and state. Do this and all this acrimony will immediately disappear.

Government schools always were, are now, and always will be a freedom of conscience and First Amendment nightmare!

[Texas Songwriter]

Oh, sure, atheists can choose to live by certain moral codes but my point is that they have no logical reason to do so except to the degree to further their own self interests.

I agree with you that atheists/darwinists can live a moral life, they simply cannot justify their decision to do so. To subscribe to Natural Law of Natures' Law (as did our founders) portends a Lawgiver. To say it is our nature is tantamount to admitting there is a God. In your examples, even the atheist know it is wrong to kill, steal, or lie,...all prescriptions written on every mans' heart. That is natural law. These are self-evident knowledge. Many people lie, steal, and kill, but they know it is wrong. These absolute moral obligations is binding, at all time,in all cultures. The implication is that there is a Moral Lawgiver. Otherwise, in our nation, atheists could proclaim murder as a virtue and gratitude is vice. In an materialistic, darwinist, naturalistic world, they might assert the virtue of hate and abhor the vice loving thy neighbor. C.S.Lewis said it this way, "Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all of the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well imagine a country where 2 plus 2 = 5.

We can't not know that killing innocent human beings for no reason is wrong. Some people deny it, or commit murder anyway, but they cannot not know it is wrong.

With the Darwinist atheist materialist they profer that there must be a gene for hate, conciousness, hope, love, justice, beauty, and so on. It can be no other way.

This is not to say that there doesn't comes a time with a hardened heart prevent the recognition of this natural law. If you read Weikart book he details meticulously how the intellengencia of Germany corrupted an entire nation, and nearly France, England, and the USA by redefining a morality around Darwinian evolution. Right became might (Rex-Lex). Morality became that which propelled the highest level Eastern European stock to a greater evolutionary scale. Contrarywise those of Inferior evolutionary stock were immoral for taking resourses from the superior. They organized an entire evolutionary ethic around their assertion that through natural selection this was the only morality. Once this effused throughout the country and western Europe they set up mechanisms to implement this morality with culminated in the eugenics movement, the holocaust, and the abortion industry's systematic extermination for the benefit of the superior stock.

There were even those that said warring Homo sapien was a derivitive of genetic code as the superior races would alway prevail over the inferior, stock. You know they even gave numerical value to people, the superior with positive numbers, the middle of the roaders with 0, and the inferior, eaters and wasters of resources as a negative number. The German Society for Ethical Culture, founded in October 1892, was the first to attempt to organize secular ethics in Germany. Felix Adler, an American professor who had already organized a similar society in the USA gave the eugenics society in Europe this idea. Besides Gizycki, Wilhelm Foerster, an astronomer at the Univeristy of Berlin, played a leading role in establishing the guiding ethics for the Ethical Culture Society. At their first meeting he said, "In the deepest sense of the biological theory of evolution, we are of the conviction that the human soul is the ultiate aim of this evolution on the earth, insora as the refinement of its senses and the ennobling of its thinking will produce the feeling and the knowledge of a amore comprehensive fellowship of happiness and unhappiness, of pleasure and pain, and the unifying consciousness of humanity." Sort of sounds like the New Age Movement in the USA. They, too, say the negative elements of Gaia must be cleanse and removed to a disembodied state to "catch up" with the upcoming evolutionary "jump" in Homo sapien which will spontaneously evolve to Homo noeticus (new man). Gee, sort of sounds like punctuated equilibrium, and it sort of seems like the "disembodiment" of Christians and Jews is the killing of them....disembodiment. They say it, not me.

Yes, there is nothing new under the sun.

These are some of the reasons bad ideas leading away from Truth is important. People, nations,.....make decision on their perception of Truth, and results can be horrific.

[wintertime]

The problem with your idea is that people do things for reasons, and based on their world view. And the atheist has no foundation or logical reason to do what is right, and even can argue that his world-view does not acknowledge the existence universal right and wrong.
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Exactly! And this is the lesson that children learn when they are taught about the origins of mankind from a godless worldview perspective.

Without a God-centered worldview, children learn directly and indirectly that morals, ethics, and values are human inventions and are not immutable laws. The same is true for the human rights outlined in our Declaration of Independence. These rights no longer permanent gifts from god but that they are granted to us by government or other men.

Thankfully it is now becoming widely accepted that their are only two worldviews possible when teaching children. That worldview is either atheistic or God-centered. Neither is religiously neutral in content or consequences.

The solution, of course, it to get government out of the K-12 business. We must begin privatizing universal K-12 education.

[Old Landmarks]

The last thing the Democrat party and the liberal "hardcore evolutionist" cartel wants is the end to the Centralized Big Government Public School with their mandated, captive audience of children.

Forced liberal indoctrination by default is the focus of the Public School monopoly. To the liberal evolutionist this is not a problem, it is the price paid to make sure God can no longer be considered in the education of the youth.

Privatization and school choice is something they fear and avoid because centralized control is required for their liberal education dictatorship.

[Dog Gone]

Well, after all our discussion it seems to boil down to whether someone who doesn’t believe in God can believe in right or wrong. And I’m not an atheist, so maybe I’m not their best advocate. In fact, until I graduated from college and went on to postgraduate school, I was in a parochical school system. So it’s not like I haven’t learned about these things.

You are arguing that the other things Jesus talked about, i.e., judgment day are what’s important. And it certainly is. But I’m talking about how poeple conduct their lives. There were billions of souls born before Jesus ever spoke a word, and certainly nearly 100% of them never heard of the Torah or anything like it.

How are they to be judged? I’d like to think it would be based on their concept of right and wrong. Were they good people or not?

If that’s accurate, then right and wrong exist outside the concept of an organized religion. You don’t believe it exists outside of a real God who sets those boundaries. I do. Depending on whether one believes in God or not can certainly influence an individual to fudge or completely violate the right or wrong standard, but I don’t think the fear of God defines whether right or wrong exists as a concept.

We fundamentally disagree on this and I don’t think we can reach common ground with more discussion. I appreciate your perspective and it might be correct. I think mine might be also.

In the long run, I’m not sure it matters. We both agree that we should live our lives doing what is right.

[wintertime]

Liberals and their evolutionist allies (not all) however are extremely zealous concerning centralized, top-down control of public schools and bring the big government public school trump card into every thread.
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Even if school districts were the size of a suburban subdivision there would still be freedom of conscience issues and First Amendment violations.

A voting mob of neighbors has the right to tax his neighbor to support his government established religious worldview ( godless or God-centered) that may be utter abhorrent to him. A voting mob of neighbors has the power of police to force his neighbor's child into government holding pens. The children are then ordered by the government to shut up, and forbidden freedom of press, free assembly, and free expression of religion. Since education can never be religiously neutral the children are subjected to a constant and continuous government religious worldview.

Even tiny compulsory, police enforced government school districts are an abomination. Everyone of them is a freedom of conscience and First Amendment nightmare every minute of every government indoctrination day.

[wintertime]

Forced liberal indoctrination by default is the focus of the Public School monopoly.
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Liberals abort their own children. They need the government schools so they can convert other people's children to the religion of Marxism.

[Old Landmarks]

Agreed.

Public Schools are a failed experiment of Big Government domination, run and controlled by the far left, and are contrary to freedom.

Public Schools should be phased out as soon as possible.

[csense]

bm

[wintertime]

Public Schools are a failed experiment of Big Government domination, run and controlled by the far left, and are contrary to freedom.
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Government schools controlled by conservatives would be a freedom of conscience and First Amendment abomination! A conservative voting mob would be imposing their will on other people's children using police threat to do it!

It time to look past whether or not evolution is good science or not. We must look past the test scores whether good or bad. Homosexuality is **not** the main issue with government schools. Phonics or Everyday math is **not** the underlying problem.

**Freedom of conscience** and First Amendment issues **are** the fundamental conflict underlying **every** government school cat fight!!! Every one! Without exception!

Government schools are an abomination! They allow the voting mob to crush freedom of conscience.