Posted on 08/02/2005 4:16:26 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
President Bush waded into the debate over evolution and "intelligent design" Monday, saying schools should teach both theories on the creation and complexity of life.
In a wide-ranging question-and-answer session with a small group of reporters, Bush essentially endorsed efforts by Christian conservatives to give intelligent design equal standing with the theory of evolution in the nation's schools.
Bush declined to state his personal views on "intelligent design," the belief that life forms are so complex that their creation cannot be explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory alone, but rather points to intentional creation, presumably divine.
The theory of evolution, first articulated by British naturalist Charles Darwin in 1859, is based on the idea that life organisms developed over time through random mutations and factors in nature that favored certain traits that helped species survive.
Scientists concede that evolution does not answer every question about the creation of life, and most consider intelligent design an attempt to inject religion into science courses.
Bush compared the current debate to earlier disputes over "creationism," a related view that adheres more closely to biblical explanations. While he was governor of Texas, Bush said students should be exposed to both creationism and evolution.
On Monday, the president said he favors the same approach for intelligent design "so people can understand what the debate is about."
The Kansas Board of Education is considering changes to encourage the teaching of intelligent design in Kansas schools, and some are pushing for similar changes across the country.
"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," Bush said. "You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas. The answer is 'yes.'"
The National Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science both have concluded there is no scientific basis for intelligent design and oppose its inclusion in school science classes. [Note from PH: links relevant to those organizations and their positions on ID are added by me at the end of this article.]
Some scientists have declined to join the debate, fearing that amplifying the discussion only gives intelligent design more legitimacy.
Advocates of intelligent design also claim support from scientists. The Discovery Institute, a conservative think tank in Seattle that is the leading proponent for intelligent design, said it has compiled a list of more than 400 scientists, including 70 biologists, who are skeptical about evolution.
"The fact is that a significant number of scientists are extremely skeptical that Darwinian evolution can explain the origins of life," said John West, associate director of the organization's Center for Science and Culture.
How much do you want to bet that most IDers consider these guys kooks?
"You would hold, then, that God specifically initiates each individual weather event ... rather than, say, having set a system in motion which then functions according to certain physical laws?"
What I hold is irrelevant. What Scripture teaches is what is relevant.
Scripture obviously does not teach that each individual thing that happens is proximately initiated by direct divine and non-natural intervention.
And I did not assert such.
What Scripture does teach is that absolutely all events (without exception) are under his sovereign control and nothing will happen outside of His plan and outside of His knowledge (not even a sparrow falls...etc.).
Some things, including some weather and other natural phenomena, are certainly going to follow an observable pattern and that is why pagans who are smart can on occasion predict weather better than very pious followers of Christ who are utterly uneducated. The Biblical worldview does not contradict that obvious fact, at all.
But just as not everything is proximately caused by divine and direct intervention, not everything is simply part of a pre-wound-up system. The testimony of Scripture is clear: God caused it to rain a whole lot to cause the flood. God caused burning sulful to rain down on Sodom and Gomorrah. God caused hail to fall onto Egypt. Samuel prayed and God then answered his prayer and caused rain. In these instances (and countless others throughout the Bible...those are just the ones that spring to my mind at the front of the book) it is most accurate to say that God "caused" that particular weather phenomenon, immediately and directly and not as part of a system, but as a means to accomplish His pre-ordained end.
Moreover, the "cause and effect", that is, the blessings and curses theology of Deuteronomy unequivocally states that God will in some sense "bless" those societies which follow His law and in some sense "curse" those which do not. Now, not many people believe that. I have hardly ever hear anyone suggest from the pulpit that a society in a drought (or something equivalent to a "drought" in a non-agrarian society) should perhaps repent. But...in the Biblical worldview, yes, there are "systems" that are set up. But part of that system being wound includes whether or not the people are obeying His laws. ("If my people who are called by my name....repent, etc., then I will heal their lands."). Of course, just because few Christians would believe that, doesn't mean it is false.
That is the Biblical testimony, as best as I can articulate it in a short space, as it applies to weather: Part divine intervention, part pure system with the caveat that the system also includes elements of obedience from the people affected.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Nonsense repeated over and over is still nonsense, no matter who is repeating it.
I'm not sure what the conflict is. Evolution, as I've said in three successive posts now, is an attempt to explain change in allele frequencies over time. There are four components to evolutionary theory (natural selection, mutation, genetic drift and gene flow) and you could falsify each one. For example, if you could prove that natural selection is completely random, that the fitness of an organism has no bearing on its ability to survive, you could falsify evolution. Or you could falsify genetic drift by finding genetically isolated populations that are genetically identical. Falsifying the theory of evolution is not impossible. One thing you cannot do, however, is falsify the established fact that allele frequencies DO change with time, which is something that IDers/creationists often say.
Huh? Where did you get the idea that it is excluded from the scientific method?
It says so right there in the creationist pamphlets. And surely they know more about how science is done than the scientists, right?
Both groups have perverse ideas about the Big Bang.
Eventually the designer will have to be supernatural. If we were designed by aliens then those aliens must have either been designed by other aliens or by a supernatural force.
By the way, evolution does not deal with the beginning of life so the argument against "random chance" is misplaced.
Thank you for the link. I have probably heard them all at one time or another.
I would agree with that.
Of course, you realize, this was more than 15 years ago, so I may be misremembering.
And yet the Greeks pulled it off for a bit. Go figure.
Wrong. You have a false dichtomy there. The "very first life form" arose from *animate* matter (i.e. autocatalytic reactions which lacked some of the properties which need to be present before most people would consider something to be "a life form").
There's a large range of properties between "inanimate matter" and "life". It's a continuum, not a sharp black-and-white line.
Please learn some biology before you attempt to lecture upon it again.
Uh Oh. I was trying to be funny (Rades is what some folks call me here on FR)
Boy did that fall flat!! LOL!
Touched by His Noodly Appendage placemarker
Purgatory, bubba. I'm not that bad, but then I ain't been good either.
You claim to be a man of "observation" yet you cannot understand pity?
Your life is built around your immediate surroundings. Nothing more.
I bet you never once enjoyed a Thanksgiving until you sat down to eat. And then, upon finishing, you went back to not enjoying it.
You have no anticipation of family, of gathering, of things to be grateful for.
I ask this, after having read what I just wrote: What loss did you suffer in your life that made you so jaded to the possibility of love from someone you don't even know?
[groan]
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