Posted on 02/20/2006 5:33:50 AM PST by ToryHeartland
Churches urged to back evolution By Paul Rincon BBC News science reporter, St Louis
US scientists have called on mainstream religious communities to help them fight policies that undermine the teaching of evolution.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) hit out at the "intelligent design" movement at its annual meeting in Missouri.
Teaching the idea threatens scientific literacy among schoolchildren, it said.
Its proponents argue life on Earth is too complex to have evolved on its own.
As the name suggests, intelligent design is a concept invoking the hand of a designer in nature.
It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other Gilbert Omenn AAAS president
There have been several attempts across the US by anti-evolutionists to get intelligent design taught in school science lessons.
At the meeting in St Louis, the AAAS issued a statement strongly condemning the moves.
"Such veiled attempts to wedge religion - actually just one kind of religion - into science classrooms is a disservice to students, parents, teachers and tax payers," said AAAS president Gilbert Omenn.
"It's time to recognise that science and religion should never be pitted against each other.
"They can and do co-exist in the context of most people's lives. Just not in science classrooms, lest we confuse our children."
'Who's kidding whom?'
Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education, which campaigns to keep evolution in public schools, said those in mainstream religious communities needed to "step up to the plate" in order to prevent the issue being viewed as a battle between science and religion.
Some have already heeded the warning.
"The intelligent design movement belittles evolution. It makes God a designer - an engineer," said George Coyne, director of the Vatican Observatory.
"Intelligent design concentrates on a designer who they do not really identify - but who's kidding whom?"
Last year, a federal judge ruled in favour of 11 parents in Dover, Pennsylvania, who argued that Darwinian evolution must be taught as fact.
Dover school administrators had pushed for intelligent design to be inserted into science teaching. But the judge ruled this violated the constitution, which sets out a clear separation between religion and state.
Despite the ruling, more challenges are on the way.
Fourteen US states are considering bills that scientists say would restrict the teaching of evolution.
These include a legislative bill in Missouri which seeks to ensure that only science which can be proven by experiment is taught in schools.
I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design Teacher Mark Gihring "The new strategy is to teach intelligent design without calling it intelligent design," biologist Kenneth Miller, of Brown University in Rhode Island, told the BBC News website.
Dr Miller, an expert witness in the Dover School case, added: "The advocates of intelligent design and creationism have tried to repackage their criticisms, saying they want to teach the evidence for evolution and the evidence against evolution."
However, Mark Gihring, a teacher from Missouri sympathetic to intelligent design, told the BBC: "I think if we look at where the empirical scientific evidence leads us, it leads us towards intelligent design.
"[Intelligent design] ultimately takes us back to why we're here and the value of life... if an individual doesn't have a reason for being, they might carry themselves in a way that is ultimately destructive for society."
Economic risk
The decentralised US education system ensures that intelligent design will remain an issue in the classroom regardless of the decision in the Dover case.
"I think as a legal strategy, intelligent design is dead. That does not mean intelligent design as a social movement is dead," said Ms Scott.
"This is an idea that has real legs and it's going to be around for a long time. It will, however, evolve."
Among the most high-profile champions of intelligent design is US President George W Bush, who has said schools should make students aware of the concept.
But Mr Omenn warned that teaching intelligent design will deprive students of a proper education, ultimately harming the US economy.
"At a time when fewer US students are heading into science, baby boomer scientists are retiring in growing numbers and international students are returning home to work, America can ill afford the time and tax-payer dollars debating the facts of evolution," he said. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4731360.stm
Published: 2006/02/20 10:54:16 GMT
© BBC MMVI
I was talking about real biologists, not university teachers, who are not scientists, but grant money whores. They are the ones that will sign anything as long as there is money attached.
It we who are the illogical ones. Our reasoning is what's flawed which is why it doesn't make sense without God revealing it to us, and He does that in His Word. Read it after asking God to help you make sense of it and you'll be in for a big surprise, if you're sincere.
My guess, based on conversations with real biologists at large, publicly traded firms, is that few of them accept evolution as anything but irrelevant politics. Only the leftist professors, who cannot be called scientists due to their closely held personal bias, and total lack of objectivity, seem to be in any way interested in evolution.
Yup, HE sure did!
Not quite accurate. God smote Uzzah because he was not of the tribe of Levi. According to Deut. 10:8, only the tribe of Levi (the priests) were allowed to handle the ark.
Thus Uzzah was not smitten for saving the ark, but for disobedience.
Indeed, it is my experience that those most likely to defend the Bible are those least likely to have read it. Those who have read it and still defend it are those who have the most invested in their particular worldview and will attempt to paper over the parts hardest to reconcile.
Yeah, I saw that too. Guess that's God's preferred way of smiting.
When you try to help people for money, and end up killing them, it's not quite the same thing as all this theorizing into prehistory. You can't just shrug and say, "well, add a few million years to the formation." Ultimately, whether these evos are right or wrong will matter not a whit.
It is possible that all this passion for the Temple of Science is bogus. This could just be a way to try to alienate some voters from the GOP. The more I get called paranoid, the more I think I'm on the right scent--for at least some of these jokers.
Maybe we should invent a taxonomy of evos--The Pathological Obsessive, The Disgruntled Libertarian, The Wily Lefty Activist in Disguise...
Well, he did use that bear to eat all those laughing kids...
"My guess, based on conversations with real biologists at large, publicly traded firms, is that few of them accept evolution as anything but irrelevant politics."
In other words, you really have no evidence. I see. :)
I can't speak for you - I encounter the risen Christ in the Word and the Sacraments.
Beyond that, the metaphors, the attributes, sayings, miracles, stories surrounding Jesus in the NT are found throughout the Eastern religions and Near Eastern mystery religions and cults long before the first century CE. Sorry. Make of it what you will.
Definitions of argument on the Web:
* a fact or assertion offered as evidence that something is true; "it was a strong argument that his hypothesis was true"
* controversy: a contentious speech act; a dispute where there is strong disagreement; "they were involved in a violent argument"
* a discussion in which reasons are advanced for and against some proposition or proposal; "the argument over foreign aid goes on and on"
* a summary of the subject or plot of a literary work or play or movie; "the editor added the argument to the poem"
* a variable in a logical or mathematical expression whose value determines the dependent variable; if f(x)=y, x is the independent variable
I don't recall seeing you do any work.
But--" Does it, or does it not mean the genetic separation of two populations so that their attempts at cross-breeding show little or no success?" is at least a start. Two species can be ID'd geneticially,
What "ID'd genetically" mean? Does it mean that you concede that species are related to each other along a timeline that can be measured by their mutational distances?
and mules are not a lifestyle success story.
Jennies, however are.
But your definition lacks a good way to pinpoint "distinct."
That's because "distinct" speciation doesn't have a "pinpoint" speciation is a gradual event, distinct species names are fairly arbitrary human boundaries that do not correspond to some natural barrier.
It'd be nice to have a benchmark to act as a control. What we need is an actual "emergence" to document.
Speciation is caught in still-frame all the time, despite the best efforts of creation scientists to emulate the 3-monkeys approach to science. Think you can mate a miniature chihuahua with a great dane? And we claim they're of the same species. We claim the following are of different species, but they can mate with varied degrees of success: horses, mules, and zebras; lions, tigers, and cheetahs; camels and llamas. There is no instant in time when speciation occurs, yet it still, quite obviously, occurs. There are many classic insect and plant experiments we, as a species, have performed, or observed, that has causes two isolated populations to speciate completely. The classic case is the UofChicago experiment where they put mealy bugs in sealed environments and watched them diverge within a matter of decades, and these experiments and field observations have been piling up steadily since then. If you had the will to look at the posts Ich or PH periodically offer up on this subject, you'd know about these things. But, then, that might put a dent in the confident rhythm of your rhetoric, I suppose.
Something that does not involve looking backwards and then reasoning forwards. (Not the hope or expectation or wish or even fossil indications). That's asking a lot, I know. But that immediately poses a question--why is it asking so much?
There is nothing inherently unscientific about looking at historical data. "Looking backwards and reasoning forwards" has another name: it is called "induction", and it is the basis of nearly all scientific reasoning toward theories about the behavior of the natural world. Do you intend to paint astronomy and geology with this brush? How much of a luddite are you willing to be?
"Thats evidence."
Nope, it really isn't. :)
"What is your evidence.., oh three dogs crapping?"
They only apply to you. :)
If we're going with #1, then what statement was pnsn's assertion that any claim of dishonesty on his part was tantamount to calling God a liar attempting to support?
I appreciate your suggestion that I get up to speed and with reality and truth. While I don't know if I'm speeding down life's highway always open to and searching for more truth and greater insight into reality; God's reality - I hope I'm at least tooling along.
Let me know when you catch up.
There is a difference between an assertion and an assertion offered as evidence of something being true. For a further example, John Cleese's lines in the Monty Python "Argument Sketch" are lies, but not arguments.
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