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
Clearly he was making an argument, if A, then B, to wit:
"Every time you call me a liar, you are calling God a liar"
In fact, it is no different than the argument made here, many, many times, by evolution advocates, and to paraphrase:
"If you attack evolution, you attack all science."
Funny though, I don't recall anyone on my side calling any of you liars. I simply see them defeat it with reason.
Lacking any vestigial sense of humor, evos are being selected out for type...
Make a lucid argument, or bug off.
Make a lucid argument, or bug off. What a pair of bluffers.
So what you are saying is that Jesus may or may not have really existed (most likely he was nothing but a reconstitutited fairy tale) but that when you do the sacraments you encounter the "risen Christ" (whatever that is)? Correct?
Since you obviously don't believe that the Bible is true in any literal sense, how is it that you supposedly encounter this "risen Christ" person "in the Word". You even capitalized "Word" as if it were some kind of holy reference. By "Word" you obviously don't mean that book of fables, the Bible, do you? What "Word" are you referencing?
I am confused. In essense it appears to me that you chalk Jesus up to being some metaphoric figure, yet you are supposedly a minister of the Christian Gospel. Does your congregation know your "feelings" on this?
BTW, where is the GRPL when you need them?
Just who among the evopansies can enforce this edict? Keep in mind, you just posted this to two conversationalists who you could ignore if you liked.
I remember this post. Do please, gentle readers, go look at that old thread and see it examined rather more carefully than wolfie apparently did.
Evopansies? What are you, 6 years old? Do you have any more arguments, or are you just going to rest your case an namecalling now?
My first try at a link didn't work.
Well, Dimensio was clearly implying the first definition when he said "argument."
"No, I have read what they wrote also."
Then you would know what I wrote about them was correct. :)
" Its all crap, just like the images you put up. A reflection of you.., jerk."
Your character always shines through everything you write. You're a real people person. This site would truly not be the same without you here. :)
No, the real question is why do so many fools attribute to God things that he has not said? - Your question is a Strawman.
It is not a strawman. It is an analogy asking the question of whether the person being addressed has such blind faith that he/she would want their children being taught something patently incorrect.
But I will say I was a little quick off the draw. I should have said ..1+1=3 because an interpretation of the Bible said so.
No one "knows" what God said, although many (myself included) believe the Bible is His Word -- just highly allegorical in many places.
I stand adjusted.
Do you have any more arguments, or are you just going to rest your case an namecalling now?
You act like this is a departure.
I'd call it the standard mode of operation.
C'mon wolfie, how many times do we have to go through this? The statement being supported is that purely random selection cannot easily account for everything we can presently observe about evolutionary theory--which is now true, and always has been true, ever since it was conceded by Darwin, and is also true about every other natural science theory. Since the dawn of micro-biology, many mechanisms, other than random selection, to produce genetic changes have been discovered. The fact is, that most of these signatories would not, if asked, (and some were, and that includes Behe, under oath) claim that evolutionary theory isn't the basic operating procedure by which species are produced--they claim, like most scientists who are on top of things biological, that the story is far from complete, as yet.
You're making a mountain out of a gopher hole. But there's nothing new about that, is there?
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