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
Don't you know? Stars are quite large, perhaps the size of an elephant. They are about 100 miles up, and exceedingly bright so that they can be seen at that huge distance. There are about 5000 of them in total, and you can see the half of them that are above the disc of the earth on a clear night.
So that's your defense of the Perfect Love of God--that God ordered fewer mass murders of innocents than Hitler? Remind me not to hire you as my lawyer the next time I'm in trouble.
I can't see how, when there are so many people available, on these threads alone, who are in direct communication with God and can answer any question you might have.
Unfortunately they don't appear to be in communication with the *same* God as each other. I suspect that all but one of them is a charlatan or deluded. It is just working out which one isn't the charlatan that is proving tricky.
Some of them seem to be in direct communication with the lord of misstatement.
Is he the same entity as the Master of Misspeaking?
What is it that keeps you spouting the same irrelevant, finger-pointing gibberish when asked a simple question whose relevancy to the issue of God's infallibility is obvious? Did or did not the christian God countenance the mauling, murder or enslavement of Mideanite children, Egyptian children, and mocking children? Did or did not God's Agents of His Perfect Love carry this teaching through to imprison Galileo, and to horribly murder and plague innocents of virtually every stripe throughout it's sorry 2000 year history? Don't you think a claim of infallibility is a claim that needs to somehow be demonstrated? The makers of Roe v. Wade made no claims to infallibility--and infallibility is the question on the table.
At least their sheep, cattle, and camels got off the hook; unlike the Amalekites in Samuel.
Why is the use of 'supernatural' power by man in a different category than the 'supernatural' power used by God?
"What does it matter if God on occasion manipulates the natural order of things that He set up, from time to time? He has the perogative to do so whenever He pleases. And that is not called magic but miracles, which is not the same thing. Miracles are used to verify the existance and power of God to unbelieving people and, to the best of my knowledge, are almost always beneficial to people.
That wasn't my point. If there is a God, something I find certain, he can do as he will, we are powerless to stop him. My point is that creationists are willing to accept all sorts of magical thinking as pertains to God all based on simple here-say evidence yet completely close their minds when confronted by the well researched and verified evidence used in the ToE. Much of the ToE's conclusions are based on the normal scientific methodology of inferences based on verified mechanisms, yet the anti-evos refuse to accept those inferences, the verifications and indeed the mechanisms themselves. They use their our inferences, which are based on very questionable premises, to 'disprove' the observations of scientists.
Accept the supernatural, deny the observable and its logical consequences by using evidence even more questionable than that found for evolution. This makes no sense to me.
I can see then how it'll be the end of everything when they all fall to Earth at once.
Good point.
Evil is evil, irrespective of what banner it carries, or when it carries it. Evil goes by many names and carries many banners. Not the least of which is the banner of God.
But in all cases, it is the evil of men. Not God. Men who fear God, do not do evil, they do good.
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes on Him is not condemned, but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the Light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the Light, and does not come to the Light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who practices truth comes to the Light so that his works may be revealed, that they exist, having been worked in God" (John 3:16-21).
I see your NIV and raise you a KJV
23And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head.
24And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.
The score is 3 'youths' to 5 'children' (or 'little boys').
The infallibility of God's word is a topic of discussion wasted on those who view the Bible as simply a book. Much less, those who view it with contempt.
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