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
1600?
How guilty can a 9 year old virgin be of anything?
It isn't a matter of 'guilt'...
NIV Psalms 79:8
Do not hold against us the sins of the fathers; may your mercy come quickly to meet us, for we are in desperate need.
NIV Jeremiah 31:29-30
29. "In those days people will no longer say, `The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge.'
30. Instead, everyone will die for his own sin; whoever eats sour grapes--his own teeth will be set on edge.
You CANNOT be unaware of the fact that nits grow up to be lice.
It was COMMON practice in those days to eliminate the 'children' of whoever you conquered, lest they bitterly mature and rise up against you.
Notice the termoil in the MiddleEast today because the Israelites of old did NOT finish off the 'sinners' of their day!
And counting :)
yatsa' qatan na`ar `iyr
yatsa' -- to go (causatively, bring) out, ...
qatan -- abbreviated, i.e. diminutive, literally (in quantity, size or number) or figuratively (in age or importance)
na`ar -- babe, boy, child, damsel (from the margin), lad, servant, young (man).
`iyr -- a city ... in the widest sense (even of a mere encampment or post) -- Ai (from margin), city, court (from margin), town.
The literal reading is 'there came forth little boys out of the city'
The cross-references indicate these would be prepubescent youngsters.
Checking the literal translations show 'little boys' to be the favored term.
But the 'thought-for-thought' translations have them as 'youths'. Usually with margin notes explaining why 'little' doesn't apply to teen hooligans that deserved to be ripped apart for mocking Elijah ...
:-)
Why? I believe it very likely that life arrose through natural means, but God created the laws of nature such that life would emerge. There is nothing in that statement that conflicts with modern science, and it is perfectly consistent with what the professor had the kids affirm.
To me the professor boxed kids in a corner which excluded any belief in a creator.
No one was boxed into anything.
Me and you both. :)
Failed your driving test?
Do you have it installed yet? Is their a icon in your Tray?
NIV Deuteronomy 21:18-21
18. If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him,
19. his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town.
20. They shall say to the elders, "This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard."
21. Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid.
Gratuitous scripture quoting. that'll be $100.
So is this a literal or allegorical reading of the Bible?
Looks to me to be English. But don't quote me on that. :0
baqa` -- to cleave; generally, to rend, break, rip or open.
You're behind the power curve. I've already shown it.
post-modern Biblical translation placemarker.
A recruiting slogan for the SS?
"Natural processes" itself is the bastard child of an arbitrary choice of worldviews and has nothing to do with "science."
Science belongs just as much in the domain of the progenitors of modern science as any other. The activities of Kepler, Pasteur, Faraday, and others were NOT done in a wold of "Physical and chemical processes that require no miracles" but in a world where God demonstrated his miraculous intervention into the world every day by supernatural activity of sustaining the world He had made. Indeed, those men viewed science as an investigation of how He governed the world, down to the details.
Your "natural processes" are simply an arbitrary choice of a worldview which ARBITRARILY excludes the supernatural and then tries to pull a sleight of hand to say "science only deals with this, so we cannot operate in a supernatural realm." It is a silly argument, and I am astounded that people repeat the same tripe over and over, as though the lack of empirical measurements of the supernatural means that science must operate from a starting point of naturalism. One does not follow from the other.
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