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
You were the one calling God a murderer. I just pointed out that your life is in his hands. When you die it will be because he has appointed the day of your death.
Heb 9:27 And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment:
You don't like God. Either that or you don't believe in him. But he is longsuffering and He very well may some day convince you of the truth of his Love. You may mock God now, But remember, some day you will stand before God. Well actually you will kneel before God.
Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. (Galatians 6:7 KJV)
I was once a God mocking young atheist like yourself. God was patient and pursued me with his love. Eventually I surrendered to his will. Eventually we all will, but the question is when? If we wait until after our appointed day of death, then we have waited too long. If we wait too long, if we try his patience too much, then we will receive those eternal wages that we earned through our rejection of Him. We may someday reap all that we have sown.
I sense a struggle in your heart. You seem to come on these threads to receive reassurance of your disbelief and to convince yourself of the truth of your commitment to rejecting God in your life. Actually that is a good sign. There may yet be hope.
May God truly bless you.
Marlowe
You re welcome!
No. The Bible implies that. You still make him sound like a Mafia don. You don't like God. Either that or you don't believe in him.
I like God well enough, and I do believe in Him. However, it is obvious the God I believe in and the one you believe in are two different deities. You gleefully worship a mass murderer and secretly desire that He continue His vengeance on non-believers. I worship a God who has let His creation do as it will and regrets the loss of any being but won't intervene to prevent that loss.
Not in THIS thread!
You made the claim here: back it up.
(Or one of your bud's will call you a 'drive-by poster'! That is, if they apply the same rules to all)
So...what is it you think science should "presupposition", as an alternative to tangible evidence? Didn't I ask you this already?
You assume anyone not believing as you do is an atheist. How utterly arrogant.
Yup; this is the dude my tagline WARNED you about!
Stoned!?
Hell, I'd be happy if they merely got the rod applied to them before they got into prison!
Son, I'm not imagining ANYTHING!
I have C&Ped what's in the Book - you don't like it.
Tough; take it up with the book WRITERS, not me.
Dodge?
HA Ha ha!
If the Evo believers can accept all kinds of maybes, getting from one of Itchy's heads to another, you have the gall to say that a perfectly good explaination of a bible illustration is a DODGE!?
Give me a break!
Obviously.
I worship a God who has let His creation do as it will and regrets the loss of any being but won't intervene to prevent that loss.
A God who is completely out of control. A God who has regretted every death in history.
Do you pray to this God? According to your theology he won't answer your prayers anyway. He is irrelevant to you and you are irrelevant to him. But I bet that when you stand on the precipice of death you will call out to him. But he will not hear you. He will send his regrets.
Do I not recall Elsie being enduringly oblivious to the mathematical implications of that passage on previous threads?
If the Evo believers can accept all kinds of maybes
I'm curious if you can actually state what the "dodge" is you are defending.
Death: one to a person, most everybody gets to experience it.
Life: few there be that find it.
NIV Ezekiel 18:23
Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?
NIV Matthew 7:13-14
13. "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.
14. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.
Dead babies... You don't like what's in the Book either; do you?
Why do I have to defend what is there?
You have made your choice, so live with it, as I will with mine.
Does THIS count?
It is OBVIOUS to ANY observer that the pre-Indians knew about Evolution and were trying to signal their planters that they were no longer like this image!
Well... the God of LOVE sure hasn't made a dent!
2 Timothy 4
2. Preach the Word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage--with great patience and careful instruction.
3. For the time will come when men will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.
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