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
Yup; that's what I said.
Pi is three, or four, or whatever.
Like a moth to the flame...
In science, we call it handwaving Evolution.
haha...or fly to the dog crap???
An 'Elsie' marathon placemarker...
Who cares? "My buddies" don't determine the law, The social expectations of our culture, or the rules of etiquette. I didn't accuse you of being a liar, you accused me. Apropos to which, let me remind you that you still haven't actually answered the question at the root of your accusation. Why do you think I would bother to try to do homework to justify a statement about your opinions which you won't confirm is wrong?
Do, you or do you not disown the giving of the law to the judges in genesis? Do you or do you not think Roe v. Wade should be overturned on the basis of biblically justified christian beliefs?
Just step back and think about what a very odd myth it is.
That is not what I was doing. I was assuming that the writer of that verse was not stupid and I was also using the measurements of the time to show that the verse is reconcilable.
If I could not justify it using a cubit a hand or a span or other biblical measurement criteria, then I suppose I would have had to admit a likely error, as the outside dimension would clearly be about 31 cubits. But the usable space, the space inside the bowl, would be roughly 30 cubits according to your own calculations, wouldn't it?
BTW, have you found that source yet?
The phrase is 'a line of thirty cubits did encompass it round about.' 'Encompass' suggests an outside diameter. There is no mention of hands at all. You're reaching.
BTW, have you found that source yet?
Kansas City Times, Jan 5, 1982.
We may be created in the image of the Divine, but it appears that there were at least 10 homids before us, with various degrees of simularity.
All this could change if one found a chimp fossil inside the belly of a T-Rex. Intelligent design is not so much false, but unfalsifiable, for the Divine could have created the fossils in the ground to mislead. That leads to the theological question, does the Divine lie, and if so, why?
Evolution is the most elegant way by which I can image that the Divine could have created a body to hold a soul.
I have given you ample opportunity to disavow my characterization of your expressed attitudes. You have not contradicted anything I have said in the passsages you are objecting to. Your convictions about the punishments inflicted on the jews more that justifies my suggestion that you must be a lot of fun at S&M parties, and that's the highest flight of fancy I've endulged in. My characterizations of your expressed opinions are accurate, as testified to by the fact that they stand repeatedly uncorrected by you.
I didn't see statues of God at the various Protestant churches I was forced to attend, from time to time, by my Grandparents and aunts. I saw plenty of statues of jesus.
Christian churches do not have any statues for the reason you stated, Catholic churches have many.
Really?
Look what I found!:
And it was an hand breadth thick, and the brim thereof was wrought like the brim of a cup, with flowers of lilies: it contained two thousand baths. (1 Kings 7:26 KJV)
So, if it was a "hand breadth thick" (like the bible says) how many cubits would the inside circumference be?
Huh?
If you don't think catholics are christians, I'm filing you in the dingbat bin, and ignoring you. Protestant churches behaved just as disgustingly toward jews and catholics did, if not worse, while offering up the exact same excuses as the Catholics. Martin Luther was a famously vile jewhater. I don't really care why reform churches have statues of Jesus. God said "no other God's before me, for I am a jealous God", yet I see only Jesus statues in God's church.
I have no grief with this. I have been saying for some time that until christians are willing to officially bend the unforgiving doctrine of salvation exclusively through Jesus, and find a way to formally and permanently acknowledge and ameliorate the persistent anti-jewish propagandizing of the Gospels and acknowledge the full citizenship of orthodox jews, as orthodox jews, in the kingdom of heaven, that christianity is doomed to endlessly repeat the cycle of evil murderous repression that's been it's habit for 1400 years, and this present 50-100 year lapse will be seen for the temporary glitch that it is.
If not, when history moves on to the next cycle, all the anti-jewish poison will still be there, and christians will go right back to righteously torturing and murdering jews, just like they used to. 1400 hundred years of this ugly behavior ain't an accident, it's a policy, and the NT is that policy.
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