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
Your mouth has flapped for hundreds of posts, and NOTHING has come out of it to indicate my claim is incorrect, has it? Were you planning to withdraw your accusation that I'm a meth addict? I'm not.
I'm out of here. These two are wacked. Love for the Jewish people is turned into antisemitism and racism somehow!
Yes I read it. If God wills an action, then by definition it is just. I'm skeptical you'll find many Jews on FR who will say the Holocaust was a just punishment of European Jewry for their sins.
Even others think that it wasn't punishment in the first person, but that these things are allowed to happen because GOD has withdrawn himself as punishment.
It still means they deserved their fate because they sinned.
You do realize that when one links biblical examples of punishment of Jews to modern day examples, one is saying that Jews were righteously dealt with in the Holocaust.
Utter nonsense. You extrapolate way too much.
In biblical examples, Jews sinned and were righteously punished by the will of God. If one says the Holocaust was divine punishment, then the same applies. You simply can't get around the fact that if you invoke divine will, then the sufferers deserved their fate.
BTW, the poster you've been defending was the one who put the Nazi card in play: ever hear of them Nazi furnaces
Now you're just getting nasty.
I think you spoke too soon. It looks like we have a "yes":
U.S. Christians create umbrella organization to lobby for Israel
By Shmuel Rosner, Haaretz Correspondent
WASHINGTON - A new group in the United States, Christians United for Israel, will serve as an umbrella organization for Christian congregations that support Israel, and will lobby for Israel.
Some 400 Christian community leaders met in San Antonio, Texas, two weeks ago to establish the group, which Christians United officials said represents about 30 million Americans.
The organization's main goal is to create a rapid-response network "targeted to reach every senator and congressman" in the United States. It is led by evangelical leaders Dr. John C. Hagee and George Morrison; fundamentalist Baptist minister Jerry Falwell; and Gary Bauer, president of the American Values organization aimed at protecting marriage, family and faith.
All are renowned supporters of Israel, and considered hawkish. For instance, they will pressure the American government to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Christians United members decided to hold meetings with legislators in Washington for two days in July to tell them about the organization and its platform, and express their support for Israel. They are also planning a large annual event called "A Night to Honor Israel" that will be held in several cities simultaneously.
The event, according to the group, will give American Christians the opportunity to fight anti-Semitism and express "their debt of gratitude to the Jewish people for their contribution to Christianity." The organizers stressed that the events are "non-conversionary."
"We see Christians in the United States as true friends and important supporters on the basis of shared values, and we welcome their efforts to strengthen the ties between Israel and the U.S.," Israeli Ambassador to the United States Danny Ayalon said Wednesday.
Stephen Strang, publisher of Charisma magazine and a founding member of
Christians United, has said he wants the organization to be as strong as the pro-Israel lobby known as AIPAC.
I think you're getting Hitler and Stalin (who studied in a seminary) mixed up. AFAIK, Hitler's ambition was to be an artist.
Teenage ambitions are not exclusive of each other. Hitler wanted to be a priest. He talked with his sister about it when they were growing up together. His biographers are consistent on this subject, including the USArmy psych assessment branch. This isn't an historical controversy; it's pretty well known.
Is that how we show are love for the jewish people? By dredging up a boatload of jew-denigrating biblical quotes, and then claiming that, on account of what the bible says, the jews themselves widely believe themselves to be God's punching bag? With friends like you, who needs enemies?
So, you hypothesize, just as Hitler repeatedly did, that the Nazi's were doing God's work.
Yeah, I did a little checking, you're right. Thanks.
Does Schicklgruber mean "grubber of shekels"?
"What I do not understand is why those of such a faith do not simply choose to ignore science, as they have deemed it irrelevant, rather than to launch a campaign to change the nature of science as if it could be made compatible with their faith. "
Wow. Very impressive 2000+ post thread, now in the Smokey Back Room. But I wonder, are you any closer to getting your questioned answered that was in post #1?
Here are a couple of things I would suggest you consider:
You have bought hook line and sinker the notion called 'the nature of science'. I would suggest you review this article discussing something called the cartesian split. It is quite interesting.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1421661/posts
But, I would also suggest you consider something a bit simpler:
GUTS: the Grand Unified Theory of Sex (or why the T.o.Evolution HAS to be, at least, partly, wrong).
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1316020/posts?page=164#164
I still think the fight in the USA over science and Religion is really about sex and how it is experienced. And I really think the Europe has experienced the ...ahem, history, it has b/c of a LACK of attention to this issue.
LoL!
I'm thinking I need to be like the little kids photographer at the mall:
Give 'em a toy to play with so they'll shut up the crying already!
Thanks for your posting and the links, which I've read with interest.
To be honest, I came to regret posting this article when I saw some of the flaming that erupted, although there has been some worthwhile info and insights as well.
As for the 'Cartesian' split; it is an interesting essay on philosophy, but as some posters on that thread have noted, it doesn't go very far. Insofar as such a 'split' occurred, it did not do so because of a philosophical decision (by Descartes or anyone else), but arose throught the continuing successes of materialistic explanations over supernatural ones: where we previously saw the actions of gods in thunder, earthquakes, and comets, science replaced irrational fears with testable truths. One does not (or at least, should not) lend science credibility as an act of 'faith,' (as some have claimed does happen), but neither can one reasonably deny science its due: its record of success is remarkable. I would not characterise this as buying into the nature of science 'hook, line, and sinker,' but simply as an acknowledgement of science's inconvertible achievements.
Now, if you wish to argue that there is meaningful knowledge and indeed "truth" which is not accessible to science, I would utterly agree with you--and I think you might be surprised by the number of scientists who are of similar mind. But that is not at all the same as attempting to change the proven and successful methodology of science, particularly when there is no agreed methodological alternative that delivers results.
As for your essay on G.U.T.S.; first, the strength of your marriage is certainly laudable, and your courage in writing here is to be commended. I deeply hold, as you do, an unshakeable belief in the sanctity of marriage, and consider my wife and children the greatest blessings which has been bestowed upon me--but this is a matter of faith, not science for me! But I am afraid I do not at all see the bearing your essay has on the scientific validity of ToE
I still think the fight in the USA over science and Religion is really about sex and how it is experienced. And I really think the Europe has experienced the ...ahem, history, it has b/c of a LACK of attention to this issue.
Without wishing to be provocative, I will say that I do get the impression, from some postings (not yours) that some unhealthy obsession with this topic is indeed one of the culprits. Someone (can't recall whom, will try to run the quote down) once defined a Puritain as 'someone who was desperately worried that somewhere, someone was enjoying himself.'
As for the 'history' experienced by Europe: far, far too much European history is in fact the history of religious wars of intolerance, and it rumbles on and on. Belatedly, we are finally, in the UK, taking measures against mullahs who have openly preached murder, as they are the current threat, but one cannot really find a period in the last 1000 years where Europe has not been filled with hatred wearing the mask of religion. That does not at all undermine my own Christian faith, which is perfectly robust, but it does give me meaningful challenges in how I live my faith.
Thanks again for your posting, a thought-provoking one amidst a lot of smoke and dust!
You develop a thick skin real quick from these threads. The flaming is painfully regular and predictable.
I hope there was SOME Light and Heat as well! ;^)
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