Posted on 09/22/2006 2:09:33 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Free Republic is currently running a poll on this subject:
Do you think creationism or intelligent design should be taught in science classes in secondary public schools as a competing scientific theory to evolution?You can find the poll at the bottom of your "self search" page, also titled "My Comments," where you go to look for posts you've received.
I don't know what effect -- if any -- the poll will have on the future of this website's science threads. But it's certainly worth while to know the general attitude of the people who frequent this website.
Science isn't a democracy, and the value of scientific theories isn't something that's voted upon. The outcome of this poll won't have any scientific importance. But the poll is important because this is a political website. How we decide to educate our children is a very important issue. It's also important whether the political parties decide to take a position on this. (I don't think they should, but it may be happening anyway.)
If you have an opinion on this subject, go ahead and vote.
FreedomProtector's statement cuts right to the heart of the matter. Thank you for your essay-post, FP! And thank you for the ping, my dear sister in Christ!
How come their heads are bumpy and ours are not?
Didn't think of that, did ya?
Beer for everyone!
It's extremely common to review the history of a science or of a theory before studying it. What's the problem with that?
Lamarck was, to say the least, speculating in an area where our current knowledge is so much superior that it's misleading to suggest that his ideas (or observations about ideas) were ever part of science.
Of course they were. They failed experimental tests, but were definitely taken seriously.
Give it up. The guy's a fraud.
Do you mean Lamarck? He was wrong, but certanily not fraudulent.
Or are you claiming FreedomProtector's claims about his school were fraudulent?
My approach to even mentioning Lamarck was exactly the same ordinarily taken to reject even mentioning ID or Creationism, or that somebody somewhere might have a question or two about Evolution itself.
The biggest argument the Evos have is that of making science class "germane". That means keep the soft-sciences out of the biology classroom.
So, either that argument is good in all cases or it's not a good argument.
So, which is it ~ you're with us, or you're not with us?
Ah. He's nowhere. Or... everywhere. ;-)
The only way that Creation 'scientists' can obtain their 'a priori' conclusion is to warp and mangle existing natural laws and produce mind boggling 'just so' stories that make any 'Adaptationist' evidence based conjecture look positively factual.
To explain the Noachian flood they create a large water canopy without explaining the mechanism preventing the canopy from descending until needed, then ignore the heat generated by that amount of water falling in 40 days. They assume such an extreme form of uniformitarianism that no tectonic plate movement happened before the flood and then such extreme catastrophism that all current mountain ranges were formed within a few years(centuries) after the flood, neither of which fit in with the actual evidence. Again the creation scientists ignore the massive heat that would be generated by such large masses moving those distances in such a short time.
Creation scientists require the SToE to abide by a mistaken interpretation of the Second law of Thermodynamics yet willingly change such universal constants as the speed of light and gravity. They ignore the consequences of making changes such as the decay rates of the materials used in radiometric dating.
Creation scientists not only play fast and loose with the currently well tested and universally accepted physical laws, they make up their own laws, laws which have not been tested but simply asserted, which they then arbitrarily apply when it becomes necessary to limit some mechanism of Evolution.
The reason we require science to be refuted by science is because the laws and mechanisms have all been tested multiple times by different groups of scientists, many who would like nothing better than to prove someone else wrong.
Creation scientists on the other hand do not try to prove each other wrong by examining and critiquing each other's work but indiscriminately accept and praise anything that looks remotely like it attacks Evolution.
Everything that we have evidence for, and everything we have an explanation for in the SToE has to and does fit in with all the physical laws of our universe. No laws have to be ignored, no physical evidence has to be hand waved away, no twisting and shouting is needed to fit the theory to the evidence. Evolution and the SToE simply fit the evidence.
The wild stories Creation scientists come up with to explain all of the events in the Bible are memorable for their imagination but not for their science.
Jeepers, I don't see how! Especially given your concluding statement: "Mandating that only one view is taught is clearly detrimental to the educational process." [I strongly, even passionately agree with this statement.]
There's gotta be a typo in there somewhere! (Either that, or the above italics is "tongue-in-cheek?")
Thanks so much for stepping up to the plate on this question, FreedomProtector!
What do you mean by "accepted rudiments?"
"Accepted" in the sense of assenting to a received doctrine? Or do you mean something else by that word; and if so, WHAT???
Thanks for writing atlaw -- please clarify.
At the level of high school science, it is all received doctrine. Jeepers, Betty, you have been reading these threads for years and haven't learned enough to know Darwin's thoughts on abiogenesis. How are you going to cram all that critical analysis into two weeks?
LOL! They are just spam. They carry no authority. And you can spam them a hundred thousand times on FR--they still will carry no authority.
You know, there's an article this week or last about string theory in the New Yorker--all about the big pretentions and huge waste of time and money by theoretical physicists, who have managed to dominate a lot of universities and tie up decades of research resources (almost half a century's worth) on their feeble nonsense.
Some scientific community...and the same kind of Unified Field Theory of Spamation by Multiplication is going on here.
How about, to start anyway, just knowing what the theory says ... such a requirement would eliminate about 90% of the trolls on this thread from ever graduating.
BB, it was clearly sarcasm ;o)
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