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.
Yeah, the wording of the question here reminds me of the kind of push-polling that the media polls engage in -- twist the wording such that you get a desired result. Besides, this isn't a Free Republic poll, as implied by the title of the thread, but a "Patrick Henry" poll designed to stir the pot.
PH rules the world placemarker.
You are trying to create a small class of creationists on one hand, Young earthers, and then trying to generalize the term as well. Creationists mean everyone that believes that God created the universe life and everything.
I am talking a specific group of people, whether they be Young earthers or just creationists.
They wish to push ID and creationism into a science classroom, which is not at all where it belongs.
As you can see from some of the debating on thise subject, as well as the poll that has taken place, a lot of conservatives feel that somehow ID should be taught in a science class.
These are the people that I am talking about.
It is a sad realization for me, because I thought that most conservatives were intellectually honest enough to figure that their beliefs were not science, and vice versa.
As I have seen from the poll, I have every reason to be disapointed.
The word was coined in 1880 and refers to those claiming a literal Biblical account of creation.
You really gotta' do better ~ the word has roots that predate ancient Rome.
If you have One God who Created the Universe, that's your starting point. It does not therefore follow that God continued to create every single second of creation in the greatest of detail ~ and we can, in fact, demonstrate that this does not happen. God does leave a lot of stuff to fields, forces, dimensions, quantum mechanics and so forth (the words we use in our time to describe certain phenomenon we do not fully understand).
The "young earth" crowd are also readily dealt with in a single story.
It's in the various tales of Abraham ~ and recall that Abraham (in the Bible and other sources) comes along quite a few centuries after Adam, and Inkydu, and so on ~ many centuries ~ thousands of years in fact.
The Young Earthers are giving us about 5100 years for everything to happen, and there's Abraham, and his "kinsman", Lot. And what's Lot doing? Well, he's wandering about with his flocks and family, doing stuff, and among the the stuff is this trip to the nasty old cities of Sodom and Gomorrah where people do outrageous things.
We all know those stories whether we are religious people or not because the events have been popularlized by professional homosexuals to advance the idea that the Bible is "out of date" these days since, as it were, they think being "gay" is good.
Well, anyway, not to belabor the point, but the really big story in Lot is actually about Lot's wife. When we left her she'd been turned into rock salt, or stone, for "looking back", presumably wistfully, at the cities of the plain which were being destroyed by a rain of fire and brimstone.
So, Lot's wife is dead in the middle of what is actually her morality tale. We recall, from their life in the town, that Lot's wife, even with the assistance of angelic beings, was unable to secure husbands for her daughters. Instead, the men of the town much preferred the angelic beings, so Lot's wife was failing in one of her primary duties. Having failed, and now with the town being destroyed around their ears, there was no hope for any future for her daughters, so she was "turned to stone" and abandoned by Lot.
Next on the agenda is ol'Lot, high as a kite, having intercourse with his daughters.
End of the story of the mother who failed to find husbands for her daughters.
So, where else do we find this story? Obviously if we do enough digging in Iraq we are going to come across it in ancient Sumerian, but if we go further, say to Finland, to the stone carvings that have been dated through modern techniques to be at least 7,200 years old, we find the very same story of Lot's wife in the petroglyphs.
Leningrad's Hermitage Museum has some of these items if you ever get a real burning desire to see them although most remain in Northern Finland and Keralia.
So much for 5,100 years. How, then, did the Bible end up with a story that's older than Creation (using the "young earth" method of measuring time?
I don't think they can answer it.
More votes have come in, but the percentages are pretty much as I reported earlier. Prior FR polls typically receive around 6,000 votes before they're ended. This one already has 3,082 votes, so it seems unlikely that the trend will change very much.
I'm ignoring un-registered voters. They're not freepers, and they seem remarkably opinionated. Their rate of "undecided" or "pass" votes is about half that of freepers, and all of the difference in decisiveness is showing up in the percentage of "Yes" votes. An interesting pattern. Aside from that, we know that freepers can only vote once.
Therefore, the important votes are from registered freepers, and in particular, those who have expressed an opinion on the poll question, so I'm also ignoring their votes for "undecided" or "pass." Freepers with an opinion have voted as follows:
Yes (put creationism in science class) 965 votesPercentage voting "No" is 36.2%
No (keep creationism out of science class) 547 votes
Total freeper votes (excluding "undecided" or "pass") 1,512
And it's not my poll. It came from a suggestion (not mine) made to Jim Robinson in this thread:
[Michigan Gov. Candidate] DeVos says he wants intelligent design taught in science classes.
No, it was Dr Szent-Gyorgi that first pointed out that vitamin C was a complex, not simply ascorbic acid.
The vegitation frozen in the tundra which they eat during the thaws is the source of the bioflavinoids that prevent scurvy, not the whale blubber, which actually is what protects their brains, eyes, and circulatory systems, and is also their source of burnable energy..
The linguists ar ethe ones that fingered the date 1880 for the first use an meaning of the term. The concept of creationis irrelevant, only the word "creationism(ist)" matters. The word was coined in 1880 and it means a literal Biblical creation, not any other.
That want their children to be brought up as scientifically ignorant. \
327 posted on 09/24/2006 5:10:45 PM MDT by freedumb2003 (Insultification is the polar opposite of Niceosity)
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It's obvious now that you really are an expert on your tagline. Logical.
http://www.itk.ca/environment/wildlife-narwhal.php
Wow, you are wrong again, imagine that?
Sadly, due to the influence of the drug giants, that is the only source of accurate information that is redily available. Many of the major universities are doing useful research, but access to the up to date info is very controlled.
Read the good Doctor's own work, and his reccomendations.
Yeah, the Chinese parents were consistently pretty sharp folks. Easy to love, easy to respect.
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Gullible.
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Racism is an area of expertise, too? Or is it just more haughty arrogance and snobbishness?
Chinese as a people are amongst the least gullible groups I've ever been around. They have to be to navigate all the nuance stuff in all their complicated surface and subsurface relationship dynamics and customs.
But I realize facts are not of great interest to the EVO side of things.
Had you bothered to even read what you posted, you would see that I was correct. (or can you read?)
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