Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: general_re; All
Is everyone happy that the NCSE is mixing religion with science and using our tax dollars? Is this OK because it is your religion?

Gravity Constant = 6.6739 10-11m3kg-1s-2
Neo-darwin Constant = humans arose from happenstance void of intelligence and design?

Neo-darwinism is essentially garbage all the way down with many turtles as just part of the equation. It’s kinda’ funny isn’t it? Garbage all the way down and here we stand on all of it… Garbage all the way down! What a crazy belief system. LOL! Hey let’s make fun of it. Nah, it wouldn’t be right to make fun of someone’s religion or set up a straw man to tear down. Let’s see if we can keep religion out of science:

The National Association of Biology Teachers [NABT] in their 1995 Official Statement on Teaching Evolution stated the following:

"The diversity of life [all life] on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments."

It took seven years of prodding from conservative groups before they revised the statement. According to the NABT's executive director, the change was made ``to avoid taking a religious position'' that might offend believers. The two words that were removed from their statement were; 'unsupervised' and 'impersonal'. These two words made the NABT's statement religious and faith-based. To illustrate, change the words to 'supervised' and 'personal'. Either way, both statements would be outside the purely 'material constraints' that science now (ironically thanks in part to Darwin) currently imposes. Their statement boldly claimed that there was no intelligent cause (force, etc.) behind mankind and all existence.

Anyway, let's look at a college textbook and see what it has to say on the subject:

According to Douglas Futuyama’s widely used college textbook Evolutionary Biology(1998), Darwin’s “theory of random, purposeless variations acted on by blind, purposeless natural selection provided a revolutionary new answer to almost all questions that begin with ‘Why?’” Darwin “made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous,” and thereby “provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanism and materialism” that is now “the stage of most Western thought.”

Well, we can't use this because it is a religious statement. I guess we should look at a required/recommended reading book for college biology:

"Paley's argument is made with passionate sincerity and is informed by the best biological scholarship of his day, but it is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong. The analogy between . . . watch and living organism, is false. All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in the mind's eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparent purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.
The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design (p. 5)
-Richard Dawkins

Another religious statement? Hmmm… The National Association of Biology Teacher's, college textbooks, and required/recommended reading material.

Maybe it's just human nature (human nature? Humans - intelligent -- nature – stupid </Frankenstein mode>)...
If things that people detest exist in religion i.e. --- dogmatism, conceit, mockery, intolerance, and power-obsession, --- why would we not expect to see it in science as well?
Especially when science becomes religion.

39 posted on 04/01/2004 4:45:58 PM PST by Heartlander
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies ]


To: Heartlander
I'm having real trouble putting this under any heading other than "be careful what you wish for". This looks remarkably like creationists reaping what they have sown, and once I stop laughing my butt off and wiping the tears from my eyes, I'll probably suggest - once again - that religion doesn't belong in the science classroom. Whether anyone will take that to heart and learn anything from this episode remains to be seen.
40 posted on 04/01/2004 4:59:51 PM PST by general_re (The doors to Heaven and Hell are adjacent and identical... - Nikos Kazantzakis)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson