Posted on 08/16/2004 9:40:47 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Samuel Chen was a high school sophomore who believed in freedom of speech and the unfettered pursuit of knowledge. He thought his public high school did, too, but when it came to the subject of evolution -- well, now he's not so sure.
In October 2002, Chen began working to get Dr. Michael Behe, professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University, to give a lecture at Emmaus High School in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
Chen, who was co-chair of a student group that tries to stress the importance of objectivity on controversial issues, knew that Behe would be perfect, since the group was examining evolution as a topic. The author of Darwin's Black Box, a critique of the foundational underpinnings of evolution, Behe had presented his work and debated the subject in universities in the U.S. and England.
Behe agreed to come in February 2004 and give an after-school lecture entitled, "Evolution: Truth or Myth?" As the school year drew to a close in 2003, Chen had all the preliminaries nailed down: he had secured Behe's commitment, received approval from school officials, and reserved the school auditorium.
Then he found out just how entrenched Darwinist orthodoxy was in the science department at Emmaus. By the following August, Chen had entered into a six-month battle to preserve the Behe lecture.
As the struggle unfolded, it became obvious that those who opposed Behe coming to Emmaus didn't seem to care about his credentials. In addition to publishing over 35 articles in refereed biochemical journals, Darwin's Black Box was internationally reviewed in over 100 publications and named by National Review and World magazine as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.
Instead, it was Behe's rejection of Darwinism -- in favor of what is called "intelligent design" -- that drove opposition. According to the Discovery Institute, of which Behe is a fellow, this theory holds "that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
The head of the science department, John Hnatow, sent a statement to every faculty member in the school stressing that Emmaus held to the official policy of the National Science Teachers Association. That policy states: "There is no longer a debate among scientists about whether evolution has taken place."
It appeared there would be no debate at Emmaus, either. Some of the science teachers would not even allow Chen to address their classes and explain to students what Behe's lecture would be about.
Chen said various tactics were apparently used to undercut the event, including an attempt to cancel the lecture and fold the student organization without the knowledge of Chen and other members; requiring that the necessary funds for the lecture be raised much faster than for other student events; and moving the lecture from the auditorium to the school cafeteria.
One science teacher in particular, Carl Smartschan, seemed particularly riled about the upcoming lecture. Smartschan took it upon himself to talk to every teacher in the science department, insisting that intelligent design was "unscientific" and "scary stuff." He asked the principal to cancel the lecture, and then, when the principal refused, asked the faculty advisor for the student group to halt the lecture. Smartschan even approached Chen and demanded that the student organization pay to have an evolutionist come to lecture later in the year.
Smartschan's campaign to get the Behe lecture canceled was surprising to Chen because the event was scheduled after school, and not during class time, and was sponsored by a student group, not the school itself. Nevertheless, Chen persevered. The lecture was a success, attracting more than 500 people.
In the process, however, Chen's struggle took its toll. His health deteriorated over the course of the controversy, to the point where he collapsed three times in one month, including once at school. "My health has been totally junked," he told AFA Journal.
Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney and senior policy advisor for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, is advising Chen on his options for the coming year. Fahling said, "Schools are not allowed to interfere with viewpoints with which they disagree, and schools cannot disrupt the right of the students to participate in the academic and intellectual life."
Despite the hardship, Chen said he would do it all over again because the issue is so important. "I feel that there's a dictatorship on academic freedom in our public schools now," he said, adding, "I refer to evolution education as a tyranny .... You can't challenge it in our schools. Kids have been thrown out of class for challenging it."
That tyranny can be intimidating to students. "Some of the students who support me are afraid to speak out, especially because they saw how the science department reacted," Chen said. "They have a fear of speaking out against it in their classes."
On the other hand, he added that some students "are now questioning evolution, some for the first time."
That may be the first step in the overthrow of Darwin's dictatorship.
He sent only one, His only begotten Son. Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, doing all that the Father, the prophets, and He said that He would do. There were no others.
I choose not to comment on prophecies that have supposedly come to fruition at the right time, when they have happened in the past.
Because I can say just about anything I want, I can put in a book that The shuttle will be destroyed and make it look like a prophecy from the past, and make all the conditions of that prophecy look like I called them out before the event, and it just happened to happen at the right time.
But, you take it on faith that someone did not do that to the book of Jeremiah, you take it on faith, that God indeed told him about the future and the circumstances relating to Jesus' coming.
bmp
This is my last post on this topic - I need to get some work done today. Thanks every one and good night.
Duh. How many people have pointed that out to you so far? Of course "evolution" covers a broad range - do you mean to cover early procaryotes, eucaryotes, amphibians, reptiles, marsupials, mammals, humans? Are you including abiogenesis? The Big Bang? Everything?
Other religions disagree with your specific interpretation.
Well you can ask the Jews when they first received the book. I don't believe any of them will say they rewrote it to coincide with Jesus' coming.
Some other religions actually agree that Jesus was the Christ, and that salvation is of the Jews. If you are talking of Baal religions, and of all other man-made religions, their being not from God, of course they disagree.
Yes, I know of him, as well as others.....
The bible should not be questioned is the basic tenet of many fundamentalist Christian groups, it is to be taken literally in all aspects, which I find a little ridiculous, but that's me.
The literalist cannot handle scientific dealving into these questions, because it will take their literalism and turn it on it's head, and in the process hurt their faith in their bible.
Others do not take the book as literally, and take it as it relates to them, and what they need to know, they need something, they open the book and God relates to them directly through the bible what they need at that specific point in their lives, to them, the bible is a book of God's stories that he uses to relate directly with us on a personal level.
The first have real problems with science, the second have no problems with science, because it cannot question the bible directly because the bible was never meant to be literal in any sense of the word.
It all depends on how you look at the bible, is it a personal gate to your own personal relationship with God, or is it a book telling you how to live every aspect of your life?
With literalists, science and religion are not compatible, with the other, science and religion are one and the same thing. It's thier own personal journey in which God is leading them.
Have I straightened that out?
If you have physical, testable evidence that God did it, please present it. Understand, however, that "God did it" is not the default position. Any claims of Divine Intervention will have to meet the same standards of evidence as any other claim.
Others would claim they were the one-true-religion and that yours was "man-made."
Yes, scientifically I can say that Abiogenesis happened, otherwise we would not be here.
The answer is a positive, something happened.
For me personally, I can say that God did it, without any trouble at all, but I also realize that it's not science, nor scientific.
Nor will I argue with science when it finally does come to a conclusion, because science is based on facts, and my religion is based on faith. So science can explain it, but God could still have done it to my mind.
Because it is my faith we are talking about, not science.
There is a difference, the problem is that a lot of you are unable to separate the 2.
Who made this placemarker?
And what is it made of?
And would Barney Frank like it? ().()
Scientists can enquire into whatever directions they desire. Nothing is stopping anyone from testing for the Almighty's hand in the origins of life. How would you go about setting up such a test?
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