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.
There is, of course, no such physical laws, but there are self-consistent theories that do not require a beginning of time, at least time as we observe it.
Postulating a creator to solve the problem of existence is the intellectual equivalent of stamping your foot and shouting "because I say so!"
Third Law of Creationism: Evolution is Garbage, Patrick
Rational discourse. You're asking a question that you know has no answer. You're asking it in a pointed manner that implies that the people you're addressing aren't intelligent enough to realize that. What do you expect as a response?
>100 billion years ago there was NOTHING, and then later on there was EVERYTHING.
This is an assertion on your part, not a fact.
What physical law could possibly be twisted to give you everything from nothing?
Zero can be broken out into plus and minus values. Matter and AntiMatter. Something from nothing.
If you reread the post (#692) you will see that the only non-rhetorical question is: "What physical law could possibly be twisted to give you everything from nothing?"
How about the fact that physical laws did not exist until the big bang?
There were no physical laws, because there was no physical universe.
Confused yet, study the Big Bang theory and maybe you will answer your own questions.
what are you actually looking for?
Don't be coy, just come out and say it.
Therefore the universe appeared supernaturally. Said differently the creation of the universe was a supernatural event.
Hey, if that's what you need, more power to you.
It is not what I need. Rather it is exactly what you described. The conditions you stated are known as supernatural conditions.
It's just a theory among many, as well as the big bang, the big crunch and back again, the solipsism universe, where someone just thought us up and now we exist.
Ahh, it just goes on and on, physicists are still debating it, but I believe that the one they are latching onto is the one where there was nothing, and then the universe exploded into being and is still expanding like a giant balloon, and will continue to expand until the 2nd law catches up with us and it all goes dark, but continues to expand forever.
The Paean to Ignorance continues.
Sorry, but you are wrong. Put an electron (0e-1) and a positron(0e1) together and you end up with energetic photons. That is something.
Supernaturally. It had no reason to do so.(or did it?)
The entire mass plus energy of the universe simply is zero. (As has been explained many time on this very forum.)
I'm into the solipsism thing, you're all just figments of my imagination, and when I turn off my computer, you are all just going to cease to exist, and then when I turn it back on, it will look like you were actually there all the time.
That is simply not so.
Beautiful confession of faith. Is this something you believe by your own study, or have others preached this to you?
Even more supernatural.
My own study.
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