Posted on 09/07/2004 12:47:31 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Serbian Education Minister Ljiljana Colic has ordered schools to stop teaching children the theory of evolution for this year, and to resume teaching it in future only if it shares equal billing with creationism.
The move has shocked educators and textbook editors in the formerly communist state, where religion was kept out of education and politics and was only recently allowed to enter the classroom.
“(Darwinism) is a theory as dogmatic as the one which says God created the first man,” Colic told the daily Glas Javnosti.
Colic, an Orthdox Christian, ordered that evolution theory be dropped from this year’s biology course for 14- and 15-year-olds in the final grade of primary school. As of next year, both creationism and evolution will be taught, she said.
Creationism teaches that a supernatural being created man and the universe. Most scientists regard “creation science” as religious dogma, not empirical science.
[Snip here, because I don't know if we can reproduce all of this material.]
Belgrade University biology lecturer Nikola Tucic called the education minister’s ruling a “disaster.”
“This is outrageous ... We are slowly turning into a theocratic state and in the 21st century we are going back to the Book of Revelations,” Tucic told Glas Javnosti, referring to the final section of the Christian Bible.
[Another snip here.]
Lecturer Tucic suspected Colic’s order was a move by Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica to bolster his conservative party’s flagging political strength by winning church support.
“This was a political decision which clearly shows the church is not minding its own business, but is deep into politics,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
Fine I will consider creationism in the same way as evolution. Give me some testable prediction made by creationism and I'll compare it to the observations that have been made. I've never said that creationism isn't true. I've said that it isn't science.
And what magical cutoff switch prevents the former from becoming the latter?
What is your definition of a "kind"? What are the testable criteria for entities to be of different kinds?
From an earlier post, before the trolls started to show up in huge numbers:
Along with the Intelligent Designertm there is the Cosmic Clerktm. It is the Clerk's function to keep track of how many times in the past your ancestral line has undergone mutations. This is a purely mechanical task, because the Clerk merely has to follow the Designer around and keep accurate records. Even your primitive, naturalistic mind should be able to understand this.And when some creature's ancestors have used up their alloted number of mutations, no more are permitted. It's really very simple. Why do you Satanic eeeevooo- loouuu-shunists have so much trouble with this concept? When the designed-in allowance of mutations is used up, that's it. Radiation has no effect. Chemicals in the environment have no effect. Lateral transfers from a virus have no effect. The creature's "kind" is fixed. Forever.
How was the day measured? By a sundial?
Like I said, I'm not an expert but their are some websites that make excellent presentations. Just Google for them, invest some time and be objective.
Just a thought. When we look at an automobile, why do we conclude it was designed and assembled by people (creationism)? Why don't we give it the benefit of the doubt and conclude it spontaneously assembled itself from an elemental state (evolution). Why don't we find autos in the fossil record, after all, they are relatively simple compared to life? Again, just a thought.
How did this layer of water not develop a Raleigh-Taylor instability? Did the layer obscure the Moon? Was it above or below the Moon?
Give a testable, falsifiable prediction.
"Festival of Tractionless Trolls, Redux" placemarker
Again, I don't claim to be an expert. I would think just plain old curiosity would lead people to do a little research on their own, like checking several independent sources. I don't believe in Astrology, but I at least examined it thoroughly before I rejected it.
Quite condesending of you. "Little" narby indeed.
For your information, your understanding of my positions re Galileo vs. the Catholic church is entirely backward. I'm not saying that Galileo should have shut up, but that the church should have. Obviously.
For you to so entirely misunderstand my position re Galileo calls into question your understanding on this entire subject.
Doing research won't yield any testable predictions made by Creationism. There aren't any. Creationism is the doctrine that God created the universe and everything in it. If there were something that would potentially falsify creationism, the creationist need only make the claim that that is the way God made it, so creationism is still true. There is no evidence or observation that would falsify Creationism. By contrast, there are many observations that would lead those who beleive that evolution is true to abandon that theory. This is why evolution is science and creationism is not. It has nothing to do with which of the theories is true. As I have said previously, creationism may be true, but it is not science and should not be taught as science.
I have done so for some 50+years. Creationism is the same anti-science nonsene that it was then. So is Astrology. So is Numerology, N-Rays, Polywater (which I explained when I was a graduate student, no one listened), Psychic Surgery, Hollow Earthism, Chiromancy, Dowsing, and almost all of Art Bell's topics.
You will have to come up with something that rises to the level of an hypothesis to be taken as other than a carnival side show. The Creationist movement hasn't done so yet. (Nor have the Astrologers. Maybe if everyone born on September 8 in Kansas City were to be killed by a bread truck, that might be a data point.)
> When we look at an automobile, why do we conclude it was designed and assembled by people (creationism)?
Because cars do not self-assemble from naturally occuring elements. Life forms, however, do exactly that. Cars do not reproduce. Life forms do.
Your analogy is like the "lone pocketwatch" analogy so commonly and incorrectly used by Creationists. Basically, it goes liek this: if you were to be the first astronaut on another planet, and found a pocketwatch on a pedestal, woudl you assume it evolved there, or was Intelligently Designed and placed there? Obviously, the latter. However, there's a problem when tryign to apply that to evolution: Earth doesn;t have one single complex organism sitting on a pedestal. Earth is *covered* in a multitude of self-reproducing life forms. So, for the pocketwatch analogy to work, the astronaut would ahve to find a planet covered in pocketwatches, grandfather clocks, writstwatches, etc. all goign through life cycles and reproducing. In *that* case, evolution seems a likely source.
As punishment, she was ordered on public tv to wear an archaeopteryx costume and write out a 1000 times: ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
Then go find one or quit wasting our time.
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