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 ...
Great news!
Communism, as practiced in Russia, simply replaced God with the State. The same mindset applied. However, nothing in "Darwinism" mentions any sort of political machinery. The Russians refused to accept Darwin's findings, prefering to go with Lysenko, Stalin's pet crank scientist.
Real communism (from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs) arose from Christ's teachings. You can't get around that so you pop off down a tangent about "modern communism."
Indeed. One might even say that everything is in line with "Everything is evidence for creationism."
You made a great effort but I think this thread has gone beyond the hope of "socially redeeming value". At least I can take away the observation that most of the evolutionists that participated could not do so without a lot of name calling, blatant intolerance or contempt for or ignorance of the scientific method. Some were civil and I appreciate that.
Here you show your ignorance of science. Not just anything can be a theory. You use the word theory in its popular usage, but in science a theory is a self-consistent explanation of a wide range of observational data. What you probably mean to say is that just anything can be a hypothesis. This statement is also untrue, however. In order to qualify as a hypothesis, an assertion must be falsifiable. That is, it must make some prediction, and if that prediction is not found to be true, the hypothesis itself must be false.
And furthermore, even if they accept the evidence regarding the age of the earth, all the need say is that God created it in such a way that the earth appeared to be older than it really is. This line of reasoning applies to any potential falsification criterion for creationism. That's why it's not science.
Or maybe 1 + 1 = 10 (in binary)
I'm afraid my mind wandered to an operation other than addition. I was just wrong. Maybe I was thinking of XOR or Modulo. It's been thirty years since I was in a classroom.
or 1 + 1 = 0 (modulo 2)
Maybe, but you can get to the Spanish Inquisition, the Crusades and the Holocaust from Christianity. You can't justify any of these things using the theory that, over time, the relative frequency of alleles in a given population changes resulting in the wide diversity of life observed today. Even if you could, what's that got to do with the truth or falsity of evolution?
That should be "contempt for ignorance", clearly meaning willful ignorance.
The term "absichtliche Unwissenheit" does sound better than the foppish "ignorance obstinée" though.
Those who have told you that the chances of DNA forming naturally are "one chance in 10Ebajillion" are liars.
You need to read your own literature. The formation of precurors, principally nucleotides and amino acids, is based on the theory that the composition of earth's atmosphere was considerably different than it is today. It has not been proved and it may never be proved. The other evolutionist theory is the space origin. Most evolutionists agree that the step from amino acids to RNA or DNA is a huge one they need to answer. Most mathematicians say its virtually impossible. The generally accepted date for a suitable prebiotic atmosphere is 3.8 billion years, and for life is 3.5 to 3.3 billion years. Evolutionist literature thoroughly explains how these dates were arrived at and why the short time frame is a problem.
I do check out evolutionist web sites because I am curious and not locked into dogma. You ought to try it.
So he made a technical error, cut him a break. Youv'e gotten a few. What I object to are people claiming to know the difference between a theory and law when they don't and then claiming others are "ignorant". Naturally I'm going to return the "compliment" and then point them to a site where they can see the formal definitions from a neutral source. But you know what, is it really all that important to having a reasoned discussion that someone uses the vernacular definitions? You did know what he meant, didn't you?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.