Posted on 11/19/2004 10:40:08 AM PST by jcsmonogram
GALLUP NEWS SERVICE
PRINCETON, NJ -- Some 145 years after the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, controversy about the validity and implications of his theory still rages. Darwin personally encountered much resistance after his book was published in 1859. Seventy-nine years ago, the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee brought the issue of exactly where human beings came from into sharp public focus in the United States. Indeed, as recently as this month, a court case in Cobb County, Ga., dealing with the treatment of evolution and creationism in school textbooks received nationwide publicity. November's National Geographic Magazine asked on its cover: "Was Darwin Wrong?" and then proceeded to devote 33 pages to answering that question.
Darwin might be surprised to find such debate still raging nearly a century and a half after he published his book. He might also be surprised to find that even today there is significantly less than majority agreement from the American public that his theory of evolution is supported by the evidence.
Gallup has asked Americans twice in the last three years to respond to the following question about Darwin's theory:
Just your opinion, do you think that Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is – [ROTATED: a scientific theory that has been well-supported by evidence, (or) just one of many theories and one that has not been well-supported by evidence], or don't you know enough about it to say?
(Excerpt) Read more at gallup.com ...
19.1.1. What Is Relative in Relativity? First, let us consider what is relative in relativity theory? To answer this question, consider a simple example. If we walk down the aisle of a moving train car, the car itself represents a frame of reference for describing our motion. Looking out the train window, however, we see our immediate frame of reference, the train car, moving relative to another frame of reference, the Earth's surface. We know that the frame of reference provided by the Earth's surface, however, moves relative to yet another frame of reference, the Earth's center, about which the Earth rotates. There is still even another frame of reference, the Sun, from which to view our stroll down the aisle of the train, since the center of the Earth moves relative to it. And so it continues to even larger scales in the Universe--we cannot ascertain clearly an absolute motion in the Universe since we can find no frame of reference that is absolutely still. The first of what will be several truths that seemingly contradict our intuition is that all motion in the Universe is relative, there being no absolute standard of rest. http://www.physics.gmu.edu/classinfo/astr103/CourseNotes/Text/Lec06/Lec06_pt1_txt_relativityMotionSpace.htm
Dear child, all motion is only *perceived* as relative. Humans detect motion based upon a perception that compares one to another.
But perception is not reality. Contrary to your repeated claims, the Sun does not actually orbit around the Earth, regardless of your perception.
Wait.
Doesn't that mean that two thirds of Americans say that evidence does not support Darwin's evolution theory?
That, to me, is the more interesting finding.
There are two words that are an absolute refutation of Darwinian theory and those words are...
...James Carville.
Some scientists are embarrassed when asked, that they cannot explain what existed before the "Big Bang". They also have no explanation for the "why" of the "what". Others are not afraid to utter the Lord's name confidently along with their scientific thought. Einstein himself famously said "God does not play dice with the universe". It is possible to imagine flowers emitting scent and having a colorful apperance to attract insects, but why are they so beautiful?
You don't have to look far to see the hand of God all around us.
Why must disagreement imply fear? Those darling deviants have really corrupted our language (among other things).
What do we have now? Darwinphobia?
I agree, "afraid" was a poor choice of words. Bygones. How about "Why do those with a belief in God find the theory incompatible with that belief?"
Wonder what they are drinking or smoking. It takes more faith (and ignorance) to believe in evolution than to believe in God's creation.
Even if God did just snap his fingers and "poof", there we were; When did he create Gravity? DNA? Right Handedness? Atoms? Molecules? Gasses, liquids and solids?
There is just an incredible amount of Creation, how could those two chapters in Genesis describe even a fraction of it?
Obviously, there's plenty of details left out of Genesis that could easly hold Evolution.
That and the fact that this Creationism silliness is harming the conservative cause, as well as making an artificial stumbling block for young people believing in God at all, makes the anti-evolution fight double stupid.
I agree. Farmers have been using evolutionary practices for centuries. (farm animals came around by selecting those most favorable to farms and discarding/eating those that do not favor farming.)
Any scientist that would be so certain about something that is still arguable, is not much of a scientist.
True classic scientists, like Einstein, may not "believe" in the classic sense, but had enough wisdom not to make absolute statements about it.
LOL. Sorry.
Your attempt to quantify that it takes "more" faith to believe in one unproven theory than another is ludicrous. What did you use for weights and measures to arrive at your thesis?
I agree--but evolution is, nonetheless, a THEORY--no more "demonstrable" than creationism.
That's precisely the example which Darwin used to help explain evolution by natural selection.
Polls to decide? Oh boy.
Yes that is one of a great many different theories held by Creationists and other religious people. Which is why I laugh so hard when Creationists attack Evolution because they "can't find the missing link", or the second law of thermodynamics, or some other such misrepresentation of scientific understanding. Creationists can't get their act together on exactly what they believe, yet they expect science to have everything perfectly figured out and etched in stone.
Right.
Well, then, that's a whole new universe. I, for one, don't. And I personally know no Christians who see any incompatibility.
> Both of which sprang forth from Darwin and evolutionary theory.
Incorrect. A common myth, but a myth nonetheless. Nazism, for example, sprang from German nationalism, anger over WWI, and 19th century spiritualist movements. Darwin was misappropriated to excuse soem of the nonsense, but was not the basis for it.
So, to prove to you that evolution is a valid theory, we need to show you a chimp giving birth to a human?
You creationists love to move the goalposts, don't you?
Anyone seen a blue-eyed ape recently?
Huh?
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