Posted on 11/29/2004 6:52:41 AM PST by PatrickHenry
In a poll released last week, two-thirds of Americans said they wanted to see creationism taught to public-school science pupils alongside evolution. Thirty-seven percent said they wanted to see creationism taught instead of evolution.
So why shouldn't majority rule? That's democracy, right?
Wrong. Science isn't a matter of votes -- or beliefs. It's a system of verifiable facts, an approach that must be preserved and fought for if American pupils are going to get the kind of education they need to complete in an increasingly global techno-economy.
Unfortunately, the debate over evolution and creationism is back, with a spiffy new look and a mass of plausible-sounding talking points, traveling under the seemingly secular name of "intelligent design."
This "theory" doesn't spend much time pondering which intelligence did the designing. Instead, it backwards-engineers its way into a complicated rationale, capitalizing on a few biological oddities to "prove" life could not have evolved by natural selection.
On the strength of this redesigned premise -- what Wired Magazine dubbed "creationism in a lab coat" -- school districts across the country are being bombarded by activists seeking to have their version given equal footing with established evolutionary theory in biology textbooks. School boards in Ohio, Georgia and most recently Dover, Pa., have all succumbed.
There's no problem with letting pupils know that debate exists over the origin of man, along with other animal and plant life. But peddling junk science in the name of "furthering the discussion" won't help their search for knowledge. Instead, pupils should be given a framework for understanding the gaps in evidence and credibility between the two camps.
A lot of the confusion springs from use of the word "theory" itself. Used in science, it signifies a maxim that is believed to be true, but has not been directly observed. Since evolution takes place over millions of years, it would be inaccurate to say that man has directly observed it -- but it is reasonable to say that evolution is thoroughly supported by a vast weight of scientific evidence and research.
That's not to say it's irrefutable. Some day, scientists may find enough evidence to mount a credible challenge to evolutionary theory -- in fact, some of Charles Darwin's original suppositions have been successfully challenged.
But that day has not come. As a theory, intelligent design is not ready to steal, or even share, the spotlight, and it's unfair to burden children with pseudoscience to further an agenda that is more political than academic.
That may be what you infer, but that is not what I said. I would fully expect all geological data to support the humanly recorded account of a world wide flood. The Grand Canyon is but a fraction of the geological data that resides untounched and unseen by humans. If you want to put all your stock in a tiny fraction of the data and make extrapolations concerning a PROCESS that has yet to be witnessed by human be my guest. In that case you have more faith than most Bible preachers.
Methinks you highly overestimate the quantity and quality of geological data available. Would you have called the past Presidential election at 7:00 a.m. on Election Day?
The data do not support such a flood. One must thus assume the human recorders were mistaken.
No, but they can be expected to follow the laws of nature as God established them just like everything else, and thus be capable of fitting together just the way they "came apart."
I am always amused at how evolutionists eschew intelligent design, yet with all their heads put together they could not establish and run a single law of nature, let alone all of them at once.
Please don't yak at me about "bait and switch" when after all the hub-bub about "facts" and "consistency" evolution has not the slightest notion how history will play itself out because it cannot test and predict the actual PROCESS of evolution. A better name for it would be "Hopeful History," for it is every bit as much lacking in solid facts as creationism. Even more so because it does not have a single human record from the past to back it up.
And face it. The number of fossils out of place could be 99% and you'd still champion the story telling that makes up 99% of evolution theories. Ad hoc rules and laws are a staple of your so-called science every bit as much as they are with creationism.
How much volume comprises the so-called geological column?
True. Someone on one of these threads once likened falsifying a theory to cutting down a tree. If you cut away a few of the minor branches, then the tree still stands. If you cut the tree at the trunk, the tree falls. If you find a single anomalous fossil, then that's not really a problem for the theory. However, if you start to find that a significant number of fossils appear out of place, then the theory has a problem. This is similar to cutting off most of the branches of a tree; the tree will die if you cut off enough of them. There are other observations, however, that would be serious enough to be extremely problematic for evolution. Evolution predicts common descent. Therefore finding an organism which doesn't use polynucleotides for heredity would be a more serious problem than a few out of place fossils. Finding a wildly out of place fossil, such as a human fossil that was reliably dated as being over one billion years old in a precambrian rock layer would similarly be a serious problem for evolution. I would liken such hypothetical observations to cutting the tree down at the trunk. The point still remains, however, that it is, at least in principle, possible to falsify evolution. There is no "God did it" type excuse to handle any possible observation as there is in creationism.
Reminds of the Cosby Noah sketch:
What's a cubit?
A cubit is a squarebit to the three-halves power.
Is it even true that all human cultures have a flood story? I would be interested in hearing the Chinese version of the flood or the Aztec version, for example. I know that these people knew nothing of God, but surely they would have noticed all that water, right?
Of course they must have a flood story; they are all descendents of Noah, since everyone else was dead.
How do you know no humans observed things a million years ago?
It is the same context. Yom means indefinite period of time. What is your evidence to the contrary?
As I pointed out earlier in my BUSTED post, you have used physics as constant and variant, depending how your argument was going.
5,140,631,390 cubic kilometers
Then stop saying there are any Laws of physics in your arguments.
"Hey. I'm only answering a fool according to his folly."
Must be talking to yourself, then.
Evolution predicts nothing. It is an assumed construct that can be made to fit the world as it exists. Evolution is a process, and in order for it to be verified it must be observed as it happens, not just as it supposedly happened. There is a world of difference. Who are we kidding to think one can look at static data from the past and then make "predicitions" based soley on dead matter (as it still stands in the record, no less!), and then have the audacity to call it "science?" If evolution wants to maintain a reputation as science, let it predict and observe the process as it happens. Otherwise it should be treated with no less skepticism in the marketplace of objective truth than any other narrative of history.
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