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.
Yeah, Everest popped up like a zit in a day or two after the flood dried up.
This is the same thing as laying like grids on a graph paper. Of course nothing is going to "fit together" the same way it "came apart". Except in the Rube Goldburg school of physics you got your hydrology degree at.
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.
I have no idea what you are trying to say here, but it it is certainly up to your standards of superior disdane combined with incompetent physics and laughable scientific epistimology.
Please don't yak at me about "bait and switch".
Ok, I'll use blunter words: bluffing, preaning about it, and then dodging until your deponents get too annoyed to continue.
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.
That would be incorrect. Now you tell me--what do you think the percentage of fossils out of place in the current record are--since you proported to present out-of-place fossils as evidence in this argument? How many topsy turvy layers in the Grand Canyon are there, as a percentage of the whole? How many human footprints in dinosaur fossil beds? How many inexplicable backslides in the morphological chain between eohippus and horse?
Methinks you highly overestimate the quantity and quality of geological data available.
Methinks I do not. And methinks a quick visit to the grand canyon and a few serious academic institution's massive field record rooms would disabuse of this hopeless conceit.
Why? Were they not in play at the time the fossil record was laid down?
More nonsense fostered by not looking at what is going on. Every time a field study is commissioned, it is on the basis of predictions about what will be found where, based on what we already know, and the success rate is extremely high, and the success rate for looking elsewhere is extremely low. Mammals will occur in Mesozoic layers around higher carbonates far more reliably than they will around devonian seabeds. Whereas random digging don't turn up squat by comparison--as the flood alternative would suggest.
These are predictions, they are easily falsifiable, and easily and commonly double-blinded. When the oil companies stop looking for Devonian shorelines to tell them where to dig for oil, get back to me on this, and maybe you'll have something. What you have now is, having lost with a dud hand, continuing to claim you won the pot long after the joke has paled.
Well, of course they had flood stories. They had floods. You can't shake a mile thick of ice off the Northern Hemisphere and expect anything else.
shubi:Then stop saying there are any Laws of physics in your arguments.
brew:Why? Were they not in play at the time the fossil record was laid down?
Haheehhaah You are joking right? You don't know what the laws of physics are, can't list them, yet you say they were in play. I am not saying they were not in play, but I am getting amused at your inability to see your own foibles.
Do you believe there is a fossil record or do you think the flood jumbled all the kinds together?
Please advise as to how you came up with that figure so I can check your math. Thank you.
Of course I believe there is a fossil record. I also believe it was laid down according to the laws of physics, and that the laws of physics today are the same as they were then. What's so foiblish about that? Furthermore, you are the one who asserted that God would never be inconsistent in the Bible. Why would He let the laws of physics go willy nilly through history?
Actually, there has been speciation observed in fruit flies in the wild. Someone just posted the article on this thread or another one rather recently.
That is the first post where we can agree.
So if you believe there is a fossil record, how old is it?
Sorry pal, but predictions about "what will be found" are but worthless predicitions when the findings have been sitting around waiting to be "discovered" and analyzed according to what might have happened. It's the process, not the static record, that counts. Science hasn't watched evolution happen. Get it?
Shall I "predict" that, if I go to the bank I'll find money there and then call it "science" when I excercise my hypothesis? Gawd.
I believe it is, for the most part, as old as the great flood. I believe it was brought about by a great flood, as this would explain both the (somewhat) jumbled nature of the contents and the pattern (strata) in which it was laid down. There are strata, but even these are not perfectly aligned as one might think if it came about merely through millions of years of nature acting consistently with respect to the environment.
Why does the flood alternative suggest the supposed geologic column would be the same everywhere throughout the planet? The manner and degree of alterations on the earth's population and topography in view of a catastrophic occurence such as a worldwide deluge in my view does not eliminate the possibility of random deposits or concentrations. Even a shuffled deck of cards yields streaks of black and red.
Dunno, it just seemed the right way to answer such an odd question.
I would appreciate it if you could cut the breast-beating melodrama and argue the points.
I take it there are certain parts of recorded human history you'd like to chuck since it does not fit in with your world view, e.g. the great flood. Since neither you nor I were present when the fossil record went down, I would think it rather preposterous to suggest we know the order in which it happened. Since we have hardly scratched the surface of the earth to date I also think it to be preposterous to assume we have a handle on all that's under there. But that's just me.
You can join your friends and place your bets on only a fraction of scientific knowledge, all the while hoping that your constructions in view of the static record are on target. I'm not that kind of believer when it comes to science. I like to see it happen first. I like facts and figures as opposed to wishful thinking.
Fact: There is a fossil record
Wishful thinking: It got there through the same processes we observe today.
Okay. So you consider the supposed geological column to descend approximately ten kilometers below the earth?
Sorry pal, but that's how science works. Or have you expanded the consipracy theory of science to include the connivence of inanimate matter?
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.