Posted on 11/30/2004 9:14:15 AM PST by cainin04
Over the past days there has been a great discussion about the role of the theory of evolution and whether it alone or the thoughts on Intellegent Design should be taught in schools.
I made the argument that Darwinsism attempts to replace God. "If you have Darwinism there is no need for God the Creator." But many of the Free Republic members disagreed.
Read the text from this recent text book used today in public schools and draw your own conclusions. I found this in Lee Stroble's "Case for a Creator."
Futuyma Douglas author of "Evolutionary Biology"--page 3--"By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superflous."
The book "Sign of Intellegence" cites several of the other popular text books. The writers cite the terms used to describe evolution; "evolution is random and undirected,"without plan or purpose,"Darwin gave biology a sound scientific basis by attributing the diversity of life to natural causes rather than the supernatural creation."
Stroble also cites an article from Time Magazine, "Charles Darwin didn't want to murder God, as he once put it. But he did."
One can read text book after text book, they all come to the same conclusion--Darwin replaced God.
Why then is a theory that has so many holes in it, still being taught as "fact?" Many excuses could be listed, but I would say it is just part of the liberal establishment trying to remove God from our schools and our country as a whole. In history class we can't read the "Declaration of ID" or say the Pledge of Allegiance, because they mention God; in English we can't read a story from the Bible, because that is seperation of church and state--yet we CAN read other religous materials as long as they are not Christian; and of course in science class we can't mention ID because that would include God.
Americans are going to have to stand up. We can not sit back and watch these atheistic liberals have every mention of God removed from our country. If we do stand up, not only will we produce children who have no understanding of our country, our history, or our values, but we will also see our nation fall into a great moral decline.
However, I do not think we are going to allow that to occur. In this last election we had a clear choice between a man of God--a man with values--and a man with little or no values. We chose the man with values. The fight will continue and Patriotic-God loving Americans can never give in. Read what is in your child's text books and if it attempts to remove God, speak out against it. Your voice matters--it matters not just for your child's sake, but for the sake of all America's citizens.
Looking at "Evolutionary Biology" it's pretty clear that if it's used as a textbook at all, it's in college.
You sort of imply that the books quoted from are used in high schools, etc. I'd bet about a million dollars that none of the books you've quoted are used as textbooks below the college level. I've never heard of a high school with an entire class on "evolutionary biology." I'd really like to see all of the titles and authors.
My wife is a strict "Seven Day Creation" believer. I tend to think that God took much longer; no sun and moon until the third "day", that kind of thing. But my main complaint with Creationist Classic is that our prime goal should be telling others about Christ's personal love for them, and his sacrifice that makes them clean before God so that they can have fellowship with He who made them. When well-meaning and faithful Christians lose this focus and drift off into the Creationist Cul-de-sac, it can put barriers up. Case in point, my best buddy from high school. He is an FBI agent, very intelligent, and very scientific. (Thank God he hasn't been lulled asleep by the Unitarians!) If she went to him, and banged him with "God made the universe in eight days and you are going to hell unless you believe it!", he would laugh in her face, and decided based on that sampling, Christians must be confused simpletons who don't understand a billion years of erosion, the background radiation of Big Bang, and simple math. Christ's free gift of Salvation, the real message, would be dismissed along with the weak (he would feel) argument of a seven-day Creation. But if I approach him with Salvation, which is centrally a spiritual argument that has no litmus paper proof, he may be argued around to understanding how God loves us all.
I could be wrong, and SevenDayism may be true. But if I am wrong, it doesn't threaten my salvation, God will straiten me out after I am dead, and then it won't matter. It will matter if I fail to reach my friend because his scientific mind locks me out based on what he considers foolishness. I guess the arguement for me would better be the admonishment "not to eat meat offered before idols" if it would offend my brother. It comes down to what the most important point of the Bible is, and I have to side with Salvation.
My $0.02.
Not that I can tell.
Or when they thought Embryonic Stem Cells would cure Spinal Cord injuries, Parkinson's.......
Or, of course, people who believe in God despite all of the "evidence to the contrary".........
Or the people who thought man evolved from ape but now think man and ape simply shared a "common ancestor..."
Darwin himself said that his theory only explained why species adapt to their environment and did not explain Creation.
Would you extend the same latitude to flat-Earth proponents?
I had meant to imply that, even though the theory of evolution does not have to be a replacement for God, it would not surprise me at all if our leftist educators were telling students that it is such a replacement.
After all, both religion and the family compete with the Left in matters of decision making and morality.
Here's the problem for strict Creationists versus Evolutionary Creationists.
If Creationist tomorrow woke up and found God was omnipotent enough to use evolution as the process of Creation, would Creationists reject that God? Or if through other non-devine means they found evolution was the process, would they then consider themselves a-theists and go on a suicidal rampage of rape and destruction?
If an Evolutionary Creationist, on the other hand, found out God had used spontaneous creation as the mechanism 6000 years ago, I think all we would say is, WOW, He sure threw us a curveball with those clues of evolution and dinosaurs, but that doesn't really change our belief in God.
I just think the Creationists are so tied up in their absolute belief that should they find out otherwise they would become mentally unstable.
Creationists are masters at distortion and, often, outright lying. Usually when people mean "our schools" they mean elementary, middle, and high schools. Like I've said I'd say there's about zero chance the books quoted (if the quotes aren't fabrications, which is always a possibility with creationists) are used below the college level.
Textbooks for high schools and lower are bland, vapid, drained of content or pretty much anything controversial, and selected by vast committees. If any of the quotations listed that people are horrified at are from high school texts I'd be more shocked than if Hillary Clinton won the 2008 Republican Nomination for President.
College textbooks are selected by professors with no oversight or review by the University and they're basically whatever he feels like typing in the syllabus.
I don't want to get into a whole deal here, but the comparisons are getting silly.
Tell me, who was right when Creationists challenged the idea that man evolved from ape, now that the standard has changed to man and ape sharing a "common ancestor?"
"The only people who think that Darwinian evolution is an attempt at replacing God are religious people of little faith."
The only people who say they don't think that Darwinian evolution is an attempt at replacing God are religious people of little knowledge and atheists who are being disingenuous.
Which public schools are using your references?
Darwin was a sideshow. The atheistic revolutionaries were everywhere fomenting rebellion and a lot of the rebellion was against the authority of the Church. Some of it justified, no doubt. But Darwin was hardly the sole reason or even a major reason. Even now Darwin is a strawman.
In response to your post.
1. Agreed. Science cannot definitively prove anything about the supernatural because it deals in the natural realm. Nevertheless, to reject the possibility of the supernatural because we cannot observe it is not consistent with the scientific method. Science must remain silent on the supernatural.
2. Evolution has been used by many enemies of religion to attack the idea of a creator God. This does not necessarily mean that it attempts to "replace" God, but it's hard to argue with someone who sees the proponents of evolution as trying to eliminate the idea of God's existence.
3. Micro-evolution is a fact! No doubt. This explains the high mutation rates of viruses, and our need for annual flu vaccines. Macro-evolution, the idea that complex organisms emerged from simple organisms over millions or billions of years has too many problems to be considered a scientific fact. A growing number of reputable scientists are rejecting Darwinian evolution outright, and a large number of these can best be described as agnostic. In fact, each year science uncovers more and more evidence for the idea of intelligent design for life in this universe. This doesn't mean that that Intelligence did not use evolution as a tool in some form, but it is increasingly unlikely that life emerged unaided from some primordial stew and evolved to the point where it could argue over the Internet.
First of all, "they" is not Darwinism.
Darwinism is a scientifically based area of inquiry and the theories it generates from data.
God is the center of a relgious belief.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
The answer to your title's question is, "No."
If your faith is strong it will not be threatened by Darwinism.
So you're suggesting that people such as Rabbi Avigdor Miller ("Sing You Righteous") have little faith?
ML/NJ
Evolutionary Biology is a college text, but the one that says "evolution is random and undirected,"without plan or purpose" comes from a 9th and 10th grade book.
I am not sure of the book's title, but you can read about it here
http://www.nmsr.org/essay3b.htm
I will do more research and see what I can dig up, when I get a chance. I am actually supposed to being writing a paper about Stomatal Responses to Water Vapor Pressure in Pinus palustris--sounds fun doesn't it.
I will try and get back to you on it all. But I will say, whether the text be college or highschool, the attempt is the same.
Bong. Bing. Pong. Something.
On the contrary, I think that creationist ideas and flat-Earth notions are on precisely the same footing. Both are long-discredited myths with no place in the classroom, except as examples of obsolete conceptions of science.
Tell me, who was right when Creationists challenged the idea that man evolved from ape, now that the standard has changed to man and ape sharing a "common ancestor?"
When someone says "man evolved from ape", it has only ever meant that modern man evolved from ancient ape. When someone says "man and ape share a common ancestor, it can only mean that modern man and modern ape share an (ancient) common ancestor. The two statements are completely consistent with each other, because modern apes evolved from ancient apes.
I looked at "Evolutionary Biology" on Amazon and the thing is friggin' 875 pages.
I took several AP classes and I don't know if all my textbooks combined in high school were that long.
There's no such thing as an 875 page book being used as a text in a public high school or middle school.
Basically what the author of the post and this Stroble guy did is read college textbooks, find the most inflammatory quotes they could find (possibly textbooks from classes in public COLLEGES) and then simply say they're texts from "public schools" (not TECHNICALLY a lie, in the Clintonian sense, of course) knowing all the while that people would assume they were talking about high school or middle school texts and get them all worked about about poor little 15 year old Sally being forcibly told there's no God and whatnot.
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