Posted on 12/14/2004 7:14:55 AM PST by wkdaysoff
HARRISBURG, Pa. — The state American Civil Liberties Union (search) plans to file a federal lawsuit Tuesday against a Pennsylvania school district that is requiring students to learn about alternatives to the theory of evolution (search).
The ACLU said its lawsuit will be the first to challenge whether public schools should teach "intelligent design," which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by some higher power....
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
"Everyone notice the join dates on most of these Creationists?"
So, the longer one has been a member of FR, the more valid their opinions?
Was this same thought process used in determining evolution to be valid?
Finding an undisturbed site with fossils that are dated at an age well outside of accepted norms. For example, finding a contemporary rabbit fossil in with dinosaur bones, or finding a fully developed reptile in Cambrian strata.
Also, an non-controversial piece of data disputing age determinations in all fields would be a grand test of evolution.
Scientists create tests for various models of evolution every time they write a paper. The paper is the report on the result of the test. It's the way science works.
Possibly. More to the point, it appears several previously banned Creats have returned. I find it odd.
A good number of creationist FReepers have been banned for personal attacks and other assorted misdeeds. Every once in a while, a whole raft of new creationists shows up, well-versed in html and making the same arguments as the banned creationists.
Feel free to connect the dots.
Interesting. But it does nothing to say that early Christians did not believe in the flat earth theory.
"Let's consider the case of nares"
All in one punctuated transition? or, is this an example of how they got it right the first time?
Surely there are fossil specimens for examination that show intermediate nare placements leading to the present day locations.
"I wouldn't know a transitonal species fossile if it were sitting on my desk. Please tell me, what---exactly---is a transitional species?"
Ah come on, don't give up your convictions so easily.
If it got from "A" to "B", there should be evidence of footprints.
There are footprints and they belong to Aetiocetus.
"A good number of creationist FReepers have been banned for personal attacks and other assorted misdeeds"
I guess there are those who are intimidated by opposing views. May civility and the satisfaction of a good clean debate rein supreme.
You don't have the right to teach my kids your beliefs.
Big Daddy is a classic of the genre.
Which is an argument for voting with your feet, vouchers or abolishing public education but not one for centrally located technocrats, bureaucrats or judges deciding local issues.
You know, I remember back in High school thinking I was much cooler than others because I was one of the first to sport a "Members Only" jacket.
But as I matured and accomplised more with my life I realized what a silly thing it was to think that way....
In principle I agree with you. However, until the libertarian millenium arrives, they're using my tax dollars to educate my kids, and I'm darned if I'm going to have them taught creation myths when they're supposed to be learning science. Bad enough they learn liberal shibboleths when they're supposed to be learning history.
Lactantius
The earliest of these flat-Earth promoters was the African Lactantius (AD 245–325), a professional rhetorician who converted to Christianity mid-life.
He rejected all the Greek philosophers, and in doing so also rejected a spherical Earth. His views were considered heresy by the Church Fathers and his work was ignored until the Renaissance (at which time some humanists revived his writings as a model of good Latin, and of course, his flat Earth view also was revived).
Cosmas Indicopleustes and Church Fathers
Next was sixth century Eastern Greek Christian, Cosmas Indicopleustes, who claimed the Earth was flat and lay beneath the heavens (consisting of a rectangular vaulted arch). His work also was soundly rejected by the Church Fathers, but liberal historians have usually claimed his view as typical of that of the Church Fathers.
US Library of Congress head, Daniel Boorstin (quoted above), like historians before him, simply followed the pattern of others without checking the facts. In fact, most of the Church Fathers did not address the issue of the shape of the Earth, and those who did regarded it as "round" or spherical.
Washington Irving and Rip Van Winkle
In 1828, American writer Washington Irving (author of Rip Van Winkle) published a book entitled The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. It was a mixture of fact and fiction, with Irving himself admitting he was "apt to indulge in the imagination."
Its theme was the victory of a lone believer in a spherical Earth over a united front of Bible-quoting, superstitious ignoramuses, convinced the Earth was flat. In fact, the well-known argument at the Council of Salamanca was about the dubious distance between Europe and Japan which Columbus presented--it had nothing to do with the shape of the Earth.
Later Writers Repeated the Error
In 1834, the anti-Christian Letronne falsely claimed that most of the Church Fathers, including Augustine, Ambrose and Basil, held to a flat Earth. His work has been repeatedly cited as "reputable" ever since.
In the late nineteenth century, the writings of John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White were responsible for promoting the myth that the church taught a flat Earth. Both had Christian backgrounds, but rejected these early in life.
Englishman Draper convinced himself that with the downfall of the Roman Empire the 'affairs of men fell into the hands of ignorant and infuriated ecclesiastics, parasites, eunuchs and slaves' — these were the 'Dark Ages'. Draper's work, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874), was directed particularly against the Roman Church, and was a best seller.
Meanwhile White (who founded Cornell University as the first explicitly secular university in the United States), published the two-volume scholarly work History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, in 1896.
Both men incorrectly portrayed a continuing battle through the Christian era between the defenders of ignorance and the enlightened rationalists. In fact, not only did the church not promote the flat Earth, it is clear from such passages as Isaiah 40:22 that the Bible implies it is spherical. (Non-literal figures of speech such as the 'four corners of the Earth' are still used today.)
Encyclopedias Erase the Myth
While many will have lost their faith through the writing of such men as Irving, Draper and White, it is gratifying to know that the following encyclopaedias now present the correct account of the Columbus affair: The New Encyclopaedia Britannica (1985), Colliers Encyclopaedia (1984), The Encyclopedia Americana (1987) and The World Book for Children (1989).
There is still a long way to go before the average student will know that Christianity did not invent or promote the myth of the flat Earth.
Author: Adapted by Ian Taylor for Creation Science Association of Ontario, Feature No. 30, from the book Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus & Modern Historians (ISBN 027595904X), by history professor Jeffrey Burton Russell. Summarized by Paula Weston, née McKerlie. Supplied by Answers in Genesis and published in Creation Ex Nihilo magazine, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 48–49.
Flat-Earth HeyDay Came with Darwin
The idea that the earth is flat is a modern concoction that reached its peak only after Darwinists tried to discredit the Bible, an American history professor says.
Jeffrey Burton Russell is a professor of history at the University of California in Santa Barbara. He says in his book Inventing the Flat Earth (written for the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's journey to America in 1492) that through antiquity and up to the time of Columbus, "nearly unanimous scholarly opinion pronounced the earth spherical."
Russell says there is nothing in the documents from the time of Columbus or in early accounts of his life that suggests any debate about the roundness of the earth. He believes a major source of the myth came from the creator of the Rip Van Winkle story-Washington Irving-who wrote a fictitious account of Columbus's defending a round earth against misinformed clerics and university professors.
But Russell says the flat earth mythology flourished most between 1870 and 1920, and had to do with the ideological setting created by struggles over evolution. He says the flat-earth myth was an ideal way to dismiss the ideas of a religious past in the name of modern science.
The Bible of course teaches the correct shape of the earth. Isaiah 40:22 says God sits above 'the circle of the earth' (the Hebrew word for 'circle' can also mean a 'sphere'). Also, Luke 17:34-36 depicts Christ's Second Coming as happening while some are asleep at night and others are working at day-time activities in the field-an indication of a rotating earth with day and night at the same time.
Footnotes
Boorstin acknowledges in his book that by the time of Columbus, most educated Europeans believed in a spherical Earth.
Yes, evolution is a theory considered to be an explanation for the creation of life - random goo spontaneiously evolving to us humans today. That is why it being shoved down our children's throat as the scientific explanation for life is so controversial.
Pair production and the Casmir effect are the processes that are theorized to have created the first matter in the universe. The current big bang cosmology states that there was no matter originally present in the universe during its first moments. Only radiation (let there be light?) was present. From the vacuum, virtual particles formed. Under normal conditions these particles would annihilate(sp?) each other. However, there was a period of rapid inflation during the early universe which allowed these virtual particles to separate and thus survive. Further particles were produced via pair production from the radiation present. As for where the energy of the radiation came from, that is more speculative. It is possible that the negative gravitational energy of the universe precisely cancels the positive energy represented by the radiation and matter in the universe today. Therefore, both before and after the big bang the energy of the universe is zero, and energy is conserved. Another speculation comes from superstring theories which state that there are 10 (or possibly 26, depending on the theory)dimensions, all but four of which are "curled up" into a very small length, which is why we don't notice them. It is theorized that these dimensions were more or less equivalent, but a quantum fluctuation caused four of them to expand while the rest contracted, the energy for the expansion of the familiar four dimensions being derived from the contraction of the rest. I'm not a theoretical physicist (I've just read some books about theoretical physics written for laymen) so I am sure that I don't have these entirely correct. The point is that there is a scientific explanation for the creation of the universe. Whether this is correct or not, it is the best that science can do currently.
According to scientific opinion, if the "theories" are not scientific, they are NOT theories.
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