Posted on 12/27/2004 2:34:25 PM PST by Ed Current
The most censored speech in the United States today is not flag-burning, pornography or the press. The worst censors are those who prohibit classroom criticism of the theory of evolution.
A Chinese scholar observed, "In China we can criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize the government but not Darwin."
Polls show that the vast majority of Americans reject the theory of evolution, as have great scientists such as William Thomas Kelvin and Louis Pasteur. But that does not stop an intolerant minority from trying to impose a belief in the ape-to-man theory on everyone else.
Local school boards have finally had enough of this tyranny. From Georgia to Pennsylvania to Ohio to Wisconsin to Kansas, school boards are finally moving toward allowing criticism of Darwin's theory.
The Darwinists have propped up their classroom dominance by the persistent use of frauds and flacks. The fraudulent pro-evolution embryo drawings of Ernst Haeckel littered schoolbooks for 100 years, and it took specific action by the Texas Board of Education to keep them out of current textbooks even after the New York Times exposed Haeckel's deception.
Many textbooks feature pictures of giraffes stretching their necks to feed high off of trees, but genetics and observed feeding habits disprove that as a basis for evolution of their long necks. Moreover, the striking beauty of the colored pattern on the giraffes illustrates that design, not merely usefulness, is what animates our world.
Continued censorship of criticism invites additional fraud, so evolution has suffered more embarrassments than any other scientific theory. The Piltdown man was a lie taught to schoolchildren for decades, even featured in the John Scopes Monkey Trial textbook, and only five years ago a dinosaur-bird fossil hoax was presented as true on the glossy pages of National Geographic.
If Darwinists want to teach that whales, which are mammals, evolved from black bears swimming with their mouths open, we should surely be entitled to criticize that. Yet school libraries have refused to accept books critical of evolution, even when written by college professors.
Responding to the majority of their constituents, Georgia's Cobb County recently authorized a textbook disclaimer saying "Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered."
The American Civil Liberties Union claims this is unconstitutional and is seeking out supremacist judges to order classroom curricula to continue the censorship and forbid an open mind about evolution. If the theory of evolution were well supported, there would be no reason to oppose open debate about scientific claims.
In December 2004, a world-famous champion of atheism, Antony Flew, announced his conversion to acceptance of intelligent design underlying our world. The Dallas Morning News observed, "If the scientific data are compelling enough to cause an atheist academic of Flew's reputation to recant most of his life's work, why shouldn't Texas schoolchildren be taught the controversy?"
At 81, Flew can speak out because he is now free from the peer pressure that silences younger colleagues who fear loss of jobs, funding, or even dreams of winning a Nobel Prize. Evolution critics Fred Hoyle and Raymond Damadian were unjustly denied Nobel Prizes and their work was instead recognized by awards to less-deserving others.
Darwinists know they cannot persuade skeptical adults, so they try to capture impressionable schoolchildren. At our expense and against our wishes, children are taught that the world exists only for what is useful, not by design.
To typical schoolchildren full of wonder, we live in a world best described as a marvelous work of art. The snowflakes that grace us at Christmastime typify the artistic beauty that bestows joy on all ages but, like an acid, evolution corrodes this inborn appreciation of beauty and falsely trains children to view themselves as mere animals no more worthy than dogs or cats.
There is a strong correlation between belief in natural selection and liberal views on government control, pornography, prayer in schools, abortion, gun control, economic freedom, and even animal rights. For the most part, the schools in the blue states carried in the 2004 presidential election by U.S. Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., are strongly pro-evolution, while the red states carried by President George W. Bush allow debate and dissent.
It should surprise no one that the United States, land of the free and home of the brave, has the lowest percentage of evolution believers in the world. The highest percentage lived in the former East Germany.
The U.S. Senate of former Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., quietly slipped a provision into the No Child Left Behind Act that requires, by the 2007-2008 school year, science testing by grade 5. That gives censors the authority to force 10-year-olds to believe and defend evolution.
It is long past time for parents to realize they have the right and duty to protect their children from the intolerant evolutionists. Hooray for courageous school boards that are finally rejecting censorship and allowing debate.
Stop stealing my lines ;D
"What I'm saying is that intelligent design - that the origin of life cam from God - is a matter of opinion. The evolutionary process isn't, at least as far as it has been researched. It's a process."
Oops, my apologies. :)
Well, at least we know now what that old harpy Schafly's latest schtick is going to be.
Gay marriage too conflicted for her at this point??
LOL!
Phyllis is a nice hardcore conservative who doesn't care whether she has correct facts when arguing. It's a little bit embarrassing to most of us.
:DDD
"Wow."
That's MY line.
Well, welcome to the pack anyway ;D
This argument is completely lost on me. How does the existence of a testing requirement say anything about the content of the testing?
I will bet that Phyllis learned something about the theory in school--most likely high school. Obviously it did not force her to believe and defend it.
AW, don't be too hard on the dried up old thang. She's just trying to get her name in the paper.
"You don't need to have the whole star in the lab to extrapolate results, do you?"
Are you kiddin gme? This was my point! Astronomy and geology are indisputably science, though much of what they explain cannot be reproduced in a lab.
Everytime a fossil is found, the theory of evolution is tested! If a horse skeleton is found in a layer that is a billion years old, the theory of evolution is in trouble. THing is, that has never happened! Fossils are always found exactly where we expect.
This is all pointless, science is defined by the scientific community. The scientific community 100% supports evolution. So I feel ABSOLUTELY no need to defend evolution to someone with a grade 10 science education when you can simply go read what the scientific community has to say on the subject.
Here are what two of the most respected scientific institutions have to say. Not to mention the official statement from the US governments advisors on science, the NAS. Choke on this...
http://www.nationalacademies.org/attic/evolution/
http://www.aaas.org/spp/dser/evolution/perspectives.shtml
Perhaps. But as long as it's validity is measured purely in wheather or not people believe it, reason is not part of the equation.
ROFLAICGU!!!!!
;D
Are you joking?
But as long as it's validity is measured purely in wheather or not people believe it, reason is not part of the equation.
I you're a psychologist or a pastor, than I guess so.
But surely you don't think reason and belief are always incompatible?
"Yes, he wrote and spoke about his religious feelings, but not in reference to any particular religion."
I did not cite his religion, although he was a non-practising Jew. When I said 'creationist' I also separated Einstein from the Bible-pounders. He was very deliberate in his estimation that the universe evidenced a guiding hand. I do not recall him ever citing a Bible passage...which would have been interesting since he was a Jew.
The man had a faith in God and his work, in his own words, tended to reinforce that belief.
ICONS OF EVOLUTION ARE DROPPING ONE BY ONE:
Many biology textbooks feature the Miller experiment, but his atmospheric theories were false. Science magazine said in 1995 that experts now dismiss Miller's experiment because "the early atmosphere looked nothing like the Miller-Urey simulation."
Darwin's tree of life does not match the fossil record. If anything, it is upside down. Fit the Cambrian explosion into his theory.
Haeckel's embryos were a fraud.
The Archaeopteryx so-called missing link is not half bird/half reptile. It is all bird. And that's about as good as it gets in the missing link department. Darwin conceded that "the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory" was that the fossil record failed to back up his evolutionary hypothesis. "Why," he asked, "if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms?" He figured it was just because the fossil record was incomplete. That was a long time ago. Where are the transitional forms?
What about the legend of Java Man?
Etc...
Read: The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel.
They are not incompatible, they just aren't necessarily concurrent.
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.