Posted on 01/22/2005 7:38:12 AM PST by PatrickHenry
A movement to drag the teaching of science in the United States back into the Dark Ages continues to gain momentum. So far, it's a handful of judges -- "activist judges" in the view of their critics -- who are preventing the spread of Saudi-style religious dogma into more and more of America's public-school classrooms.
The ruling this month in Georgia by Federal District Judge Clarence Cooper ordering the Cobb County School Board to remove stickers it had inserted in biology textbooks questioning Darwin's theory of evolution is being appealed by the suburban Atlanta district. Similar legal battles pitting evolution against biblical creationism are erupting across the country. Judges are conscientiously observing the constitutionally required separation of church and state, and specifically a 1987 Supreme Court ruling forbidding the teaching of creationism, a religious belief, in public schools. But seekers of scientific truth have to be unnerved by a November 2004 CBS News poll in which nearly two-thirds of Americans favored teaching creationism, the notion that God created heaven and earth in six days, alongside evolution in schools.
If this style of "science" ever took hold in U.S. schools, it is safe to say that as a nation we could well be headed for Third World status, along with everything that dire label implies. Much of the Arab world is stuck in a miasma of imam-enforced repression and non-thought. Could it happen here? Our Constitution protects creativity and dissent, but no civilization has lasted forever, and our current national leaders seem happy with the present trends.
It is the creationists, of course, who forecast doom if U.S. schools follow a secularist path. Science, however, by its nature, relies on evidence, and all the fossil and other evidence points toward an evolved human species over millions of years on a planet tens of millions of years old [ooops!] in a universe over two billion years in existence [ooops again!].
Some creationists are promoting an idea they call "intelligent design" as an alternative to Darwinism, eliminating the randomness and survival-of-the-fittest of Darwinian thought. But, again, no evidence exists to support any theory of evolution except Charles Darwin's. Science classes can only teach the scientific method or they become meaningless.
Many creationists say that teaching Darwin is tantamount to teaching atheism, but most science teachers, believers as well as non-believers, scoff at that. The Rev. Warren Eschbach, a professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pa., believes that "science is figuring out what God has already done" and the book of Genesis was never "meant to be a science textbook for the 21st century." Rev. Eschbach is the father of Robert Eschbach, one of the science teachers in Dover, Pa., who refused to teach a school-board-mandated statement to biology students criticizing the theory of evolution and promoting intelligent design. Last week, the school district gathered students together and the statement was read to them by an assistant superintendent.
Similar pro-creationist initiatives are underway in Texas, Wisconsin and South Carolina. And a newly elected creationist majority on the state board of education in Kansas plans to rewrite the entire state's science curriculum this spring. This means the state's public-school science teachers will have to choose between being scientists or ayatollahs -- or perhaps abandoning their students and fleeing Kansas, like academic truth-seekers in China in the 1980s or Tehran today.
Oh. So God was wrong when he said everything was VERY nice before Eve.
We know what you know, and we disagree. It is hard to disagree with a proven fact, however understandable to disagree with someone's theory. Theories are only interpretations of the facts, even if the theory is tauted by conventional wisdom.
If science were as pristine as the method comports, much of our disagreement would dissipate. Unfortunately, we have a large group of people who continue selling theory, as fact, every chance that they get, and many of them find the agenda so compelling they have systematically distorted the data. Humility is hard to find amongst the evo crowd. Telling.
Thought Police dispense with the idea of persuasion.
He had already separated the day from the night on day one (1:4). Obviously, he is reiterating his creation much like your were rationalising Genesis 2 statements that sequenced the creation of animals after Adam.
It is with your capability to "interpret to fit" the bible on one hand but no only allow the literal interpretation on the other ...
Gen 2:18 - Then the LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him."
After he found out that he was wrong when he thought the animals would be satisfactory companions.
Chapter 1 tells us that man and woman were both created on day 6, so these events in Chapter 2 took place on day 6,
Please cite.
Do you believe the earth was formed before the sun? Do you believe that angels keep the planes aloft?
I challenged some guy to prove that hypothesis but he refused my challenge then it failed the test for theory.
Or in the present case, sanity.
Remember, kids, don't withdraw yourself from major psychotropic medications unless you're under a doctor's close supervision!
I was trying to, um, be, uh, polite ...
If someone was not already an atheist before starting these threads, I'm amazed they won't go that way in the end.
Genesis 2 talks about Adam being alone and God creating the animals to give Adam company. However, this literal wording is in conflict with his teachings so he must reject it as false and a result of a poor translation.
And since what God created, the earth, has produced prodigious evidence of Evolution, then it makes sence that God created Evolution.
If believers want to question anything, then they should stick with where the first life came from. No reputable scientist can really answer that question.
In the mean time, anyone promoting this fight over "Evolution" and "ID" is just working a con job no different than the Sierra Club or Greenpeace. They're stiring up the emotions of people using junk science and, oh by the way, you can donate to the cause at www.someplaceonthenet.com.
This whole debate I'm convinced is very bad for faithful people, very bad for conservatives, and a huge waste of time for anyone except those that oppose faithful people and conservatives.
And remember kiddies, Darwinian racist theology was the guiding principle behind Nazism and its euthanasia policies, and is also the primary principle of Communism's "new man" theology.
Nazis and Communists also often used the tactics of accusing their political opponents of mental illness, drunkeness or drug use.
ditto. However, this is how our system works. Not always efficient and with frequent, if not rapid, swings of the pendulum.
Hmmm. Didn't you just use a Nazi/Communist tactic?
Should have cc'd you instead of narby.
I think that Southack, on any other kind of thread, would be calling the NAS a bunch of pink pantied, kiche munching commie libs. He was desperate to find a way out of the corner. I have to say I admire his google skills. I have not found a single other instance of the word recessive used in reference to bacteria.
The word nonce refers to a word used only once in all of literature. Shakespeare added a pile of them. I don't know if there's a word to describe a word misused only once.
But that premise does not need to include what either party believes. Frequently, in debating classes and societies, parties are forced to take either side whether one agrees with it or not. The debate commences based on the merits of the argument without name calling and irregardless of the views of either party.
Bottom line, you violated the rules of debating AND stated a false assumption.
What I cannot accept is trying to force a literal interpretation where one thinks the bible fits his view and then forcing a liberal interpretation in other areas to make the bible fit their point of view. Does not wash.
Then certianly you can recognize that whether old earth or new, the bottom line is that religious believers do not agree with each other. If believers cannot agree on the meaning of Genesis, then why should science pay any attention to them at all? It is for science to use it's methods that it defines to make it's decisions, and for religious people to stick with their religion.
ID IS NOT SCIENCE. And it should not be crammed down the throat of schools for religious reasons.
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