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Ayatollahs in the classroom [Evolution and Creationism]
Berkshire Eagle (Mass.) ^ | 22 January 2005 | Staff

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Miscellaneous; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: antitheist; atheistgestapo; chickenlittle; creationism; crevolist; cryingwolf; darwin; evolution; governmentschools; justatheory; seculartaliban; stateapprovedthought; theskyisfalling
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To: mlc9852
I won't bother to respond.

That says it all.

281 posted on 01/22/2005 5:40:43 PM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: Southack
I'll just note two things:

1) The old thread in which you allegedly "laid out your math in no way shape or form anticipates every possible unaided process, including the actual process of evolution,

2) At least half the posters on said thread spent their entire time thereon trying to pound such facts into your stupid head. I will link just one salient example, "Dishonest or stupid?"

I was tempted to zero in on the usages in just that one post of "bogus" and "tragic brain damage," but the right choice was clear. "Dishonest or stupid?" It always comes down to that decision for anyone with a brain reading your stuff.
282 posted on 01/22/2005 5:46:52 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: DannyTN
The Ayatolla's demand their teachings and only their teachings. In that respect, they have a lot more in common with evolutionists.

No, we demand that you teach scientific fact. And the Theory of Evolution is, despite long years of attempts to discredit it by the god squad, the best explaination for how species developed on Earth.

ID proponents want people to have all the information and make up their own mind.

Then they should encourage children to go to church and indoctrinate them with religious teachings there.

ID is not science, and despite the fevered dreams of those at the Discovery Institute, never will be.

283 posted on 01/22/2005 5:47:02 PM PST by Zeroisanumber
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To: bondserv
ID has had its ups and downs. Hardly a decade goes by that it isn't tried to be falsified.

I can't imagine how anyone thinks they're going falsify a "theory" that says, "Well ... God coo-uuuuld have left it looking like that!"

284 posted on 01/22/2005 5:49:08 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
"It always comes down to that decision for anyone with a brain reading your stuff."

No, it just comes down to math.

Speaking of which, perhaps in your *next* post you'll show your math that somehow contradicts my own.

Not!

285 posted on 01/22/2005 5:49:24 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Dimensio
Thanks;

If the other 'scientists' were willing to admit that there is no proof perhaps the rest of us (them) could have equal access to state our (their) case?

(without being maligned / denigrated for it?)

286 posted on 01/22/2005 5:51:54 PM PST by norton
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To: Zeroisanumber
"the Theory of Evolution is, despite long years of attempts to discredit it by the god squad, the best explaination for how species developed on Earth."

No, not even close.

Examine post #238 above. Notice that it shows off a potential biological machine. It also references the fascinating field of DNA computers.

Now consider that Man has already built robotic welders and asemblers capable of building new welders and assemblers, i.e. self-replicating machines.

Apply that feat of mechanical self-replication to DNA computers and biological machines.

Now ask yourself, does unaided Evolution or aided Intelligent Design best explain such self-replicating biological machines?

287 posted on 01/22/2005 5:54:28 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
it should be intuitively obvious to a computer programmer such as yourself that it takes intelligent intervention to write a program rather than merely leaving a computer on overnight to have it form unaided.

See www.genetic-programming.org/

"There are now 36 instances where genetic programming has automatically produced a result that is competitive with human performance, including 15 instances where genetic programming has created an entity that either infringes or duplicates the functionality of a previously patented 20th-century invention, 6 instances where genetic programming has done the same with respect to a 21st-centry invention, and 2 instances where genetic programming has created a patentable new invention."

In its simplest form, genetic programming creates several random starting programs, runs them, compares the results to the desired result, discards the least successful programs, slightly modifes the more successful, and repeats. Highly evolutionary, and no intelligence is involved.
288 posted on 01/22/2005 5:55:17 PM PST by Harlequin (the difference between theory and practice is bigger in practice than in theory)
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To: Junior
Infant Cosmos Was Already Elderly    07/08/2004
At first, they weren’t sure it was real or they were just seeing things.  Now, it’s inescapable.  As far back as cosmologists can see, there were already mature galaxies.  That’s the thrust of two papers in the July 8 issue of Nature1,2 and a commentary on them by Keck Observatory astronomer Greg Wirth3, who says in the subtitle, “The discovery of massive, evolved galaxies at much greater distances than expected – and hence at earlier times in the history of the Universe – is a challenge to our understanding of how galaxies form.”  But then in his opening paragraph it’s hard to disentangle the optimism from the pessimism:
Over the past two decades, astrophysicists have been spectacularly successful [sic] in explaining [sic] the early evolution of the UniverseExisting theories can account well [sic] for the time span from the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago [sic] until the Universe began to cool and form the first large structures less than a million years later [sic].  But detailed explanations of how the original stew of elementary particles subsequently coalesced over time, to form the stars and galaxies seen in the present-day Universe, are still being refined.  As they report on pages 181 and 184 of this issue, Glazebrook et al.1 and Cimatti et al.2 have discovered the most distant ‘old’ galaxies yet.  But the existence of these objects at such an early epoch in the history of the Universe seems inconsistent with the favoured theory of how galaxies formed.   (Emphasis added in all quotes.)
According to Wirth, these new studies provide the “first solid evidence” that “as far back as 10 billion years ago there were already many old massive galaxies,” and “it is clear that even the best models can’t fully explain the evolution of galaxies.”  Do galaxies grow much faster than predicted in the hierarchical models, that assume they coalesced from smaller objects?  Or did the stars in these galaxies form “in a substantially different way from our expectations”?  We may have to wait a decade for the next generation of larger telescopes, he concludes.
    Glazebrook et al. found that up to a third of massive galaxies formed within 3 billion years of the Big Bang.  Cimatti’s team found four mature, fully-assembled, massive spheroidal galaxies at redshift 1.6 to 1.9.  They remark, “The existence of such systems when the Universe was only about one-quarter of its present age [sic] shows that the build-up of massive early-type galaxies was much faster in the early Universe than has been expected from theoretical simulations.”

Link

289 posted on 01/22/2005 5:58:12 PM PST by bondserv (Sincerity with God is the most powerful instigator for change! † [Check out my profile page])
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To: Southack; Dan Day
Plenty of nice math here. I'll copy Dan Day's farewell to you inline, as that, too, says it for me.

Either way, you're a lost cause, don't expect much more of my time. My work here is done, I've exposed you as a charlatan and/or a fool too many times to count now. Whether or not you're able to admit it, the lurkers should be quite able to see the shoddy quality of the anti-evolution arguments.

"Monkeys" my hind end. Come back when you're able to properly analyze self-sustaining organic chemical cycles and *then* we'll talk.

Note his specific criticism is that, even as I told you some posts ago, you not only didn't model every conceivable unaided process, you utterly failed to address the specific process put forth by mainstream science.

If you've ever done that anywhere, please show your work and I'll get back to you. If that thread is all you've got, you are making unsubstantiated assertions and [once yet again] all you have for defense is that nobody can make Southack see.

I expect you will have the last word and that your next post will be it.

290 posted on 01/22/2005 5:58:13 PM PST by VadeRetro
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To: VadeRetro
"Note his specific criticism is that, even as I told you some posts ago, you not only didn't model every conceivable unaided process, you utterly failed to address the specific process put forth by mainstream science."

You'd be better served to see my rebuttal to Dan Day's flailing about before citing him. Click on the View Replies button to each of his posts.

Moreover, the *math* that I provided is valid for the probability of *all* possible forms of unaided sequencing.

If you want to attack that all-encompassing probability math, then you'll have to (finally) show your own work.

291 posted on 01/22/2005 6:02:00 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
Now ask yourself, does unaided Evolution or aided Intelligent Design best explain such self-replicating biological machines?

I think that it's interesting, I don't think that it supports your argument. Complexity itself is not a proof for ID. It just means that science has one more layer of investigation to conduct into the nature of the living machine.

Though this does bring up the interesting question of why you'd want to find proofs to support faith in the first place.

292 posted on 01/22/2005 6:03:14 PM PST by Zeroisanumber
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To: VadeRetro
"I expect you will have the last word and that your next post will be it."

The "last word" should be you showing math to the contrary. You can't do that. Even the link that you provided (to my own thread!) shows merely that there are a lot of combinations of valid sequences...something that the probability math in that thread dealt with initially, anyway.

But that would require actually reading it...

293 posted on 01/22/2005 6:05:10 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Zeroisanumber
"Though this does bring up the interesting question of why you'd want to find proofs to support faith in the first place."

Faith is a strawman, far removed from any scientific discussion of Intelligent Design or Evolution.

294 posted on 01/22/2005 6:06:13 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: Southack
Faith is a strawman, far removed from any scientific discussion of Intelligent Design or Evolution.

I don't think so, it's certainly driving your argument. And I imagine that it drives the whole ID movement nationwide.

ID isn't a mater of presenting intellectual choice or providing for reasoned debate. If that were the case then IDers would be pushing for the inclusion of other ideas that challenge established scientific fact. The fact that they aren't suggests that faith and a desire to proselytize to impressionable youth in a government funded forum is their (and your) real goal.

295 posted on 01/22/2005 6:14:07 PM PST by Zeroisanumber
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To: bondserv

A creationist website. Couldn't you come up with something from a scientific journal?


296 posted on 01/22/2005 6:15:43 PM PST by Junior (FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC)
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To: freespirited
I did not say they were caused by teaching evolution.

Throwing around silly psuedo-intellectual jargon may get you some brownie points with your comrades but not with me. You should not embarrass yourself by jumping to rash conclusions about the logic of others you have not even had a conversation with.

I fully realize that one event following another does not automatically mean the first is the cause of the latter. If you really understood anything about the LOGIC you so arrogantly assert I do not have, you would realize that any logical discourse must have a premise.

What I was pointing out was that the popularity of evolution coincides with OTHER moral decline. What I said was neither a supposition nor a hypothesis. It was not even a stipulation to develop a further logical line of reasoning. It was merely an observation which, last time I checked, I am free to make.

Since you do not know me, you are the one guilty of logical fallacy for ASSUMING the reason I believe what I believe. Just because my beliefs do not line up your your beliefs does not make them wrong or illogical.

You would like to make yourself the arbiter of logic. Wouldn't that be convenient if we could all make up our own rules? Then everyone else can be wrong and I can always be right.

Now, if you care to go back and read the whole post you were commenting on, you would see the clear logic of my point. The quote of dissent toward intelligent design was "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."

My comment was in the context of pointing out that this is exactly what was taught when America rose to greatness. Teaching that there are other viewpoints such as Intelligent Design is not going to cause our nation to decline. AND, IN FACT our greatest decline has been when this teaching was not included.

Quoting people out of context is worse than the "logical fallacies" you accuse me of. It is a violation of common courtesy which should compel the participants of a debate to at least make a minimal effort to comprehend what the other person is trying to say, AND not misrepresent it.
297 posted on 01/22/2005 6:16:25 PM PST by unlearner (Our word for the day, boys and girls, is HUBRIS)
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To: Zeroisanumber

Evolution is not scientific fact and it is not the best explanation of how species developed on Earth despite the fevered dreams of evolutionists.


298 posted on 01/22/2005 6:19:05 PM PST by DannyTN
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To: DannyTN
Evolution is not scientific fact and it is not the best explanation of how species developed on Earth despite the fevered dreams of evolutionists.

And if you can scientifically prove that fact, I'll sign on wholeheartedly to whatever it is that you're promoting.

299 posted on 01/22/2005 6:21:11 PM PST by Zeroisanumber
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To: Zeroisanumber

We are going in circle. How does it violate the first amendment?


300 posted on 01/22/2005 6:22:53 PM PST by mlc9852
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