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.
"Are you really so uneducated that you've never heard of error bounds?"
See post #327. Moreover, science has proven many, many things under many, many circumstances.
In contrast, you claim that science has proved nothing.
You are, and will remain, wrong.
But creationist ideas have not been excluded from our lives since evolutionary theory was first proposed. They just have not been taught in biology class--because they are not science. They have been in plenty of other places where people spend far more time . . . church, Sunday school, etc.
As for your original post, I think it did suggest that what you call moral decline was somehow related to the teaching of evolution. Let's agree to disagree on what your prose conveyed. It is always possible to express ourselves in a way that conveys other than what we intend and maybe that is what happened here.
You've done sh!t - just check your sewer line.
"And it's been shown to be laughable. Do you not understand even the obvious?"
You are welcome to post *any* math that conclusively disproves the original math that I linked to for this thread, but up to this post you have not yet listed such equations (nor can you, I suspect).
I just went to your link. The caculation is about monkeys reproducing Hamlet. It has no calculations on the probability of life.
And you will remain stupid. Ignorance is curable but you are stuck with your genes. Too bad...
Newdow is just one weenie.
It is the actions of professors, teachers, and countless others that will intereact with your children that will make the difference.
All this, because of some stubborn people's interpretation of Genesis.
No, I'm simply *scientific*. I've provided you math, logic, and concrete examples both *for* Intelligent Design (e.g. artificial intelligence, computer viri, cloning, self-replicating machines, etc.) as well as that could falsify ID in many (perhaps even all) circumstances (e.g. Steen Rasmussen's current experiment at Los Alamos).
In response, you've been reduced to name-calling. I typically reduce posters such as yourself to profane outbursts in mere minutes. It's dead easy to do.
Yawn. Perhaps *some* day, a more intelligent debater will at least play a decent devil's advocate (oh my, this *must* be some sort of secret religious pun!) will come along and actually post mathematical equations and counter-examples, but until then, I suppose I must live with what very little intellectual stimulation posters such as yourself provide (i.e. not much).
No, *YAWN*, you're simply delusional. Go institutionalize yourself for all concerned.
Ahhh, 345 posts into the debate, you *finally* review the math! Clever boy, aren't you?!
Yes, the calculations are for the probability of *sequencing*; the sequencing of "random" letters typed into words, the sequencing of genetic DNA programming instructions into viable life forms, the sequencing of numbers into a winning lottery ticket...the sequencing for anything and everything based upon aided or unaided (specifically) processes.
In relation to this thread, the unaided sequencing of billions of genetic programming instructions into viable DNA might, if you continue to become more clever, begin to slowly intrigue you.
I hold out such hope for you, at the very least.
Just show your math. Show why the probabilities for unaided sequencing of genetic instructions are other than what I calculated mathematically.
I mean, you are so *brilliant* that you can counter the specific math that I showed with math of your own (rather than profane name-calling and misdirections), yes?!
I'll hold my breath waiting for your new math post to arrive... < /mocking! >
It's too late for you. Call 911 before you start running amuck.
God, you're stupid.
Hey, dumbass, show that you have spanned the probability space.
We'll wait.
Go look at only the data gleaned from the science then. Ignore everyones interpretation of the data if you are so pure of heart.
That is all we can ask anyone to do. Scientists should use disclaimers when they divulge in the speculative and Creationist should do the same.
And even if they did, what's that got to do with Evolution? NOTHING. Evolution still occured, however life began.
Your math is irrelevant.
I must have missed that post - do Creationists do anything else?
You choose to "wait" merely because you can't choose to list counter-math of your own; it's beyond your intellectual acumen.
In reality, there's nothing for which you need to wait. The probability math that I linked is valid for *all* unaided processes. It's comprehensive in that manner.
This puts the ball into *your* court. It requires that *you* do something that you are unable to do, i.e. show your calculations that legitimately might contradict my own math.
You can't do it. You are left merely to name-call, insult, deride, attempt to mock, or perhaps even flee this debate altogether (lets pick an excuse for you such as "you don't have time for this").
Because you certainly can't list your own relevant probability equations.
The math is valid for the probabilities involved in sequencing. We don't have to know the *precise* original sequence for the probabilities to be calculated, either (in fact, that very point was dealt with in the original link that I provided to you).
If you can't or won't debate the math, then what are you doing on this thread? Debating "faith" or some sort of nonsense?!
Debate the math. Surely real *science* doesn't frighten you?!
I can see it now, stickers on the Bible that say "Caution, nobody agrees on exactly what this means. Interpret it with caution."
ID WILL stir up direct attacks on the apparent conflicts in the Bible. And the disagreement between denominations on its translation. Sure, those things can be "rationalized" by those appropriately "trained". But your kid won't know how to handle that when they are confronted by the professor and half their classmates in college.
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