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.
In rudimentary logic those to thoughts cannot co-exist. If I drop a ball, it falls to the ground EVERY time. It is a fact and the term used for that manifestation is gravity. No one disputes that fact. What we are lacking in the "theory of evolution" is a reproducible "fact" to place it in the same category as gravity.
Your mistake is to read a word-for-word littalisim into Genesis. There are two creation stories in Genesis. Gen 1:1 and Gen 2:4. They are both sequences (claims otherwise notwithstanding, as there is wording in Gen 2 that "B" did not happen, because "A" had not). And these sequences do not agree.
Yes, there are ways to interpret them to ignore the apparent problems. But once you establish that you can rationalize verses, then it's easy to rationalize Evolution into Genesis as well.
Do you believe in a 6000 year old creation? If you rationalize that "day" is not a 24 hour day (as most believers do), then you have already rationalized word-for-word litteralism out of Genesis. Go ahead and insert Evolution in between some verses.
God doesn't describe nuclear forces and gravity and electromagnetisim in Genesis either. Yet obviously He created them.
There is no contradiction between Genesis and science. Only contradictions in humans interpretation of the verses. So what's new?
You've got a twisted mind, FB.
Ok, so if a school included a class in the philosophy of inteeligent design by a "creationist" in parallel with scientific evolution by a science instructor, you would have no problem with that?Not unless the "creationist" was touting a specific religion. If he would be, you'd have to allow proponents of ALL religions to come do the same (and what a mess that would be!). However, I cannot assess the legalities of this.
Hey man, it's a twisted world.
cite me the section ganting the fedgov power over local school issues.From what I can recall, and I may be wrong about this, the 14th ammendment makes states bound by the constitution like the federal government is. The local school boards (with power delegated by the state) would thus be bound by the same. How this translates to having a federal judge handing this case, as opposed to one from the state in question, I can however not say. Being a Swede, my knowledge about your country IS somewhat limited! :)
Such as?
My daughter takes "Music Theory" in college. It always confused me why they called it "Music Theory" until I got into this Evolution discussion. Like Evolution, Music in fact exists. But the study of it, the description of the process of making music or of evolving a species is called it's "theory".
Here you go: http://www.thermionics.com/ip_too.htm (don't know how to post real link). That's the "Theory of Operation for Ion Pumps". They often publish Theory of operation for computer processors too. Ion pumps and computer processors exist in FACT, and their operation is their THEORY.
To describe how the FACT of Evolution works, you write a "Theory of Evolution".
Take my word for it, the ruling will be overturned. 14A jurisprudence in the 20th century did incorporate certain of the BOR's including 1A but this is not a 1A case. No religion is established and in America the Creator is stl Constitutional. You see we teach our students that our rights are granted by the Creator. That is no more an establishment of religion than the disclaimer in the science book.
Ergo, the fedgov has no power and, as usual, is medding where it has no business meddling.
It is intellectually dishonest, no?
Not unless the "creationist" was touting a specific religion.Such as Islam, Christianity, Raelians, etc etc.Such as?
I am an engineer so I am not completely ignorant of the scientific method or terminology. I look at the debate on evolution as one of defending a thesis. If the thesis is not strong enough to withstand the questions from students that may bring their religious background into their questioning then the theory has not been presented in a way as to be considered self evident. I see many evolution fundamentalists take the same stand on their views as religious fundamentalists take.
If that were true, then why is there no prayer in schools?
I won't argue with you that the courts are way out of line with how they interpret the First Amendment. The 14th amendment, if I remember correct, a reaction to some southern states who were attempting to say the BOR only applied to the federal government.
But the argument is moot because the First Amendment was specifically a restriction on what laws the Federal Congress could write. The First Amendment is not a "right" per-se. Yes it says we have a right of free speech, but that right had to be cloned by the states in order to insure that the state could not abridge speech either.
In reading the BOR, it appears as if the amendments were extensions of the First amendment, as if the First was some kind of preamble to the rest. As if the words "Congress shall make no law" were extended to the other amendments.
But what we call the "First Amendment", I believe was not the first actual amendment passed out of the Congress. It was merely the first Amendment RATIFIED by the states, that considered the amendments separately
I could go on and on. Basically, I agree with your actual litteral interpretation of the Constitution. But let's be real, the courts have ruled entirely differently, and this ruling will stand. Easily.
ID or evolution, doesn't matter to me. God does what he wants and I don't question how or why. But you can't say that ID is not falsifiable adthen post a link to a site alledlyalsifying ID's posited IC.I don't think so. Demonstrating that a specific claim can be explained in evolutionary terms doesn't falsify Intelligent Design. Even if it's possible to evolve such features, we cannot say with certainty that no designer was involved. Any hypothetical observation we make can be explained with "that's how the designer made it". Raelians aside, this is especially true if the deisgner was the Judeo-Christan God, right?It is intellectually dishonest, no?
Every monotheist religion has creation story. I see a bit of semantic word play here. There is a wide difference between Genesis based "creationism" and intelligent design.
Stick to the science anguish, it was a nice try but your statement had more holes than a Swiss Cheese.Bleh! :oP (Will do. Foreign constitutional law is after all not even on my interest-radar)
After working these crevo threads for a few months, it's pretty obvious that if a "student" brings his fundamentalist religion into this discussion, that no amount of logic or evidence will convince them.
It's no different than if a Irish Protestant were trying to pursuade an Irish Catholic to convert. It just ain't going to happen.
Just as the fight in Ireland was damaging to the faithful, I see this fight as damaging to religious conservatives too. It will distract us from what we need to be doing (getting good judges confirmed, etc.) And it provides a perfect opening for the left to point at conservatives and call us the "6 day creationist" people in order to make us appear dumb. It has already happened, so don't say I'm exagerating.
There is a wide difference between Genesis based "creationism" and intelligent design.But your example was with a creationist, no? But in general intelligent design is the same as theistic creationism - it doesn't mention a 'God' explicitly, but taken to it's logical conclusion it requires one. Even if we were designed by aliens, they in turn had to come from somewhere etc.
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