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.
I agree and that's what the evolutionists keep trying to do.
No it is not. Their observations and conclusions are simply honest science describing the truth of what can be seen by all.
Not "all" agree. Sorry.
What do you mean by "correct"? Are you asserting that if evolution were rerun, it would have to arrive at the current state to be considered correct? How do you determine or define correctness?
If the DNA sequence can form viable life, then it is correct for the purposes of the math under discussion. The optimistic range of correct values is discussed, of course, on the link that I provided.
No. Do you claim it is never a new species?
I haven't seen you respond to the bacterial culture starting with a single individual. How does a single individual have the built in variation?
Was the Kenniwick Man simply honest science describing the truth of what can be seen by all, in your opinion?
That's a Boolean option. Either it has the resistant trait or it doesn't.
I can find examples of fraud from any group, or field. Those may, or may not be sports. What matters is the overall character, not the sports.
So perhaps there is more to it than blithely claiming that Evolutionists are stating nothing besides simple, honest science.
If you would have noted and underlined the word "there" in the beginning of my sentence you would have been honest and the point would be valid. Since you did not, the point is groundless.
Wow. Just answer the following YES/NO.
Have additions been made to the Bible?
Have sections (books) been deleted from the Bible?
Does the KJV contain passages that are NOT in previous versions?
Please do not rant. Answer Yes/No.
And I see that you have "interpreted" my post and God's word by substituting "points" inplace of the actual word "corners" and ignoring the key word "edges".
I make no blithe claim. My statement is a judgement made after considerable consideration. In #572 I posted what God says about the matter.
That is about the DUMBEST statement I have ever seen. Math is used to model physical principles. There is NO physics without math. On the other hand, it is not required to know what originated the processes to understand how the work.
"How does that constitute a scientific theory, much less an inarguable fact?"
I'll let the National Academy of Sciences, the most prestigious science institution in the US answer that:
I bet you can't cite any instances where it is NOT taught as theory.
And you don't believe that God designed the plates to shift and cause tsunmis?
"I think any probability estimate must take into account the reasonable assumption that there are an infinite number of universes, and that somewhere, even the most improbable event has happened. "
haha! That's a good point, if he wants to take that much liberty with his logic, I guess we shouldn't pull any punches either!
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