Ayatollahs in the classroom [Evolution and Creationism]

Berkshire Eagle (Mass.) ^ | 22 January 2005 | Staff

[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.

[WildTurkey]

day and night were on day one, but the source of the light was NOT the Sun, which was not created until day 4.

You are correct. It was not the sun. It was the headlight of a Martian space vehicle. God just borrowed till he could get around to making a sun.

[VadeRetro]

dominance/regression

Dominance/recession. Close counts in my stuff.

[WildTurkey]

It is very obvious that you are incorrect. Unless you think that God created light twice. Book 01 Genesis

---

001:001 In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
001:002 And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
001:003 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
001:004 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
001:005 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
001:006 And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.
001:007 And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so.
001:008 And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
001:009 And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so.
001:010 And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good.
001:011 And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.
001:012 And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
001:013 And the evening and the morning were the third day.
001:014 And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years:
001:015 And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
001:016 And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
001:017 And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth,
001:018 And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
001:019 And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

[JohnnyM]

Please tell me how the Sun can be the source of the light on day 1, yet be created on day 4? This is logically inconsistent.

The source of the light in on day one is God. Revelation 21:23 may shed some light on this (pun intended).

And the city has no need of the sun nor of the moon, that they should shine for it; for the glory of God has enlightened it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb

JM

[VadeRetro]

I think he kind of wishes he hadn't gone where he did with hidden alleles as the answer to the before-your-eyes adaptiveness of bacteria. He has established that a bacterial allele can be unexpressed, "hidden," if only once in a blue moon.

There will be no dragging him back to the problem to which said phenomenon is not an answer at all.

[js1138]

There will be no dragging him back to the problem to which said phenomenon is not an answer at all.

But the case he cited had nothing hidden. We were discussing mutations. He implied that mutation wasn't the source of change because there was a recessive trait.

At this point I challenged him to explain how this worked in bacteria. He has never responded to my challenge. I'm still waiting.

Words are magic to him. Say the right incantation and facts go poof. His problem remains: Explain how recessive traits work in a bacterial colony descended from a single individual.

[WildTurkey]

And the city has no need of the sun nor of the moon, that they should shine for it; for the glory of God has enlightened it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb

I guess that answers your question how plants and animals can live without the sun. Thanks!

[WildTurkey]

FYI, it does not say the sun was created on the fourth day.

[JohnnyM]

"FYI, it does not say the sun was created on the fourth day."

Then what is the "greater light to rule the day" referring to?

JM

[VadeRetro]

Whether or not he ever explains his own dumb-dumb version, here's a nice key to disentangling further arguments from semantics.

Procaryotes. (I gather that's some kind of Brit spelling.)

Highlights:

Bacterial lateral transfers are known as parasexuality.

Beside the exchange of genetic information via plasmid, the cell is able to gain valuable information by taking up DNA. These mechanisms are generally referred to as parasexuality. In contrast to the sexuality of eucaryotic cells, where the genetic information of both partners is equal and where both genomes contribute equally to the species’ progeny, in parasexuality, the information of one partner is enhanced at the expense of the other’s.

This isn't even a sharing of information, really. It's more like the stealing of same. What one gains, another actually loses.

It is mostly the extra-chromosomal plasmids involved in this process that create the appearance of polyploidy:

Bacteria have an extensive array of restriction endonucleases specific for this purpose at their disposal. The bacterial genome is mostly haploid, but the information stored in the plasmids has to be regarded as polyploid, since the cells contain usually several copies of the same type of plasmid.

This is the data set that someone is Googling up a little bit at a time to prove that no new information is ever created, nor does it need to be because bacteria are diploid.

[js1138]

His problem remains: Explain how recessive traits work in a bacterial colony descended from a single individual.

[JohnnyM]

"I guess that answers your question how plants and animals can live without the sun. Thanks!"

Are you saying, as an evolutionists, that for a long period of time life on this earth evolved without the presence of the Sun?

JM

[JohnnyM]

"I guess that answers your question how plants and animals can live without the sun. Thanks!"

Are you saying, as an evolutionists, that for a long period of time life on this earth evolved without the presence of the Sun?

JM

[Junior]

LOL. Abbreviating federal government to fedgov equals "conspiracy kook" is about as kooky as it gets.

The John Birchers were the first folks I ever heard using "fedgov." Of course, they also abbreviated other things, such as "comsymp." The JB crew was about as kooky as they get.

[VadeRetro]

I forgot to mention this part:

The complete nucleotide sequence of strain K12 is known. It contains 4,639,221 base pairs corresponding to 4,288 genes.

That's the total size of the founder Ur-cell that has in it already somewhere recessive genes coding for every antibiotic resistance and every food-metabolization adaptation which will ever be needed. K12 is a strain of Southack's "diploid" E. coli.

[WildTurkey]

Are you saying, as an evolutionists, that for a long period of time life on this earth evolved without the presence of the Sun?

Are you saying, as a creationist, that for a long period of time life onthis earth evolved?

[js1138]

On another thread I asked Alamo-girl if ID had any research proposals to find the secret to predicting the effects of mutations or changes. It seems to me that if you are designing something you need to know how your materials work.

You would need a formula or model that predicts how any allele will express itself, how it will be affected by the totality of the genome, and most of all, how reproductive success will be affected, given the physical environment and the ecosystem.

That would make ID a science.

;-)

[JohnnyM]

no.

We are discussing if the creation account and evolution are compatible, so it is only reasonable to apply evolution to our discussion.

So I ask again: Are you saying, as an evolutionists, that for a long period of time life on this earth evolved without the presence of the Sun?

JM

[Junior]

So God created God on the first day. Interesting ...

[JohnnyM]

God is the source of the light on the first day.

JM