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.
Evidently you've never spent time in the wilderness where mists abound. Do you suppose God kept the mists from being illuminated why anyone was around? Did he place them in a deep sleep while the mist was watering the things? Perhaps He kept the particle size small enough that no rainbow resulted. What's with the DOD? It rained and there where even thunderstorms prior to the flood and there's no reason to believe otherwise. The Earth is also billions of years old, not 6K y/o.
Then, why did God say it was not good for man to be alone? Seems that if the animals were first, he would have said otherwise ...
One is not held in contempt for ignorance; one is held in contempt for choosing ignorance.
I don't believe Adam came before the animals. Just as with the Sun, god created them at certain time. The fact that he reiterates their creation does not mean that he created them in that sequence. I think you agree that just because God reiterated his creation of animals for man's company after he created man, that that does not mean the animals came after? Right?
Interesting. This is EXACTLY the same logic you refuse to accept concerning the day of creation of the sun. God created light on the first day. This is obviously the sun. You can't have it both ways.
Tinfoil? No you really ought to stick with the theme of the pissant communist who wrote the Christian conspiracy article.
That is...
Turban too tight little Christian fascist freak?
The problem is in the translation. The words used in v.13 do not indicate that the sun was created at that moment. It was created in the past (day one). A better translation might be:
"God had made the two great lights, the greater light to govern the day, and the lesser light to govern the night; He made the stars also."
I don't think Southack knows or cares what is going on. He painted himself into a corner saying that mutations are not necessary for a monoclonal bacterial culture to develop antibiotic resistence. He does not have the honesty to admit the article he cited starts out by saying mutations are required.
The issue of whether the word "recessive" is appropriate when applied to bacteria is a nit. Recessive traits for antibiotic resistance did not exist in the organism cited. That is a fact clearly stated in the article. The article clearly states that two mutations were required.
"Recessive traits", as defined in all reference works, is not a term that applies to non-sexually reproducing organisms.
Why do all these creationist threads bring out all the worst in the creationists?
Oh YEAH?
Hitler invented a pagan theology around the worship of the German race, German State with himself as God of that State. That he confided privately to some aides, according to William Shirer, that he was the 2nd coming of Christ, don't make him any more a Christian than Uncle Joe Stalin singing in the choir at Russian Orthodox seminary school made him one.
Whatever. It is very plainly written that God found it bad for Adam to be alone and THEN he created the animals and brought them to Adam.
15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
Hmmm. He's very impressed with the prestige of the (drumroll!) National Academy of Sciences. There can be no doubt for any reader of this thread that he endorses every word of every sentence in that article. Who would question it? He believes that every line must be taken absolutely literally in the Genesis sense.
No, it follows that we must be mistaken in thinking that Southack is saying there is no role for mutation in bacterial adaptation. Otherwise, there would be a contradiction.
What makes an athiest evolutionist dumb@ss post an article on a Conservative site refering to Christians as Talibanis? Then says "Be nice". Freepin' troll.
Funny. God said it was VERY good (before Eve)
29 And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.
30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.
31 And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Yes. The nerve. One should realize that fanatical creationism is contrary to politeness.
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