Posted on 01/29/2005 6:54:41 PM PST by PatrickHenry
THE Republican “red states” that voted for President George W Bush in America’s Bible Belt are claiming their reward in an unexpected area: rolling back the teaching of evolution in schools.
Bold initiatives to introduce the concept of “intelligent design”, wrought by a god or higher being, into theories about Earth’s creation are being sponsored in towns and communities across America.
Religious fundamentalists — or “theocons” — opposed to Darwinism have adopted sophisticated tactics enabling them to pass under the political and legal radar that keeps church separate from state and forbids the promotion of religion in schools.
The champions of intelligent design, who are mindful not to specify a particular creator, are poised for victory in Kansas later this year after a new school board favouring the teaching of evolution as a theory rather than a fact was elected in November by a majority of six votes to four.
Jack Krebs of Kansas Citizens for Science said: “The re-election of Bush has emboldened the intelligent design movement. They feel they have the wind at their backs.”
The president, a born-again Christian, has proclaimed his own scepticism about Darwinism in the past. “On the issue of evolution, the verdict is still out on how God created the Earth,” he once said. A recent CBS poll found that 55% of Americans and 67% of those who voted for Bush do not believe in evolution.
This Tuesday marks the start of a series of public meetings in Kansas on the teaching of Darwinism and the battle lines are firmly drawn.
The prairie town of Salina, Kansas, in the centre of the United States is modern enough to have a two-mile airstrip. When it comes to religion, however, little has changed for some families since the pioneers rolled by on their wagons.
In a small diner on the outskirts of the town, Ruth Coleman, 58, the mother of a Baptist pastor, was treating her five-year-old granddaughter Kendra to lunch. “I am creationist,” she said stoutly. “I believe God made the Earth 6,000 years ago and he deserves the credit. If there was evolution, why are there still monkeys?”
A 14-year-old girl asked members of Coleman’s congregation last Sunday for guidance on how to answer exam questions about the origin of mankind. “Shall I give the right answer and fail the test or give the wrong answer and pass?” the puzzled teenager asked.
“We teach kids not to lie and if we believe in creationism, evolution is a lie, so the grown-ups were kind of stumbling,” Coleman said. “A mom said, ‘Just put the textbook says this, but I believe that.’ Everybody thought it was a really good idea.”
Educationists across the state arrived in Salina last week for a meeting of a science standards committee on rewriting the curriculum. The leading protagonists on each side traded barbs as they discussed changes that would open the door to challenging evolution.
“Darwinism is a non-theistic religion,” protested one supporter of intelligent design, “and you’re trying to give it to our kids even though they don’t want it.” An opponent retorted: “The alternative to natural causation is supernatural causation . . . and that’s what you are trying to open the door to.”
The well-funded, nationally based intelligent design movement is casting itself as the promoter of academic freedom. It is hard for opponents to write the group off as the American equivalent of Afghanistan’s fundamentalist Taliban when it appears to be challenging received wisdom rather than stifling debate.
For Bill Harris, a 56-year-old scientist and a Christian, the question is: “Is it impossible that a god created the Earth? If it is impossible, then take it off the table, but if it’s possible don’t ignore it.”
He believes evolution should continue to be taught with important caveats. “There are definitely elements of Darwin’s theory that are well founded, but the origins of the universe, the origins of life and the origins of the genetic code are currently unknown. We can’t state frequently enough that science is still looking for the answers.”
Harris believes the finely tuned relationship between the planet and its living creatures point to the existence of a higher designer. “It’s not a religious debate,” he insisted. “It’s a scientific debate with religious implications.”
Krebs, 56, a veteran of skirmishes with anti-evolutionists, said his opponents had learnt from past mistakes. “It used to be easy to dismiss the views of young Earth creationists as an embarrassment, but the intelligent design movement is deliberately keeping them in the background. It is a cleverly designed strategy to say, ‘You guys are being dogmatic’, and we wind up looking like the ones who want to limit science.”
There are signs that the tactic is paying off, even among staunch supporters of evolution. In the same diner as Coleman, Doug Guenther, 48, had just finished a plate of fried chicken. His job for the Kansas rural water authority has led him to develop a passionate amateur interest in fossils.
“I’ve dug up shark teeth that go back 67m years to the Cretaceous period when the sea spread from Texas all the way to Canada,” he said proudly. “I’ve seen mammoth teeth, camel teeth and large arrowheads belonging to early man. It would be pretty hard to explain that in the Bible.”
Yet Guenther has no problems with teaching children about intelligent design. “Evolution is definitely not a theory — it is a fact. But you can fit in it with the Bible as long as you don’t believe everything it says literally.”
Evangelical Christians, such as James Dobson’s influential Focus on the Family movement, are delighted by the success of intelligent design as a “wedge” issue to challenge and undermine Darwinism.
Changes to the science curriculum are being sought by religious conservatives in Wisconsin, Missouri, Mississippi, South Carolina, Montana and Pennsylvania, where one educational district has already placed stickers in biology textbooks with the warning that evolution is a theory rather than a fact. It plans to appeal against a recent court decision ordering the schools to remove them.
What will happen next is the de-accreditation of high-school biology classes that teach creationism or its ID surrogate. If Kansas forces ID onto the curriculum, I will certainly have a motion before our Arts and Sciences faculty proposing we refuse to count Kansas's ID high-school courses as science classes.
Kudos to your sarcasm.. ;o)
May I add...
Why not forsake science completely..
Issue our soldiers a bible and the jawbone of an ass..
According to the Creationists, no technology is necessary for our armed forces to do their duty..
Private schools should be free to teach what they like. On the other hand, if they teach material considered to be nonsense by scientists, the scientists who run University Biology Departments will stop accepting these as legitimate high-school courses.
By all means tell us the purpose, then, of the non-functional, relict gene of gulonolactone oxidase in humans and higher primates. What purpose did it serve. And was the designer under the impression we would never need to synthesize vitamin C? How could an intelligent designer not forsee scurvy? Or were they given the non-functional design so that when their joints ached and their teeth fell out, they could appreciate the delicious irony that but for a few base pairs, they'd be perfectly healthy?
If I believed in ID, I'd conclude the designer was rather hateful, in addition to incompetent.
I disaagree. Creationism is associated with church going, morality, virtue etc. Republicans will do fine.
As for scientific progress there'll continue to be Japan, India and much of Europe, possibly Israel.
--the scientists who run University Biology Departments will stop accepting these as legitimate high-school courses.
-They have been and are getting into top university science departments. When does the ideological purge start??
I think some colleges accept the kids but require a bio for the unprepared instead of just college level bio 101.
On another thread I posted what would happen to a biology curriculum with no mention of evolution. Pretty ugly.
I also think that as America fills up with the biologcally ignorant there will be less and less research in biology and medicine and more and more poor health practices among the public at large.
Is this your opinion, or do you have some evidence?
In general, religiosity is not strongly correlated with measures of social virtue, and when you control for other factors, even the weak correlations tend to vanish.
So your complaint is that the alternate crap isn't cheap?
What evidence supports creationism?
Dr. Martin earned his D.M.D. from University of Pittsburgh Dental School. From there he went into private practice, then joining the faculty of Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas. Later he went on to earn a Th.M. in Systematic Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary. He currently serves as president of Biblical Discipleship Ministries (Dallas, TX).
Do I have the right Dr. Martin? The book covers tout him to be a scientist. I looked in vain for any articles by Martin in scientific journals.
Read the creationist posts on this thread.
Is there a real correlation with either religion or morality? Probably not.
But the association is there.
If you are prepared to believe a bunch of handwaving like that which solely applies to industrial-age bible-readers, then why don't you just go the whole hog and accept that evolution is the mechanism that God used to create biological diversity? The evidence for the fact that evolution has happened is crushing, regardless of arguments about precise mechanism (believe that it was guided by God if you want to), as is the evidence for an ancient earth and universe. (believe that God hops around outside time if you will to justify the biblical sequence in Genesis)
yes, but I've always assumed that's because the Lord, Himself, generates light. There's no need for sunlight or starlight when the Lord manifest's Himself.
For what purpose did the Lord then create circa 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 suns, evidently they are not required for light or heat?
Are separate ID courses being contemplated? Or are you proposing to de-accredit any science course that adds mention of ID as an alternate to evolution?
"I just spent $90 last week buying videos for my kids to counter all the evolutionary crap they are getting fed."
Why should I have to pay to counter the evisceration of science by religion?
"Without God life does not make sense!"
Then I suggest you start using your God-given brain and think.
"300,000 kilometers per second. It's not just a good idea. It's the law!"
Egad --- I played that game, too.
Because I don't believe the evidence demonstrates evolution. I don't believe God used guided random chance in order to create us in His image or that He needed to. God healed the guards ear instantly. God made Moses' hand leprous instantly and then healed it instantly. God walked on water defying gravity. There is no reason to believe that God resorted to Evolution to create the animals.
Why would God use Evolution to create all lifeforms except Man and then create man separately and differently? It says God created Eve out of Adam's rib. No way can you reconcile that to evolution.
The evidence for an ancient Earth and universe is not crushing. Only if you arrogantly believe that what man has discovered in the last 200 years is the sum of what can be known. I don't think we are even close to understanding what can be known about physics or God's powers.
(believe that God hops around outside time if you will to justify the biblical sequence in Genesis)
The reason I belive God hops around outside time has nothing to do with Genesis. It has to do with explaining how God knows the future which he has demonstrated many times. Specifically, how does God know that we will sin in the future if we have free will. How could he predict Peter's denial three times before the cock crowed? How could God tell Israel they would be exiled for their sins, before they had sinned? There are only so many possibilities, that I can think of.
#3 fits with scripture better than anything else. It also explains the way God talks about past and future in the scripture. God doesn't say "I was the Alpha and I will be the Omega", but rather "I am the Alpha and the Omega". Jesus didn't say "I tell you verily, before Moses I was", but rather "I tell you verily, before Moses I am". When God talks about future events in Revelations he says, "and man repented not from his sins". Why is it past tense. Shouldn't it be "and man won't repent from his sins"?
So if God can tell us now, things that have yet to happen, because God is already in the future. Then God probably has the ability to change the past.
Now understand. I'm speculating. I do not fully understand how God interacts with time or how He is able to predict the future. He has demonstrated this ability with prophecies that can be time dated.
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