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.
Stick around. That's exactly what's going on. This creationism stuff has the potential to destroy what could otherwise be a generation of Republican government.
Oh, come now Danny! You know perfectly well that the TOE does NOT adress life's origins, you've spent enough timwe on these threads. You've also spent enough time to know that it's NOT a "religion" (although I find it interestingly funny that you use the term "religion" as a slur), as it has actual evidence, experiments, and research backing it, which by definition religion does not.
As for your videos, I'm just chuckling to myself. What are you going to tell your kids when they finally learn the truth, and are exposed to all the lies in those cartoons?
What about private schools, PH? Do you want to ban "anti-evolution" stuff (whether called ID, creationism, or anything else) from private schools? If so, please let us know. If not, well, we want some say in what our kids are taught in public schools as well as private. (Some of us can't afford to send our kids to the private schools we'd like to send them to.)
What Would We Expect to Find if the World had Flooded?
Problems with a Global Flood.
The Geologic Column and its Implications for the Flood. By a former creationist.
I don't care what kids are taught in private schools, or in church. I don't want a bunch of evolution texts (or stickers) to be forced on people in such institutions. But as long as we have government schools (I hope it's not much longer) we don't want religion being snuck in as if it were science.
The Republican party now can only be damaged from within, and the creationists will be at the forefront of the effort.
Why in HELL did this fringe movement wind up connected with conservatism?
Why can't we all just get along and respect each others beliefs? And like the high 'n' mighty Times of London has anything to say anymore. The sun has long set on your Red Coats so get back to your own knitting. And Liberals, everything is beautiful so play nice. And ,oh, yeah you folks lost big in the last elections. In a democracy the winners make the rules.
You are falling for the credentials game. Credentialed people can and do turn out gobbledygook. And can you find one who has produced a truly falsifiable hypothesis and tested it and published the results in a respected journal?
Isaac Newton was a great scientist who spent a great deal of his time on nutty stuff. His great science is great and his nutty stuff is, well, nutty. That he was a great scientist does not make the nutty stuff any less nutty.
It's a pity so many people keep knocking the intelligent design concept without ever having read anything about it. In my opinion, it makes better scientific sense than Darwinism, and certainly is worth looking at.
Here's a good starting place, for any who may be interested:
http://www.ignatius.com/ViewProduct.aspx?SID=1&Product_ID=679&SKU=SEDU-P&ReturnURL=search.aspx%3f%3fSID%3d1%26SearchCriteria%3dIntelligent+Design
I'm gone for the evening. Everybody play nice.
The question is not what is taught, the question is why have parents lost control over where and what their children are taught (indoctrinated if government school).
Your first link assumes a ridiculous simple model for the flood and then debunks it. I believe, that's called a strawman argument.
The video on the flood, did a good job of laying out both the evolutionist theory of grand canyon area being submerged under oceans several times. Then it presents the Creationist view. Does a good job of explaining how the differnent layers formed and points out that there is a general lack of erosion between layers which would be expected if the layers had occurred over millions of years.
As for your videos, I'm just chuckling to myself. What are you going to tell your kids when they finally learn the truth, and are exposed to all the lies in those cartoons?
Having gotten both sides of the issue, they'll be able to think for themselves. What are you going to do the day you realize that this fisherman and disciple of Jesus prophesized 2000 years ago about you?
1 Peter 3 Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, 4 And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. 5 For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: 6 Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished:
The IDiots are an embarrassment.
Don't teach any of them, including evolution, in the public schools to elementary kids.
Last year, Patrick Henry posted a link to a California educator's site where they were actually had a curriculum built on how to introduce kids to evolution and it had recommendations on what to introduce in Kindergarden. It was blatant indoctrination. It was designed to have them so exposed repetitively to evolution that by the time the theory is actually discussed in Highschool biology that they take it for granted and don't critically examine it at all.
So then it must be despicable to teach children about god before they are old enough to choose their faith themselves.
Or, "They deny 150+ years of scientific research and evidence, but they want us to trust them to win a war? To reform the tax code?"
My stomach is turning just thinking about it. We've got so many opportunities this Presidential term, and these people will just pi$$ it away.
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