Posted on 04/10/2005 3:53:04 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
A pro-evolution group has organized what appears to be a successful boycott of Kansas hearings on intelligent design.
Alexa Posny, a deputy commissioner with the state department of education, told the Kansas City Star that only one person has agreed to testify on the pro-evolution side for the hearings scheduled for May.
"We have contacted scientists from all over the world," Posny said. "There isn't anywhere else we can go."
Harry McDonald, head of Kansas Citizens for Science, charged that the hearings, called by a conservative majority on the state board of education, have a pre-ordained outcome.He said that testifying would only make intelligent design appear legitimate.
"Intelligent design is not going to get its forum, at least not one in which they can say that scientists participated," he said.
Backers of intelligent design, the claim that a supreme being guided evolution, say it is a theory with scientific backing. Opponents believe it is an attempt to smuggle religion into public education.
Individually? From other humans. As a species? From an ancestor hominid species.
Hint: The Earth is not a closed system.
"No, but if a belief has, as part of a tenet, any religious content, then it's not science."
Ok then, according to that:
Darwin makes the assertion of a Creator in his writing (The Origin of the Species, duh)
This makes his (and all findings based on such) theories and discoveries "not scientific"
Ecclesiastes:
1:5 The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
1st Chronicles:
16:30 Fear before him, all the earth: the world also shall be stable, that it be not moved.
Psalms:
93:1 The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty; the LORD is clothed with strength, wherewith he hath girded himself: the world also is stablished, that it cannot be moved.
96:10 Say among the heathen that the LORD reigneth: the world also shall be established that it shall not be moved: he shall judge the people righteously.
104:5 Who laid the foundations of the earth, that it should not be re-moved for ever.
This information was discovered in about 10 minutes using Google. You should try it sometime. It's a great search engine.
To say "sunrise" does not imply an ignorance of the Sun's position and the Earth's rotation.
And to state that the Earth is "firmly established" (NIV translation) does not mean the world doesn't spin around the Sun. It implies the same reason the wise man builds his foundation on rocks instead of sand.
Evolution does not violate the "law of entropy" (I think you meant the Second Law of Thermodynamics). Evolution, like all biological processes, increases universal entropy while decreasing local entropy. Your argument is an ancient, refuted creationist canard trotted out by those who neither understand the Second Law of Thermodynamics, nor biology.
Nothing "induces" evolution. Evolution occurs when an environment is populated by imperfect replicators. Individuals in each generation are subtly different than individuals of previous generations or even individuals of their own generation. These variations become critical factors in surviving within an environment long enough to reproduce.
There's a good case to be made that a set of entities undergoing inexact reproduction could qualify as life.
I'd like to get this for the record. You are saying that when the bible says the sun moves and the earth does not move, it is being figurative.
Are you basing this on evidence from the Bible, or evidence from science? Has it ever been the case that readers of the Bible took these passages literally?
"You are saying that when the bible says the sun moves and the earth does not move, it is being figurative."
No, I am saying that you don't know Greek! (or Aramaic)
To call it "figurative" you'd have to know what exactly was being said in the first place in the original tounge.
The retina is part of the brain, and vice-versa. The interaction between eye and brain is two-way.
http://teachpsych.lemoyne.edu/teachpsych/faces/script/Ch09_HTM/visual_neuroscience.htm
"Has it ever been the case that readers of the Bible took these passages literally?"
They have, and people have misquoted the Bible for eons. An example of which was provided by PatrickHenry and even yourself in an earlier discussion (which you have still not responded to I might add)
I do not mean that in a condiscending tone to either of you, but if you're going to quote something like the Bible, take it for ALL it's possible translations, then work from there. Don't just start at the one that doesn't make sense to you.
Maybe. But it doesn't demonstrate any knowledge of astronomy. I guess it depends on how literally you want to read the text (and what justifies being literal in some places and not in others). Anyway, what does it mean at the end of that passage, the part I'm underlining:
The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.
So you are saying that translations of the Bible do not reflect the meaning of the bible?
No, I'm saying that one only gets a rough idea of it when it's been translated into a language that didn't even exist when the events taking place in it occured.
I did look at more than half a dozen translations, and saw nothing that would change my understanding of what was meant. This is in reference to all my posts today.
It's quite clear that the Bible says the sun moves -- not just that it rises and sets, but that it moves. it also says the earth does not move.
It's quite clear (to me) that these are not scientific statements about cosmology, but it's also clear from history that church leaders have, at times, taken these statements literally and murdered people who said otherwise.
But I ask again, why do we not take these statements literally today? Is it because we are more careful readers of the bible, or is it because we have evidence that contradicts the literal meaning? If you think the evidence is in the Bible itself, please name the Biblical scholar who deduced the astronomical facts from the text of the Bible.
In Ecclesiates, we are reading of a man's profession of exactly how meaningless things are.
What is being stated is that even "sunset" is not final, so it is futile. So is the sunrise. By saying "it hastens back to where it came from" all is being said is that the cycle begins again.
A little later in the same passage, it is noted that there is "nothing new under the sun." Well, we know this to be scientifically "false" but is it really? All we have are simply advancements on what was already. All the ideas are still there, ancient and waiting to be brought back to our reasoning.
Again, we still call it "sunrise" even today, so why lambast the Bible for claiming the Sun rose above us? We still have to look "up" to see it.
"I did look at more than half a dozen translations, and saw nothing that would change my understanding of what was meant. This is in reference to all my posts today. "
And did any of those not explicitly claim the World was created in 6 days?
I don't lambast the Bible, but I do lambast people who insist on literal interpretations that contradict facts and established science.
I ask you one more time. Has there eve been a time when the church persecuted scientists for disagreeing with the literal interpretation that the earth does not move.
Was the interpretation corrected because people got better at translating the Bible, or because science made it impossible to take the statement literally?
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