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.
Are We Doing It for The Children?
Correct me if I'm wrong but wasn't Baal the god of the sun, fertility, and flocks according to the beliefs of certain ancient Semitic peoples? Wasn't he worshipped by the Carthaginians? They may have sacrificed their children to him but that was their ignorance (they believed their sacrificed babies would spend all eternity in the blissful paradise of the Sun god, right?), it doesn't seem to be an act of malice. It may be Idoltry but using the name doesn't imply that one is a believer in the false god.
Enough with this rubbish and back to the task at hand.
Approximately 98.6° of all statistics are made up on the spot.
placemarker
Baal was a pagan god. Yes he WAS the god of the sun as you said, but that's just an example of what he WAS. As said semitic peoples refocussed on monoteheism (Zoroastrians are credited with first recognizing monotheism, they still practice to this day, but number only in the hundreds of thousands)
And the semites dropped the pagan gods that they picked up from their nomadic lifestyle from Akkadia. Baal later became known as Beelzebub (Baalzebub) who we refer to as Satan now. Cast out of Heaven.
It is also important to know that "Baal" is a title. So no one "given" deity held the name. However, it is worth noting that the title was given to the (semi-political) opposing (leading) god of Yaweh. One either held God or Baal. So Baal was in opposition to God.
Also, it must be pointed out that Baal having changed to Satan became the enemy of Jesus, tempting him in the wilderness.
Politics wrt foreign relations and national defense has more to do with the illusion of science than the facts of it - hence all the espionage. Directed energy weapons are another example...
I suspected it was just a matter of degree...
The controversy is what needs to be taught along with the alternative speculations and the state-of-the-art. Who knows? The kids might get a lot more interested in science if they know there are important questions which remain unanswered.
ID makes no such claim. Neither is ID incompatible with much of evolutionary theory.
Backers of the materialist monopoly show the weakness of their case by slipping into lies, half-truths, and innuendo to preserve their place.
4) But in addition to approval of his work, significant criticism existed. In 1539, Martin Luther wrote: "Mention has been made of some new astrologer, who wanted to prove that Earth moves and goes around, and not the firmament or heavens, the sun and moon... This fool wants to turn the entire art of astronomy upside down! But as the Holy Scriptures show, Joshua ordered the sun, and not Earth, to halt!" Protestants were initially more hostile to Copernicus; the Catholic resistance developed later.
So the origin of life is unexplained?
I have heard from evolutionists that life came from non-living matter. Is there evidence of this?
That is exactly the point, A-G: Intelligent Design is not a systematic theory that can be taught. It is -- it seems to me -- more of an inventory of problems that neo-Darwinist theory hasn't touched. At least it has not done so, so far.
It seems Darwinist theorists have two choices: They can outright deny the insights of ID that point to the seeming incompleteness of natural selection in certain key areas of evolutionary explanation, or they can embrace them, and see what further progress they can make from the new insights.
I don't think the proponents of Darwinist evolution have any right to stifle new insights that might prove useful to its own researches in the long run.
I've said it before, so I hope I'm not boring folks to tears to say it again: I have little doubt that the universe evolves, and all things in it evolve. That makes me an evolutionist, though not necessarily a Darwinist. Darwin had invaluable insights into the processes of natural selection, species adaptation to environmental change, and so forth. But he does not deal with questions of life, particularly its inception -- that is, how it arose in the first place.
Since these are vital questions of perennial interest to the human mind (if history has any testimony to give), why censor them? In classrooms, where eager young minds and proto-scientists tend to gather?
To which a Darwinist might reply: because they aren't "scientific questions." But if science is about giving us a truthful description of the universe and all things in it, how can it dispense with such questions and be faithful to its mission?
At the moment, yes.
I have heard from evolutionists that life came from non-living matter. Is there evidence of this?
Yes there is. Once more, Ichneumon, one of our resident research analyst, has compiled quite an impressive list of the research being done in this area. And, mind you, the stuff he posts is, as I pointed out before, only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to research. He often includes links to ongoing lines of research and additional evidence in his posts.
He might be persuaded to repost his compilation, though I hold out little hope of it making any impression upon you. However, as I said, we're not doing it for you.
Mental flexibility includes being able to put yourself in your opponent's shoes and see things from his point of veiw (this is often called "empathy"). It also covers what might be considered a vivid imagination (which aids in the empathy, above, and allows one to plan for most contingencies). Unfortunately, many fundamentalist Christians equate mental flexibility with mental weakness and eschew it. Young folks, on the other hand, are typically not under such a handicap.
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