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.
But what more should we expect from a weasily word lawyer? You latch onto the surface features of an argument in your desire to appeal to an audience who finds thinking difficult and never actually consider the totality of the argument itself.
Catholicism, at least at one time, encouraged rigorous thinking. It appears that whatever form of Christianity you practice no longer does so.
And, the second part of your supposition is a non-sequiter. The Constitution makes no mention of God and is actually patterned on the old Roman Republic (read: pagan) concept of a government of laws. Remember, the Founding Fathers were, for the most part, classically trained. The Constitution also owes quite a bit to 17th- and 18th-century natural philosophy. The latter holds that rights are inherent within an individual because holding that rights are bestowed by God means they are gifts, and not rights, and may be taken away by the Almighty or anyone supposedly representing the latter.
Why are you so foolhearty it will end up getting you Know where?
Additionally, even the mutations need not be random. Evolution doesn't actually require that they be random. If a designer were constantly tweaking the mutations that occur, the observed processes of evolution would be the same. Occam's razor tells us to assume that no designer is needed since random mutations would produce the same observable result as designed mutations, but the theory of evolution doesn't actually rule out a designed process.
Being a religious parent who homeschools also does not equate to teaching creationism and not teaching evolution. Many religious people would not refuse to teach their children evolution, since many religions, such as Roman Catholics, do not see evolution as contrary to their beliefs.
LOL!
"You're playing semantic games here. You're trying to distort Darwin's original comment beyond any semblance of its original context and then using that dishonest distortion as "proof" that Darwin included a Creator as part of the theory of evolution"
Actually, I was using it to show the ludicrousness of the statement I was replying to. (By that logic:)
Thanks for playing though.
That's part of my point. Evolution should be taught as what most of science theorizes. You should not delineate a part of science just because you do not believe it's theories.
That's why you don't see most religious homeschoolers changing their minds about the subject because they are able to really see the farce which is evolution as fact.
Please show me the repeatable experiment that allowed us to understand the dynamics of a supernova. Please show me the repeatable experiment that allows us to understand plate techtonics. Please show me somewhere where any scientific theory has been proven. Apparently repeatability and proof are not really what characterizes science.
Scientific American is a magazine with a clear left wing, atheistic bias, and does not speak for the scientific community as a whole. As a working chemist, I have met and worked with many scientists, the vast majority of whom are Christians. None of them have been ridiculed, shamed, or in any way professionally harmed by their religious beliefs. The only way that this would occur, and rightly so, is if they allowed their religious beliefs to override the evidence that they gather and therefore caused their beliefs to color their scientific findings. Scientists must put aside personal beliefs and focus exclusively on the evidence.
"The Constitution makes no mention of God and is actually patterned on the old Roman Republic (read: pagan) concept of a government of laws."
Excepting that a) Rights were guaranteed (and this was enforced by a document).
b) The old Roman Republic had a monarchy at times. (our country was founded as an opposition to monarchies)
c) The judicial branch was accounted for, and is to be preserved by our organization (checks and balances)
d) The idea of states holding the non-assigned (federal) powers is actually the "new" Roman Republic.
e) in fact, the Founding Fathers noted what had happend to the Roman Republic, and so built the system in a different way to avoid its same pitfalls. This country was built on what was LEARNED from the old Republic, not as a model OF the old Republic.
That being said, in the inclussion of philosophy and the subsequent measure of there being a Creator, the Founding Fathers STILL accounted for the natural Rights of Men to be of the Creator. If there is no Creator, there are no rights. This is not non-sequiter, this is truth.
If God gave us Rights: and there is no God, then there are no Rights. To deny God is to deny His blessings upon us.
"How does asking you for a definition of "free will" morph into denying a concept of God?"
It looked more like speculation to me, not an actual question. You seem to have forgotten you answered it yourself with your own suppositions. I merely used your suppositions to continue the thought:
If there is no God and we hold a naturalistic perspective, then free will may be deemed an illusion, and thus is NOT guaranteed by the Constitution. This is the exact logic that lead the USSR to establish "There shall be a seperation of Church and State" in its own Constitution. A Godless people is an oppressed people.
So we are allowed to interpret when reading the tenth chapter of the Book of Joshua, but not when reading the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis? The literal words of Joshua state the the sun stood still. If we are to read Scriptures literally and this passage means simply that the day was extended, then why doesn't it simply say that "...the day was extended"? Once we open Scriptures up to interpretation, there ceases to be any problem with incompatibility of the Scriptures with evolution.
Plate tectonic theory is used to predict where earthquakes may occur. This is repeatable in that all one has to do is wait for an earthquake. If it's along the lines of the plates, it's repeatable.
Dynamics of a supernova are speculation at best anyway. This is why it's talked about in detail durring the "theoritical" portion of an astrophysics class. It's spoken of in the same breath as black holes. (And don't get me started on black holes being a "theory")
I will grant that the scientific theories aren't proven, but I think it's permittable to ask that if the mechanics involved in a supernova aren't talked about in detail until a more focussed class on the specific subject; then evolution should be left to only a sidenote in science (basic/fundamental) classes.
Again, if it were simply a case of the earth's rotation slowing, then why doesn't the Scripture say this directly? Why, if we are to take it literally, does it say something that must be interpreted to be correctly understood?
"But elsewhere that Bible says the sun moves."
Source?
I'll nip this one before it comes completely out anyway:
It states the sun moves across the sky *in a translation*.
Again and again and again, to say "sunrise" does not imply ignorance of whether the sun moves or the earth moves. That term is yet to be changed, and so the common tounge you read it in will state as such. In Greek, it may read differently.
Why is it in English?
I am sure that since all evolutionists are atheists, mlc is considering the ~35% of people who believe that God created all the different species of life using the process of evolution to be creationists. Oh wait, there really ARE people who believe in God and are pro-evolution! GASP!!!
</sarcasm off>
From post #393
Martin Luther's interpretation of the relevant Scriptur: 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!"
Are you suggesting that Martin Luther wasn't smart enough to read the Bible correctly? Is there any particular reason why the Bible would be so obscure in its meaning that its interpretation would lie beyond the ken of Martin Luther? Is there any hope at all for the less intelligent?
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