Kansas Board Holding Evolution Hearings

TOPEKA, Kan. - Witnesses trying to persuade Kansas officials to encourage more criticism of evolution in public school classrooms are making statements some scientists say betrayed creationist views.

Witnesses in a State Board of Education hearing on how the theory should be taught also have acknowledged they hadn't fully read evolution-friendly science standards proposed by educators. Nor had two of three presiding board members.

Board member Kathy Martin, of Clay Center, elicited groans of disbelief from a few audience members when she acknowledged she had only scanned the proposal, which is more than 100 pages. Later, board member Connie Morris, of St. Francis, also said she had only scanned it.

Martin said during a break: "I'm not a word-for-word reader in this kind of technical information."

I believe in both the Virgin Birth and the Ressurection, but except on these two points I agree with you. I particularly liked this phrase:

Tinkering with mutations seems inconsistent with freedom. Also if God is tinkering with mutations, then what else? Say a leaf falls. Is that because of chemical reactions at the base of the leaf causing it to separate for the stem, or did God make a miracle for one (or any number) or particular leafs to fall that wouldn't have "otherwise". The effect of affirming tinkerings is to make the world a domain sprinkled with occult effects rather than a whole, coherent and seamless creation.

Your argument is very much like Ken Miller's.

Thinking about all these things, I am now inclined to believe, for theological reasons, that life originated through a natural process. It seems that staying within the the laws of nature is a much more elegant manner of creation than simply "poofing" things into existence. And it seems to me that elgence is something the God of the Bible is fond of.

As you rightly pointed out, miraculous events stemming from the incarnation are in an altogether different class and in no way would reduce the elegence of our God's natural ways.

If God grows a 50 foot oak tree in 30 years or 30 seconds it is really the same miracle, with the only difference being the time frame.

Depends what you mean by miracle, I guess. God is the ultimate cause of both, but typically we only say something's a mircale if it violates the laws of nature. That is the case of the 30 second oak, not the 30 year oak.

Maybe so, but the statements you quote of theirs are not statements implied by the theory of evolution, but rather statements of their own opinions which are made to promote their personal agendas. Or should we believe that everything that Kent Hovind and Jack Chick say is exactly what all creationists and ID'ers believe?

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