Let's Have No More Monkey Trials - To teach faith as science is to undermine both

Time Magazine ^ | Monday, Aug. 01, 2005 | CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

[Elsie]

Our challenge, as I see it, is to elect hot babes to school boards across the country.

Won't matter much, as they'll STILL get their marching orders from Washington!

[Elsie]

(We should all protest fight for more civilized debate)

[Elsie]

A new theory that explains why the language of our genes is more complex than it needs to be also suggests that the primordial soup where life began on earth was hot and not cold, as many scientists believe.

 

---

 

new

theory:           What was wrong with the OLD one?

 

explains,  needs: We're sure THIS time! 

 

suggests, believe:    At least I THINK we are......

[durasell]

These threads inspire hostility in normally calm and reasonable people. Humor helps...

[Elsie]

And if you are insulted by the use of Islamic, then you are a poor pathetic, ignorant fool.

NOW will you whimpering off into the darkness????

[Elsie]

Why on earth would that "scare" them?

UH... because civilization, as we know it, will COLLAPSE???

[Elsie]

Nope. You were where I started reading this morning, realizing I had SO much to wade through!

[Elsie]

;^)

[Elsie]

NO IT doesn't!!!!!

[Elsie]

Yea!!!!

Lunch time!

[narby]

These threads inspire hostility in normally calm and reasonable people. Humor helps...

The idea of teaching myths as fact in public schools is a serious subject. Attempts at "humor" do not calm such discussions, they antagonize those who see this as a serious subject.

Elsie is one of the principle antagonists in this discussion, and hasn't added anything new for months.

For all I can tell, Elsie is an atheist pro-evolution troll, attempting to make creationists look stupid.

[Doctor Stochastic]

No problem, most myths have enough gods to be permitted.

Et vice versa.

[Rockingham]

Let's then try approaching this from several new directions.

Consider the civilizational consequences of atheism and aggressive secularism: they are strongly correlated with declining birthrate and national and civilizational decline. Spengler at the Asia Times has done a fine job of analyzing the data and putting his views on a solid foundation.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/GH02Aa01.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/front_page/ED08Aa01.html

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/FI08Aa01.html

As for domestic politics, faithful, Red Staters tend to marry, produce children -- and vote Republican in consequence of those life choices. The statistical evidence is compelling.

http://www.isteve.com/BabyGap.htm

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/07/opinion/07brooks.html?ex=1260162000&en=ebdde83f03fe6d2e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

And, to draw this back to media distortions of science, George Neumayr has hit the target on the abortion issue.

http://www.theamericanprowler.com/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8531

Neumayer's analysis applies to evolution as well. An aggressively secular and faith-hostile public school system and allied cultural elites and an accommodating news media news have promoted a false account of evolution as somehow disproving Christianity and the existence of God.

Of course, like other parents, most Christian parents cannot make sense of evolution or any other complex bit of science, but they do not want evolution or anything else used to undermine the religious faith and instruction of their children. For that, Christian parents get pilloried as dummies, obscurantists, and book burners.

As Herb Stein famously observed, "that which can not go on forever won’t." Spengler's gloomy assessment may in the end be contradicted by events. In America, at least, evolution-worshiping, abortion-loving, left-voting Blue State atheists seem certain to diminish in numbers relative to married, children producing, conservative Red Staters.

Or, to state the scenario in term of evolution, the greater fertility and fitness of the faith-believing Red State species make them likely to prevail over the less fit and less fertile Blue State species. Now that is a kind of evolution that even Pat Robertson could heartily approve.

[Doctor Stochastic]

It's working.

[FierceKulak]

Science is the study of physical reality. It SHOULD be studied isolated from political or religious beliefs.

[b_sharp]

"Intelligent design is a mathematical model that demonstrates how improbable it is for inanimate objects to combine into animate ones. Its math says that it very nearly approaches zero, and that, in fact, you have a far better chance of winning the next 280,000,000 dollar Lotto. (And you know how good that chance is for YOU. :>)

Nice example of its lack of theory and inability to show design.

"One verification of this rarity would seem to be the lack of oodles of alien life forms from the billions upon billions of planets that must exist among the unimaginable number of stars."

You can see the surface of all those billions of other planets? Wow. Better talk to the astronomers.

[trubluolyguy]

I agree with the premise that evolution is a THEORY and should be taught as a THEORY only.

I believe that religion (and I do attend church 2 times per week) has no place in SCIENCE class, just like I don't want to study dinosaurs in church.

[chariotdriver]

No it was a case of I don't take you and your demented pal serious beyond a certain level. Therefore I tire of your 'logic'.
If these replies to me are in your minds clever victories,.. I could say more but it would not be nice.

What it is is you types take yourselves way too serious.
What it is is a metaphor of what you and the demented types don't see about the huge gaps of and leaps of faith too.. you apply your science.

So claim your victory. What have you won? Lay it at the metaphorical altar of your dead evolutionism.

[b_sharp]

"I think there've been exactly zero finds of extra-terrestrial life at this point. If there had been, Lord knows we would've heard about it a gazillion times."

How many other planets have we investigated closely enough to determine if life exists or not? Possibly one, Mars. Even then we have not yet scratched the surface.

You are basing your premise of no extraterrestrial life found, on the investigation of one other planet out of how many possible planets?

Can you not see the fault in that premise?

"So far as highly advanced life forms"

And the probability of us being in contact with other intelligent organisms is exactly what? Don't forget to factor in both geometric and temporal distances.

By the way, does not ID suggest the designer may be extra terrestrial life? Ironic that you push ID yet forget that little nugget.

[Fester Chugabrew]

ID is to science what gay marriage is to marriage.

Inane analogies such as the above amply demonstrate the warped logic necessary to palm off evolutionism as science.