Posted on 08/01/2005 10:58:13 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
The half-century campaign to eradicate any vestige of religion from public life has run its course. The backlash from a nation fed up with the A.C.L.U. kicking crèches out of municipal Christmas displays has created a new balance. State-supported universities may subsidize the activities of student religious groups. Monuments inscribed with the Ten Commandments are permitted on government grounds. The Federal Government is engaged in a major antipoverty initiative that gives money to churches. Religion is back out of the closet.
But nothing could do more to undermine this most salutary restoration than the new and gratuitous attempts to invade science, and most particularly evolution, with religion. Have we learned nothing? In Kansas, conservative school-board members are attempting to rewrite statewide standards for teaching evolution to make sure that creationism's modern stepchild, intelligent design, infiltrates the curriculum. Similar anti-Darwinian mandates are already in place in Ohio and are being fought over in 20 states. And then, as if to second the evangelical push for this tarted-up version of creationism, out of the blue appears a declaration from Christoph Cardinal Schönborn of Vienna, a man very close to the Pope, asserting that the supposed acceptance of evolution by John Paul II is mistaken. In fact, he says, the Roman Catholic Church rejects "neo-Darwinism" with the declaration that an "unguided evolutionary process--one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence--simply cannot exist."
Cannot? On what scientific evidence? Evolution is one of the most powerful and elegant theories in all of human science and the bedrock of all modern biology. Schönborn's proclamation that it cannot exist unguided--that it is driven by an intelligent designer pushing and pulling and planning and shaping the process along the way--is a perfectly legitimate statement of faith. If he and the Evangelicals just stopped there and asked that intelligent design be included in a religion curriculum, I would support them. The scandal is to teach this as science--to pretend, as does Schönborn, that his statement of faith is a defense of science. "The Catholic Church," he says, "will again defend human reason" against "scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of 'chance and necessity,'" which "are not scientific at all." Well, if you believe that science is reason and that reason begins with recognizing the existence of an immanent providence, then this is science. But, of course, it is not. This is faith disguised as science. Science begins not with first principles but with observation and experimentation.
In this slippery slide from "reason" to science, Schönborn is a direct descendant of the early 17th century Dutch clergyman and astronomer David Fabricius, who could not accept Johannes Kepler's discovery of elliptical planetary orbits. Why? Because the circle is so pure and perfect that reason must reject anything less. "With your ellipse," Fabricius wrote Kepler, "you abolish the circularity and uniformity of the motions, which appears to me increasingly absurd the more profoundly I think about it." No matter that, using Tycho Brahe's most exhaustive astronomical observations in history, Kepler had empirically demonstrated that the planets orbit elliptically.
This conflict between faith and science had mercifully abated over the past four centuries as each grew to permit the other its own independent sphere. What we are witnessing now is a frontier violation by the forces of religion. This new attack claims that because there are gaps in evolution, they therefore must be filled by a divine intelligent designer.
How many times do we have to rerun the Scopes "monkey trial"? There are gaps in science everywhere. Are we to fill them all with divinity? There were gaps in Newton's universe. They were ultimately filled by Einstein's revisions. There are gaps in Einstein's universe, great chasms between it and quantum theory. Perhaps they are filled by God. Perhaps not. But it is certainly not science to merely declare it so.
To teach faith as science is to undermine the very idea of science, which is the acquisition of new knowledge through hypothesis, experimentation and evidence. To teach it as science is to encourage the supercilious caricature of America as a nation in the thrall of religious authority. To teach it as science is to discredit the welcome recent advances in permitting the public expression of religion. Faith can and should be proclaimed from every mountaintop and city square. But it has no place in science class. To impose it on the teaching of evolution is not just to invite ridicule but to earn it.
Is a sperm cell alive? Yes
Is it human? No
Is an unfertilized egg cell alive? Yes
Is is human? No
BUT; when they COME TOGETHER, the result is both alive and HUMAN.
Originally?
What was his conclusion?
Just leave it alone.
If you wait long enough, it will. -- ToE
Live rabbits don't obey the simple minded physical laws that dead rabbits obey.
No more than ASSUMING there is 'stuff' between ancient crittern+12,382,987 and ancient crittern+12,382,988.
Oh; you a 'scientist'?
So many so little time ----
Obsolete biology theories
Lamarckism - but revitalised in Neo-Lamarckism - see also epigenetic inheritance
Maternal impression - obsoleted by genetic theory
Miasma theory of disease - obsoleted by germ theory of disease
Spontaneous generation (abiogenesis)
Recapitulation theory - or "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"
Obsolete chemistry theories
Caloric theory
Phlogiston theory - replaced by Lavoisier's work on oxidation
Obsolete physics theories
Aristotelian theory of gravity - discredited by Galileo
Aether - failed to be detected by the Michelson-Morley experiment, made obsolete by Einstein's work.
Caloric theory - Lavoisier's successor to phlogiston, obsolesced by Rumford's and Joule's work
Plum pudding model of the atom - assuming the protons and electrons were mixed together in a single mass
Emitter theory - another now-obsolete theory of light propagation.
Persistence of vision - to a fairly good level it is rejected by investigative psychologists
Obsolete astronomical and cosmological theories
Ptolemaic system/Geocentric universe - obsoleted by Copernicus and Galileo
Copernican system - obsoleted by Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton
Obsolete geographical and climatological theories
Creationist theory - obsoleted by Big Bang theory and the theory of evolution.
Flat earth theory
The Open Polar Sea, an ice-free sea once supposed to surround the North Pole
Rain follows the plow - the theory that human settlement increases rainfall in arid regions
Obsolete medical theories
Theory of the four bodily humours
Eclecticism (medicine) - medical history - Some say it transformed into homeopathy and pseudoscience.
Obsolete branches of enquiry
Alchemy, which led to the development of chemistry
Astrology, which led to the development of astronomy
Phrenology, was once widely studied but now considered a pseudoscience
Numerology, as distinct from number theory, now considered a pseudoscience
Approximate theories
Here are theories that are no longer considered the most complete representation of reality, but are still useful in particular domains. For many theories a more complete model is known, but in practical use the coarser approximation provides good results with much less calculation.
Steady State - The Big Bang and dark matter threaten to destroy this comfortable world picture.
Universe - The possibility of Multiverses is one of the consequences of cosmic inflation.
Atoms are no longer thought to be indivisible, but are now seen to be composites.
Nuclei disintegrate at high energy.
Heliocentric universe theory - This is still used in the coordinate system of celestial mechanics.
Newtonian mechanics - obsoleted by Theory of Relativity and quantum mechanics. Still useful in engineering and physics at either middling (human) scales or where appreciable fractions of the speed of light need not be considered.
Bohr model of the atom - Allows for exact solution of the hydrogen atom, but larger atoms are not well described.
Newton's sine-square law for the force of a fluid on a body - no longer considered useful at low speeds, though it has found application in hypersonic flow
Theories whose significance was overstated
Land bridges - Though temporary connections between land masses sometimes allowed migrations (as when sea levels were lowered during ice ages), the actual splitting of continents by plate tectonics has been more important.
Theories should be taught as theories not fact. After all so many have been debunked disproven over the years.
Enjoy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsolete_scientific_theory
You've seen that old movie!
Ya gotta re-connect the wires to them neck studs!
Or else admit that the 'breath' is gone, that makes Bunny a 'living' soul.
Dang! I'm channeling Dementio....
How many times do we C dudes have to post the TRUTH about this before you'll accept it????
Woe is me.....
You didn't really answer my question. Should we teach the atomic theory as a theory, not a fact? Should we tell students the existence of atoms has never been proven? Should we tell them the earth's rotation around the sun is merely a theory, and there are alternatives?
Gasoline markets are different from the marketplace of ideas. In that market, the item is not morally quantified. In the marketplace of ideas, the items bought and sold carry the moral quantificaiton of T/F and more.
Why do you suppose those good Christian folk would seek the truth from those who submitted to Mohammed? Was it the truth they were searching for, or some form of alliance for further corruption. What could possibly be their common objective?
Pres. Bush said, that they should be exposed to these things. What makes you think Pres., teach and the kids don't have a sense of humor?
Oh come on, now Elsie, you know I can generally quote chapter and verse. I'd blame it on 11 years of Catholic school, but of course Catholics don't read the Bible. Anyway, it's not your favorite NIV, but here it is... (1 Kings 7:23)
And he made a molten sea, ten cubits from the one brim to the other: it was round all about, and his height was five cubits: and a line of thirty cubits did compass it round about.
If the diameter is ten cubits, and it's round all about, and its circumference is 30 cubits, then pi = 3.
I am a professional computer fix it dude.
OOH!
Maybe you can help me!!
I'm using a COMPAQ laptop right now (Presario 2100) and it has some extra keys that allow me to press one for the Web and one for e-mail. I log is just fine using it.
Well, we just bought a new desk model, SR1550NX, and I set up my accounts on it. Well, if I use the shortcut icons on the screen to login, it works just find, BUT, if I use the CONNECT button on it's keyboard, it will NOT login but turns on the browser with some pre-defined address assigned to that key.
I CANNOT find how to get that key assigned right!
GRRRrrr.....
It is important to take what you read there with a grain of salt since it can be edited by users, but likely errors are corrected by other users pretty quickly.
Watch it!!
This thread will get highjacked to a Mac vs IBM one!
You KNOW how nasty THOSE get!!
They don't 'fetch' but they DO 'stay'.
We were discussing Darwinism not atomic theory but OK I'll bite.
What has it been? A couple thousand years? Because of the years of study done on atoms there is a strong understanding of what an atom and its components are.
Have all the bugs been eliminated? I don't know, but I think not. Do you? When they are atomic theory can be classifed as fact.
"Divide and Conquer"
What could be the Evo's reasoning?????
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