Posted on 08/04/2005 12:43:01 PM PDT by Crackingham
A leading Republican senator allied with the religious right differed on Thursday with President Bush's support for teaching an alternative to the theory of evolution known as "intelligent design."
Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a possible 2008 presidential contender who faces a tough re-election fight next year in Pennsylvania, said intelligent design, which is backed by many religious conservatives, lacked scientific credibility and should not be taught in science classes.
Bush told reporters from Texas on Monday that "both sides" in the debate over intelligent design and evolution should be taught in schools "so people can understand what the debate is about."
"I think I would probably tailor that a little more than what the president has suggested," Santorum, the third-ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate, told National Public Radio. "I'm not comfortable with intelligent design being taught in the science classroom."
Evangelical Christians have launched campaigns in at least 18 states to make public schools teach intelligent design alongside Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Proponents of intelligent design argue that nature is so complex that it could not have occurred by random natural selection, as held by Darwin's 1859 theory of evolution, and so must be the work of an unnamed "intelligent cause."
Santorum is the third-ranking member of the U.S. Senate and has championed causes of the religious right including opposition to gay marriage and abortion. He is expected to face a stiff challenge from Democrat Bob Casey in his quest for re-election next year in Pennsylvania, a major battleground state in recent presidential elections.
SNIP
"What we should be teaching are the problems and holes -- and I think there are legitimate problems and holes -- in the theory of evolution. What we need to do is to present those fairly, from a scientific point of view," he said in the interview.
"As far as intelligent design is concerned, I really don't believe it has risen to the level of a scientific theory at this point that we would want to teach it alongside of evolution."
Nope. We were canonical.
The direct divine creation of the human species by virtue of direct divine creation of the human soul is Catholic dogma by virtue of Biblical teaching.
That is my understanding of Catholic dogma, and it's what we were taught: there is no conflict with the proposition that species evolved from other species, but only with the idea that humans are entirely the result of the evolution of natural processes.
I'm not saying I accept this, mind :-)
I'm not calling you a liar. I'm saying I've never seen it taught; and that I distrust anecdotal evidence. But I wouldn't be surprised if there's an occasional proselytizing atheist teaching high school who tells kids that evolution proves there is no God. After all, there are millions of proselytizing Christians out there.
These days, though, most teachers are gun-shy about teaching anything beyond the bare curriculum.
Wrong path. The burden of justification to abandon science-THE LAWS OF PHYSICS- lies with the ones abandoning science.
" It's not necessarily a religious claim to say that the laws of physics are insufficient to govern the world"
Yes it is, it's pure faith necessarily. That's, because it's an arbitrary choice that arises out of thin air. Handwaiving and blank stares are the only way to support the contention of choice to abandon science. ID is nothing, but false science and faith.
To suppose the Theory of Evolution, one would eliminate that God was involved in the creation of man.
You are possibly new to the crevo threads. This has been explained before - more than twice. Briefly there are facts which indicate that species are related, that some of them are descended from earlier species.
This facts that give this pattern of interrelation are sometimes called "evolution".
The "Theory of Evolution" is an attempt to explain how this happened by naturalistic means.
It may be right, but then so may be the conjecture that "Sparky the Omnipotent Wonder Yak just created it this way, and any facts that lead to any other explanatition is just Sparky messing with our minds" - but that isn't a scientific theory.
No. It is THE argument. It is exactly the argument I was making.
Besides, even if you allow for government funding, there is still no legitimate reason for the federal government to dictate the curriculum. The government could provide vouchers and let everyone make their own choices.
Frankly, public schools were a LOT better before Jimmy Carter invented the Department of Education in 1979.
jbloedow, you clearly reject the TOE. I'm curious whether you subscribe to any alternative theory about the origin or history of species, the origin of the cosmos, etc. Do you solely adhere to Genesis as both theological AND scientific explanation or do you reference some other text that provides a comprehensive explanation of the origin of things in scientific parlance? I'm genuinely curious.
In general they're just idiot leftists making fun of the "mythology". In general, it's political, if not simply babbling.
LOL! No. Many of them are uninhibited idiots. The science depts in general are not this way and that includes UW Madistan here.
(Must not respond ... no ... no ..., no) "OK I'm back"
Darwin looked for answers out of angst. We bother ourselves with learning anything out of angst. I could ask you: "Do we teach Darwinism to relieve people's origination angst?". Why teach the topic at all? We are here, what does it matter how we got here?
Actually it's "they led him on. They wanted it".
My aplogies for the mistake on the role of the Babylonians in the first example. Nevertheless, the "day of the Lord" doesn't mean that God is commanding each of these actions to take place. It's a much more involved concept in Scripture.
Yes, just because Lot was saved and considered "righteous" relatively, that doesn't mean that the Bible is saying his behaviour there was acceptable. Many heroes of the faith committed despicable acts, and it is to the Bible's credit that it does not attempt to gloss over these details.
Third, I'm not going to go into a global history of slavery with you, but suffice it to say that not all slavery is just "slavery pure and simple". The Mosaic law allowed for voluntary servitude as a merciful option for certain people in certain cases. Anyway, that said, this was involuntary slavery, and you could come up with much better examples to make your point: yes indeed, God did instruct his people to slaughter certain other people at one time.
In the final analysis your point that you want me to be outraged at God's morality based on some morality of my own invention. I could take each of these hair-raising examples and create a compelling apologia for God in each case, but in the end that's not the point:
On what basis should I object to God's standard of righteousness? On what basis do you? Why do you object to all children being dashed against the rocks? Darwinism proscribes no such moral outrage? Survival of the fittest, might is right, to the victor goes the spoils... It's selective adaptation? Pain is just a biochemical phenomenon. So is life. It's just particles of matter arranged a certain way? Why do you put moral value on one arrangement over the other?
Who's abandoning science? I gave you careful arguments from scientific theory as well as from religion and phillsophy that distinguish and also interrelate science and religion. You reply with some wild-eyed circular rhetoric about abandoning science. The ID folks at least know a bit about what science is and isn't. You're just blowing smoke--arguing neither from science nor religion nor philosophy.
A leading Democrat senator allied with the anti-religious left differed
RWP was able to resist that easy one. But it is true, they did waste a lot of time on me...Sunday school teacher too.
Oh, wait...
Good one.
Talk about diving for the middle!
"not until the Democrat party of higher taxes and big government is disbanded completely and destroyed beyond repair."
Let's hope that the current big-gov't GOP gets destroyed with it and we can return to our Jeffersonian roots.
I also share your 'now isn't the time' sentiment concerning this issue, considering the far larger issues at hand.
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