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Frist backs 'intelligent design' teaching
AP ^ | 8/19/5 | ROSE FRENCH

Posted on 08/19/2005 1:02:07 PM PDT by SmithL

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Echoing similar comments from President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said "intelligent design" should be taught in public schools alongside evolution.

Frist, R-Tenn., spoke to a Rotary Club meeting Friday and told reporters afterward that students need to be exposed to different ideas, including intelligent design.

"I think today a pluralistic society should have access to a broad range of fact, of science, including faith," Frist said.

Frist, a doctor who graduated from Harvard Medical School, said exposing children to both evolution and intelligent design "doesn't force any particular theory on anyone. I think in a pluralistic society that is the fairest way to go about education and training people for the future."

The theory of intelligent design says life on earth is too complex to have developed through evolution, implying that a higher power must have had a hand in creation. Nearly all scientists dismiss it as a scientific theory, and critics say it's nothing more than religion masquerading as science.

Bush recently told a group of Texas reporters that intelligent design and evolution should both be taught in schools "so people can understand what the debate is about."

That comment sparked criticism from opponents, including Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, who called Bush "anti-science."

Frist, who is considering a presidential campaign in 2008, recently angered some conservatives by bucking Bush policy on embryonic stem cell research, voicing his support for expanded research on the subject.

Frist said his decision to endorse stem cell research was "a matter of science," but he said there was no conflict between his position on stem cell research and his position on intelligent design.

"To me, I see no disconnect between that and stem cell research," Frist said. "I base my beliefs on stem cell research both on science and my faith.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: 109th; anothercrevothread; crevolist; enoughalready; frist; intelligentdesign; notagain; panderingtoignorance; scienceeducation; senatorfrist
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To: Once-Ler
Mainly Judaism and Christianity as they were the most influential on western culture.

What variety of Judaism? What variety of Christianity? Suppose you have a Jewish family who doesn't want their kid taught Catholicism? Or a Catholic family who doesn't want their kid taught Mormonism?

Better to keep religion out of the public school curriculum entirely. (I'd have no objection, BTW, to purely voluntary after-school religion classes on school property, provided that any interested group was allowed to offer a class).

101 posted on 08/19/2005 2:33:25 PM PDT by malakhi
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To: Petrosius

You weren't a biology major, I take it?


102 posted on 08/19/2005 2:34:19 PM PDT by Vive ut Vivas
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To: Junior
"The madness spreads" ping.

AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!

103 posted on 08/19/2005 2:35:13 PM PDT by PatrickHenry (Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas. The List-O-Links is at my homepage.)
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To: Once-Ler
"I'd prefer that over the complete vacuum of faith and morality in today's schools."

Tell that to the parents of those kids who decide that Islam, Scientology, voodoo, or some other set of beliefs offers the 'truth'...
104 posted on 08/19/2005 2:35:25 PM PDT by NJ_gent (Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.)
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To: malakhi
What I'll never understand is why the ID crowd and creationism crowd and all that want their beliefs in a science classroom. That implies that they think their beliefs can be disproved through the scientific method, right?
105 posted on 08/19/2005 2:35:35 PM PDT by Vive ut Vivas
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To: NJ_gent

Thank you for your list of micro-evolution events. Now could you please provide us with a list of macro-evolution events. Even Stephen J. Gould (until his revent death, America's foremost spokesman for evolution) came to the conclusion that there wasn't any proven macro-evolution evidence. That is why he then proposed his theory of "punctuated evolution."


106 posted on 08/19/2005 2:37:18 PM PDT by DeweyCA
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To: DeweyCA

If what you term "macroevolution" was observed in a lab, it would blatantly disprove the theory of evolution.


107 posted on 08/19/2005 2:39:03 PM PDT by Vive ut Vivas
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To: Right Wing Professor
I'm opposed, as a teacher of science, to religious fundamentalists telling me what I or other teachers of science should teach in science class.

I suppose you are equally satisfied with the left wing professors who are teaching politics in our schools. After all no Right-Wing-Nut, should be able to tell them anything.</sarcasm>

108 posted on 08/19/2005 2:40:13 PM PDT by itsahoot (Reagan promised to abolish the Dept of Education and the 55 mph Limit. Which was least important?)
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To: Vive ut Vivas
That implies that they think their beliefs can be disproved through the scientific method, right?

They don't want their beliefs examined by the scientific method; they want their beliefs to replace the scientific method. It's about rolling back the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. The long term consequence would be the same sort of intellectual stagnation we see in the Islamic world.

China, India, Korea, and others would have no objection to that, I'm sure.

109 posted on 08/19/2005 2:40:27 PM PDT by malakhi
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To: SmithL

The sky had fallen.


110 posted on 08/19/2005 2:40:53 PM PDT by Just mythoughts
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To: Vive ut Vivas

Nice try at playing a semantics game, but it doesn't work. Again, where is your evidence for macro-evolution, and why did Stephen J. Gould come to the conclusion that there was NO evidence for micro-evolution.


111 posted on 08/19/2005 2:41:08 PM PDT by DeweyCA
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To: DeweyCA

You know freepers PatrickHenry and Ichneumon? Look at their profile pages. Everything you could possibly want to know and more is located there. Even evidence for "macroevolution". Take the time to read it.


112 posted on 08/19/2005 2:43:55 PM PDT by Vive ut Vivas
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To: DeweyCA
Wrong.

Gould formulated the theory of punctuated equilibrium NOT to explain "macro-evolution" (which is Creationist terminology) or speciation (the scientific term); but to better explain the observed fossil record where creatures can exist without substantial change for a long period of time (equilibrium) and then suddenly there is a big change in lots of different species apparently all at the same time (punctuated).

I'd accept Creationist/ID'ers arguments as being intellectually honest and derived at from a basis of knowledge if they could at least get ONE SINGLE THING RIGHT. So far they are batting 0, and showing that they clearly don't understand what they purport to not believe.
113 posted on 08/19/2005 2:44:36 PM PDT by Mylo ("Those without a sword should sell their cloak and buy one" Jesus of Nazareth)
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To: SmithL
There they go again. Nothing in the quotes they offer from Frist supports the claim in the article's lead sentence: that First is saying ID should be taught alongside evolution, or even that it should be taught in a science classroom.
114 posted on 08/19/2005 2:44:52 PM PDT by Stultis
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To: DeweyCA

Please people, again tell me why Stephen J. Gould (for decades the foremost proponent of evolution in the USA, until his recent death) propose his theory of "punctuated evolution" if the evidence for micro-evolution is so overwhelming? He came to the conclusion that there is no good evidence for micro-evolution. That is why he proposed his new theory. Agfain, what evidence did he know that perhaps you do not know?


115 posted on 08/19/2005 2:46:32 PM PDT by DeweyCA
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To: malakhi
They don't want their beliefs examined by the scientific method; they want their beliefs to replace the scientific method.

In that case, why is Darwin the subject of such outrage? Their beef seems to be with Bacon.
116 posted on 08/19/2005 2:46:40 PM PDT by Vive ut Vivas
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To: Vive ut Vivas
You weren't a biology major, I take it?

If being a trained biologists is a requirement to discuss evolution then let all non-biologists who support evolution please refrain from commenting on this list.

I want to make my position clear, I am a skeptic either way as to the truth of natural evolution. My beef with the pro-evolutionists is with their faulty epistemology where because of the limits of the research tools in the natural sciences they insist that there must be only natural explanations for the origin of life and the origin of species. To a priori dismiss the possibility of a non-natural origin is poor logic and goes beyond the competence of the natural sciences. Such a position is faith, not science.

117 posted on 08/19/2005 2:48:00 PM PDT by Petrosius
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To: Mylo

You forgot to address this issue, concerning one of your own.....

Consider the words of Darwinist Richard Lewontin of Harvard. "Our willingness," confessed Lewontin, "to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to understanding the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for the unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism ... materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door."


118 posted on 08/19/2005 2:48:03 PM PDT by itsahoot (Reagan promised to abolish the Dept of Education and the 55 mph Limit. Which was least important?)
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To: DeweyCA
"Thank you for your list of micro-evolution events."

The creation of new species is "micro-evolution"? Wow...
119 posted on 08/19/2005 2:49:10 PM PDT by NJ_gent (Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.)
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To: Vive ut Vivas
In that case, why is Darwin the subject of such outrage? Their beef seems to be with Bacon.

ID is their 'wedge' issue. The first step is to try to shoehorn ID into the schools -- and not by actually doing science, but via politics and litigation.

120 posted on 08/19/2005 2:49:53 PM PDT by malakhi (America and her founding fathers were products of the Enlightenment.)
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