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.
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).
You weren't a biology major, I take it?
AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!
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."
If what you term "macroevolution" was observed in a lab, it would blatantly disprove the theory of evolution.
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>
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.
The sky had fallen.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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."
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.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.