Posted on 09/15/2005 6:36:25 PM PDT by PatrickHenry
Creationism is prominent in a recent lawsuit that charges the University of California system with violating the constitutional rights of applicants from Christian schools whose high school coursework is deemed inadequate preparation for college. The complaint was filed in federal court in Los Angeles on August 25, 2005, on behalf of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), the Calvary Chapel Christian School in Murrieta, California, and a handful of students at the school. Representing the plaintiffs are Robert H. Tyler, a lawyer with a new organization called Advocates for Faith and Freedom, and Wendell R. Bird of the Atlanta law firm Bird and Loechl.
Bird is no stranger to litigation over creationism. As a law student in the late 1970s, he published a student note in the Yale Law Journal sketching a strategy for using the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to secure a place for creationism in the public school science classroom. Bird later worked at the Institute for Creation Research, where he updated its model "equal-time" resolution. The ICR's resolution eventually mutated, in Paul Ellwanger's hands, to become model "equal-time" legislation. A bill based on Ellwanger's model was passed in Arkansas in 1981 and then ruled unconstitutional in McLean v. Arkansas.
Although Bird was not able to participate in the McLean trial -- he sought to intervene on behalf of a number of creationist organizations and individuals, but was not allowed to do so -- he was involved in Aguillard v. Treen, which became Edwards v. Aguillard. Named a special assistant attorney general in Louisiana, Bird defended Louisiana's "equal-time" act all the way to the Supreme Court, where in 1987 it was ruled to violate the Establishment Clause. His The Origin of Species Revisited, which compared evolution and "abrupt appearance," was subsequently published (in two volumes).
At issue in the present suit are the guidelines set by the University of California system to ensure that first-year students have been adequately prepared for college in their high schools. The complaint (1.6M PDF) cites a policy of rejecting high school biology courses that use textbooks published by Bob Jones University Press and A Beka Books as "inconsistent with the viewpoints and knowledge generally accepted in the scientific community." Such a policy, the complaint alleges, infringes on the plaintiffs' rights to "freedom of speech, freedom from viewpoint discrimination, freedom of religion and association, freedom from arbitrary discretion, equal protection of the laws, and freedom from hostility toward religion."
Robert Tyler told the Los Angeles Times (August 27, 2005) that "It appears that the UC system is attempting to secularize Christian schools and prevent them from teaching from a [Christian world] view." But creationism is a matter of theology, not of science, Robert John Russell of the Center for Theology and Natural Science told the Oakland Tribune (August 31, 2005). "It's almost ludicrous anyone would even take this seriously," Russell said. "It seems absurd that a student who had poor biology would meet the same standards as a student with 'good' biology. ...This has nothing to do with First Amendment rights."
A spokesperson for the University of California system would not comment on the specific allegations leveled in the complaint, but told the Los Angeles Times that the university was entitled to set course requirements for incoming students, adding, "[t]hese requirements were established after careful study by faculty and staff to ensure that students who come here are fully prepared with broad knowledge and the critical thinking skills necessary to succeed."
In its fall 2005 newsletter, ACSI expresses concern that the University of California system's "secular intolerance might spread to other institutions and to other states. ... If this discrimination is allowed to continue unchallenged, it is only a matter of time before secular institutions in other states will join the bandwagon." Interviewed by Education Week (September 7, 2005), however, a spokesperson for the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers expressed the opposite concern, reportedly worrying "about the potential implications of asking a university to ignore its course requirements -- which had been shaped by experts in various fields -- in favor of a 'free-for-all,' in which any interest group is allowed to shape policy."
Behe and Dembski, despite the technical window dressing are basically arguing that because they can't explain how something happened, it must be impossible. This is not the basis of a devastating refutation of evolutionary theory.
Deductive logic, which is what you are referring to, is a very minor tool with minor applications in science, much like a microscope. Serious scientific reasoning, including about biological evolution, much like in any other serious human enterprise, is largely the domain of inductive and analogical reasoning.
Nature tells us the exact opposite. Chemistry doesn't abide by the principle of probabilities as described in the Infinite-Monkey Theorem. The letters that stay on the page for the monkeys, do not stay on the page for chemistry. Chemicals continually bind and unbind, making the idea of a random event for an infinite amount of time will produce the probability of 1, impossible.
If you are saying the Creator supernaturally continued to manipulate the chemistry to get the result He wanted, then we are not speaking about Neo-Darwinian Evolution.
The argument for evolutionary theory does not rest on observing every minute step in the process, any more than the theory of universal gravitation relies on observing its effects in every square inch of the known universe, or the theory of continental drift relies on someone seeing south america and africa separate.
No. It was not. Science doesn't prove things; it guesses at things, and tries really hard to make good guesses. Presently, it guesses that spontaneous generation isn't a necessary assumption to explain why naturalistic origins of life are possible.
While we now know far more than even 100 years ago, there is still far more that we don't know and scientists are continually updating and revising their theories as new data comes in. When we know all the facts and all the proofs are in, then it can be declared dead.
No such point will ever be reached. You are asking far more of science than it is capable of.
Until then there remains a need to consider it. If creation is wrong, prove it.
It is not science's job to either prove or disprove creation by a Prime Mover god. Science gets along just fine without entangling itself in questions it is structurally unequipped to answer.
Don't just categorize it as a myth
Show me anywhere in "Nature" or "Science" or any technical biology journal or a position statement by an important scientific association that suggests this.
and dismiss it off hand.
Not science's job. Science needs an opinion about the nature of God like a fish needs a bicycle.
I'm one of the others....
Ain't Evolution wonderful!!
Oh... I'm sure one could SAY it, but do you have any data to back up YOUR claim?
So, do you feel that the NEXT world is not 'real'?
I'm glad you do not follow this same line of reasoning in your political outlook, or you'd stay away from the voting booth because of 'cult-like' voters out there.
What you were taught as a youth WILL come back to you:
Proverbs 22:6
Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
Now the question you must settle in your heart is, "Do souls and spirits really exist?"
If you don't think they do then enjoy wallowing in the mire. ;)
Your 'theory' is wrong!
His Noodly Appendages PUSH!
It's the same guys websites!
Anyway.... he has this assertion:
3) Conclusion: Therefore, irreducibly complex structures could not have been produced by natural selection.
...which I say is wrong. Evoultion COULD produce ICS's IF all the parts needed are mutated all at once: IE punk eek.
Just as YOU do, Narby, in the way YOU think about religion is right, and the religious folks are all wrong.
Not so!
Even in these threads, MANY evo's say, "...that everything was created by God.
It's just the He (she, it) used EVOLUTION to accomplish His (her, it's) task."
Of course not!
'GOD' tricked him!!!!
Well, it WAS creationists who convinced Bush to blow up the levee!
Are you proud of that?
Genesis 2:16-17 states:
"And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat. But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shall not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
What is the correct interpretation of the word "die" (or the reference to death) in that passage? My parenthetical examples in the original question are just some of the interpretations that have been proffered over time.
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Okay, now I get it...
This one puzzled me for a while, and then it dawned on me what the scriptures were saying.
[**My Personal Opinion here] Let me re-phrase this way, the day you eat of it you will be subject to physical death... Read the passage carefully, it does not say that the day you eat of the fruit, you will die that day. Previously in Genesis it appeared that Adam an Eve would live forever in fellowship with God in the Garden. Upon sinning creation itself changed its physical form as we see by the snake have bodily changed so that it would now crawl on its belly and eat of the dust of the earth. We see that humans changed too, women would now be subject to pain in childbirth and the man would have to toil to feed himself. And emotionally people changed, the woman and her seed would have "enmity" with the serpent.
It's likely a weakness in the differences between English and Hebrew. Not necessarily a translation problem. For example, there are some languages that don't have words that are even related to other languages. Some languages have subtle variations and nuances of the same word. So in some languages it takes several words to describe a single word in the other language.
There are also cultural issues that may be unwritten, i.e. "understood" by the writer and never actually written because it would be silly to them to do so.
And yes, I have verified at least the language related issues with my wife who graduated summa cum laude with a degree in cross-cultural communications.
It wasn't the 'knowledge', but the failure to be obedient: "Thou shalt not"
I know that being 'obedient' is anathema to most all Americans these days, and THAT is what is sticking in their craw.
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