Posted on 09/20/2005 7:02:45 AM PDT by Right Wing Professor
ITHACA, N.Y. - Lenore Durkee, a retired biology professor, was volunteering as a docent at the Museum of the Earth here when she was confronted by a group of seven or eight people, creationists eager to challenge the museum exhibitions on evolution.
They peppered Dr. Durkee with questions about everything from techniques for dating fossils to the second law of thermodynamics, their queries coming so thick and fast that she found it hard to reply.
After about 45 minutes, "I told them I needed to take a break," she recalled. "My mouth was dry."
That encounter and others like it provided the impetus for a training session here in August. Dr. Durkee and scores of other volunteers and staff members from the museum and elsewhere crowded into a meeting room to hear advice from the museum director, Warren D. Allmon, on ways to deal with visitors who reject settled precepts of science on religious grounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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But I thought that science should not be taught as dogma. That's what's happening here.
If visitors challenge the presentations, the explainers are instructed to listen "and then explain the science and the evidence."
How is that dogma?
I'm guessing that it all started as the creationists say, then went on, as the evolutionists say...
Well, this is a big "DUH!"
s/settled precepts of science/dogma/ig;
Religion is taught as dogma.
Science relies on observation, evidence, and testing of hypotheses. A very clear distinction.
Evolution has NOTHING TO SAY about the "creation" of life.
I don't see the conflict. It is after all a museum and natural history should be expected. I don't expect a natural history lesson from a church.
Read the context. It's clear she means it's the creationists/IDers that aren't listening.
..and so, of course, I agree. Duh!
I'm sorry, but the docent in a museum is not "teaching dogma." She's there to present what the museum exhibits. Period. If creationists have an issue with what the museum exhibits, harrassing volunteer docents isn't the way to express it. These jerks are no better than left-wing "activists" in their approach, and these tactics will not do anything to further their cause.
Gee, I always thought that creationists belived in the literal meaning of The Book of Genisis whereas MOST people who don't believe in Darwin's theory advocated Intelligent Design, but why bother making that distinction? They're all just a bunch of crazy Bible thumping fundamentalists who want to take us back to the 1700's, right?
although almost half believe that Darwin has been proved right, slightly more disagree.
Sure he was proven right! It's not like his finches have hybridized from 14 to 6, right? Oh, they did? Well, at least we have fosil evidence that traces man back to apes. We don't? Oh... Well, at least there's evidence of one species evolving from another and that by logical extention- oh, we don't have that either? Well, let's just shout them down then.
Owl_Eagle(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
Revelation 4:11Intelligent Design
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"Well, let's just shout them down then."
Lots of that from both sides of the argument. I don't have any use for any of those folks.
Surely even the evolutionists on this forum can agree that this is a waste of our tax dollars. If anything, we should all be against the evolution of big government.
Geez! Too much caffeine this morning, Doc? I'm on your side!
I find it interesting that when creationists want to imply that an idea is worthless trash, they call it religion, and when ID advocates want their ideas to appear respectable, they call them science.
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