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 ...
"As is your right, but I know what the real creation story says so I am on a solid foundation"
Read BOTH versions of creation in Geneis carefully, sans agenda.
I see no conflict between some form of the evolutionary theory and Christ --- indeed, evolution theory now shows that there was at least one "DNA Adam" and a "DNA Eve" --- common ancestors to all mankind --- which I presume is the chief point of your objection.
Jesus was fully man, too. And that means all the human physical frailties and problems.
Kinda Biology 101, but if they mate and produce sterile offspring, there's no problem with their being species. Like lions and tigers, you know?
Sorry, I meant fertile off-spring, which of course is the opposite of what I wrote. And of course, this goes directly against Darwin's "Tree of Life".
Polyploidy is a difference in chromosome number; chromosome number differences are one of the major means of speciation
No, that's not what speciation is. That was my first problem with that site (Boxhorn's) is that he fails to give a concrete definition of speication. He sites Dobzhansky and then Mayer and he doesn't hold himself to either definition (and Mayer's is poorly defined anyway).
Specifically, Darwinists site a slow gradual change in the genetic code, whereas polyploidy is the result of a doubling (or occasionally tripling etc.) of the entire genetic code.
Owl_Eagle(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,
I know there are priests that are heretics. Although I don't know if you understood them correctly in this case. The bread and wine actually become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ (that could be described as "literal") -- but it's not a molecular change (which could be described as "symbolic"). It's defined in very specific terminology and when descriptive terms are thrown around they could cause confusion for someone who doesn't already understand what's being expressed.
Doesn't change the fact that millions of people believe exactly the same doctrine as defined by the Catholic Church (same for other churches), whatever your cirle of friend or acquaintances believes.
Your link is to a anti-corporate ultra-liberal activist who has his own ax to grind against public education. I am not naive nor mis-informed. I have read Dewey (Experience and Education) and numerous other sources on education. (I am a college professor of mathematics who has done course development work in mathematics eduation.)
Here, I submit, is a better impression of the origins and purpose of public education (this is adapted from E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need: & Why We Don't Have Them, Doubleday, 1996):
Thomas Jefferson encouraged the devising of a common curriculum in order that "the great mass of the people" should be taught not just the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also that "their memories may here be stored with the most useful facts from Grecian, Roman, European, and American history". Here is a quote from Jefferson:
Of the views of this [education] law, none is more important, none more legitimate, than of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this purpose, the reading in the first stage [of schooling] where [many] will receive their whole education, is proposed to be chiefly historical. History by apprizing them of the past will enable them to judge of the future. It will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it to defeat its views. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate, and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the ruleers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.
Horace Mann argued that democracy required a "common school" to provide all children equally with the knowledge and skills that would keep them economically independent and free. (Hirsch, p. 17.)
But you did not respond to my primary point -- that government support of science and science education is necessary for our national security.
". . . but how did it get to be 15,000 feet below the surface of the earth? . . . I'm guessing millions of years of sediment?"
Yes, and (to greatly oversimplify) the same upheavals that gave us the Rocky mountains pushed things down at the same time. They got flipped and folded onto themselves (which is probably why they trap natural gas -- the make "little" upsidedown pockets).
...just pointing out that scientist are people and they have their dogmas and bogymen, too...
The word dogma came up in post #3, which led to #31.
I still want to know why creationists call evolution a religion or a dogma when they want to insult it, and call ID a science when they want to promote it.
Why are terms associated with religion considered derogatory?
This is not directed at you personally. It's just a question.
And it is a NY Times article, and written from one side of the argument only.
You may choose to take it at face value if you want to, but as a conservative, you should understand that it is not likely presenting the unbiased truth.
I get tired of saying this.
Scientists?
"I know there are priests that are heretics. Although I don't know if you understood them correctly in this case. "
Actually no. Ring Species are a very good example of why the ability to reproduce is not the only criteria in determining where one species ends and another begins.
The concept of 'species' is a human construct used to order and classify life into neat little pigeon holes. Evolution predicts that the the concept of species will not be concrete but will be somewhat fluid - just like we observe.
No.
What are you looking for, evidence of a whole new family or order springing instantly from another? That would be more like creationism, not evolution. It doesn't work that way.
The theory of evolution is based on evidence from many seperate lines of inquiry, i.e. morphology, paleontology, biogeography & genetics, which all lend credence to the conclusion of common descent through biological evolution. In fact, given the variation scientists have observed and the malleability of the genome, a better question would be how could a vast range of biodiversity not have evolved over the 3.5 billion years life has been on this planet?
If you plan on answering that the earth is only a few thousand years old, well that's another problem entirely. Misunderstanding the details of evolution is not nearly as serious a problem in scientific literacy as thinking the earth & universe are that young.
Rejection implies consciousness & knowledge: collection, analysis and conclusion. Ignorance is a much more accurate description. The Net provides a cloak where posters are granted a semblance of objectivity. Imagine having to engage with the Cletii in person like these poor docents.
So if I, and a dozen of my friends, stand up in your church and ask why the New Testament requires slaves to obey their masters, or why Christians do not follow the Law of Leviticus (which at the time they were given were described as everlasting) you would consider this just a friendly inquiry?
Well, then, you are sure of nothing, which makes your credibility now, umm, zero.
“Immediately you would like to know where this number [ α alpha] for a coupling comes from: is it related to pi, or perhaps to the base of natural logarithms? Nobody knows. It’s one of the greatest da-- mysteries in physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man. You might say the “hand of God” wrote the number, and ‘we don’t know how He pushed His pencil’.”" -- Richard Feynman, Nobel Laurette Physics, QED The Strange Theory of Light and Matter, Page 129., Princeton University Press, 1985.
I use Feynmans lecture excerpts to teach my 8th grader (a devout Christian) physics ("Six Easy Pieces") and I've read much of Feynman for my own edification.
The quote is not out of context. Nor is it in conflict with previous quotes from Feynman. What we do not understand we can truly attribute to God (as Feynman said) but when we do understand it does not mean it is not of God. All things are of God, whether we understand them or not.
"A fool has no delight in understanding, but in expressing his own heart.: -- Proverbs 18:2
"I still want to know why creationists call evolution a religion or a dogma when they want to insult it, and call ID a science when they want to promote it."
Because both sides of this debate are filled with irrational hate.
"Why are terms associated with religion considered derogatory?"
Not always true. But I think it has a lot to do with stupid TV preachers who know next-to-nothing about Christ, less about science, and yet are somehow on about 20 TV channels writing formulas on a blackboard while wearing a yamulka and asking for money.
"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."
Great tagline material.
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