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 ...
There are many scientists who are creationists. But many here wouldn't consider them to be scientists.
So who gets to decide who qualifies as a scientist?
"You might say the hand of God wrote the number, and we dont know how He pushed His pencil"
The placement of the quotation marks in that statement is critical. Feynman believed that mankind invents deities to deal with the unexplicable, as I demonstrated in my quote from him.
Yes, you might say that it is the "hand of God" writing something that we don't understand. It's an easy answer for what we don't understand. As we understand it, we don't have to resort to that phrase.
You misunderstand Feynman, I'm afraid.
You make the claim but cannot substantiate. You make assumptions that the docent was supposed to give a tour and make presentations, but was prevented? There is no evidence of this in the article. And you continue to consider people asking questions a "nasty mob".
Obviously you've been caught with your pants down. Attack mode kinda spun out of control for you, huh? Lol ....
Mosque - why don't you believe that Jesus is Lord?
Church - why don't you believe Mohammed is the Prophet?
Synagogue - why don't you believe that Jesus is Lord and/or that Mohammed is the Prophet?
Most of the extant species of American birds can hybridize and produce fertile offspring with at least one other species of bird. Mallards produce fertile hybrids with Pintails, Wigeon, European Wigeon, American Black Ducks, Mottled Ducks and a large number of other species. If your criterion of speciation were inabiility ever to produce fertile hybrids, there would be perhaps 4 species of duck on this continent. Orioles, warblers, etc are likewise mostly interfertile within the genuses. The major isolation mechanisms are geographical and behavioral, and when they break down, you get hybridization.
It's hardly surprising that the Darwin finches would do the same.
That was my first problem with that site (Boxhorn's) is that he fails to give a concrete definition of speication.
Scientists do. Same as doctors, lawyers, engineers and accountants do for their respective fields.
misconstrued out-of-context Einstein quote placemarker
"Genesis does not say there were only two fully grown adult human beings formed/created. Thus DNA actually gives credence to what is actually said in Genesis."
I don't disagree. The point is that Christ (or maybe Paul, can't recall) does say that sin entered into the world by our shared ancestor and that the sacrifice of one man, in turn, balanced the debt. This is a common YEC objection to evolution, apparently not yours.
"I read no "physical frailties or problems" he withstood the temptation of the devil after a 40 day fast. Look what the devil offered Christ, if only Christ in the flesh would follow him."
I didn't say He wasn't tough. But He was a man (as well). He ate and drank. He thirst. He hurt. He bled. He died. The distinction is spiritual, not so much physical.
The only point of view stated is that the docent was overwhelmed. The motives and style of the questioners is not presented from their point of view.
It is a NYTimes article. It's not reliable.
The only fair parallel in a church would be if it were a situation where questions were welcomed, as they are in a museum (like a Sunday School class or a Bible study or seminar). If the questioners were polite, it wouldn't matter what they asked. The questions should be answered.........and would be in any church I have attended.
You have no ground to stand on in this one. It's an emotional response, and not intellectual.
I think the fact that almost 100% of scientists in biological fields say that evolution is the only scientific theory that explains the diversity of life on earth is a pretty good indicator that we should consider it science. Also the fact that creationism and intelligent design have no citations in any peer-reviewed literature.
Creationists used to do that back in the 1960s too.
Really? You're sure doing a pretty good job of acting like it. After all, it is your position that acceptance of the theory of evolution is incompatible with Christianity, isn't it?
I can only tell you what the Bible tells about who Christ was, is and will be. . . .Christ is described as the only PERFECT being in the flesh, evolution is about the flesh . . .
Well, yeah, evolution is about "the flesh", in a way. But where does the theory of evolution address the divinity of Christ? Or, perhaps, what about the theory of evolution invalidates the divinity of Christ (or the inverse, why would the divinity of Christ invalidate the theory of evolution)?
You seem to have an all or nothing attitude towards the miraculous. Either everything is a miracle, or nothing is. Do you reject all scientific explanations on this basis, or just the theory of evolution?
And you're very much certain that you're right, but there are those of us who have our doubts and we are not narrow-minded, anti- science or have a wish to return to the 1700s (albeit the 1700s was a rather freewheeling century intellectually.)
Also, ID is not anti-evo necessarily. It's anti-accident, a claim you many hearing more and more, so ready your rebuttal.
Like I said, there are always heretics. And again, even "near-universal" acceptance defeats your ridiculous assertion.
That's what you get for using subcontractors.
"I don't disagree. The point is that Christ (or maybe Paul, can't recall) does say that sin entered into the world by our shared ancestor and that the sacrifice of one man, in turn, balanced the debt. This is a common YEC objection to evolution, apparently not yours. "
Well it does depend on what level one plows as to what is really meant by sin entering into this world. Many find much glee in making Adam the punching bag without ever considering what kind of stand they themselves would have made, given the same circumstances. More than that, flesh man has used the Eve syndrome to make himself feel better.
The only people who claim evolution is accidental are either ignorant or are setting up a straw-man.
No, but docents work in institutions that are publicly funded. One could argue that since their very jobs depend on funds confiscated through the force of government, they are just as bad. What do you think would happen if someone didn't pay their taxes because they disagreed with the beliefs espoused by the museums they are forced to fund?
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