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 ...
Were you there when the Grand Canyon was formed, so that you know for a FACT how it happened?
The fact of the matter is, that how it was formed can't be proven one way or the other, and it shouldn't be presented as though it can be, or has been.
Why is this so hard for you?
While I think K-12 should be compulsory, it needn't be public. But I strongly believe that if K-12 isn't compulsory, it really should be freely available to all (for those who cannot afford private options). Education shouldn't be a dividing line between haves and have-nots in this country -- we live in a country where hard work can lift someone out of poverty, and lack of access to education should never be allowed to prevent this.
Of course, if public education is bad (which it certainly is in many cities), that needs to be dealt with -- bad public schools will deprive the poor of access to an education as much as no public schools might. Some of the quotes you provide, of Dewey and others, suggest the problem with education is that it has become in thrall to bad educational philosophies. This is actually detailed in the E. D. Hirsch book I found the Jefferson quote in. Hirsch advocates a return to a basic "core curriculum", where students are expected to learn western civ and US history, as well as science, on top of the critical skills of reading, writing and mathematics.
Actually, another believer in God who understands that seeking proof is the antithesis of FAITH.
Uh, quite simply, until you figure out how to fund education at millions of dollars per student (K-12), some ain’t! You’re asking for utopia here. Every teacher will never have a doctorate to teach a subject (even in college they don’t). At some point, if they’re lucky, most kids will develop some critical thinking skills. If not, such is life.
Few will grow up to become scientists. The entire discussion is lost on a very large percentage of the remainder (and too many who do go that route, that's why we're having this discussion). The idea that whether or not “some” people might come away from a television show with a poor grasp of the science involved should affect whether it be shown or not, would imply no fiction or “edutainment” should be shown.
We must save them from themselves! They can only watch stuff containing long litanies of what everybody (besides the author, director, producer) feels should be included as catchalls.
Take “Shakespeare in Love” (to avoid limiting the discussion to science only, education is bigger than just science). How long a list of historians should be granted time in the movie, to point out the lopsided view of historical health/care it provided, or dieticians on meals, socialists on politics, and actors’ union reps to highlight the inequities of men only casts, et cetera, et cetera. All because, if they aren’t granted equal time, the audience may come away with a “slanted” perspective!
If it will make you happy, have every high school graduate sign a disclosure statement at graduation to the effect that they understand that much presented to them as “scientific fact” is NOT. (Most’ll still flee screaming from second hand smoke and remain convinced global warming will kill the planet in 50 years.)
You can't look for irreducible complexity. You can't say that something is irreducible simply because you haven't figured out its history. If you want to engage in science, propose an alternative history, one that (gasp) makes assumptions about the designer, the objectives, methods and possible limitations of the designer. Say something about the attributes of the designer that would predict something other than what natural selection predicts.
Anything that is unexplained can be asserted to be unexplainable, but that doesn't make it so.
the problem with ID is not that it is wrong, but that it doesn't propose scientific questions. Science is about making assumptions and testing them.
"Were you there when the Grand Canyon was formed, so that you know for a FACT how it happened?"
Congratulations. You have just made it utterly impossible to convict anyone of a crime without an eyewitness.
"The fact of the matter is, that how it was formed can't be proven one way or the other, and it shouldn't be presented as though it can be, or has been."
OK, so let's see you start agitating for releasing the thousands of people unjustly convicted of serious felonies because, by your standard, their guilt couldn't be proven.
I can agree with this to an extent. I don't think that they were ignorant of proper behavior, it's just that they thought that they were serving a higher cause so the rudeness was justified.
From these threads, many have shown that purposely misrepresenting the facts or being purposely obtuse is ok as long as you're doing it for God. In almost every thread the same set of characters emerges as says "evolution is just a theory". Even after they are informed that the word "theory" doesn't mean a "guess" when used in a scientific context, they continue on.
"Actually, it does. It suggests looking at living organisms for irreducible complexity"
Stop right there.
Define "irreducible complexity."
I have asked that of Michael Behe, and his answer, once you have shorn away the lawyer-talk, is that "irreducible complexity is complexity that is irreducible."
Thank you! And I have to say, I'm usually not so confrontational ...
Olive Garden?
Then layman shouldn't challenge the exhibits unless they understand the scientific method enough to form an intelligent and relevant challenge. A tour group is not the place for seminar caller challenges.
If a person has a problem with the exhibit and would like to challenge the presentation, the proper venue is talk to the person in charge of the exhibit or to write the museum or park a letter asking for clarification.
Questions on a tour are fine - just not seminar caller questions and not ones that aren't meant to be questions but challenges.
Give accurate information, and don't present suppositions as facts.
The problem is that a scientific theory is not supposition.
A hypothesis is a belief, based on some evidence, that may be proven true.
The same thing for "faith". We have much evidence and feel confident we will be proven correct.
However, regarding the Holy Spirit and the power of Jesus Christ, that is not faith. It is a certain fact, and because of that I give credence to all that Christ teaches. When my wife and I asked Christ to enter our hearts we immediately felt the power of the Holy Spirit come to life within our souls. It was something unlike anything we had ever experienced before. All of our faculties sensed and knew the truth of that spirit. It was electric. It was powerful and unexpected.
My wife is Jewish and I was a fallen-away Catholic. I rejected it when I was a teen. For 25 years we were deists, at most. But when, with some skepticism, we asked Christ to come into our hearts, as an experiment, albeit sincere, it was incredible and ovewrwhelming. My wife broke down in tears of joy.
That happened about 18 months ago.
We are both successful professionals. I'm an electrical engineer, she a mathemitician. I own a business, she is a 2nd level engineering manager at a very major aerospace firm. We've both been in R&D for decades. We have children etc...We are very well off. We needed nothing. We viewed Christianity as just other flavor of any other religion. We were dead wrong.
We'd been to ethical societies, synagogues, unitarian universalist fellowships etc etc etc and they all were about the same, just fellowships and/or dogma, doctrines and power structures.. We were seeking something but couldn't define it. Materialism didn't quench it.
When we accepted Christ it was on our own, in our bedroom. Nobody coerced us or coached us. We were not converted. We simply learned and then accepted a truth. There is a spirit from God and a capacity for humans to allow that spirit to flourish within them, if they will accept it. Christ was the key. Follow Him and that spirit will come to life and flourish.
The presence of the Holy Spirit within us cannot be proven 'scientifically" any more than "love" can be proven scientifically. But it is an absolute truth.
Likewise for love. Does "love" exist? How can it? Where is the "love" hypothesis for physicists to prove? How about the "soul"? Does it exist scientifically?
Science cannot deal with love, the soul or the common cold, yet you have faith that it is superior to the Creator of the universe.
Your faith in science is simply not supported by science.
Quite.
Silly.
Your interlocutor is engaging in the "Fallacy of Equivocation" -- he's trying to change the meaning of a word in mid-argument, from the meaning for "mob" you used (which was clearly in the non-criminal context) to the meaning for it as it applies ONLY to criminal contexts. He's pretending that you accused the "Seminar Disruptors" at the musuem of being members of la Cosa Nostra, so that he can then proclaim, "there's not a shred of evidence that these people are part of an organized criminal conspiracy, thus your characterization of them is completely false."
It's "Equivocation," with a "Straw Man" twist. Both are fallacious, both are dishonest, as was the behavior of the "Seminar Disruptors" at the musuem. Both are examples of the depths depravity and dishonesty to which anti-Evo warriors are willing to go, in terms of both their behavior and their subsequent attempts to defend it.
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.