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 ...
Now, that's cold. Funny, but cold.
If that were true, then the curator, unless she were a scientist, should not be presenting the case for it.
btw, do we have any proof that these were 'seminar caller' questions, or is that just supposition on your part, Jeff?
No matter how you choose to word it, the information should not be presented as fact when it is not. I don't care if you call it supposition or theory........it's not FACT, and it's being presented as such. THAT is the problem.
"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."
This is where we disagree. The curriculum you propose sounds great, but it can never be taught under compulsory requirements, because there are too many special interest groups who will co-opt it for their own use. This is obviously what has happened in the modern educational system.
"While I think K-12 should be compulsory, it needn't be public. "
This is the system we already have and it is failing miserably. A friend of mine was an elementary school principle for over 25 years. His comment to me after he retired was, "You just can't educate 100% of the population". His contention after being on the front lines for many years is that there are some people who just don't want an education, and those people de-value the whole enterprise.
I do agree with your comments that education should be made available to everyone, though. At some point there will have to be a re-thinking of the way education is done in our society but it won't happen anytime soon, simply because too many people make money off of the current system.
But what you've posted is not evidence and is indeed faith. I remember seeing an article about Patrick Duffy (Bobby on the show Dallas) and how he dealt with the murder of his parents.
He is Buddhists and he said that the comfort of that Buddhism brought him was very real and he could not have made it through that time of grief without it. It is very real to him and I am sure that he felt "something" but it was most likely just a need of comfort.
The charlatan faith healers (who mainstream Christians want nothing to do with) use the same technique.
To many, religion is just a way for people to manage their life and their emotions.
How the Grand Canyon was formed is NOT FACT. No matter how you try to spin it, you don't know how it was formed.
If it is not 'known with certainty'........as you now, in a rare moment of honesty and humility, finally admit.......then it should not be presented with certainty.
Just tell the truth. That's all.
Nothing but class, Patty. Nothing but class.....
The creationist is the one with the bigger head.
I took general science in the ninth grade. There were few formulas to memorize, but a lot about the history of science, and how key discoveries were made. Students should be exposed to the methodology of science.
I have my suspicions, but I will state unequivocally that the sentiment that she is as brilliant as she is beautiful applies equally to both women!
As far as "too much curriculum," the WSJ had a fascinating article several years ago that reproduced a test given to students at or about 1900. I am here to tell you, most college grads today could not pass it. It was for admission to high school.
I've always thought that any scientific subject should be taught with an "according to be best knowledge of current science" context. Of course, that context is implied if they first teach the students what science is.
It's the same for religion in the public classroom. What's the problem with teaching the Bible (or any other religion) under the context of "Christians believe that..."? Then you're not indoctrinating, you're teaching religion.
You forgot to acknowledge that I scored a prime with that post.
Fair enough, as long as idiotic contentions that it was formed all at once in the last few-thousand years don't get equal time with the massively evidenced mainstream view.
I can't "know with certainty" that the moon isn't made of cheese (those NASA rock samples might be hoaxes), but the "moon is cheese" theory is not worthy of equal consideration with the "moon is rock" theory. Risible YEC geological conjectures which have no sensible explanation for such basic global observations as angular unconformities can be believed by the deluded if they wish.
Hmmmmmmm.........The Ends justify the Means?
Sounds positively Totalitarian to me.
This reminds me of the approving gaze of kindly Uncle Joe Stalin for his Anti-Evolutionist lapdog Lysenko:
lovely, but that has nothing to do with my post to you. I challenged your contention. The behaviour of the ID supporters does not turn off people to id. The reverse appears to be true.
As to your comment above. I do not pursue science in order to validate my faith. I pursue science to understand God's creation, and gain wisdom.
God encourages us to do this, many, many times in the Bible.
"He who gets wisdom loves his own soul; He who keeps understanding will find good." -- Proverbs 19:8"How much better to get wisdom than gold, and understanding than silver!" -- proverbs 16:16
"A wise man will hear and increase learning, ..."
"Whoever loves instruction loves knowledge, but he who hates correction is stupid." -- Proverbs 12:1
"The Christian Religion, when divested of the rags in which they [the clergy] have enveloped it, and brought to the original purity and simplicity to its benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the freest expansion of the human mind." -- Thomas Jefferson, Mar 23rd, 1801 letter to Moses Robinson
Uh, just how did he propose it was formed that you deny is a fact? I mean, if you're suggesting it didn't form over centuries/ages via erosion, then you're dancing on the head of a pin. You would deny that you existed 30 seconds ago, becuase you can't prove that factually, either.
All that can be done with regard to gravity.
I'm leaving the discussion now (life goes on), but I want to thank you for a decent conversation with polite questions, Dimensio. Quite remarkable compared to your previous attitude.......
Tut, tut; everybody knows that primes divisible by 40 don't count.....
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