Posted on 09/24/2005 7:20:09 AM PDT by gobucks
The brawl between evolutionists and religious neo-conservatives over how life began is coming down to the survival of the slickest.
For about 150 years Charles Darwin's evolution theory has held sway. But a new American theory, intelligent design, is getting a lot of press as scientists and intellectuals rush to the barricades to dismiss intelligent design as little else than "creationism" rebadged.
Already a DVD featuring American scientists claiming intelligent causes are responsible for the origin of the universe and life has become Australia's biggest-selling religious video and intelligent design is starting to permeate school courses.
Next year, hundreds of Catholic schools in the dioceses of Sydney, Wollongong, Lismore and Armidale will use new religious education textbooks that discuss intelligent design. At Dural, year 9 and 10 students at Pacific Hills Christian School have begun learning about intelligent design in science classes.
The chief executive of Christian Schools Australia, Stephen O'Doherty, says it is inevitable other schools will follow suit. Until last month, few Australians had heard of it. But debate broke out internationally on August 1 when the US President, George Bush, told reporters he supported combining lessons on evolution with discussion of intelligent design. "Both sides ought to be properly taught," Bush said.
Last month, the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, gave intelligent design ministerial imprimatur, telling the National Press Club he thought parents and schools ought to have the opportunity - if they wished - for students to be exposed to intelligent design and taught about it.
Nelson's office said his comments were unplanned.
But his interest had been pricked by a parliamentary visit on June 20 by Bill Hodgson, head of the Sydney-based campus Crusade for Christ, who left a copy of a DVD Unlocking the Mystery of Life with Nelson.
The DVD featured a US mathematician, William Dembski, and other leading American intelligent design proponents claiming the complexity of biological systems is proof of an organising intelligence.
"ID is the study of patterns in nature that are best explained as the result of intelligence," Dembski said.
The DVD is distributed in Australia by a Melbourne-based Christian group, Focus on the Family. Its executive director, Colin Bunnett, says until Nelson's comments only 1000 copies had been sold over four years. "But it's taken off. We've sold thousands in the last few weeks," he says.
The intelligent design debate has more resonance in the US, partly because teaching about the beginning of life is problematic. A Harris poll in June found that 55 per cent of American adults support teaching evolution, creationism, and intelligent design in public schools yet many who favour a literal interpretation of the Bible found it difficult to accept Darwin's The Origin of Species.
One teacher, John Scopes, was convicted for violating a Tennessee ban on teaching evolution in 1925's famous "monkey trial". It was not isolated legislation. In 1968, when the US Supreme Court struck down similar laws, some states began pushing the teaching of "creationism" alongside evolution.
In Australia, the issue has been less hard-edged. The last tussle was in 1978 when Queensland's Bjelke-Petersen government bowed to creationists' opposition to social science courses. Of late, leading scientists have rebuffed intelligent design. The Nobel Prize-winning scientist Peter Doherty says it has no place in a science curriculum and the physicist Paul Davies rejects it as creationism in disguise.
Dembski, an associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science at Baylor University in Texas, the world's largest Baptist university, said it should be taught with evolution in schools but not be mandated.
"Evolutionary theory and intelligent design both have a scientific core: the question whether certain material mechanisms are able to propel an evolutionary process and the question whether certain patterns in nature signify intelligence are both squarely scientific questions," Dembski says. "Nevertheless, they have profound philosophical and religious implications."
False. Survival with reproduction is not a "value."
I can't help myself ... I had to just tap an irrational ping to you ... especially when it was observed you have no rational arguments...
"I can't help myself ... I had to just tap an irrational ping to you ... especially when it was observed you have no rational arguments..."
The only right thing you have ever said on this forum. Even a broken clock is right 2 times a day. :)
Some people let that slip now and then.
Science does not have alot to do with "reading people" <<
And you will never be able to teach your ability to "gut" read people. Psychology has spent much time on this issue. But I will let you decide whether you believe psychology is a science or not, I'm undecided.
DK
LOL. That's a good one.
Note that asking for "motives" rather than "evidence" are is one of the hallmarks of the postmoderndeconstructionists reationists are just postmoderndeconstructionists differently vestmented.
All I know is Psyc was a class I took because I had to. I scored pretty well.
Psyc is not a science.
Evolution is simultaneously the driving philosophy behind socialism and robber-baron capitalism. The method of reconciling these thoughts is best explained by Orwell.
And we may infer from the sneer behind this statement that ideas requiring faith are rubbish.
"Whattttt, sorry evolutionists have no training, knowledge, or methodology scientifically to speak to the nature or stature of a mind, that part of the flesh is out side their preview."
There is no evidence that Mind is outside of Flesh. Sorry you have no logical answer to Darwin.
It's just a recognition of what you believe relative to what you have tangible evidence to support.
So having faith is an admission that there is no evidence for something?
And there is no way to prove your faith in evolution. You take bits and pieces of scientific evidence and put them together into a theory that takes a great deal of faith.
It's fine. Just be honest about it.
Now, in the interest of not losing any sleep over this discussion, I shall depart.
Keep the faith, js. :)
Evolution is simultaneously the driving philosophy behind socialism and robber-baron capitalism. The method of reconciling these thoughts is best explained by Orwell.
You mean the idea of 'survival of the fittest' don't you? I know you know this is different from the TOE. At any rate, the statement that brought this up was that communists adhered to the idea that 'The stronger and the further evolved are the masters.'
This attempt to connect the TOE with the ideas of Communists (and Nazis) and their ilk really clouds the discussion and provides rhetorical and propaganda fodder for opponents of the TOE.
BTW. I'm interested in what Orwell has to say. Can you point me somewhere?
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.