Posted on 10/07/2005 4:59:16 AM PDT by shuckmaster
How should evolution be taught in schools? This being America, judges will decide
HALF of all Americans either don't know or don't believe that living creatures evolved. And now a Pennsylvania school board is trying to keep its pupils ignorant. It is the kind of story about America that makes secular Europeans chortle smugly before turning to the horoscope page. Yet it is more complex than it appears.
In Harrisburg a trial began last week that many are comparing to the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925, when a Tennessee teacher was prosecuted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Now the gag is on the other mouth. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in public-school science classes was an unconstitutional blurring of church and state. But those who think Darwinism unGodly have fought back.
Last year, the school board in Dover, a small rural school district near Harrisburg, mandated a brief disclaimer before pupils are taught about evolution. They are to be told that “The theory [of evolution] is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence.” And that if they wish to investigate the alternative theory of “intelligent design”, they should consult a book called “Of Pandas and People” in the school library.
Eleven parents, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, two lobby groups, are suing to have the disclaimer dropped. Intelligent design, they say, is merely a clever repackaging of creationism, and as such belongs in a sermon, not a science class.
The school board's defence is that intelligent design is science, not religion. It is a new theory, which holds that present-day organisms are too complex to have evolved by the accumulation of random mutations, and must have been shaped by some intelligent entity. Unlike old-style creationism, it does not explicitly mention God. It also accepts that the earth is billions of years old and uses more sophisticated arguments to poke holes in Darwinism.
Almost all biologists, however, think it is bunk. Kenneth Miller, the author of a popular biology textbook and the plaintiffs' first witness, said that, to his knowledge, every major American scientific organisation with a view on the subject supported the theory of evolution and dismissed the notion of intelligent design. As for “Of Pandas and People”, he pronounced that the book was “inaccurate and downright false in every section”.
The plaintiffs have carefully called expert witnesses who believe not only in the separation of church and state but also in God. Mr Miller is a practising Roman Catholic. So is John Haught, a theology professor who testified on September 30th that life is like a cup of tea.
To illustrate the difference between scientific and religious “levels of understanding”, Mr Haught asked a simple question. What causes a kettle to boil? One could answer, he said, that it is the rapid vibration of water molecules. Or that it is because one has asked one's spouse to switch on the stove. Or that it is “because I want a cup of tea.” None of these explanations conflicts with the others. In the same way, belief in evolution is compatible with religious faith: an omnipotent God could have created a universe in which life subsequently evolved.
It makes no sense, argued the professor, to confuse the study of molecular movements by bringing in the “I want tea” explanation. That, he argued, is what the proponents of intelligent design are trying to do when they seek to air their theory—which he called “appalling theology”—in science classes.
Darwinism has enemies mostly because it is not compatible with a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Intelligent designers deny that this is why they attack it, but this week the court was told by one critic that the authors of “Of Pandas and People” had culled explicitly creationist language from early drafts after the Supreme Court barred creationism from science classes.
In the Dover case, intelligent design appears to have found unusually clueless champions. If the plaintiffs' testimony is accurate, members of the school board made no effort until recently to hide their religious agenda. For years, they expressed pious horror at the idea of apes evolving into men and tried to make science teachers teach old-fashioned creationism. (The board members in question deny, or claim not to remember, having made remarks along these lines at public meetings.)
Intelligent design's more sophisticated proponents, such as the Discovery Institute in Seattle, are too polite to say they hate to see their ideas championed by such clods. They should not be surprised, however. America's schools are far more democratic than those in most other countries. School districts are tiny—there are 501 in Pennsylvania alone—and school boards are directly elected. In a country where 65% of people think that creationism and evolution should be taught side by side, some boards inevitably agree, and seize upon intelligent design as the closest approximation they think they can get away with. But they may not be able to get away with it for long. If the case is appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, intelligent design could be labelled religious and barred from biology classes nationwide.
Intelligent freedom loving Britons??? I doubt it. ;)
True... most with that disposition long ago moved here... ;^)>
Have you noticed the incoherence level of certain posters increasing somewhat? :)) It must be hard to type through the haze of spittle.
Oh, there's so many examples of god's semi-competence in the whole design thing; it's not even worth compiling a complete list.
Apparently the purpose was to eradicate evil. Well, that really worked didn't it.
Rendered cattle used as cavity-wall-insulation? Now that is sick.
I missed the Bible passage that says that the Grand Canyon was formed in the Flood. Perhaps you can point it out to me, or perhaps you are just made it up?
If you're going to mount the high horse, learn how to spell insolent first. Then try looking it up. Insolence is the failure to show the deference due to one's superiors; if you fancy yourself in that position, the issue isn't my insolence, but your hubris.
Let’s get something straight, those of us who believe that God created all things in six days are saying He did it right the first time. You who believe in evolution say He needed millions of millions of years and that things where not right to start, as He had made them so they need to evolve.
You have the sheer hubris to believe that you know the mind of God a priori. The rest of us seek to know God by observing his creation. The powers of observation and reason are part of His creation at least as surely as that little book you so cherish.
And evolution does not imply that God got something wrong; creation was right then, and it's right now. It's just not the same now as then. If I build a clock, and it doesn't say at this moment that it's noon, there's nothing wrong with the clock. It will say it's noon when it's noon.
The problem is that your fragile little ego can't handle the possibility that God knows something you don't, so you have to reduce the ongoing miracle of creation to something you can write in crayon on the back of a Denny's place mat.
God created evolution and quasars and quantum mechanics, with no more effort than you or I would exert to make a cup of tea and a slice of toast for breakfast. You will not and cannot understand the mind of God, because the infinite cannot be contained by the finite. It's like trying to squeeze Jupiter into the trunk of a Pinto.
It is you pious, self-righteous zealots who most gravely insult the Almighty -- you delude yourself that you are His gatekeeper, that your squawkings are His will. You know nothing, least of all that you know nothing. You have neither wisdom nor humility. If you find that insolent, so be it.
Right answer, wrong question. God's work is by definition perfect. If we consider strokes or heart attacks or childhood cancer "defects" or "taints" it is not because they are unplanned; it is because they are part of a plan we do not and cannot see.
The world is full of people who pray for the winning lottery numbers, or the next rent payment, or even the next meal. But if you truly believe that an all-seeing, wholly benevolent god is holding the reins of the universe, that his eye is on the sparrow and nothing happens but according to his plan, there is only one prayer that is appropriate:
Thy will be done.
That's it. Beginning, middle and end.
It's a display of one of their std techniques. They claim anything, back it up in the most illogical way, ignore any correction, come back later, and repeat the same rubbish as if it was never said and corrected before.
I have radiocarbon dates on shellfish older, or much older, than 6,417 years ago.
How do you account for these?
I have radiocarbon dates on shellfish older, or much older, than 6,417 years ago.
How do you account for these?
Sorry for the double post. It was over a minute later!
And at least one from Israel.
Right, you finally got it! He started the ball rolling...
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