Next time you go quote-mining, here's a nice hat for you.
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.
You tell him Eleni. You'd never be rude about a bunch of people who you don't know, would you?
Thick Evolutionists.
It's interesting that you need to ping the E-troops to attack me.
No, what's interesting is that you would jump to such a paranoid (and incorrect) conclusion as to why I pinged folks.
Didn't take long for the Evolutionists to proclaim the most essential feature of their natures: calling people who disagree with them names. Out of the blue.
Are you *really* this dense? It wasn't "out of the blue", sweetie, it was in response to YOUR unprovoked namecalling against a very large group of people, which you made in response to a reasonable, polite question.
I don't even know who you are and have not responded to you...
And yet, you chose to fire a broadside at all "evolutionists", including myself, when you wrote, "It must be true that evolutionists are thick." Gosh, I don't know *HOW* anyone could *possibly* have taken offense at such a slur. Just how "thick" are you yourself that you apparently have absolutely no clue as to what the effect of your scattershot insult might have been -- or apparently that you had even *made* one?
you refer to me as an a***le---
Yes. If the shoe fits, I certainly do. And I stand by it. Your current post has only further reinforced my original opinion.
I have no quarrel with Christian evolutionists...
Then maybe you shouldn't stupidly insult them.
I do with those who demand that our kids (in public schools) be taught as fact Big Bang without even a mention that God's hand might be behind the Creation.
If you ever actually meet anyone like that, do feel free to quarrel with them. I am, however, curious as to how you have jumped to the wild conclusion that anyone on this thread might hold such a position, and deserved to be lashed out at in a petty, childish manner
But wonders will not cease...you show your colors with the lunacy of the last question about slavery.
No, actually, I was wondering how *you* feel about the lunacy of the your fellow "Believers in the Lord" on this thread. Several of them have come out in favor of slavery due to Scripture, and most of the rest have pointedly failed to denounce such a position. I was thinking that perhaps you'd like to be the first to actually deplore such statements, but apparently not:
I know the answer about the Bible and slavery but I'll let you try to figure it out for yourself.
Lame dodge.
Go fry an egg why don't you... pathetic.
Wow, I'm stunned by your articulate and well-reasoned rebuttal. You have done such a great job of demonstrating the keen insights and penetrating wit of the kind of person who would be in a position to call others "thick"...
I've observed a couple of tenaciously-held misconceptions by creationists:
First, they imagine that the entire evidence for evolution is maybe a dozen or so fossils, all of them fakes. If only they knew how little they know. On the other hand, the entire case for creationism is made by a dozen or so creationist authors, who are endlessly quoted at creationist websites, and all of them are indeed fakes -- or fools, or crackpots.
Second, they imagine that scientists sit in their labs, bibles open, as they go through it line by line, looking for ways to disprove it. In reality, it's the creationists who pour over genuine science articles, line by line, looking for quotes to mine. And one of them has admitted it in print:
A great need -- but very expensive -- is that of more high-quality scientific research. We have been able to accomplish much significant research with our limited staff and our graduate students, but much more is needed, especially in the various problem areas [hee hee] of geology, archaeology, anthropology, and astronomy. In the secular world, this type of research is very largely funded by government grants. We, of course, do not have access to government funding [I wonder why], and would not accept it if we did [yeah, right], so this is a serious inhibiting factor. In the meantime, even though we do not yet have answers to all the problems in scientific creationism, the answers we do have are better than those the evolutionists and "progressive creationists" have. We can at least do literature research, using the experimental data acquired by evolutionary scientists and reinterpreting such data in terms of Creation and the Flood. The modern creation revival has, in fact, largely been developed by this process.I just checked the link, and it seems that they've taken it down. Amazing. I thought you couldn't embarrass a creationist.
Source: ICR AND THE FUTURE.
I'll just clarify. As of now, we don't have a single unambiguous denouncement of slavery from anyone on the creationist side of the debate in this thread. Every single creationist so far has picked one of the following options:
I had high hopes that we might get the first clear denouncement from Eleni; well actually I didn't. Clarity on this issue from those who get all their morals from the bible seems to be in short supply (even that isn't quite true, the pro-slavery crowd are admirably clear, just sickening)
Chirping Crickets Placemarker, and off to bed for me. It is hard work since I got promoted to Blackguard. You lesser minions of DC just carry on.
Don't want to step over the line into ad-hominism, but have you ever noticed how creationists very often confuse singular & plural? As in, "all those scientist are liars..."?
I know there's some cognitive problem where the sufferer has problems forming plurals of words, or has problems using plurals in their proper place & context, but I forget what it's called. (Maybe if I call up that museum, you know, "smith" something, and ask someone. But I digress...)
I worked with a software guy once who had this problem. He did have a strange sense of what constituted good code, but he wasn't necessarily a bad coder. And he wasn't irrational or creationist in general. Yet creationists seem to make this mistake much more often than mere chance. It's weird.
I, an atheist conservative, forthrightly and without reservation state that slavery is morally wrong.
You'd think this would go without saying on a conservative website populated mostly by Americans, but there ya go.
C'mon you creationists, stand up & be counted for or against slavery! Taxesareforever did. Are you going to let him/her hang out there all by themselves?
Yet creationists seem to make this mistake much more often than mere chance. It's weird.
tttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
What is really weird is that you would take the time to actually consider such a fallacy.
Now that is weird!
tasesareforever: What is taught is schools is the same thing as being taught in science class. At least that's the way it was when I went to school.
Hmmm. So "what's taught in schools is the same thing as being taught in science class." I take that as a "yes," although your inability or unwillingness to answer the question in a straightforward manner should be noted.
How did your school -- since you tell us the classes in it were undifferentiated -- how did your school explain how it can be that locusts have four legs and that rabbits chew their cud, even though no evidence for this whatever?
Yes, this would be a good way to get away with advocating practically anything if enough people played by those rules.
The Bible needs no interpretation from me on racism slavery or creation etc and especially not to clarify or provide an exigesis for you.
I will let one of your own do it for me.
The leading evolutionist, Stephen Jay Gould who is an atheist and marxist as well, wrote in his "Ontogeny and Phylogeny", Belknap-Harvard Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, pp. 127–128, 1977:
‘Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.’
Thanks. Now I can link it again. And thanks for demonstrating that creationists continue to be shameless.
Next time you go quote-mining, here's a nice hat for you.
The Bible needs no interpretation from me on racism slavery or creation etc and especially not to clarify or provide an exigesis for you.
Little more there than, "I refuse to say what I think. It might be inconvenient to my attempts to portray myself as reasonable."
Your post would seem to indicate that justifying slavery is bad. I get that sense from your Gould quote:
The leading evolutionist, Stephen Jay Gould who is an atheist and marxist as well, wrote in his "Ontogeny and Phylogeny", Belknap-Harvard Press, Cambridge, MA, USA, pp. 127–128, 1977:At least, I can't imagine the point of including this if justifying slavery is good behavior. I'm sure Gould intended to note it as an undesirable social consequence of evolution, giving slavers something to spin in their favor.‘Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.’
So taxesareforever is misbehaving, right?
Trying to Google this. The first 50 hits are creationist sites. And Gould wasn't a Marxist. There was some other Gould who was, but not the Harvard biologist. (He was a leftie, but not a marxist.) Still searching for this "quote" ...
M'kay, kids?
Uh,
slavery is bayd...
LOL
Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory.The non-creationist reference is here: Creation/Evolution Quotes. It's this:
Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory. The litany is familiar: cold, dispassionate, objective, modern science shows us that races can be ranked on a scale of superiority. If this offends Christian morality or a sentimental belief in human unity, so be it; science must be free to proclaim unpleasant truths. But the data were worthless." (Gould S.J., "Ontogeny and Phylogeny," Belknap Press: Cambridge MA, 1977, p.127)
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