Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Evolution and intelligent design Life is a cup of tea
Economist ^ | 10/6/05 | Economist

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.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: creoslavery; crevolist; evolution
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 821-837 next last
To: SmartCitizen
People like you should be tarred and feathered and rode out of town on a rail.

Ah, the fine art of apologetics.

61 posted on 10/07/2005 8:18:16 AM PDT by Physicist
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: blowfish
This alone tells me that the bible is no science book. And do you care to provide the scientific underpinning for "the sun stopping for a day" without invoking the 'miracle' word?

Ah and there is where our fundamental differences begins.

You want to justify the God's Word with mans conclusion, I on the other hand, seek to justify mans conclusion(s) using the God's Word of God, the Holy Bible.

You put your faith in mans word, using it to disclaim the Bible, while I take God's Word to be absolute and therefore deny mans claim(s) by my belief in God's Word, the Holy Bible.

Are you one of the ones Paul is referring to when he wrote: Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator...

62 posted on 10/07/2005 8:19:54 AM PDT by newsgatherer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 54 | View Replies]

To: spunkets
He drank water and breathed air too, so you're doomed.

Apparently Hitler believed in atoms too. He completely rejected the notion of "intelligent matter".

63 posted on 10/07/2005 8:20:29 AM PDT by Thatcherite (More abrasive than SeaLion or ModernMan)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 58 | View Replies]

To: newsgatherer
Personally I would prefer not to share my heaven with you.

You're funny.

64 posted on 10/07/2005 8:20:59 AM PDT by shuckmaster (Bring back SeaLion and ModernMan!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: Physicist

As I said, they have the ball and are running in the wrong direction.


65 posted on 10/07/2005 8:26:51 AM PDT by js1138 (Great is the power of steady misrepresentation.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies]

To: Thatcherite
How can you claim to be Christian and at the same time disbelieve Christ when it comes to how the world came about?

And before you get off on the days mean bull, go to Exodus and read what God has to say in the ten commandments about six days. Not six eons, not six million years, not six thousand years, six days.

If you do not believe God when it comes to how the earth came into existence, than how can you claim to believe Him on anything else? Tell me do you believe in the virgin birth? Do you believe in the Trinity? Do you believe in Christ resurrection? All these are supposedly impossible in the eyes of modern science.

No , to deny God created the world and that it did not evolve is to call God a liar. And that does go against Scripture.

66 posted on 10/07/2005 8:28:10 AM PDT by newsgatherer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 59 | View Replies]

To: newsgatherer
And speaking of racism. A careful look at what Darwin, the high priest of the evolutionist, said about races explains nazism, racism, the muslim attitude towards women, communism, slavery, etc. Think about it, if man evolved from monkeys, are not those who look, via color, more like monkeys and therefore on a lower evolutionary plane? Does that not explain how the Japanese justified their desire to rule the world? The Japanese have less body hair than all other humans, so does that not cause one to conclude that they have evolved further and are therefore superior? Yet, God goes out of His way to list generation after generation in Genesis 1-11 to prove to us conclusively that we are all descendants of Noah and one of his three sons. And that before Noah we all trace our lineage back to Adam thru his son Seth.

Perhaps you should read Darwins works on this matter. He made it absolutely clear that he considered all human beings to be of the same species, and that the advantages that Europeans enjoyed over "savages" were cultural, not genetic. Let us hear him talk for himself:

" On the 19th of August we finally left the shores of Brazil. I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horsewhip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master’s eye. These latter cruelties were witnessed by me in a Spanish colony, in which it has always been said, that slaves are better treated than by the Portuguese, English, or other European nations. I have seen at Rio de Janeiro a powerful negro afraid to ward off a blow directed, as he thought, at his face. I was present when a kind-hearted man was on the point of separating for ever the men, women and little children of a large number of families who had long lived together. I will not even allude to the many heart-sickening atrocities which I authentically heard of; - nor would I have mentioned the above revolting details, had I not met with several people, so blinded by the constitutional gaiety of the negro, as to speak of slavery as a tolerable evil. Such people have generally visited the houses of the upper classes, where the domestic slaves are usually well treated; and they have not, like myself, lived amongst the lower classes. Such enquirers will ask slaves about their condition; they forget that the slave must indeed be dull, who does not calculate on the chance of his answer reaching his master’s ears.

It is argued that self-interest will prevent excessive cruelty; as if self-interest protected our domestic animals, which are far less likely than degraded slaves, to stir up the rage of their savage masters. It is an argument long since protested against with noble feelings, and strikingly exemplified, by the ever illustrious Humboldt. It is often attempted to palliate slavery by comparing the state of slaves with our poorer countrymen: if the misery of our poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin; but how this bears on slavery, I cannot see; as well might the use of the thumbscrew be defended in one land, by showing that men in another land suffer from some dreadful disease. Those who look tenderly at the slave-owner and with cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter; - what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! Picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children - those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own - being torn from you and sold like beast to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbors as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin. "

Darwin had frenzied arguments on the subject with Captain Fitzroy of the Beagle. Fitzroy was a Christian Fundamentalist who justified slavery on Biblical Authority and believed that Biblical Authority trumped all considerations of reason, morality, or logic. Now who does that remind you of?

67 posted on 10/07/2005 8:29:22 AM PDT by Thatcherite (More abrasive than SeaLion or ModernMan)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 57 | View Replies]

To: blowfish
Would you say that geologists are satan's flunkies as well? They clearly disagree with the biblical account of geologic processes.

If they deny Christ and embrace satan than what would you call them? And if you say they embrace Christ and deny satan, than how can they refuse to believe Christ account of creation?

68 posted on 10/07/2005 8:30:32 AM PDT by newsgatherer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 60 | View Replies]

To: newsgatherer

You fail to address the point that atheism is not the same thing as rejecting your particular brand of scripture. To claim that it is, is a lie.


69 posted on 10/07/2005 8:30:47 AM PDT by Thatcherite (More abrasive than SeaLion or ModernMan)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 66 | View Replies]

To: shuckmaster
You're funny.

Why would you think I am joking, I am serious. Don't read between the lines, take it a seriously as I meant it. I would prefer not to share my heaven with you! And as a joint heir with Christ, it is my heaven!

70 posted on 10/07/2005 8:33:25 AM PDT by newsgatherer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 64 | View Replies]

To: Thatcherite
Yur selective selections are not very impressive. Nor very convincing for I ahve read Darwins writings along with the false assertion by his wife that he recanted and confessed both his sin and his lie on his death bed.
71 posted on 10/07/2005 8:36:14 AM PDT by newsgatherer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 67 | View Replies]

To: newsgatherer; shuckmaster
"I await your apology."

You accused biologists of being and promoting atheists. That's false, so you deserve no apology.

72 posted on 10/07/2005 8:36:32 AM PDT by spunkets
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 53 | View Replies]

To: newsgatherer
shuckmaster is right, you are funny!

I would prefer not to share my heaven with you!

Sorry, that's not your call. Unless you are God's Official Spokesperson (as you seem to regard yourself).

73 posted on 10/07/2005 8:36:57 AM PDT by blowfish
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 70 | View Replies]

To: Thatcherite
You fail to address the point that atheism is not the same thing as rejecting your particular brand of scripture. To claim that it is, is a lie. YOu are stating to sound like a broken record. Yu say "My particular brand of scripture". show me where your brand of Scripture differs with what I have said, using Scripture of course.
74 posted on 10/07/2005 8:38:27 AM PDT by newsgatherer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 69 | View Replies]

To: spunkets
You accused biologists of being and promoting atheists. That's false, so you deserve no apology

I made no such accusation, I said evolution is 180 degrees opposite of God's word. And is therefore satanic.

Now, yur apology please.

75 posted on 10/07/2005 8:40:23 AM PDT by newsgatherer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 72 | View Replies]

To: newsgatherer
I made no such accusation, I said evolution is 180 degrees opposite of God's word. And is therefore satanic.

The bible says "the sun stopped for a day". Physicists would say that is impossible. QED: Physicists are also satanic.

This is fun.

76 posted on 10/07/2005 8:43:04 AM PDT by blowfish
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 75 | View Replies]

To: newsgatherer
Yur selective selections are not very impressive. Nor very convincing for I ahve read Darwins writings along with the false assertion by his wife that he recanted and confessed both his sin and his lie on his death bed.

You'll need to do better than that, like providing, oh what is the stuff called? Evidence, thats it.

77 posted on 10/07/2005 8:44:27 AM PDT by Thatcherite (More abrasive than SeaLion or ModernMan)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 71 | View Replies]

To: blowfish
Now think about what you said and what I said. I, as a joint heir with Christ, can and will call it my heaven.

I did not say he couldn't also be a joint heir, all I said was I would prefer he not share my heaven.

Why does that so bother you? Are you concerned about where you will spend eternity? Are you concerned about where he will spend eternity?

Aethiest amaze me, they get offended by Someone they don't even believe exist.

78 posted on 10/07/2005 8:45:22 AM PDT by newsgatherer
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 73 | View Replies]

To: newsgatherer
YOu are stating to sound like a broken record. Yu say "My particular brand of scripture". show me where your brand of Scripture differs with what I have said, using Scripture of course.

My brand of scripture is not relevant. Are you seriously trying to suggest that everyone who doesn't share your exact beliefs is an atheist? That is, most Christians, and everyone of every other religion?

79 posted on 10/07/2005 8:46:18 AM PDT by Thatcherite (More abrasive than SeaLion or ModernMan)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 74 | View Replies]

To: rdb3
They're making the point that the left in general, and the European left in particular, shouldn't always be so smug and complacent. ID is bogus, but so is much of what the so-called "reality-based community" buys into.
80 posted on 10/07/2005 8:47:51 AM PDT by RightWingAtheist (Free the Crevo Three!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 41-6061-8081-100 ... 821-837 next last

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.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson