Posted on 10/11/2005 6:21:59 PM PDT by gobucks
The most frustrating thing about following the Dover school board trial is seeing both sides maneuver for a legal advantage with arguments that not only seem disingenuous, but miss the point.
Dover school board members may deny it, but religion did influence the vote to introduce intelligent design into science class. Lawyers for the plaintiffs jump on the legal requirement demanding a “secular purpose” for science curriculum by lining up witnesses who denounce intelligent design as religion. Slam-dunk case, right?
Not really, because the plaintiffs’ argument is built on faulty premises. Their witnesses insist that Darwinism is pure fact, that it is neutral in regard to religion. Then they roll out the old chestnut that science and religion are two entirely different realms of knowledge — separate but equal. We’ve heard that before.
Intellectual honesty
The truth is that anyone who’s being intellectually honest will admit that science can never be divorced from religion, that a person’s philosophical outlook will always affect how he or she interprets nature’s phenomena. Honest people will also admit that Darwinism supports a definite philosophy about nature, one that is hostile to theistic faith held by many Americans.
This is why I find the Dover plaintiffs’ arguments disingenuous. Their witnesses, like many adherents to Darwinism, insist modern science respects religion when in reality it marginalizes it and usurps its authority.
Consider how many leading scientists frame the issue. The late Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould went further than many of his colleagues in allowing that religion has the right to pursue “questions of ultimate meaning and moral value.” But then he undercut the credibility of religion by stating that only science deals with actual facts.
In other words, science examines reality; religion deals in fantasies.
Hard to take
This implicit disdain for religion makes it hard to take the Dover plaintiffs’ argument at face value, such as when theology professor John Haught explained why he does not consider intelligent design science.
Science, Haught said, is supposed to address the question of “how;” while religion answers “why.” They are two different schools of thought, he said.
What Haught did not say was that this alleged restriction fails to prevent some scientists from encroaching upon subjects supposedly reserved for religion.
Physicists argue that miracles are impossible. Behaviorists equate human morality with the instinctive reactions of laboratory rats. Oxford professor and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins insists that an evolutionary view of life and the cosmos makes God “gratuitous.”
The late biologist Julian Huxley even went so far as to call for “an evolutionary and humanist religion” to replace faiths such as Christianity he considered either dead or outmoded.
Does this kind of agnostic evangelism sound like the product of a field of study that restricts itself to answering certain kinds of questions? It does not, and to suggest otherwise is absurd.
Second-class status
But even if Haught is right, what does that say about the priorities of public education? If religion answers the question “why” — why we are here, why evil exists, why any choice we make matters at all — wouldn’t you think religion would be considered indispensable to the curriculum?
But as far as public education is concerned, religion is quite dispensable. Religion courses, if they’re offered at all, certainly are not presented as students’ best chance to learn about divine truth. How much “ultimate meaning” can you expect to get out of an elective, anyway?Science courses, by contrast, are usually mandatory. And don’t forget about those standardized tests.In reality, the separate-but-equal standard works about as well for religion in public education as it did for minorities during Jim Crow.
Belief in nothing
What does this means for students? It means that explicitly and implicitly they’re taught that science trumps faith.
It means they learn that men in white lab coats — the ones who offer medicines, iPods and weapons of mass destruction — speak with greater authority than pastors, rabbis and priests. It means they’ll be told the reason they exist is no reason at all, just chance, mutation and blind law.
And chances are they’ll believe it, because after all, it’s based on science.
Dave Dentel is a copy editor for the York Daily Record/Sunday News. Reach him at ddentel@ydr.com or by calling 771-2043.
Who's religion? Yours? Or somebody else's?
Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
There are thousands of creation stories out there. Should I post a few for your edification and amusement?
The Big Bang theory is testable. What do you think the 2.74o background radiation is from?
"With evolution, microevolutionary theories can be empirically tested, but macroevolutionary theories cannot."
Your distinction is artificial. There is no difference. Consider sickle cell anemia. The gene(s) for that and the phenotype propagated, because it allowed folks to live longer in malarial infested Africa.
"Percy Williams Bridgman."
I don't know who he is, but his screed is bogus. Here's an example:
"Some have believed that science has been successful in acquiring knowledge, yet there really is no way of verifying this. Data are incapable of conclusively proving theories, and we can’t exactly read an omniscient “book of truth” to see how often our theories have been correct.
It's false. Rubbish is worth more. Later on in the trash he says the theories are most often wrong, so he's a crackpot.
WHAT I'M READING NOW: Art of Unix Programming by RaymondOpposition research. Like reading "Darwin on Trial". :-) No, seriously, I'm on p. 44 & already I understand something about what's wrong with Unix: The Rule of Least Surprise contradicts the Rule of Separation, at least as Raymond interprets it. In one sense, separating UI from the engine is a good thing. But a culture that encourages freak flags to fly on the UI level, on the theory that policy is more transient than mechanism, etc. etc., just invites mass confusion for the average user. This is a specific example of a wider problem, perhaps more to do with open source than necessarily Unix itself... oh, uh, sorry. Deep breaths. Um, maybe I should just step outside for a smoke. (Why did I give up smoking 15 years ago? Excuse me while I take a little trip down to the 7/11...)Ooh, a woman after my own heart. Write programs that do one thing well, and will work together. Mistrust the "one true way!" All Hail Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie!
Well, certainly the current experiments to detect whether the Earth drags space around with it as it orbits could provide much support to Marinara Sauce Theory. (Not that the FSM needs to rely on materialistic science to verify His noodly existence...)
Then Parents ought to be the ones to teach science too, not the schools. I't not the governments place to teach science.
Well, true, evolution can contradict certain specific dogmatic interpretations of the Bible. But my point is that that is true of any scientific theory that happens to contradict a line or two in anyone's holy book.If you actually stop and think about it, since the Bible says that God created the Heavens and the Earth, then created day and night, and got around to creating Man, then you just called everyone who believes in the Bible "dishonest" for arguing that God created us.
How is that not hostile to religious belief per se?
If there was a line in the Bible that had Jesus making an offhand comment about the angels pushing around the planets in the sky, then fundamentalists would be just as up in arms against Newton as they are against Darwin.
Scientific advances will, from time to time, contradict someone's reading of their favorite holy book. It's inevitable. When that happens, the believer has a choice: Either they should stay with their interpretation of the book & distrust their lying eyes, or else admit that their interpretation of the holy passage is flawed. With either choice they make, they will end up being comfortable with their belief in God. But depending on their choice they will either remain comfortable with this world as well, or be more & more alienated from it.
Unix has never really lived up to the promise. Then again, neither did Plan 9. Breaking the window manager from the graphical engine has led to many twisty user interfaces, that all look alike but aren't. It adds to the learning curve immensely at the user level. At the systems administration level, the problem is not as bad. An administrator benefits from customizability. Administering Windows machines becomes a maze of fiddly little control panel tabs. Being able to read configuration files as text and doing some things programmatically at the command line is a real benefit. That's why there are perl modules for registry editing.
This is what the article says:
Dover school board members may deny it, but religion did influence the vote to introduce intelligent design into science class.
I'm not sure how this could be interpreted as anything but a contradiction of what the board members are saying. Under oath. But their (alleged) perjury is very specific and involves very specific things said at very specific places and times. It's a clear case of he said/she said.
So my comment is directed at the people on this thread. How smart is it to say there's a religious issue involved, when people are testifying under oath that there isn't?
If they denied it under oath then they probably won't be believed by the jurors but there's no case for perjury in that. It's hard to prove what a person believes.
Didn't read my post, did you?
Yes I did I wasn't arguing with you. It's hard to tell what a person means sometimes over email.
But their (alleged) perjury is very specific and involves very specific things said at very specific places and times. It's a clear case of he said/she said.
There is conflicting testimony in this case. Conflicting testimony about things said at specific times and places.
So with the defendents asserting under oath that they never discussed religion, it seems like FReepers are undercutting their testimony by saying this is obviously a religious issue.
It depends. Maybe they never discussed religion per se in discussing whether ID should be given a place in the classroom. Maybe their arguments at that time were in their opinion based solely on the merits (as they saw it) of ID. If they said "God wants ID in the classroom" it would be pretty open and shut.
You don't need to speculate about this. Go to the local paper's website and read about the conflicting testimony.
You through? Cause that was a largely nonsensical standard copout lecture that all of us are tired of hearing.
Nobody took issue with science. Nobody demanded that science point to God either. All nonsense. What I did take issue with is Evolutionists hiding behind science and hoping to ride science's know success's to gain legitimacy the way poison gains acceptance by hiding amidst a larger pile of good food. The obviety of why this happens is beyond need for comment I'd imagine. For those in rio linda, though, it's because nobody in their right mind would accept poison in place of good food. Nobody with any brains would accept Evolution as true if it stood apart from "Science". And that is why you guys like to drag in arguments over superstrings, gravity and anything else - to legitimize something that can't stand on it's own.
I expect religion to point to God and science to point to facts. Science attempts to point to facts - that is it's job in theory.. (pun intended). It's job is not to point to assumptions and state them as fact, then demand blind faithfulness to them. Gravity we have evidence for, we live with it every day and have no need for explanation of it beyond the fact that it works. The space program might feel differently; but, every day Joes couldn't care less. We live with it, see it's evidence, that's enough. We understand. Evolution can't make that claim. Evolution is a theory in search of the observeable. Gravity is the observeable in search of a logical device to explain it's complexity to the extent anyone really cares.
You've never seen a bird produce anything but a bird. You've never seen a dog produce other than a dog. And as I noted on another thread not long ago, plantlife is experimental grounds enough to state a proveable hypothesis, that life will only ever give rise to life of the exact same kind. Corn is planted in the millions of acres around the world every year, that's literally Billions of corn seeds that sprout every year.. numbers beyond that in fact. And you know what, to the extent that any of those seeds germinate and grow, they grow corn. Happens every year and the offspring are in the zillions of little corn kernels. The same is true for wheat, green beens, oranges, apples, etc. There is enough evidence in all of them combined to state as a law of nature that seeds of any given kind will only ever produce the same thing planted. The evidence for it is easily enough seen by anyone with two eyes and a brain. By the magnitude of the numbers involved, one can use a single year's growth as proof. And that's the problem with evolution - nature defies it instead of supporting it.
The extent of that defiance is readily visible.
Couple of questions for the audience. How long does it take for 14C to reach equilibrium in the atmosphere. Noting that it has not - and you can check that out for yourself.. How old, then can the earth be.
We're not done. The moon is moving away from Earth at roughly a rate of 3 inches per year. Rewind. How long can the moon move back toward the earth before the inverse square law renders earth a destroyed remnant?
The reason I'm not providing the answers is because you should find them out for yourself and then convince yourself how the earth can be any older than the least of these two problems solve to. Then consider, there is far more limiting the earth's age than that. It's one thing to posit something as true. It's quite another to posit it knowing that it cannot be true given known quantities disallowing it. One can say that a transam can do 100mph. One cannot say that a transam with no engine and flat tires sitting under an inch of accumulated dust and debris for 10 years just sped past them under it's own power five seconds ago.
This is something we understand without having to be told; but, this sort of common sense must be evicted and the laws of science thrown out or stood on their head for the claims of evolution to withstand scrutiny. It isn't that you have to be smart to understand it. You have to be willingly ignorant to accept it. And that isn't science. That's fairytale, bub.
In all your carrying on about scripture, you forgot to note
that Evolution point by point refutes scripture without any proof. If you wish to compromise, then paddle your own boat and stop trying to destroy the faith of others with fairytale lies. IE, unless you have something of note, shut up. Not meant to be rude, just obvious. If the sound of your voice isn't an improvement over silence, shut up.
We listened to stories for years about how Chimps and humans shared 98.5% commonality of dna. After the Gnome project was completed, we learned that this was not only not true, we also learned that Chimps are not closer to men than to apes but rather are closer to Apes than to men. For you guys who wouldn't know truth if it smacked you in the face apparently, that was "provisionally true" because you decided it was so for years. Now it's known beyond a doubt to not only be false; but rediculously so. It isn't that it was somewhat true in absence of evidence. It was false then and it's false now. That didn't stop you abusing people with it for all those years. What's that old saying about liberalism - the beauty of it is never having to admit to being wrong.. Science may now and again admit to being wrong. But it's little consolation to the people it abused while pontificating on how right it was because they assumed something. And given their track record for doing just that, there is little - truly - for science to brag about on being right about much of anything. It is wrong more often than right and usually abusively so - even to the point of being deadly - as in Washington's case. That doesn't buid confidence - especially when the ground on which evolution stands is so week as to be non-existant. Evolution has less going for it than the theory of flight did. Every nutjob capable of fashioning wings from cardboard tried killing themselves to prove flight before someone with brains applied thourough methodology to the problem and proved the concept. Orville and Wilbur did something anathema to Evolutionists - they let the facts take them to their conclusion. From day one, Evolution has started from the conclusion at the direction from Darwin to do that very thing - go ye therefore unto all the earth and seek out some evidence for this idea. And pseudo-scientists have done just that, they've been searching high and low for evidence to match their conclusions. That isn't science. In science we draw conclusions from evidence. In evolution, they try to make evidences fit their conclusions. When they don't fit, creativity is not apparently disallowed. The rule seems to be "don't get caught" and "don't make us look bad".. as in having the audacity to find human artifacts in coal deposits or under rock layers dated well before men could have existed according to evolution - then finding evidence of men there.. oops. Doooooooooon't do it. Too late.
As for your quoting of scripture. Instead of quoting passages you think useful on their face, try contextualizing it and actually reading not just that; but, all the things that are mooted or turned into lies on their face by your
compromising of it. What was Christ's charge to the Pharisees - that they made God's word a lie with their vain traditions.. their opinions based on logic. It seemed right to them. It must have been at least provisionally true to them; but, Christ said it was a lie because it turned God's word to a lie. Gee, where have I heard this before? Seems really familiar. You may think you know something about scripture or want others to believe you do. Anyone can misuse it - Satan did in the Garden and managed to call God a liar in so many words 'God didn't really say that'.. Which do you imagine you sound more like? Paul, or satan. My response then to you on both pseudo science and scripture is come back when you have something truthful to say. Until them, we're expecting more accountability and less garbage.
Thanks.
Sure religions answer the "why" - they just don't do it consistently or correctly. Perhaps you disagree - which religion or religions would you teach in government schools?
Whether it's legally perjury or not, the denial of the board that this whole thing is religiously based is obviously BS. However, I have a question for all those anti-evos who think that ID is such a great advance for them. Do you really know what ID states? To the best of my ability to boil down the whole ID argument, it seems to me that if you accept ID you then accept the following statements:
1. The universe probably began in much the manner described by current inflationary theory. (ie. big bang cosmology).
2. The universe is approximately 15 billion years old.
3. The earth is approximately 5 billion years old. ]
4. Life probably formed on earth as a result of natural, chemical processes. These chemical processes may have been directed by an intelligent agent.
5. Different species of life arose from a process of evolution whose primary mechanism was natural selection of different variants of organisms. These variants arose as a result of mutations, which may have been guided by an intelligent agent.
Someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong, but these statements sound suspiciously like something that an EVOLUTIONIST could easily agree with. The only problem that such an evolutionist would have with them is the idea that the original life forms and the mutations that led to variation in organism were guided by an intelligent agent. The problem I would have with these ideas is not that they couldn't be true, but rather that they are untestable, and hence unscientific. If you formulate a scientific hypothesis or theory without any reference to whether or not an intelligent agent is responsible for the creation of life or for the mutations that lead to variants which are selected for, then you would have a perfectly acceptable scientific theory.
Of course, there's a name for this theory. The idea that chemical processes formed the first living creatures, regardless of whether an intelligent agent played a role, is called abiogenesis. The idea that new species formed via mutations and natural selection is called evolution. Thus, ID, as far as it is actually scientific SUPPORTS abiogenesis and evolution. Why then do YEC'ers, OEC'ers, or any other creationist fight so hard to get ID into science classes?
One word for you, gobucks: decaf.
Neither their opinions, or yours are based on logic. Stick with Art Bell.
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