Posted on 12/06/2005 11:55:32 AM PST by MRMEAN
Andrew J. Coulson is director of the Center for Educational Freedom at the Cato Institute.
Supporters of the theory of human origins known as "intelligent design" want it taught alongside the theory of evolution. Opponents will do anything to keep it out of science classrooms. The disagreement is clear.
But why does everyone assume that we must settle it through an ideological death-match in the town square?
Intelligent design contends that life on Earth is too complex to have evolved naturally, and so must be the product of an unspecified intelligent designer. Most adherents of this idea would undoubtedly be happy just to have it taught to their own children, and most of my fellow evolutionists presumably believe they should have that right. So why are we fighting?
We're fighting because the institution of public schooling forces us to, by permitting only one government-sanctioned explanation of human origins. The only way for one side to have its views reflected in the official curriculum is at the expense of the other side.
This manufactured conflict serves no public good. After all, does it really matter if some Americans believe intelligent design is a valid scientific theory while others see it as a Lamb of God in sheep's clothing? Surely not. While there are certainly issues on which consensus is key — respect for the rule of law and the rights of fellow citizens, tolerance of differing viewpoints, etc. — the origin of species is not one of them.
The sad truth is that state-run schooling has created a multitude of similarly pointless battles. Nothing is gained, for instance, by compelling conformity on school prayer, random drug testing, the set of religious holidays that are worth observing, or the most appropriate forms of sex education.
Not only are these conflicts unnecessary, they are socially corrosive. Every time we fight over the official government curriculum, it breeds more resentment and animosity within our communities. These public-schooling-induced battles have done much to inflame tensions between Red and Blue America.
But while Americans bicker incessantly over pedagogical teachings, we seldom fight over theological ones. The difference, of course, is that the Bill of Rights precludes the establishment of an official religion. Our founding fathers were prescient in calling for the separation of church and state, but failed to foresee the dire social consequences of entangling education and state. Those consequences are now all too apparent.
Fortunately, there is a way to end the cycle of educational violence: parental choice. Why not reorganize our schools so that parents can easily get the sort of education they value for their own children without having to force it on their neighbors?
Doing so would not be difficult. A combination of tax relief for middle income families and financial assistance for low-income families would give everyone access to the independent education marketplace. A few strokes of the legislative pen could thus bring peace along the entire "education front" of America's culture war.
But let's be honest. At least a few Americans see our recurrent battles over the government curriculum as a price worth paying. Even in the "land of the free," there is a temptation to seize the apparatus of state schooling and use it to proselytize our neighbors with our own ideas or beliefs.
In addition to being socially divisive and utterly incompatible with American ideals, such propagandizing is also ineffectual. After generations in which evolution has been public schooling's sole explanation of human origins, only a third of Americans consider it a theory well-supported by scientific evidence. By contrast, 51 percent of Americans believe "God created human beings in their present form."
These findings should give pause not only to evolutionists but to supporters of intelligent design as well. After all, if public schooling has made such a hash of teaching evolution, why expect it to do any better with I.D.?
Admittedly, the promotion of social harmony is an unusual justification for replacing public schools with parent-driven education markets. Most arguments for parental choice rest on the private sector's superior academic performance or cost-effectiveness. But when you stop and think about it, doesn't the combination of these advantages suggest that free markets would be a far more intelligent design for American education?
This article appeared on FOXNews.com on November 18, 2005.
You choke on a gnat while swallowing a camel.
Well, goody, goody for you. Your children will be the elitist snobs that everyone hates so much. Much like you, I imagine.
You didn't understand it, did you?? Should have figured. LOL
Hit a nerve, did I?? LOL
You are probably right though. Although once upon a time the Republican party and conservatives were the party of merit. We believed that people should be rewarded for hard work, hard study, intellect, and accomplishment.
One of the reasons that creationism / ID is a cancer on conservatism, as one poster's tag line states, is that now we are becoming the party that hates that; education and hard work have become "elitism".
You are confusing the complexity of zero-order pattern with the total information it contains. An infinite zero-order pattern can contain trivial complexity in both time and space (small enough to fit on cocktail napkin with a crayon), and it is more than obvious that you are not equipped to make this determination of a virus. We already know that the total complexity of living organisms is unimaginably smaller than their expression.
Your mickey mouse "statistics" don't even take into account the extremely biased phase space of real molecular systems, which represents an astronomical reduction in the improbability of the conformations in question. If you keep throwing up petrol-soaked strawmen, people with a modicum of science and mathematical ability will continue to torch them.
Ah, but because you understand physical sickness, you are in a better position to understand spiritual illness. You learn to treat a physical illness, instead of letting that hemmoroid go untreated. Same with the orthodontia. Without that object lesson, you might never learn to identify spiritual hemmoroids, much less take steps to treat it.
Because you see death, and understand death, you are in a better position to avoid spiritual death. But then there's also spiritual lemmings. The choice is yours.
Yes they do. All the time. The 2nd law of thermodynamics places limits on the entropy change of a system depending on the external energy input, it doesn't eliminate the possibility of entropy increasing. If it did, refrigeration (both natural and artificial) wouldn't work.
No explosion has ever produced a laptop computer. No tornado has ever assembled a Rolls Royce. And no random combination of molecules has ever produced life. What is the minimum number of amino acid molecules required to make up the simplest virus? A few thousand? I really have no idea but for the sake of argument lets call it 1000. The number of total possible combinations is 1000! which equates to 4.023872e+2567.
These comparisons don't make any sense. Viruses weren't assembled by random collisions of molecules any more than a newborn baby is assembled by the random collision of molecules. For one thing, peptides with as few as 32 amino acids have been observed to self-replicate in the right environment. Second, your rudimentary calculation ignores the possibility of any very simple selection mechanisms at the most basic level.
An analogy -- if you flip a row of 100 coins repeatedly, it will take you somewhere around 1029 attempts to land all heads or all tails. You wouldn't get it done in a billion billion years. Implement the strongest selection method possible (only re-flipping tails), and you'll probably have all heads in less than 10 flips. Implement a weaker selection mechanism (like only keeping heads when they appear next to other heads), and you'll get something in between these extremes. The chemical behavior of complex organic compounds implements selection mechanisms, many of which we are only beginning to understand, and unless one has specific knowledge of how those selection mechanisms work, it is impossible to generate even a remotely accurate evaluation of the probability that self-reproducing systems (i.e. the precursors of life) could generate of their own accord.
I disagree.
It 'forces' one to look at which side of the fence he's on, to clarify what he ACTUALLY believes, and to make a stand thereon.
Joshua 24:15
But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
NO; the pressure to survive would be so great, that they would migrate to the middle of our backs, so we could breathe so much better while swimming.
Romans 5:12-21
12. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned--
13. for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.
14. Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.
15. But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God's grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many!
16. Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man's sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.
17. For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God's abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.
18. Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.
19. For just as through the disobedience of the one man, the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.
20. The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,
21. so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Boo Hoo!!!!
I guess you want us to go to the Liberals then??
Then WHY, in God's nmae, don't the E's rant about the DD in ALL the other subjects???
Why not??
It would become quite obvious which one is TRUE, eh?
Why wait or Nature to 'select' for good qualities? We should DEFINITELY help E along then: Keep the defective from reproducing; by what ever means is most effective.
I know whereof you speak!
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