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Posted on 12/26/2005 8:37:06 AM PST by PatrickHenry
Questioned about the national debate over ''intelligent design,'' [Florida] Gov. Jeb Bush last week said he's more interested in seeing some evolution of the science standards that Florida public school students must meet.
He wants those standards to become more rigorous -- and raising the standards should take priority over discussing whether intelligent design has a place in the public schools' curriculum, he said.
Nationally, the discussion over whether to teach intelligent design -- a concept that says life is too complex to have occurred without the involvement of a higher force -- in public school classes heated up after U.S. District Judge John E. Jones ruled that it smacked of creationism and was a violation of church and state separation. (President Bush appointed Jones to the federal bench in 2004.)
Jones, in his decision, wrote that the concept of intelligent design ''cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents,'' according to a Knight Ridder News Service report published Wednesday in The Miami Herald. [PH here: For a more reliable source than the Herald, here's the judge's opinion (big pdf file).]
In Florida, education officials and science teachers will be reviewing the state's science curriculum in 2007 or 2008, after the governor has left office, and ''it is possible that people would make an effort to include [intelligent design] in the debate,'' Gov. Bush told The Watchdog Report on Wednesday. ''My personal belief is we ought to look at whether our standards are high first,'' he said.
SCIENCE FIRST
``The more important point is science itself and how important it is, and we right now have adequate standards that may need to be raised. But worse: Students are not given the course work necessary to do well with those standards.''
Bush, after meeting with Coral Gables Mayor Don Slesnick and city commissioners concerning the community's widespread power outages after hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, also noted that the federal ruling came in a case that involves Pennsylvania's Dover Area School District.
''It is one school district in Pennsylvania,'' he said.
POINT OF VIEW
The Watchdog Report asked a follow-up question: Does the governor believe in Darwin's theory of evolution?
Bush said: ``Yeah, but I don't think it should actually be part of the curriculum, to be honest with you. And people have different points of view and they can be discussed at school, but it does not need to be in the curriculum.''
Firtly, most historical texts are regarded as first person accounts.
Dismissing all first person account gives a very different view of history. Usually archaeologists take first person accounts as gospel. Unless of course it turns out to BE gospel.
That being the case we have 1 first person account, and then we have folks like you who refuse to show evidence that the first person account is wrong, and suggest it is because archaeologists can't unearth evidence of something occuring that long ago.
I expected that sort of reply. You're becoming quite predictable - lol.
Your original question was:
"Who eats fruit bats."
I answered you. You want to limit it to Americans? Say so.
As for somebody thinking the aliens are contacting him or Christ is coming into his heart: it's all in his mind. Irrelevant.
Your mind is your perception, your logic, your memories, your personality. Without it, you understand nothing.
Or occur during initial ontogenesis.
Please be specific. Which of the several theories of evolution are you talking about?
More:
"...In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation, on condition that one did not lose sight of several indisputable points. ...
What is the significance of such a theory? To address this question is to enter the field of epistemology.
A theory is a metascientific elaboration distinct from the results of observation, but consistent with them. By means of it a series of independent data and facts can be related and interpreted in a unified explanation.
A theory's validity depends on whether or not it can be verified; it is constantly tested against the facts; wherever it can no longer explain the latter, it shows its limitations and unsuitability. It must then be rethought.
Furthermore, while the formulation of a theory like that of evolution complies with the need for consistency with the observed data, it borrows certain notions from natural philosophy.
And, to tell the truth, rather than the theory of evolution, we should speak of several theories of evolution.
On the one hand, this plurality has to do with the different explanations advanced for the mechanism of evolution, and on the other, with the various philosophies on which it is based.
Hence the existence of materialist, reductionist, and spiritualist interpretations.
What is to be decided here is the true role of philosophy and, beyond it, of theology.
5. The Church's magisterium is directly concerned with the question of evolution for it involves the conception of man: Revelation teaches us that he was created in the image and likeness of God. The conciliar constitution Gaudium et Spes has magnificently explained this doctrine, which is pivotal to Christian thought. It recalled that man is "the only creature on earth that God willed for itself."
In other terms, the human individual cannot be subordinated as a pure means or a pure instrument either to the species or to society; he has value per se. He is a person. With his intellect and his will, he is capable of forming a relationship of communion, solidarity, and self- giving with his peers.
St. Thomas observes that man's likeness to God resides especially in his speculative intellect, for his relationship with the object of his knowledge resembles God's relationship with what he has created.
But even more, man is called to enter into a relationship of knowledge and love with God himself, a relationship which will find its complete fulfillment beyond time, in eternity.
All the depth and grandeur of this vocation are revealed to us in the mystery of the risen Christ. It is by virtue of his spiritual soul that the whole person possesses such a dignity even in his body. Pius XII stressed this essential point: IF the human body takes its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God.
Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person.
6. With man, then, we find ourselves in the presence of an ontological difference, an ontological leap, one could say. However, does not the posing of such ontological discontinuity run counter to that physical continuity which seems to be the main thread of research into evolution in the field of physics and chemistry?
Consideration of the method used in the various branches of knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable.
The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the spiritual is not the object of this kind of observation, which nevertheless can discover at the experimental level a series of very valuable signs indicating what is specific to the human being.
But the experience of metaphysical knowledge, of self-awareness and self-reflection, of moral conscience, freedom, or again, of aesthetic and religious experience, falls within the competence of philosophical analysis and reflection, while theology brings out its ultimate meaning according to the Creator's plans.
7. In conclusion, I would like to call to mind a Gospel truth which can shed a higher light on the horizon of your research into the origins and unfolding of living matter. The Bible in fact bears an extraordinary message of life. It gives us a wise vision of life inasmuch as it describes the loftiest forms of existence. ....
It is significant that in St. John's Gospel life refers to the divine light which Christ communicates to us. We are called to enter into eternal life, that is to say, into the eternity of divine beatitude.
To warn us against the serious temptations threatening us, our Lord quotes the great saying of Deuteronomy: "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." Even more, "life" is one of the most beautiful titles which the Bible attributes to God. He is the living God. ..." ~ John Paul II
Address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, October 22, 1996 (Reprinted from Origins, December 5, 1996)
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I'm not sure what you mean by this statement. Are you saying that people who are highly educated in this field cannot recognize great complexity when they see it? Or are you waiting for an academic group to define the word complexity?
There are tremendous, huge areas in the theory of evolution that are untestable and amount to "hand waving" by scientists. I have to go look at some real estate with a friend right now, but I'll try to explain this a little later tonight.
How is this a response to my post? You gave a link that, as far as I could see, did not give evidence of an exodus. I would like you to explain how that link proves your point.
"That being the case we have 1 first person account, and then we have folks like you who refuse to show evidence that the first person account is wrong, and suggest it is because archaeologists can't unearth evidence of something occuring that long ago.
It is not our responsibility to show the account is wrong, it is up to you (or Biblical scholars) to show it is true.
There needs to be more than one first person account. There needs to be some other verification, such as Egyptian records.
The evidence of exodus is the first hand account in the Bible.
You're the one that understands "nothing" ... of lasting importance, anyway.
"...What is missed in all of this is that without a Creator of some kind, not only is there no basis to trust the human mind to make true observations, but there is no reason to suppose that it would matter.
Why worry about science or religion, and certainly why worry about whether they could have a negative effect on each other?
If there is no God, there can only be arbitrary judgments. It is God who gives meaning to what we say and believe. ..."
[It is "absolute objective moral truth" that our Constitution was put into place to guard - not the subjective / arbitrary judgements of sinful mortals who love to usurp the God-given rights of others every chance they get.]
24 posted on 12/26/2005 12:09:59 PM EST by Matchett-PI
".... For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. ... the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know [them], because they are spiritually discerned. ...But we have the mind of Christ." 1Cr 2:9-12
"..Now if any man have not the Spirit [Mind] of Christ, he is none of his." - Romans 8:9 and THE PICTURE IS HIDDEN
'Recognizing great complexity when you see it' is not enough to enable testing of the hypothesis. There has to be some objective definition of complexity that is consistent across the hypothesis. So far, Dembski defines it as an improbability of 10-150 in some cases, and as compressibility (which is the opposite of Kolmogorov-Chaitin complexity) in other cases.
Whether the definition is from academia or from Dembski is irrelevant, as long as it is well defined and consistent within its application.
Thank you.
Verified by what second source (non-Biblical)?
Here's an example of a human mutation that increases resistance to HIV infection. Do a search on CCR5. The paper I linked to is a report on research that claims that the gene was selected for because it confers resistance to smallpox; it is claiming that the results of previous research, claiming it was selected for by bubonic plague, are incorrect.
You didn't comprehend the question.
That's a howler. There's always a hope you might evolve into lightocean. You creationist guys are just like the anti-Corpernican folks of yore. Guess what, the earth rotates around the sun. Our galaxy is at the fringe of one of billions of galaxies. Life evolved on this planet over a period of 5 billion years. I'm sorry if you faith is so fragile that you cannot handle it.
Moses is the first author in history to write a historical account of events occuring after his death. Pretty nifty for a first hand account.
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