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.''
Odd...
I first came across it as a strawman in The French Lieutenant's Woman.
Cheers!
...and Merry Christmas!
I'd prefer a Case of Guinness Stout.
Or ambiguities in language, or categories which do not fit into our contemporary classifications, because they are in the vernacular? Remember Michaelangleo's "horns" on a sculpture of Moses due to mistranslation...
Nice try, though.
Cheers!
Omphalism is indeed the only sane refuge of those who have seen the evidence for an old earth and biological evolution. It brings with it a number of philosophical problems however. It requires us to either see God as a liar, or that God is allowing other forces to manipulate the universe to give us the appearance of great age. It is also indistinguishable from an admission that the universe is of great age. What is the difference between an infinitely powerful actor making it seem as if the universe is old, and the universe actually being old? A difference which makes no difference *is* no difference.
Contention not in evidence. (links have been provided but no evidence of study of them on your part appears in your posts)
There would likely be problems. Particularly as 3 of the 6 founders were brothers. Some loci in the human genome have more than 200 alleles if memory serves. It is particularly hilarious that the same crowd who assert "all mutations are harmful" can reconcile such genetic diversity with a tiny starting population a few-thousand years ago. Of course the Noah story has many, many problems far more serious than this. Have a chat with a zoo-keeper sometime for example, to consider the problems of 8 people maintaining a global ecology for a year with no recourse to outside services.
I really should?? About presumptious of you. I read of this in the early eighties. Tell me, what Creationist conspiracy tin-foil hat wearing website would it have been from? Sheesh, is everything raised as a question presumed dismissable to you on this subject??
I've noticed that there are currently six or seven active crevo threads, all covering the same ground after twenty or so postings. Would there be any advantage in trying to keep everything in just one, like what happened with the discussions on Katrina?
Just a thought.
Good news, though - we won! ;)
Yikes. Maybe you should stop using your computer. It might be possessed by a demon.
Exerpt:
For many years claims were made by strict creationists that human footprints or "giant man tracks" occur alongside dinosaur tracks in the limestone beds of the Paluxy River, near Glen Rose Texas. If true, such a finding would dramatically contradict the conventional geologic timetable, which holds that humans did not appear on earth until over 60 million years after the dinosaurs became extinct. However, the "man track" claims have not stood up to close scientific scrutiny, and have been abandoned even by most creationists. The supposed human tracks have involved a variety of phenomena, including forms of elongate (metatarsal) dinosaur tracks, erosional features, indistinct markings of uncertain origin, and some doctored and carved specimens (most of the latter on loose blocks of rock). This Web site provides a collection of articles reviewing the history of the controversy and evidence involved, articles on other alleged out-of-order fossils and artifacts, and information and links on dinosaur tracks in general [emphasis added].
"Contention not in evidence. (links have been provided but no evidence of study of them on your part appears in your posts)"
I tend to filter out the junk when researching it, which is about 99% of it.
Evolution at best, is ONLY speculation.
Depends on whether God was trying to teach them a lesson about getting too big for their britches; or whether the planted info was there for some other reason than to fool them; or whether some saboteur planted the fakes to estrange God and man; or any of a number of other circumstances you left out.
The evidence for evolution has not been faked, so we can rule that one out. To fake all the evidnce would require a coordinated and ongoining conspiracy of at least hundreds of thousands of people in every country in the world over centuries. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
God plants lies to keep us from getting too big for our britches? That's no better. Why would He give us these amazing capacities for reason and observation then prohibit us from using them? And what other reason could He have had for lying to His children with planted falsehoods?
If you claim one must use rigorous testing, Occam's razor, etc., then it is inconsistent with your stated methodology to go around making ad hoc assumptions about God's behaviour or motivations...
No offense, but that's nonsense. If you do wish to apply Occam's Razor, which is the simpler solution - that our natural science reveals the truth about the age of the Earth, that there is a global conspiracy to plant evidence or that God has been deliberately tricking His children for hundreds of years? I think the answer is quite clear.
Regardless, I have never claimed that the supernatural is subject to the rules of science. That's because it's not science.
Belated Merry Christmas to you. I had a lovely Christmas with my family, and hope you had the same.
"dinosaur footprint / man footprint ????" Does anybody still believe that falsehood?"
Some still do.
It's a common evolutionist tact to link humans to monkeys. Absolutely laughable.
"I've noticed that there are currently six or seven active crevo threads, all covering the same ground after twenty or so postings. Would there be any advantage in trying to keep everything in just one, like what happened with the discussions on Katrina?"
I second that idea.
Liar or troll. Take your pick, everyone.
http://www.omniology.com/GlenKubanism.html Click here to go to it
There is also mention of Carbon-14 dating of "dinosaur bones, human remains and organic material throughout the fossil record."
Carbon-14 dating is one of my specialties and I have checked a number of articles relating to the dating of fossils using the Carbon-14 method. I find these articles to be extremely unconvincing. If you are interested I would be happy to go into detail.
I should have known since your creative tag line speaks to this. Thanks for taking a look at it, but if I may ask, what is it about that review that you come to the conclusion that there is not much science there? Whats wrong with the presentation by the man you posted to me and the other who is undoubtedly using the empirical approach?
"I tend to filter out the junk when researching it, which is about 99% of it. Evolution at best, is ONLY speculation."
Liar or troll. Take your pick, everyone.
Hmmm. That's a tough one.
Can the correct answer be "both"? I tend to lean that way whenever somebody repeats known falsehoods and debunked stories as truth.
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