Posted on 12/31/2005 12:41:23 PM PST by streetpreacher
| Darwin's Pyrrhic victory Posted: December 28, 2005
By Patrick J. Buchanan © 2005 Creators Syndicate Inc.
"Intelligent Design Derailed," exulted the headline. "By now, the Christian conservatives who once dominated the school board in Dover, Pa., ought to rue their recklessness in forcing biology classes to hear about 'intelligent design' as an alternative to the theory of evolution," declared the New York Times, which added its own caning to the Christians who dared challenge the revealed truths of Darwinian scripture. Noting that U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III is a Bush appointee, the Washington Post called his decision "a scathing opinion that criticized local school board members for lying under oath and for their 'breathtaking inanity' in trying to inject religion into science classes." But is it really game, set, match, Darwin? Have these fellows forgotten that John Scopes, the teacher in that 1925 "Monkey Trial," lost in court, and was convicted of violating Tennessee law against the teaching of evolution and fined $100? Yet Darwin went on to conquer public education, and American Civil Liberties Union atheists went on to purge Christianity and the Bible from our public schools.
The Dover defeat notwithstanding, the pendulum is clearly swinging back. Darwinism is on the defensive. For, as Tom Bethell, author of "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science," reminds us, there is no better way to make kids curious about "intelligent design" than to have some Neanderthal forbid its being mentioned in biology class. In ideological politics, winning by losing is textbook stuff. The Goldwater defeat of 1964, which a triumphant left said would bury the right forever, turned out to be liberalism's last hurrah. Like Marxism and Freudianism, Darwinism appears destined for the graveyard of discredited ideas, no matter the breathtaking inanity of the trial judge. In his opinion, Judge Jones the Third declared:
But if intelligent design is creationism or fundamentalism in drag, how does Judge Jones explain how that greatest of ancient thinkers, Aristotle, who died 300 years before Christ, concluded that the physical universe points directly to an unmoved First Mover? As Aristotle wrote in his "Physics": "Since everything that is in motion must be moved by something, let us suppose there is a thing in motion which was moved by something else in motion, and that by something else, and so on. But this series cannot go on to infinity, so there must be some First Mover." A man of science and reason, Aristotle used his observations of the physical universe to reach conclusions about how it came about. Where is the evidence he channeled the Torah and creation story of Genesis before positing his theory about a prime mover? Darwinism is in trouble today for the reason creationism was in trouble 80 years ago. It makes claims that are beyond the capacity of science to prove. Darwinism claims, for example, that matter evolved from non-matter – i.e., something from nothing – that life evolved from non-life; that, through natural selection, rudimentary forms evolved into more complex forms; and that men are descended from animals or apes. Now, all of this is unproven theory. And as the Darwinists have never been able to create matter out of non-matter or life out of non-life, or extract from the fossil record the "missing links" between species, what they are asking is that we accept it all on faith. And the response they are getting in the classroom and public forum is: "Prove it," and, "Where is your evidence?" And while Darwinism suggests our physical universe and its operations happened by chance and accident, intelligent design seems to comport more with what men can observe and reason to.
If, for example, we are all atop the Grand Canyon being told by a tour guide that nature, in the form of a surging river over eons of time, carved out the canyon, we might all nod in agreement. But if we ask how "Kilroy was here!" got painted on the opposite wall of the canyon, and the tour guide says the river did it, we would all howl. A retreating glacier may have created the mountain, but the glacier didn't build the cabin on top of it. Reason tells us the cabin came about through intelligent design. Darwinism is headed for the compost pile of discarded ideas because it cannot back up its claims. It must be taken on faith. It contains dogmas men may believe, but cannot stand the burden of proof, the acid of attack or the demands of science. Where science says, "No miracles allowed," Darwinism asks us to believe in miracles.
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I use fundamentalist to describe anyone who insists on the absolute authority of a foundational text, such as the Bible or Koran. I am not in the least interested in debating the absurd and obnoxious contention that your particular sectarian belief system is the only one that can provide a basis for morality.
Ayn Rand was a mediocre political philosopher at best, and wrote awful novels, but she had some success attracting people to libertarian ideas, for which she deserves kudos.
Watch out!!! They will swarm you with all sorts of statistics and computer animations proving that Darwin is correct! The people who worship at Darwin remind me of the Planned Parenthood zealots. HMM, I guess that baby growing in the mother's womb is simply some unwanted mutation.
Obviously, I agree with Pat on this one. Good for him to take a stand!!
2) It's almost absurd to ask if I'm 'against Hebrew schools'... I am for school choice and if Jewish parents choose a school to teach the Jewish faith, fine.
Well then, what the heck are you recommending that we teach in public schools? That is the issue. Not what is taught at home or in religious schools or in churchs or temples. What do you teach when you have a population that include non-Christians, and is supported by the tax dollars of Christians and non-Christians alike? What are you saying in real-life practical terms? And don't give me the "Christian nation" thing. Of course most of the founders were Christian. What the heck does that have to do with this issue?
I do not contend that. I do contend that all morality is an appeal to authority, and religious authorities are as valid as secular ones for public discussion. Moreover, secular disputes can be as intractible and violent as religious ones. So there is no reason to exclude religion from the public square.
Interesting! I think it should be given a chance.
Morality that derives from authority is no morality at all.
Absolutely, assuming they actually proposed research. In fact, individual ID advocates have published good papers; they just don't happen to be relevant to the ID argument.
It remains a mystery what would constitute ID research. No one in the ID movement seems to have any idea how to go about research that is specifically ID.
I know of at least one FReeper poster who follows the research closely and occasionally opines on unsolved problems in evolution theory, but unsolved problems are not disconfirming evidence.
We know the history of Mt. Rushmore is enormous detail. Try something we don't know.
How would you go about trying to figure out how the pyramids were built?
And that's utterly beside the point. I wasn't asking if you knew how Mount Rushmore was carved. I asked you if you thought it could be scientifically determined that something like Mount Rushmore could not, for all intents and purposes, have resulted from purely unintelligent forces.
Mount Rushmore is a far better subject for this particular exercise than the pyramids.
"Well then, what the heck are you recommending that we teach in public schools? That is the issue. Not what is taught at home or in religious schools or in churchs or temples. What do you teach when you have a population that include non-Christians, and is supported by the tax dollars of Christians and non-Christians alike? What are you saying in real-life practical terms?"
I have already given 2 practical propossals:
1) The ultimate local control is parental choice.
Each state should take their funding portion and give it directly to the parents to use for educational purposes as they wish, either public schools, private schools, charter public schools, etc. It would be irresponsible and wrong to force secularism on religious families as it would to force a particular religion on an irreligous one. Therefore, the system must include religious schools to be truly fair and equal. This amount in most states would be between $2500 and $4500, enough to pay for many schools.
Different public school districts can compete for students.
Local school boards should also augment those vouchers.
2) the teaching of religion even in public schools is possible without state funding, as follows: Let religious groups set up after-school religious education programs.
I noticed you havent commented on it, but it is certainly both a practical and non-threatening way to allow for religious instruction while maintaining 1st amendment freedom to worship.
3) I am recommending we teach more in public schools, they are woefully inadequate on many levels due to the grip of the educrat elites pushing PC rather than excellence and its monopoly status that prevent improvements.
Why? We know the history of Mt.Rushmore. What is the point of speculating about it?
We do mot know the history of the pyramids, but it is reasonable to assume they were built by men with technology consistent with their era.
But it is not certain that this is possible, and the details are unknown.
So I am asking you, is it reasonable to attempt to replicate some of the activities necessary to build pyramids with low tech equipment, or is it more reasonable to assert it can't be done; therefore aliens must have helped?
This is not a trivial or rhetorical question. I goes to the heart of how we learn things in science. It is also how forensic science works in criminal cases. It is not unusual to have crimes with no witnesses. In such cases we ask what is possible and what is likely. We often have to demonstrate that a scenario is possible by replicating its primary activities.
But we will never know for certain, even though we sometimes execute people based on less than the work of tens of thousands of investigators and less than 150 years of accumulated evidence.
I already addressed that point in my last post to you. You're avoiding the real point, and I think you know it.
Once again, I'm not asking if you know how Mount Rusmore was sculpted. I'm asking if it could be a proper scientific conclusion, based only on the fact of the faces' existence, without prior knowledge of how they came about, to say that they could not have come about from unintelligent forces only.
If you continue to avoid the question, then it will be obvious what the answer is.
Why is it that people think it is a miracle when faces appear on a piece of glass or a piece of toast? Why do people see faces and forms in clouds? I don't need to speculate about Mt.Rushmore because I know the history of Mt.Rushmore.
It is far more interesting to see people speculate about the magical origin of things that are most likely to be natural phenomena. This says something about people's tendency to read intelligence and design into natural objects.
If you think you can tell the origin of something from its appearence, let's talk about things where we don't know the exact origin.
You're welcome to the last word on this. I've made my point and don't care what you think.
You've made no point.
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