Posted on 02/20/2006 10:58:43 AM PST by curiosity
ST. LOUIS, Missouri (Reuters) - American scientists fighting back against creationism, intelligent design and other theories that seek to deny or downgrade the importance of evolution have recruited unlikely allies -- the clergy.
And they have taken their battle to a new level, trying to educate high school and even elementary school teachers on how to hold their own against parents and school boards who want to mix religion with science.
While they feel they have won the latest round against efforts to bring God into the classroom, the scientists say they have little doubt their opponents are merely regrouping.
"It's time to recognize that science and religion should never be pitted against one another," American Association for the Advancement of Science President Gilbert Omenn told a news conference on Sunday. The AAAS has held several sessions on the evolution issue at its annual meeting in St. Louis.
"The faith community needs to step up to the plate," agreed Eugenie Scott, Executive Director, National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California.
Scott said many people held the "toxic" idea that "you are either a Christian creationist or you are a bad-guy atheist".
Recent court and electoral battles have made clear that judges and voters will reject efforts to sneak creationism into the classroom under the guise of making a scientific curriculum clearer or fairer, Scott said.
By a vote of 11 to 4, the Ohio Board of Education last week pulled a model lesson plan it had approved in 2004. The plan had permitted science teachers to encourage students to look at questions about evolution, something proponents of "intelligent design" call "teaching the controversy."
Last year in Pennsylvania, a federal court ruled the theory could not be taught in a public school and the school board in Dover, Pennsylvania, which approved the teaching, was voted out.
Intelligent design proponents see the hand of God behind evolution because, they say, life is too complex to be random.
"As a legal strategy intelligent design is dead. It will be very difficult for any school district in the future to successfully survive a legal challenge," Scott said. "That doesn't mean intelligent design is dead as a very popular social movement. This is an idea that has got legs."
But pastors are speaking out against it. Warren Eschbach, a retired Church of the Brethren pastor and professor at Lutheran Theological Seminary in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania helped sponsor a letter signed by more than 10,000 other clergy.
"We believe that the theory of evolution is a foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests," they wrote.
Catholic experts have also joined the movement.
"The intelligent design movement belittles God. It makes God a designer, an engineer," said Vatican Observatory Director George Coyne, an astrophysicist who is also ordained. "The God of religious faith is a god of love. He did not design me."
Gerry Wheeler, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association said some teachers feared losing their jobs if they taught evolution. "The pressures come from the students and the parents," he said.
So was shorthand.
The community in response threw the school board out.
Well, maybe. But that was the proper and fitting way for the decision to be made.
I hope you are not equating the two.
Well, maybe. But that was the proper and fitting way for the decision to be made.
Well the other problem is that ID isn't really science it is? Intelligent design is just another name for creationism. That is a religious belief not a scientific one. The fact that people have been pushing it as science is just a way to wedge religion into the schools. If that is what you want... well ok... but be warned that your particular beliefs are not the only game in town.
Scientology is gaining ground for example in all sorts of places. They were VERY present at a shelter I worked at in Baton Rouge after Katrina. They were not supposed to be there but had "befriended" the Baton Rouge mayor and gained his support. Their so called scientific beliefs says that an intergalactic leader named Xenu enslaved a bunch of souls here on Earth in humans and it is why we have all these psychosis problems.
If you set a precedent for teaching a non-scientific belief as science, then you open the door for other organizations, such as the Scientologists with their rich supporters, to do the same. It might sound like a stretch, but that is exactly where we would be heading.
Nicely put!
Intelligent Design. You either recognize it or you do not recognize it. ID is obvious to many vs accidentalism which is obvious to many. You either see it or you don't.
You did. They are both subjects.
Well the other problem is that ID isn't really science it is? Intelligent design is just another name for creationism.
Wrong. And on the subject of rich man and poor man, they both count as one vote.
When it comes to Scripture and Science - yep
There is only one Biblical creation story...it is consistent with reality.
You did not cite any "creation" stories - all are variations of evolution stories.
I'd prefer they clean their own house a bit first. Wonder if we'll see this lede:
American scientists are recruiting American scientist to fight back against scientist that use evolution to seek to deny or downgrade the existence or importance of the religious sphere of knowledge.
Doubt what you like. That is your right. You just need to mingle with more evolutionary scientists who make at least some attempt at being intellectually honest. Perhaps the source of your doubt is that you do not mingle with enough of intellectually honest evolutionary scientists regularly?
(Q): As a Christian do you also agree with the vatican "astrophysisist" that God did not design you? I suspect he calls himself a "Christian" too. (A): Depends on what you mean by "design." If you mean He drew up precise plans of what man would look like, and then poofed it into existence, no.
You are correct and in agreement with Scripture to say that man was not “poofed” into existence. God indeed had a pre-conceived design for man that did not depend upon the design of anything else God created in order to design man. What part about “…God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them (Gen 1:27) do you find most difficult for you to accept? Seems you might have a problem accepting that God did not use an animal as His model for a predicate design, but instead chose to use Himself?
If you think Genesis 1 cannot be taken literally, how about Genesis 5:1 – “This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God made he him.” Or how about Genesis 9:6 where it says: “Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man.” Need I go on?
Or when David writes in Psalm 139:13, “For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb,” what design for man do propose he used in David’s case, if in your mind it has any possibility of differing from the image of God? We could ask Him, after all “… it is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves.” (Psalm 100:3).
Rather, God designed the evolutionary process that eventually led to Man.
Please reconcile the evolutionary contention with the contrasting statement found in Gen 1:27 above, and the fact that Christ, the Creator, himself, as much as quotes this very fact as noted Matthew 19:4?
I agree, the astrophysicist's statement was poorly worded, but I suspect he means what I mean above.
“Poorly worded?” It was parroting exactly of that kind of sloppy thinking that caused the early Roman church leaders to buy into the line peddled by the scientifically fashionable Hellenists of their day who sold them on the notions of geo-centrism of the universe and flat-earth fallacies that post-Reformation scientific inquiry later roundly debunked. I’m sure those members of the early church who bought the “scientific” falsehoods of their time were concerned with how their evangelical outreach was being perceived, even as you are.
(Q):The Christian knows that death entered the world by one man's sin, even as Paul writes in the book of Romans. Do you, as Christian believe this? (A)Yes.
Evolutionary premise contends that death has always been a part of life in this universe. Fossils allegedly millions of years older than the supposed first appearance of man in Africa – as you claimed in your post – manifest not only death but in many instances show evidence of disease, decay, and physical deformation. If death came by one man’s sin, as we agree, please explain how death and affliction are clearly present at a time when by your own reckoning man is not supposed to even be in existence, let alone committing any manner of first sin? Please use scripture in your answer to back up your statements if possible.
I don't believe He meant the six days to be literal, human days. A literal interpretation of this passage would fly in the face of not only evolutionary science, but geology, physics, astronomy, and about half a dozen other fields.
Since we are talking about what it is that you happen to believe, are the ten commandments the Law as God wrote it or are they merely ten suggestions peppered in places with allegory? Do you also pick and choose which commandments you happen to believe God means for you to take literally and which ones He supposedly doesn’t?
The word for “day” as used in the Exodus 20:11, which I quoted from the ten commandments, is the same word used in Genesis 1 to describe each day of Creation --- even and as it is used in every other place in the Hebrew Scripture in the literal context and usage of the word, “day.” It is the same word the finger of God used to write the word, “day(s)”, in the tablets of stone (Exodus 31:18). In each usage the word is a fixed unit of time corresponding to evening and morning for a typical 24-hour day. Can you show me in the Hebrew Scripture where it is used differently?
(Q): As a Christian, who in your opinion is right -- the Creator who designed it all in the beginning or today's speculators who clearly were not? (A): Both are right, modern scientists as well as the authors of the Torah. It is the Biblical literalists who are mistaken. God doesn't lie either in his Word or his creation, but man's interpretation of the Word is frequently wrong.
Correct you are: God does not lie. His Word is truth -- and his commandments are true. What I find most amazing sometimes is how Christians readily believe Christ did miracles here on Earth and that He literally died on the cross and rose from the dead, but as the Creator of the universe He could not possibly have created the universe in six literal days although the finger of God Himself wrote so quite plainly, because man desires to say otherwise. C’mon, Curiosity, why do you feel compelled to play word games? Will you exchange the vain imaginations of man for the truth of God? As scientists, we all have the same testable physical evidence. An evolutionist has no more physical evidence to study than does a creationist. Physical evidence simply does not support the evolutionary premise.
Famous evolutionary geologists, and paleontologists have plainly admitted it, although they continue to cling to their faith in the evolutionary premise, despite the evidence to the contrary. As far as they are concerned the evolutionary premise is all they’ve got, because it is all they want to have – not because the evidence in any way substantiates their premise. Physical evidence does not contradict the creationist’s premise. Most evolutionists find this point to be particularly galling.
Jesus Christ without exception endorsed the writings of Moses as true…. Yes, and I accept them as true as well. Jesus never, however, said that every single verse was intended to be taken literally. Nor did he say that the authors of the Torah didn't use metaphor and allegory.
Are you’re now trying to tell me that He had to? You accept the writings of Moses as true just not literally true – and neither did Christ, is that it? And you read this in Scripture where exactly? Christ, the Creator of the universe, in prayer to His Father declared, “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” (John 17:17) --- but by your preference only sometimes, right? In your mind are the ten commandments the Law, or is God merely writing in an allegorical sense? We had a US president once who was profoundly confused about the meaning of the word “is.” It appears that as a Christian you are parsing the meaning of the word, “truth,” to the point of your own personal confusion -- and as only Satan the author of confusion would have it, I might add.
(Q) Genesis is the first book containing the writings of Moses. Do you, as a Christian have a problem with Christ's affirmation of the writings of Moses? (A)Nope.
Actually, I think you do. And not only with the writings of Moses.
(Q)”Jesus Christ, speaking specifically in the context of man, declared that He who made them in the beginning made the male and female. As a Christian, please square the words of Jesus Christ -- the Creator Himself, with the "solid science" of evolution that you believe to be true." (A): Well, you as a Biblical literalist should have just as much trouble squaring it as I do, for if you take Genesis literally, human beings were not created in the beginning. They came on the 6th day.
I see. As I just said you don’t only have a problem with the writings of Moses. You do have a problem with what Christ said after all. Your objection is not so much with me, or other literalists, as you term us. Your problem is with the words of Christ, Himself. But, you see, I already knew that. It is Christ who says “at the beginning.” But then, unlike you, or I, or any of today’s scientists, He was there at the beginning.
I have no difficulty at all taking Christ at His word, either as a scientist or as a Christian. Jesus Christ is the Creator of the Universe and all that is in it – including man. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.” (John 1:1-3).
Obviously, therefore, Jesus did not mean that males and females were present at the very beginning of creation. He was talking about the beginning of the human race, and indeed, both males and females were present when the human species emerged in Africa some 200,000 years ago.
Christ refers to the Creation as “the beginning.” John 1 refers to the Creation as “the beginning.” Genesis 1 starts, “In the beginning…” And you, who calls himself a Christian, have a problem with that? Christ didn’t know what He was talking about, Moses didn’t know what he was talking about, and St. John didn’t know what he was talking about -- is that it? I take it that you know something Christ Himself does not know about how He created man or that He was somehow just incapable of getting the story straight to satisfy the vain imaginations of man? But by contrast unregenerate imperfect man knows what he’s talking about in spite of the fact that at best he has only 3.5 lbs of grey mater to conceptualize this universe, whose perspective at best merely “sees through a glass darkly,” whose “truth” is an ever moving target, and as the natural, sinful man he is, is afflicted with the tendency to be at odds with his Creator? “Let God be true and every man a liar.” (Romans 3:4)
What is sadly obvious is that like those who compromised with Hellenists of the past you too have a problem taking Christ at his Word and the Scriptures at face value for fear that unregenerate man, and possibly the popular “scientific” MSM will somehow think less of you – and Conservatism, if you don’t. As anyone who has been a Conservative for any respectable amount of time knows Conservatism never needed the accolades of the MSM – political, scientific, religious or otherwise in any of its manifestations to be successful. In fact conservatism has transcended the popular media, and it is the popular media who are in decline. Conservatism is winning in the arena of ideas.
Similarly, the real and honest study of science will trump what is left of fashionably popular evolutionary approaches and explanations regarding matters of science. Why should the true pursuit of science have anything to fear from what the High Priests of Darwinism think together with their self-validating love affair with an increasingly incestuous and discredited MSM? Evolution is well on its way to a very certain and embarrassing scientific shellacking. Are you prepared to be among to theosophic compromisers who like that Vatican “astrophysisist” will be left holding the flat-earth bag of yesterday’s Hellenists, even as more readily testable and observable science continues to pass you by, along with your like-minded albeit atheistic allies?
placemarker for further reading...
It will also trump the BS spewed by the thousands of creationist websites.
You said: It will also trump the BS spewed by the thousands of creationist websites.
Well, if it isn't that famous poster of dead darwinist spam links to that failed med-student wannabe and mere theologian Chuckie D's gardening commentaries, ol' js1138 himself! Prepare to be impaled upon your own words -- again.
In a posting to me on May 6, 2005 you declared: "I'm not dancing. Science isn't about truth...." Well, maybe not your study of science at least. If science is not about studies which at their core are founded in pursuit of truthful answers all you evolutionists will ever have is the self-validating BS you guys continually belch, and still fewer are willing to believe anymore.
Even your own evo-"High Priests" have an epiphany from time to time. For instance, atheist Harvard paleontologist SJ Gould declared Lyell's uniformitarians had "pulled a fast one" on geologists, when the evidence in the Scablands of Washington State was looked at in its entirety and it pointed to catastrophism, and not uniformitarianism. Gould pointed out that because catastrophism didn't fit what he termed to be the popular "doctrine" (Gould's religious sounding words, not mine) the truth to which the evidence pointed was dismissed out of hand. Global evidence of polysrtate fossils puts the lie to rabid adherence to any honest scientist's uniformitarianist premises. Too few of those on your side are as honest as Gould was here.
Since we chatted last T. Rex fossils with intact soft tissues have been found -- blows away that 70 MM year old age idea from the get go. You've had van Zeiten's putrified "fossil" frauds -- 200 year old skulls peddled off to an unquestioning, self-validating scientific community as 27,500 years old. Ever ask your boys how they could be so wrong and remain suckers for so long? I'll tell you why. It's because you wanted van Zeiten to be right, that's why. He was only exposed because he defrauded his creditors, not because any one of your lazy asses exposed him for what he was at the outset. That only came out later.
You can continue to ignore the fact that it has been demonstrated and observed that fossils can be formed in matters of days or hours, and crystalline structures left behind the eruption of Mount St Helens 25 years ago were erroneously dated at millions of years old in blinded tests. Your pathetic little temple of materialism is crumbling down around your knees, as your willful ignorance continues to blind your scientific objectivity.
Those such as yourselves whose pursuit of science is not founded in the search for truth will continue to prove yourselves to be the suckers you have been all along.
1. As good an example as it gets of the ignorant spew coming from creationist sites.
2. There is no contradiction between uniformitarianism and occasional catastrophes. The rule of uniformatarianism is that presently observable process are the key to understanding the past.
3. Please cite the journal reference where items were misdated. While you are at it, explain to me how you know they were misdated. By what standard are you judging?
No, ID isn't quite another name for creationism. The 'designer' (or designers) could be space aliens, or an intelligent mechanism built into the universe, or the earth. Creationism implies a specific monotheistic theological commitment, ID doesn't (per se, though I've not noticed any 'Gaia hypothesis IDers' running around).
The real reason ID isn't science is that it doesn't start with a scientific theory of intelligence. (It could, at which point the "ID isn't science" and especially the "ID can't be science" arguments collapse.)
You said: 1. As good an example as it gets of the ignorant spew coming from creationist sites.
Boil in your own bile, pal. You have no explanation for evidence contradictory to your position -- you never do; evidence I might also add that you and others like you would just as soon ignore.
You said 2. There is no contradiction between uniformitarianism and occasional catastrophes. The rule of uniformatarianism is that presently observable process are the key to understanding the past.
In case you missed it that was your boy Stevie J. Gould debunking Lyellian uniformitarianism in the example. Not an insignificant example I might add, in that the formation in question stretches over three Northwest US States and portions of Canada. I suppose one could classify the catastrophic global flood of Noah's time as a singularly "occasional" event.
Grand Canyon formations scream catastrophism and rapid deposition of the observed strata formations. It's only a matter of time before the USGS comes to their senses on this one too. Sadly, it took them 50 years to set aside uniformitarian biases to finally admit the truth of the Scablands formations.
The "rule" of uniformitarianism as you call it particularly when extrapolating it from geology to other general contexts stretches one's credibility. It is the kind of simplistic thought process one might expect from a lawyer, such as Lyell was, but certainly not for a thinking scientist in command of what should be his unbiased powers of observation.
You said: 3. Please cite the journal reference where items were misdated. While you are at it, explain to me how you know they were misdated. By what standard are you judging?
How do I know they were misdated? Why don't I let you be the standard and just ask you. Were you alive when Mt St Helens blew in 1980? If not, I know I was, as were millions of other Americans. You can ask us. The eruption has been thoroughly documented, and if you still have doubts and it wouldn't challenge whatever powers of research you can summon too terribly much perhaps you can just look it up.
Quoting directly from the link below: "Potassium and argon were measured in the five concentrates by Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, Massachusetts, under the direction of Richard Reesman, the K-Ar laboratory manager. These preparations were submitted to Geochron Laboratories with the statement that they came from dacite, and that the lab should expect ‘low argon’. No information was given to the lab concerning where the dacite came from or that the rock has a historically known age (ten years old at the time of the argon analysis)." (Technical Journal, Vol 10, Number 3).
Results of blinded K-Ar tests on samples of 10 year-old crystallized lava ranged from 300,000 to 2.8 million years.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v10/i3/argon.asp
Your side seriously needs to question your assumptions, otherwise you'll simply have to be content with continually losing your credibility in these debates since you don't.
Well, then it would seem that SETI is not science.
Your characterization of the dino fossil is baloney. Ignorant spew. There is no dino meat. There has never been an assertion of dino meat or any problem with traditional dating of dino fossils. You can't read and can't think.
In case you missed it that was your boy Stevie J. Gould debunking Lyellian uniformitarianism in the example.
More ignorant spew. The grand canyon has no feature that supports or is consistent with a global flood. Geologists have known since long before Darwin that the evidence is not consistent with a global flood.
Your dating example is a setup. The material was sent to a laboratory that explicitly states it is not equipped to provide the service requested (specifically because it produces the kind of nonsense results that happened.)
The moderators have forbidden me to characterize your post, so, I'll leave it at that.
The most crucial difference between SETI and ID is that SETI admits up front that it hasn't found what it's looking for.
Actually, SETI really isn't scientific. It, like ID, operates on the basis of a priori probability estimates, which are necessarily both unfalsifiable and unconfirmable (sort of the worst of all possible worlds scientifically).
The idea that purportedly improbable regularities signify intelligent action is at the basis of both, and is rot.
How, if one found, say, a 'first thousand binary digits of pi' repeating beacon 850 light years hence, would you either verify it had an intelligent source or disconfirm it? Sure 'in principle' one could build a self-sustaining starship and send it off, wait a few millenia and one's descendants might get word that there was a city on a planet at the other end, or a really wierd orbital configuration of neutron stars, or whatever. But 'in principle' one could reproduce conditions for an evolutionary event and rerun it to falsify ID.
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