Posted on 06/21/2006 8:33:46 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
In a veiled attack on creationism, the world's foremost academies of science on Wednesday called on parents and teachers to provide children with the facts about evolution and the origins of life on Earth.
A declaration signed by 67 national academies of science blasted the scriptural teaching of biology as a potential distortion of young minds.
"In various parts of the world, within science courses taught in certain public systems of education, scientific evidence, data and testable theories about the origins and evolution of life on Earth are being concealed, denied or confused with theories not testable by science," the declaration said.
"We urge decision-makers, teachers and parents to educate all children about the methods and discoveries of science and to foster an understanding of the science of nature.
"Knowledge of the natural world in which they live empowers people to meet human needs and protect the planet."
Citing "evidence-based facts" derived from observation, experiment and neutral assessment, the declaration points to findings that the Universe is between 11 and 15 billion years old, and the Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago.
Life on Earth appeared at least 2.5 billion years ago as a result of physical and chemical processes, and evolved into the species that live today.
"Commonalities in the structure of the genetic code of all organisms living today, including humans, clearly indicate their common primordial origin," it said.
The statement does not name any names or religions, nor does it explain why it fears the teaching of evolution or the scientific explanation for the origins of planetary life are being sidelined.
Signatories of the declaration include the US National Academy of Sciences, Britain's Royal Society, the French Academy of Sciences and their counterparts in Canada, China, Germany, Iran, Israel and Japan and elsewhere.
It comes, however, in the context of mounting concern among biologists about the perceived influence of creationism in the United States.
Evangelical Christians there are campaigning hard for schools to teach creationism or downgrade evolution to the status of one of a competing group of theories about the origins of life on Earth.
According to the website Christian Post (www.christianpost.com), an opinion poll conducted in May by Gallop found that 46 percent of Americans believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years or so.
Scientists say hominids emerged around six million years ago and one of their offshoots developed into anatomically modern man, Homo sapiens, about 200,000 years ago, although the timings of both events are fiercely debated.
Nearly every religion offers an explanation as to how life began on Earth.
Fundamentalist Christians insist on a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis in the Bible, in which God made the world in seven days, culminating in the creation of the first two humans, Adam and Eve.
A variation of this is called "intelligent design" which acknowledges evolution but claims that genetic mutations are guided by God's hand rather than by Charles Darwin's process of natural selection.
US President George W. Bush said last August that he believed in this concept and that he supported its teaching in American schools.
The academies' statement says that science does not seek to offer judgements of value or morality, and acknowledges limitations in current knowledge.
"Science is open-ended and subject to correction and expansion as new theoretical and empirical understanding emerges," it adds.
- Isaac Watts
My new twin granddaughters, born just nine hours ago.
There is more to life, Mssrs. Darwin and Dawkins, than your cramped and bigoted faith claims can begin to refute or deny. Though you be willfully deaf and blind, the greater and best part of life looks through your benighted souls and sings powerfully and wonderfully with the voice of an angel.
GW - I remember the thread. The culture was grown in a continuous culture - turbidostat, IIRC and you got the general gist. I couldn't find a post of mine in such a thread, but I may have been just lurking. This was not speciation, though, but a great example of the rapidity of adaptation by microbes that could very well be a first step in speciation.
The Nylon Bug thing is quite different. It is actually a misnomer since the bug doesn't really eat nylon, but small "nylon-mers". It was from a group of Japanese researchers and the enzyme was probably recruited from another function, because IIRC it had a very high Km, showing very poor affinity for the nylon oligomers. But this showed how a new function can be derived from a protein that has quite a different function. For more on recruitment see the old papers of E.C.C. Lin on enzyme recruitment - classics in the development of new capabilities from old genetic information.
Perhaps you had a Biology textbook which covered more than just evolution. You know, like steps 1 through n...
Why are you wasting your writing talent on crevo threads?
You could get rich writing marketing copy for the Clapper for regional ads in California; or re-writing the Bible for liberal denominations such as the Episcopals.
Cheers!
Just thinking, what would they make of this?
I also dislike name calling, such as the indiscriminate use of the word "crevo" as a put down. We can do better than that, and we should.
You don't even *want* to know the half-life of chocolate when it is in my presence.
Cheers!
People who teach their children silly creation myths in place of science should be charged with child abuse.
You're kidding right? No one can really be that willfully ignorant and still be able to type a message.
It is a contraction of CReationist/EVOlutionist. I see it as purely descriptive.
1) Assuming for the nonce that the inflationary model is true, did inflation only occur in spacetime? What happened to the other dimensions (e.g. those of which Brian Greene and the superstring folks speak of)?
When you are in a black hole, likewise,what happens to those other dimensions? (Does Minkowski space 'shrink' so that it becomes similar in scale to the other collapsed dimensions)?
3) Can we have a Lisa Randall picture please?
Cheers!
Evolution is evolution. There's no micro/macro to it.
The subtitle reads "How to make a tiny person with tools you probably have around the home".
Cheers!
You're talking about a mixed assortment of heavily plagiarized, mistranslated, later day reselected, heavily damaged and partially reassembled scrolls handed down from various tribes of middle-eastern sandal wearing bronze age goat herders. If you believe it's useful as a modern day science book, you've got a huge problem.
Yah sure, you betcha.
Flippin' sweet!
Cheers!
I did not admit the Bible contains factual errors. I did state that there have been errors - the term "factual" is yours. If you go back and look at what errors may exist in English translations - you will find primarily that they are grammatical/ and other errors that go back to the 1611 KJV, and even to that volume's predecessor.
Thus the reason I use more th an one translation plus a Greek parallel - to conpare for myself.
I believe that the Bible that is available today contains zero errors of fact or content. Any possible errors are strictly related to printing/typographical errors.
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