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.
They have published detailed accounts of how it may have evolved. But these are not on any of the creationist scam sites you visit.
WHOA!! Hang on Omaha! I'm one of the good guys! That goes to Diamond (which takes millions of years to produce.)
WHOA!! Let's see. Note to myself. Review Preview before hitting post.
and .. uummm.. that proves.. umm whut?
I'll go ahead and give you 1/2 a cool point for providing a pic. You get 1 full cool point if you can prove chaos is ID.
I told you where you can find it. FR does not have the bandwidth or disk space to handle it. I'm sure you understand that.
That's fair enough. So I would like to see your professional articles, or if that's outside your professional area, any professional articles on the origin of the bacterial flagellum.
He seems to have disappearead after #618.
I addressed this article in #608.
Cordially,
A citation would use about as much bandwidth and diskspace as this sentence.
Cordially,
I have not claimed to have any professional expertise in microbiology to give my opinion added weight. So trying to turn my words here back on me is without foundation.
Cordially,
Cordially,
The library is the citation - have fun!
You addressed it and mailed it, but the envelop is empty. Exactly where is the article wrong?
Nothing at all wrong with wondering that, but the problem of evil is not a scientific question, and the existense of evil and imperfection doesn't provide positive evidence FOR evolution.
One thing I wondered aloud about, on this very thread in fact, is why some evolutionists, from Darwin on down, consider arguments that they constantly make for evolution based on what God would or wouldn't do concerning what is found in nature "scientific", and automatically consider arguments for God or creation based upon what is found in nature unscientific.
Cordially,
Exactly where is the article wrong?
Yes, like those bona fide demonstrations, shown in the lab, of one species changing into another. Oh, wait...never mind. ;-)
The envelope is not empty. It has a little link in it:
Evolving the Bacterial Flagellum Through Mutation and Cooption
After you've read that I'll be happy to discuss the contents of both articles with you.
Cordially,
Because they are not scientific. They are musings, nothing more. Sort of like the tribesman that first sees the airplane go overhead. The local missionary taught him about God and angels but not about aerodynamics so he assumes that the plane is a product of ID held up by angels happy in the thought that he has solved one of the mysteries of the universe.
How plausible is the scenario that we are debating one on one here considering the billions of people on the earth. EGAD. The fact that in all the millions of years of life on earth and the billions of people that have ever lived, we are two together. The odds of that happening must be like, enormous. Too large to have happened. Must be ID!
One might, of course, raise the objection that I have not provided a detailed, step-by-step explanation of the evolution of the flagellum. Isn't such an explanation required to dispose of the biochemical argument from design?
In a word, no. Not unless the argument has allowed itself to be reduced to a mere observation that an evolutionary explanation of the eubacterial flagellum has yet to be written. I would certainly agree with such a statement. However, the contention made by Behe is quite different from this – it is that evolution cannot explain the flagellum in principle (because its multiple components have no selectable function). By demonstrating the existence of such functions, even in just a handful of components, we have invalidated the argument.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.