Posted on 10/14/2006 11:16:50 AM PDT by lizol
Keep Darwin's 'lies' out of Polish schools: education official 2 hours.
WARSAW (AFP) - Poland's deputy education minister called for the influential evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin not to be taught in the country's schools, branding them "lies."
"The theory of evolution is a lie, an error that we have legalised as a common truth," Miroslaw Orzechowski, the deputy minister in the country's right-wing coalition government, was quoted as saying by the Gazeta Wyborcza daily Saturday.
Orzechowski said the theory was "a feeble idea of an aged non-believer," who had come up with it "perhaps because he was a vegetarian and lacked fire inside him."
The evolution theory of the 19th-century British naturalist holds that existing animals and plants are the result of natural selection which eliminated inferior species gradually over time. This conflicts with the "creationist" theory that God created all life on the planet in a finite number.
Orzechowski called for a debate on whether Darwin's theory should be taught in schools.
"We should not teach lies, just as we should not teach bad instead of good, or ugliness instead of beauty," he said. "We are not going to withdraw (Darwin's theory) from the school books, but we should start to discuss it."
The deputy minister is a member of a Catholic far-right political group, the League of Polish Families. The league's head, Roman Giertych, is education minister in the conservative coalition government of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
Giertych's father Maciej, who represents the league in the European Parliament, organised a discussion there last week on Darwinism. He described the theory as "not supported by proof" and called for it be removed from school books.
The far-right joined the government in May when Kaczynski's ruling conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, after months of ineffective minority government, formed a coalition including LPR and the populist Sambroon party.
Roman Giertych has not spoken out on Darwinism, but the far-right politician's stance on other issues has stirred protest in Poland since he joined the government.
A school pupils' association was expected to demonstrate in front of the education ministry on Saturday to call for his resignation.
You have a problem when making pronouncements on science and having scientists and those that study science debating you?
Which man's view of God would you like taught?
No man's view, but God's view will do nicely. Let's just start with the 10 commandments and leave it at that. It seemed to work before, and if it wasn't broke, why did they "fix" it? If the 10 Commandments are so objectionable to one's religious sensibilities, he can homeschool his kids.
Is there something inherently religious about designers? I know a good many of them, and they don't appear to be supernatural in any way. Science does not have a means of discerning the difference between natural and supernatural in the first place, so your second assertion is absurd.
Two, the statements of the founders of your movement . . .
You flatter me in suggesting the movement is mine. As I read the documents to which you refer I see no reference either to a Christian God or to any efforts at evangelizing the world through the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Your zeal in painting intelligent design as an inherently Christian concept is misguided. Yes, the idea of intelligent design is in accord with Christian teaching, but it is certainly not coterminous with it.
Why do you limit the powers of your god so?
Others have said the same thing and I cannot help but wonder: Isn't it rather bass-ackwards to suggest it is more difficult to create a functioning universe over billions of years as opposed to six literal days?
Unlike you, I have no stake in this other than the advancement of science.
It would be better if your temerity extended to confessing your god openly rather than hiding behind semantics and federal law.
Well He wrote them.
Are they? So?
If so, this shows not what was claimed - that Christianity is responsible for all of science - but that other religions can adapt western institutional structure to their needs and *while retaining their own religious beliefs* contribute to modern science.
"Should not rather Western universities use Eastern gurus as scientific authorities?
The claim was that the science we use today is a result of the work of people with many belief systems and is in fact independent of the religious beliefs of those involved in it.
I did not say that non-western belief systems are the only or even the best way to go.
Why is it that some people jump to conclusions so readily?
Please, read for comprehension!
Please provide a link to the place where I told you to shove it. I have no memory of this exchange, nor does google. I do have freepmails where you initiated a discussion of my personal faith. I can post them if you like. I responded to your query politely and sincerely. It took a bit of courage to do that, considering we don't agree on much. Your response was to drop the dialog, after assuring me that you were actually interested in an exchange of ideas.
I also don't have any recollection of posting that you are an asshole, although I have called a couple of people assholes. Most recently it was one of your allies whose idea of a good argument is to tell people who disagree with him to kill themselves. Nice guy. Glad he's on your side.
Now I am going to ask you politely to post a link to the place where I told you to "shove it," or have the assertion deleted.
Where the heck did you get that idea?
"We need a new synthesis with the date, name of the author and defined claims. Science is not that different in this aspect from patent law.
It is very different.
What makes you think any theory should be date stamped and labeled?
What? 23 flavors aren't enough? Some people are never satisfied.
The ideal mix is about 70 (DP) / 30 (GA) with lots of ice.
What, you think Joe Schmoe down the street designed all life as we know it?
Science does not have a means of discerning the difference between natural and supernatural in the first place
Supernatural is outside the realm of the natural sciences, otherwise it would (if you just look at the word) be natural.
As I read the documents to which you refer I see no reference either to a Christian God or to any efforts at evangelizing the world through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I linked to the Wedge Document earlier. Notice in it that actual science is a small part. They run apologetics seminars for the believers to try to create a grass-roots movement. They've succeeded with that, and with it they have begun their end-run around science, using elected officials to enforce what they've failed to do scientifically.
Expanding on what I said before, the chief architect of that document, and the founder of the ID movement, Phillip Johnson, said in his book Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds,
Darwinian theory isn't true. ... where might you get the truth? ... I start with John 1:1. In the beginning was the word. In the beginning was intelligence, purpose, and wisdom. The Bible had that right. And the materialist scientists are deluding themselves."Yeah, ID has nothing to do with religion.
Your zeal in painting intelligent design as an inherently Christian concept is misguided.
From the document, the audience is "our natural constituency, namely, Christians." Sure, other religions have various beliefs and philosophies that may include their deity guiding life to the forms it is in now, but they haven't labeled it ID and tried to push it as science.
Why do you have to be rude?
It's rather hypocritical to complain about nastiness and then call people "morons."
How's that plank feel in your eye?
Sure it does. To falsify something is to present a condition opposite or contrary to what is predicted or expected. Intelligent design predicts order. The absence of intelligent design, therefore, predicts chaos.
You have anything to add besides lame attacks?
I'm no enemy of Christianity.
I'm an enemy of bad science.
And you want science to prove God exists. Why?
I don't need science to make itself bigger than God. Science has its place.
What "evidence all around you" disproves evolution and proves special creation?
That's a lie.
Out of the two religious belief systems, which one is more compatible with science? The one that the world is created by God as real and material, having beginning and the end and ruled by the consistent intelligible laws, or the second that the visible world is an illusion or a dream distracting from the ultimate reality?
"...as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by [a] belief [...] (Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos)
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