Posted on 06/04/2008 7:00:22 AM PDT by King of Florida
DALLAS — Opponents of teaching evolution, in a natural selection of sorts, have gradually shed those strategies that have not survived the courts. Over the last decade, creationism has given rise to “creation science,” which became “intelligent design,” which in 2005 was banned from the public school curriculum in Pennsylvania by a federal judge.
Now a battle looms in Texas over science textbooks that teach evolution, and the wrestle for control seizes on three words. None of them are “creationism” or “intelligent design” or even “creator.”
The words are “strengths and weaknesses.”
Starting this summer, the state education board will determine the curriculum for the next decade and decide whether the “strengths and weaknesses” of evolution should be taught. The benign-sounding phrase, some argue, is a reasonable effort at balance. But critics say it is a new strategy taking shape across the nation to undermine the teaching of evolution, a way for students to hear religious objections under the heading of scientific discourse.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
next up, strengths and weakness of challenging the government IRON FISTED ENFORCEMENT of the humanist religion of evolutionism being taught in GOVERNMENT RUN ‘public’ schools.
Oh my goodness! Now we cannot discuss the strengths and weaknesses of evolution as a theory.
And yes!
Lets discuss the strengths and weaknesses of gravitational theory. That’s how we came about the theory in the first place. That’s also how we will develop better theories in the future.
What is wrong with people?
Well, not exactly. A strength of evolution may be the recognition that some changes to species have been more beneficial and thus survived. A weakness may be the extrapolated claim that therefore all life has a common descent from one “thing”.
The old saw about gravity just clutters the room with a mis-matched analogy.
No doubt.
After researching this issue in-depth, I have found an amazing intolerance upon the part of Darwinian proponents to even consider that there may be other explanations. They absolutely hold without wavering that godless forces are the ONLY explanation for what exists. However, the arguments to the contrary are extremely powerful and are, in-fact, much more reasonable and fact-based than the materialistic yearnings of the Darwinists.
As for intelligent design being a “creationist” movement, the critics really need to look at some of the leaders of the movement. Michael Behe is a secular, agnostic Jew, for example. He just happens to be honest enough to look at the evidence for himself without presupposing anything.
Yeah - let’s let high school kids hash it out!
Did Hillary teach these jokers to keep changing the rules until the result comes out the way you want, or did they teach her?
Well, duh -- when every attempt to be reasonable results in unilateral concessions that the other side uses as a baseline for additional "reasonable" concessions, the only sane thing to do is to refuse to play their game.
More quality representations of my argument.
In reality, that is what is happening because public education is that bad. It basically does let kids hash it out.
They certainly get to hash it out on sex ed.
But please, make sure you have your ‘Evolution proves there is no God’ high school teacher lead the fair minded discussion. I have seen so many of those pathetic performances in my own school.
Hey, if you don’t want to believe in God— don’t. But don’t use Evolution as your ultimate whipping device to interfere with decisions others have made to believe.
That is what is going on here— Insecure atheists who cannot cope with a world of uncertainty.
I'm sure that geology, nuclear physics, astronomy, etc, all have "strengths and weaknesses".
Geez. Is there something in the water in Texas?
Discussing possible concerns about Evolution is not the sort of thing that the teachers unions are going to accept.
And on marches the Lying for Jesus movement.
Offer scientific evidence of an alternative and we will pay attention
Scientifically speaking, life on earth was seeded by aliens. We are their reserve food source in the future. Quite scary, but true.
Weaknesses: A bunch of people who would rather deny the evidence of their senses than accept that Genesis is a parable.
Back in Galileo's time maybe they should have discussed the strengths and weaknesses of the Heliocentric model.
Strength: It explains observations more elegantly than epicycles within epicycles and fits withing the theory of the universal gravitational attraction of matter.
Weaknesses: A bunch of people would rather deny the evidence of their senses than to admit that their egocentric model of geocentricism is a faulty interpretation of Scripture.
Would a science textbook presenting a head-to-head comparison of the "strengths and weaknesses" of the scientific evidence for the ToE against a literal interpretaion of Genesis be a good thing?
ALIENS DID IT!
BEN STEIN: What do you think is the possibility that Intelligent Design might turn out to be the answer to some issues in genetics or in evolution.
RICHARD DAWKINS: Well, it could come about in the following way. It could be that at some earlier time, somewhere in the universe, a civilization evolved, probably by some kind of Darwinian means, probably to a very high level of technology, and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now, um, now that is a possibility, and an intriguing possibility. And I suppose it’s possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry, molecular biology, you might find a signature of some sort of designer.
The opponents find their arguments are evolving.
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