Posted on 08/18/2008 9:35:10 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
With five seats on the State Board of Education up for grabs this year, education advocates say how children learn about evolution hangs in the balance -- and who voters choose could affect Kansas' national reputation.
A frequent flip-flop between moderate and conservative majorities on the 10-member board has resulted in the state changing its science standards four times in the past eight years.
Conservatives have pushed for standards casting doubt on evolution, and moderates have said intelligent design does not belong in the science classroom.
In 2007, a new 6-4 moderate majority removed standards that called evolution into question.
This year, none of the three moderates whose seats are up for election are running again. Only one of the two conservative incumbents is running for re-election...
(Excerpt) Read more at kansas.com ...
I've read a lot of those answers. The problem with them, for me, is that they don't fit together into a coherent explanation the way the old earth-big universe-consistent speed of light-evolution package does. Rather, they tend to be a bunch of one-off explanations for each phenomenon, and they don't have anything to do with each other. Somebody succeeds in forcing a tree to grow two rings in a year under very specific conditions, so maybe those conditions existed in the past long enough to throw off tree ring dating. Maybe the speed of light used to be different. Maybe carbon 14 used to decay at a different rate. But these things don't have anything to do with each other--they don't hang together to paint a consistent picture of how the universe works.
So yeah, maybe God built in a bunch of exceptions to the natural processes we observe. And maybe He happened to choose exceptions that pointed to the wrong answers, for reasons best known to Himself. But we're always told that science is based on the Christian view of a rational, consistent God. Except when he wasn't?
Well, if you can't be wrong there's no point in arguing with you. The only choices are to agree with you, or make sure we never cross paths.
There are indeed godless liberal interpretations though...there’s nothing at all normal about homosexuality, life doesn’t begin at conception, global warming and so on.
godless liberalism is dangerous and destructive and nothing to laugh at!
==Anyone who thinks the Scientific “evidence” supports a young earth is sorely deluding themselves and engaged fully in apologetics, not Science.
Are we just supposed to take your word for it? Given your lack of evidence, not to mention the fact that your Darwinian assumptions keep getting falsified over and over, it would appear that it is you who are “fully engaged in (Darwinian) apologetics.”
==There is no “Darwinist” interpretation of Geology, there is the Geologist interpretation of Geology. There is no “Darwinist” interpretation of Astronomy, there is the Astronomer interpretation of Astronomy. There is not a “Darwinist” interpretation of Physics, there is the Physicist interpretation of Physics.
In this case, I take “Darwinist” to be synonymous with philosophic naturalism. The age of the earth is a crucial parameter with respect to naturalistic explanations in virtually every area of science. This includes geology, biology, astronomy, cosmology, etc, etc, etc. Take away the old age of the earth, and all these naturalistic explanations come crashing down. That’s why Creation Science is so threatening to Darwinists. I think Richard Lewontin summarized the position of philosophical naturalists the best when he said:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
Lewontin, Richard C. [Professor of Zoology and Biology, Harvard University], “Billions and Billions of Demons”, Review of “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,” by Carl Sagan, New York Review, January 9, 1997. (Emphasis in original)
==Why do all these Scientists (many of them of Christian faith like myself) all agree?
Does it make you feel good to agree with anti-Christian bigots like Lewontin, Dawkins, et al?
==You suppose it is a conspiracy to deny God and I laugh at how stupid one would be to have to believe that.
Like Wiley Coyoteman, you seem to like tossing that word around quite a bit. I really don’t think of it as a conspiracy. I think of it as a spiritual war between the forces of good and evil. And unfortunately, when it comes to Darwin, you have not chosen sides wisely.
The assumptions of evolution through natural selection have one hundred and fifty years worth of supporting evidence and nothing about it has been “falsified”. Please supply your evidence about how natural selection has been falsified. It sure seems to work EVERY SINGLE TIME a population is subjected to selective pressure.
Good vs Evil? Please.
More like Intelligent vs Stupid. You have chosen the stupid side, this is not good or evil; it is just stupid.
So in this “spiritual war between the forces of good and evil” do you count the Pope as being on the side of evil? Because he and I seem to share the same view of the strength of the evidence for Evolution and that it is not in conflict with a spiritual understanding of the Bible.
So if I am on the side of evil in this “spiritual war” and my position is indistinguishable from that of the Pope and most other Catholics; do you also consider the Pope to be on the side of evil in this spiritual war?
Since in the past Dr. Pitman has shown a willingness to respond to challenges to his work on FR, I forwarded him your lame reply. Here is his respons, ()=mine:
This guy (dread78645) is clueless. He doesn’t understand the argument. The size of the population is not related to the detrimental mutation rate until a certain threshold level is reached. Rather, it is the health of the gene pool that is in question here. The threshold point at which the population size would deteriorate is not known - only the direction of the ratio of deleterious vs. neutral vs. beneficial mutations. The point is that the deterimental mutation rate is far outpacing the human reproductive rate. In other words, the gene pool, not the population numbers for humans, is going downhill - i.e., it is devolving or getting worse and worse over time.
He also misrepresents what I said. I never said that “three mutations would be lethal”. I specifically said that the threshold level of the absolute number of deleterious mutations was not known, but the direction of heading downhill vs. uphill is known.
In short, your friend (sic) doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of the “living dead” when it comes to the overall deterimental mutation rate for slowing reproducing species like humans.
Sean
What irony!
The ones that “can’t be wrong” are the ones who sneak into school boards and whisper: take Christmas off the calendar or face a lawsuit!
Christians have begun to see that turning the other cheeck isn’t an option for alot of people.
Dialogue with terrorists makes as much sense, and if godless libs are going to hijack our courts, then THANK GOD for ThomasMore, ACLJ, etc.
Do I have a better way than hijacking courts to ensure Christians aren’t heard?
OF COURSE!
If you believe your own judgement is divinely inspired and infallible, then you can never be wrong. You’ll have no guilt, remorse, or conscience. We call people like this “sociopaths”.
Popes have never been on the wrong side of an issue. They’re infallible, being of The Church... right?
[singing]
The Inquisition (what a show)
The Inquisition (here we go)
We know you’re wishin’ that we’d go away.
But the Inquisition’s here and it’s here to-
These are available, readily available, and the only way you could be unaware of the evidence is a refusal to look.
And yet we are told these people never get a change to present their ideas.
Unobjective godless liberals have destroyed mainstream media but good people have found ways around them too!
You don't have a better way to insure objectivity, because you don't want objectivity.
Well, we’ve learned on this thread that science doesn’t even have any theories about origins like abiogenesis and cosmology and that men like Hawkings are not *real* scientists.
I wonder how they can feel confident telling creationists that they’re wrong when they don’t even have anything to offer to explain it with themselves. If they had their own “scientific” explanation, I could see where they’d maybe have some grounds to judge. But to tell anyone else that they’re wrong when they have nothing ????
That’s quite a stretch.
But we’re always told that science is based on the Christian view of a rational, consistent God. Except when he wasn’t?
OR pehaps WE being merely human beings don’t see it, or have yet to discover it, or figure out why when we do?
Who knows!
But suing silence we’ll never ever learn.
Well, some kids will learn, sadly some will be programmed not to.
I believe you’re referring to “homeschooling”.
But, like the “Fairness Doctrine”, the left/forces of evil will fight back.
They will, and have been (California, Germany), trying to force kids into the indoctrination centers.
And now they have a new tactic. They won’t let you into a university unless you’ve been taught the “right way” about evolution, etc.
There's at least an outside shot that evolution might be something like that, i.e. that God figures that evolution is so overwhelmingly stupid that nobody need feel sorry for anybody who buys it.
The choices are: agree with evo or get sued into oblivion.
“As for me and my house...”
Having a biblical worldview means among other things that you interpret scripture with scripture. Jesus referred often to Genesis and Moses’ writings as literal and historical.
I see NO advantage of teaching children that Genesis is “just a story”, besides diluting their faith in the scriptures so that they can be indoctrinated more easily by arguments like “well, if that’s just a story, why do you believe Jesus lived, died for you, and rose again?”
This argument is for Christians only - scoffers, don’t bother commenting.
Seems like "evo" (whatever the hell that's supposed to mean) is the one that keeps getting taken to court.
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