Posted on 04/25/2012 6:54:15 PM PDT by Caleb1411
The sky is falling! Many interest groups and journalists raced to tell that to the public when a modest but important bill became law in Tennessee early in April. The law instructs teachers and administrators to "create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues."
What's not to like? The law, similar to one in Louisiana, also protects teachers who help students (I'm quoting from the official legislative summary) "understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories covered in the course being taught. ..." Oh, here's the problem: Evolution is one of the theories that can now be analyzed and critiqued.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the American Institute of Biological Sciences, the National Association of Geoscience Teachers, and many others have gone ape over the inclusion of evolution. They revere critical thinking and the freedom to explore, but not when it might produce irreverence toward their idol.
Those groups and many journalists brought up Tennessee's 1925 law that made illegal the teaching of evolution in public schools and led to the Scopes "monkey trial." They did not note that most public schools in the four score and seven years since then have gone to the other extreme by forbidding the teaching of anything but evolution. In states from Virginia to Washington true believers in evolution have harassed and driven away teachers who dared to teach both sides of the Darwin debate.
If macro-evolution were proven, the true believers would have a case, but more than 800 Ph.D.-bearing scientists have signed a statement expressing skepticism about contemporary evolutionary theory's claims that random mutation and natural selection account for the complexity of life. These scientists say, "Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."
The 1925 law tried to close off debate, but the think tank that has proposed laws like Tennessee's new one, the Discovery Institute, is working to increase the coverage of evolution in textbooks. It wants evolution, including its unresolved issues, to be fully presented to students: "Evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can't be questioned."
That gets to the heart of the hysteria. The New York Times editorialized in 1925 for "faith, even of a grain of mustard seed, in the evolution of life." The Times said evolution gives us hope for progress: "If man has evolved, it is inconceivable that the process should stop and leave him in his present imperfect state. Specific creation has no such promise for man."
Specific creation, of course, has the ultimate promise: God cares. Sadly, many look desperately for hope elsewhere, anywhere. Last month the New York Times editorial page editor, consistent with his predecessors, criticized critics of evolution who have "learned to manufacture doubt." The Times, of course, daily manufactures doubt regarding God, but thunders, "Thou shalt not doubt" evolution. If other states follow Tennessee's example, we'll have a robust debate instead of more attempts to suppress it.
Or for the short answer to your bolded remark in post #97
See coelacanths or wolemi pine tree - living fossils purported by evolution to be hundreds of millions of years old yet found alive in the present day without any supporting fossils in much younger strata.
Related try googling polystrate fossils - the logic is sorely lacking for these fossils to be represented by millions of years - it’s circular reasoning.
I believe that before sin, God’s creation was perfect.
I freely admit it is mainly conjecture what a perfect world would look like, but didn’t God say he gave them the plants and fruit of the trees for food?
I’m an old school COBOL programmer so by my reckoning it is easy to see that it would require a far superior intelligence to write [and then after the fall re-write] the DNA that varies from approx one half-billion lines of quad-code [a, c, t, & g] for bacteria upto approx 50 billion for some of the more exotic and often times extinct DNA code found [i.e. the Marbled Lungfish, and the Paris Japonica with the largest known genome]. Incidentally, the larger the genome the more they are prone to extinction so it is good that mankind only has approx 3 billion LOC. But it is also very interesting the man made in God’s image is still considered to be the highest, and most complex life form which must be attributed mainly to intrinsic qualities not found in the physical genome.
Did you know man’s brain has an estimated 6 peta byte capacity [mega, giga, tera, then peta] and our brain [mainframe] and nervous system/spinal column [network] is over a million times as powerful as modern day personal computers?
In my own imaginations none of the present plants nor animals are the same as they were in Paradise. None of them needed a digestive tract that expelled waste b/c all food was 100% nutritious. So no carnivores [no sharp teeth nor claws] b/c none were meat-eaters. No plants were poisonous nor bacteria, or virii deadly. The whole creation was cursed by sin with death and destruction.
In the millennial reign of Christ, Revelation indicates the original order will be restored, the lamb will lie down with the lion, and even a child will place his hand in a nest of adders and not be harmed.
Furthermore, I believe the Noahic Flood brought forth the first rain, along with the bursting of the fountains of the great deep, and the tearing open of the upper atmosphere - Gen 7:11 and subsequently all manner of natural disasters, many local floods and the ice-ages. I also believe Dr. Brown has found much astrological, geological and fossil evidence in support of this in addition to what the Bible only hints.
Lastly, I would not doubt that mankind got too smart for his own good and is primarily responsible for all manner of natural disasters ~ in Noah’s day he most likely drilled approx 10 miles deep into Earth’s crust [probably mining for precious metals] and caused the fountains of the great deep to explode open [1 pint of supercritical water = 1 stick of dynamite], resulting in 40 days of torrential rain, tearing a rift in the crust and up through the upper atmosphere mostly north/south and circumventing the globe, caused the breaking up of the continents and tech-tonic plates, vulcanism, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, major uplifts of mountain ranges and even deeper crevasses in the oceans [crevasses that just happen to parallel all the major mountain ranges. This is a brief description of the hydroplate theory ~ for more see section II of:
Center for Scientific Creation - In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood
http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/IntheBeginningTOC.html
Is it really any wonder that the Bible records life spans for man of almost 1000 years pre-flood and only 120 years post-flood?
You are welcome to your view and I respect it, but it appears that we have very little common ground upon which to continue a discussion.
Oh Wendy, Wendy Wendy, (sorry I mean Brant, I forgot which persona you are posting under today). That statement is so full of crap; I don’t even know where to begin.
Below is per creationscience.com written and researched exhaustively and extensively by Dr. Walt Brown, Ph.D.
“Brown has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.” And he should really stick to something he probably knows something about like perhaps designing HVAC systems because he sure doesn’t know anything about geology or fossilization.
Who is this Wendy you refer to? I only post under 1 name.
The rest of your blabbering is just willful ignorance.
“What scientist wouldn’t agree with that?” Climate scientists, for one. ;)
Sorry I’m just getting back to you Notary.
***At no point does Werner ever state that he found fossils of currently living species in the same strata as fossils of species which are considered long extinct.***
I suggest you view his DVD. The title (as posted in #81) is “Evolution: The Grand Experiment - Living Fossils”.
The entire one hour video is devoted to doing just that.
If you don’t want to shell out the dough for it, send me your address in a private reply and I’ll send you mine.
A ridiculous statement NS please revise ***At no point does Werner ever state that he found fossils of currently living species in the same strata as fossils of species which are considered long extinct.*** Strata is sedimentary rock. Only micro-organisms have been found to live in rock!
Living ‘fossils’ of life forms that were once thought extinct by tens and hundreds of millions of years are in fact found to be alive in today’s world with virtually no changes in structural anatomy! STASIS in the fossil record is the rule not the exception.
“there is zero evidence of phyletic evolution” - S
Are you familiar with the relationship between ontogeny and phylogeny?
Do you think it is evidence of anything?
I've read (and own) Gould's book Ontogeny and Phylogeny, am quite familiar with the idea but don't see any evidence of recapitulation or much of anything else. If there were evidence of recapitulation, I'd have to wonder why Haeckel engaged in fraud.
Time only flows in one direction, therefore it's quite possible according to evolutionary theory for a species thought long extinct to have survived into the present day..... but it's not possible to find a fossilized specimen of a relatively recent species in exactly the same location with long-extinct species.
When paleontologists excavate a site where many animals have died and been fossilized at close to the same time, they have not found Triassic amphibians, dinosaurs, Eocene mammals, and contemporary mammals together. A young-earth chronology would indicate that they should.
As I said up-thread, show me a fossilized velociraptor with a fossilized modern rabbit found in its stomach area in situ, and I'll give the young-earthers a serious hearing.
****but it’s not possible to find a fossilized specimen of a relatively recent species in exactly the same location with long-extinct species.****
It is not only possible, This video will point to them, show you pictures and have museum curators tell you they were found.....according to one curator, over 100 chordates of which they display none.
What is your explanation for human and dinosaur footprints in the same strata?
If you are talking about the Paluxy River “tracks” that’s been shown to be a hoax. If you have other sites, post a link.
"Chordates" go all the way back to the upper Cambrian, 485+MY ago.
and possibly earlier
So talk to me not about "chordates". Will I see clearly recognizable fossils of animals which evolutionists claim have only appeared in the last million years??
Look Notary...
I’m beating a dead horse here. This video has “Living Fossils” in the title because they are alive today and found in the same strata as dinosaurs. Werner sought them and found them.
Either you’re willing to invest some time in viewing it or, like many others before you, you are unwilling to take the chance on having your worldview shaken.
A PhD scientist named Philip Skell once said: “A theory that is so flexible that it explains everything, in reality, explains nothing at all.”
The theory of evolution fits that description.
Come to think of it, how does evolution explain this:
Since genes reproduce asexually and animals/humans reproduce sexually.... that means that at some point in time at the exact same place on the planet, two creatures evolved with two separate sets of plumbing that just happened to be perfect for each other.... one having the sperm necessary for life and the other having an egg necessary for life. They also had the ability to inject the sperm into a cavity where the egg existed in order to fertilize it and begin the process of birthing another of the same species... but the process of fertilization was only the beginning.... the plumbing where the egg evolved is HUGELY complex and necessarily so in order to get that fertilized egg to the point of birth.
Here are a couple of questions:
1. Since Natural Selection is an observable phenomenon and therefore not conjecture... and we know that Natural Selection will select based on advantage for survival... how did sexual reproduction survive given that observation tells us that asexual reproduction has up to twice as much reproductive success as sexual reproduction? Wouldn’t Natural Selection have selected sexual reproduction out of the process?
2. What are the odds that evolution, a random process, could invent the two complimentary sets of plumbing at the exact same time and the exact same place.... especially given the facts presented above?
3. After the baby is born, the body cuts the placenta off. It has been described by some as “like hitting the arteries with a meat cleaver..... yet the mother doesn’t die because each one of those arteries has a sphincter at the end that immediately closes, keeping the mother from bleeding to death.
How long do you think it took for evolution to get that right?
Dr. Carl Werner was challenged about the theory of evolution by a friend. He decided that if he could find modern organisms in the same strata as dinosaurs that would falsify evolution.
He spent 30 years of his life visiting dino digs and museums. He found fossils of every modern species and genera in the same strata as dinosaurs..... including the rabbit that you mention.
In which video does Dr. Werner specifically say he found a fossil rabbit in the same strata as a dinosaur?
I'll contribute $50 to the charity of your choice if I can see that on video. Will you do the same for me if it's not really on the DVD?
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