Posted on 02/12/2002 12:24:57 PM PST by PatrickHenry
Since 1920 creationists have been successful in persuading legislatures in five Southern states to pass laws favorable to their views, but the courts consistently struck them down, saying that they violated the establishment clause of the Constitution. In the 1990s creationists began focusing instead on changing state educational standards. The most famous attempt to do so in recent years--the decision of the Kansas Board of Education to eliminate evolution from the state's science standards--was not a success: the decision was reversed in 2001 when antievolution board members were defeated for reelection.
Still, creationists have been victorious in many other states, a trend catalogued by Lawrence S. Lerner of California State University at Long Beach. His evaluation, summarized and updated in the map below, is valuable in part because it points up the widespread sway of creationists in Northern states, such as Illinois, Ohio and Wisconsin, that have a liberal or moderate tradition. Furthermore, it highlights the fact that certain Southern states--North and South Carolina--have more rigorous educational standards than some Northern states, such as New York and Massachusetts.
There is little information on what is actually taught in individual classrooms and school districts, so it is not clear what effect state standards have on the quality of evolution teaching. The influence of the standards is, however, potentially great because they are likely to affect the content of textbooks and lesson plans. Standards set the tone under which teachers and administrators work and, if written well, make it easier for science-oriented educators to insist that all teachers, including the one third who advocate equal time for creationism, observe proper guidelines.
Creationists have been able to alter state education standards despite being a fairly small minority. According to a 1999 poll by the People for the American Way Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based organization opposed to the teaching of creationism in science classes, only 16 percent of Americans support the teaching of creationism to the exclusion of evolution. A huge majority--83 percent--favor teaching evolution, but most of them maintain that creationism should be discussed in science classes with evolution. Only 37 percent expressed strong support for evolution--that is, teaching it to the exclusion of all religious doctrine in science classes.
In the absence of a majority favoring strict standards for evolution teaching, it is easy to see why creationists have been able to make headway even outside the circle of evangelical Christianity. In 1996 Pope John Paul II reaffirmed the Catholic Church's commitment to evolution, first stated in 1950, saying that his inspiration for doing so came from the Bible. Despite this, 40 percent of American Catholics in a 2001 Gallup poll said they believed that God created human life in the past 10,000 years. Indeed, fully 45 percent of all Americans subscribe to this creationist view. Many who are indifferent to conservative theology give creationism some support, perhaps because, as mathematician Norman Levitt of Rutgers University suggests, the subject of evolution provokes anxiety about the nature of human existence, an anxiety that antievolutionists use to promote creationist ideas.
I am here. I don't have a problem with schools teaching what the parents of that community want them to teach, be it evolution or special creation. If there is a danger they will teach what is untrue, there is a greater danger still in mandating from above what all schools must teach. For in the former case those in the wrong will soon mend their ways or be at disadvantage, for essential truth is a free-market type corrective mechansim.
Those who want to mandate from above what all schools should teach pose the greater danger to liberty. For should the central powers teach error, corrective mechansims are not so much in place. If they go wrong, then all go wrong, and there will be no one left to shine a light upon the true path...
Waxing a bit prosey today. Must need a nap!
Pop quiz: How many things can you find wrong in this one sentence?
The only error is referring to the second law of thermodynamics as the "third". Otherwise, the statement is correct. My thermodynamics textbook presents the second law of thermodynamics in Chapter 6 and entropy in the following chapter, Chapter 7; so, someone using this text may have made the minor mistake of assuming entropy was the third law.
The intent of the "egregiously erroneous" statement is correct since all physical systems follow the second law of thermodynamics thereby opposing the premise of evolution theory: that order and complexity "somehow" increase to perpetuate evolution.
That kinda implies the second law is pretty useless.
It's Fashtnacht Day here in Pennsylvania.
Pretty much you eat doughnuts, that's all there is to it, really.
I think of myself as an advocate of reason, and an opponent of the junk science of creationism. Opinions vary, of course, according to intelligence and education.
We still have some work to do.
Ask me about the "Desert Visions" Invitational on August 6.
Right. Which is why I think government should get out of the education business. Totally. (Except for a very few Constitutionally permissible areas, like the military and Indian reservations.)
But when would we teach science? I figure there are so many different "Creation Myths" it could take up the entire school year explaining all the different flavors. That would leave no time for science, or writing, or history, or Mathematics, or grammar, etc.
I suppose that would appeal to some.
Science would be taught at it's normal time. School would start one hour earlier so as to accomidate every creation story through the course of the year. See that wasn't so hard.
Question for you: according to your understanding, what makes a law a law, and a theory a theory?
You can't possibly believe that complexity cannot increase! (Double negative, I know!)
You must also be aware that the second law has nothing at all to say about designers (or Designers) or "ordering principles." The idea that any law of physics would have an exception for something as vague as the terms "designed" or "ordered" is rather silly.
The Beatles said it: "Nothing you can do that can't be done." If you can do it, it isn't a miracle. If it really was a miracle, you couldn't do it.
You might argue that no undesigned natural process ever made a toaster. Probably true. Why would a toaster just happen?
This is not the same as saying that the laws of physics forbid toasters except by design. Which laws? What part of nature is checking to make sure that a designer is operating? All you can honestly say is that it's hard to imagine a scenario whereby a toaster just happens.
The law of gravity doesn't forbid things from going up, for all that it produces a tendency for things to go down. A tendency is not a law.
The second law of thermodynamics does not forbid entropy from decreasing locally. Entropy decreases happen locally all the time on earth. Many are undesigned.
My favorite example lately is the kind of thunderstorm that produceds tornadoes. The tornado itself has structure and power. It descends from something called a wall cloud which is also a clearly defined structure. The lowered entropy of the storm system is signalled not only by its apparent order but by its ability to do work (in the physics sense) such as picking up your double-wide trailer and depositing it in the next county.
Not once every sect and cult got done demanding to be part of the "Creation Myth Curriculum." Soon, every day, all day would be taken up teaching Creation Myths.
I propose an alternative: everbody who thinks Creation Myths are important gets up an hour early and takes their children to the house of worship of their choice, after which the kids go to school to learn history, English, science, grammar, reading, social studies, Mathematics, etc.
In the alternative, privatize all schools and send your kids to whichever one suits your budget and fancy. That wasn't so hard, either, and we got the government schools out of the Theology business.
Actually, it's impossible. Aside from the uproar which would arise about teaching our children some truly absurd nonsense, and paying teachers to leacure on this junk, the volume of creation myths is just too overwhelming. Creation Myths of the World .
Creation Myths from around the World .
Creation Myths .
Pretty much you eat doughnuts, that's all there is to it, really.
Pretty much the perfect holiday, isn't it?
I know. My answer was tounge-in-cheek, speeking to the rediculousness of teaching creation in school.
Demand that the three Rs be taught. Demand that the emphasis on team sports be reduced. Demand that students not be allowed cars and don't provide parking for them. You'll really get the PTA up in arms. Do it.
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