Posted on 06/07/2002 11:35:28 AM PDT by jennyp
To Seattle area residents the struggle over how evolution is taught in public high schools may seem a topic from the distant past or a distant place.
Don't bet on it. One nearby episode in the controversy has ended, but a far-reaching, Seattle-based agenda to overthrow Darwin is gaining momentum.
Roger DeHart, a high-school science teacher who was the center of an intense curriculum dispute a few years ago in Skagit County, is leaving the state. He plans to teach next year in a private Christian school in California.
The fuss over DeHart's use of "intelligent design" theory in his classes at Burlington-Edison High School was merely a tiny blip in a grand scheme by promoters of the theory.
The theory is essentially this: Life is so complex that it can only be the result of design by an intelligent being.
Who is this unnamed being? Well, God, I presume. Wouldn't you?
As unlikely as it may seem, Seattle is ground zero for the intelligent-design agenda, thanks to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute and its Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC).
Headed by one-time Seattle City councilman and former Reagan administration official Bruce Chapman, the Discovery Institute is best known locally for its savvy insights on topics ranging from regionalism, transportation, defense policy and the economy.
In the late '90s, the institute jumped into the nation's culture wars with the CRSC. It may be little known to local folks, but it has caught the attention of conservative religious organizations around the country.
It's bound to get more attention in the future. Just last month, a documentary, Icons of Evolution, premiered at Seattle Pacific University. The video is based on a book of the same name by CRSC fellow Jonathan Wells. It tells the story of DeHart, along with the standard critique of Darwinian evolution that fuels the argument for intelligent design.
The video is part of the anti-Darwin agenda. Cruise the Internet on this topic and you'll find something called the Wedge Strategy, which credits the CRSC with a five-year plan for methodically promoting intelligent design and a 20-year goal of seeing "design theory permeate our religious, cultural, moral and political life."
Last week, Chapman tried to put a little distance between his institute and the "wedge" document. He said it was a fund-raising tool used four years ago. "I don't disagree with it," he told me, "but it's not our program." (I'll let the folks who gave money based on the proposed strategy ponder what that means.)
Program or not, it is clear that the CRSC is intent on bringing down what one Center fellow calls "scientific imperialism." Surely Stephen Jay Gould already is spinning in his grave. Gould, one of America's most widely respected scientists and a prolific essayist, died just two weeks ago. Among his many fine books is one I kept by my bedside for many weeks after it was published in 1999, "Rock of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life."
In "Rock of Ages," Gould presents an elegant case for the necessary co-existence of science and religion. Rather than conflicting, as secular humanists insist, or blending, as intelligent-design proponents would have it, science and religion exist in distinct domains, what Gould called magisteria (domains of teaching authority).
The domain of science is the empirical universe; the domain of religion is the moral, ethical and spiritual meaning of life.
Gould was called America's most prominent evolutionist, yet he too, was a critic of Darwin's theory, and the object of some controversy within the scientific community. There's a lesson in that: In the domain of science there is plenty of room for disagreement and alternative theories without bringing God into the debate.
I have no quarrel with those who believe in intelligent design. It has appeal as a way to grasp the unknowable why of our existence. But it is only a belief. When advocates push intelligent design as a legitimate scientific alternative to Darwinian explanations of evolution, it is time to push back.
That's what they continue to do in Skagit County. Last week, the Burlington-Edison School Board rejected on a 4-1 vote a proposal to "encourage" the teaching of intelligent design. Bravo.
Despite proponents' claims of scientific validity, intelligent design is little more than religion-based creationism wrapped in critiques of Darwin and all dressed up in politically correct language. All for the ultimate goal — placing a Christian God in science classrooms of America's public high schools.
You're most certainly correct. The first step is abandoning a literal interpretation of Genesis, after which all else falls into place.
all pride is evil--sin...
vain ego--glory!
‘Then Nathan said to David, You are the man!’ (2 Samuel 12:7).
"When Nathan began his parable about the Little Ewe Lamb, David's good nature was apparent. All that we know of David informs us that he loved righteousness. He was just and compassionate. When he heard of the wrong done by the rich man to the poor man in Nathan's story, he was outraged. But then the prophet poured cold water all over his indignation, by telling him that he was the rich oppressor."
"This incident reminds us that we are all curiously blind to our own shortcomings. We are offended more by the sins of others, than our own. We have two sets of names for evil. One set of names mitigates the wrong; excusing it. The other set of names sharply critical, and damning." "One set we reserve for describing our own mistakes. The other we reserve for the offences of our neighbors. What I call diplomacy in myself, I am apt to describe as hypocrisy in you. Thrift in me, is transformed into stinginess in you. "O wad some power the gift to gie us, to see oursels as ithers see us."
"David was among the best of men."
"Yet it took the Spirit, through the prophet Nathan, to open his eyes to the... greed and guilt---that he carried within. For this very reason, we need Christian fellowship. Without the word of God, spoken to us by our brothers and sisters, we will surely have a mistaken view of our true selves."
"After his conversion, Augustine said: You took me from behind my own back, where I had put myself, all the time that I professed not to see myself."
"And you set me there before my own face, in order that I might see how vile I was. . . . I saw myself, and I was horrified."
"Those who learn the truth about themselves are already objects of God's saving purpose. They are ready to receive the great mercy."
But what do you believe? Don't you believe that God is a person of some kind?
...To me you are as abstract as an abstract thing can be. You "consist" of light emitted from phosphors on a monitor screen. Without that screen or the other things that make the phosphors glow you do not exist.
Which is another way of saying "God is just as real to me, in just the same way, as the concrete entities I deal with every day". Unless you're really claiming that you're skeptical that I really am a physical woman sitting at my computer somewhere on the other side of this socket connection. Most people would agree your refusal to accept the plain fact that I am indeed a physical person is like Clinton demurring when asked what "is" is.
Sorry, but your thinking is just too ethereal for me. This all has nothing to do (that I can see) with whether God defines what is good and bad, or whether God recognizes what is already good and bad. If you'll recall, that's what Sabertooth & I were discussiong.
They need to set things up so that we can devote our pledges to certain categories, such as "evolutionists", "creationists", "Objectivists", "Libertarians", "anti-Libertarians", "Drug Prohibitionists", "anti-Prohibitionists", etc.
(responsible for his own material and spiritual well-being, comfortable with traditional sex roles, and able to identify with family, race, heritage and nation, while following a path illuminated by the light his Maker gave him)...
against an array of... Collectivist---movements."
"These movements may involve different personalities and use different terminology. But they are generally led by compulsive neurotics or amoral demagogues, determined to reduce mankind to an undifferentiated species: A human ant hill, managed by social engineers at war with history and reason; men and women, who endlessly prattle shibboleths extolling "Social Justice," "Equality," "Democracy" & "New World Orders!"
What plain fact? You could be some bozo from Klondike who thinks themselves an intellectual. I really have little doubt that you are at least a person. But beyond that I have to accept what you proffer. The result of your and your partner's discussion is not really in question here. I'm 99.9bar% sure that you will leave the discussion with the same beliefs you entered. What I was pointing out was the misuse of a word.
You seem to have stumbled onto what I have been stating here, but can't see it. Here maybe this will ease it for you. God exists. He also created everything. Now I know that you disagree. Further I know that nothing will ever change your mind. You will accept nothing as a miracle, and you will toy with abstract things but will not really give them concrete existence. You fail to see my point on "you" as concrete and abstract. Your body is concrete(see I do accept some things), but your body is not "you". You can lose just about every piece of your equipment(not all at once of course) and still be "you". "You" can be gone and your body will exist. It may even live on without "you" or external support. "You" are not real(by your estimation).
Simply trying to provide you with a flavor for the nature of the two or three whack jobs you are citing as authorities on catastrophism.
First, the skeleton was not found in a vertical position, but was lying at an angle 50 to 40 degrees from horizontal . . . [T]he whale skeleton lay parallel to the bedding of strata which at one time was the sea floor on which the dead whale fell after its death.Let's hope they mean a less-than-horizontal position. (And the singular of "strata" is "stratum.") Still, there you are. I see folded sediments whenever I drive by a road cut. Folding built the Appalachians. (But you can forget about finding a whale here.). . . As a result of folding and tectonics associated with the formation of the Transverse Ranges, the strata containing the enclosed skeleton has been tilted into a less-than vertical position.
What is particularly interesting in this example is that the man who finds such a thing could re-affirm his belief in a "random" origin by conducting an experiment that follows the scientific method perfectly. He can try to make a carving on his own, then have every person in the village where he lives try to do the same thing. If nobody can make an identical carving, then he would logically conclude that these things could not have been man-made!
And the notion that our bodies no longer produce Vitamin C because "it was plentiful in our natural environment" is a bit absurd. If this were the case, then one would expect to find Scandinavians or Eskimos who have begun to "devolve" back to the point where their bodies would still create Vitamin C.
Interesting point. You'd think that this condition alone would have meant that man, the most advanced of all life forms on the face of the earth, would have developed gills by now.
"God does not play dice with the universe"
-- Albert Einstein
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