Tough Assignment: Teaching Evolution To Fundamentalists

Ft. Wayne Journal Gazette ^ | 03 December 2004 | SHARON BEGLEY

[rwfromkansas]

For the record, I did not mean we can use Genesis to date the Earth. That would be silly, though unfortunately many creationists use some silly magic by saying those six days then talked about all these humans without skipping any time. It must be obvious that a large portion of Scripture was written to reflect time eons after the creation, not just a few thousand years.

Therefore, anybody who says the Earth is only 6-10 thousand years old based on the Bible is a fool.

I was saying I believe there is enough strictness and not enough figurative language in the creation account to allow for an evolutionary type of change since the animals were created as they were according to the account.

[js1138]

Anybody notice a whole new cast of screen names, all reading the same lines that the previous cast delivered so eloquently.

[_Jim]

Evolution is the religion of those who would elevate man above God.

Then engineering is the same thing; and YOU are using products resulting from that process ...

No?

Is not using God's Laws (Nature and her varied and many properties) to do our *own bidding* tanatamount to roughly the same thing?

[_Jim]

You could share the DNA because we all were created by God, who started with some common DNA.

On what day were the animals that inherit the earth (as my Cocktiel loudly calls for attention!) created and what day was it that man was created to inherit the same earth?

[PatrickHenry]

But, I need something that shows there can't be other explanations. Transitional fossils etc. still could have other explanations.

Any one thing can have another explanation. But not everything. When evidence has been gathered for generations, and it all fits into and supports the theory of evolution (it was, after all, devised by Darwin to account for the evidence he knew about), and when even new, independent lines of evidence (genetics, and later DNA, things Darwin didn't know about), which could have contradicted the theory, but which also fit into and support the theory, and no evidence contradicts the theory, then you'd have to admit that evolution is a theory that is on very strong ground. There is no other scientific explanation that can deal with all this evidence. It could all be a miracle, but that's not a testable idea, so it's outside the domain of science.

[_Jim]

This stuff is just jibberjabber. It's laughable nonsense. The "DNA evidence" is a joke. It's like phrenology

I suspect that those with 'knowledge' in the early sciences (who said that matter was made of the four elements: Earth, Wind, Fire and Water) said that about early matter being made of smaller particles (e. g. electrons protons and neutrons) once upon a time;

Now look where we are ...

[loboinok]

So you admit evolution is closest possible lie to the truth. Yet you believe something extravagantly far from evolution, which you said "lies closest to the truth." So clearly, your beliefs are bigger, less-believable frauds than evolution, which is almost the truth.



You did not ask me what I believe.If you had,I would have told you, I believe that Almighty God created the universe and all that is in it.That science as part of that creation,was given by God to aid the finite mind of man to better grasp the infinate mind of God.That since the "fall" the earth and all in it (including science) has been corrupted.So, instead of beginning at the beginning,science starts somewhere in the middle and works its way backward and then attempts to advance from there.I don't reject science per se.I reject the aspects of science that exclude God or places itself above God.
This can go on and on, but the fact is, the truth is the truth.A army of Christians can't change it and a army of scientists can't change it.

"Almost the truth" is like "almost pregnant"

[_Jim]

"Almost the truth" is like "almost pregnant"

How tall am I?

You could answer that with an answer which was 'close' by simply choosing the height figure for an average adult male living here in America and it would be 'almost the truth' ...

Now to the point: When is the 'almost the truth' literally the only truth you've got (and it is nowhere close to "almost pregnant")?

Ans: In most fields of science.

I can measure current in a circuit and with the best calibrated meter I have come only within +-.02%. I could almost never ever count every electron however, so, I would have to settle for 'almost the truth' as the truth in this case.

[VadeRetro]

Anybody notice a whole new cast of screen names, all reading the same lines that the previous cast delivered so eloquently.

Yep. Funny, so many of us having the same erie, irrational thought at the same time.

[loboinok]

How tall am I?
You could answer that with an answer which was 'close' by simply choosing the height figure for an average adult male living here in America and it would be 'almost the truth' ...

Now to the point: When is the 'almost the truth' literally the only truth you've got (and it is nowhere close to "almost pregnant")?

Ans: In most fields of science.

I can measure current in a circuit and with the best calibrated meter I have come only within +-.02%. I could almost never ever count every electron however, so, I would have to settle for 'almost the truth' as the truth in this case.


6'1" 195lbs Brn Hr Brn eyes ;)

Your ans; in most fields of science. Is your answer.
The truth I accept is based on scripture.Any truth outside of that is a lie,conjecture or opinion unless supported by scripture.

[ovrtaxt]

Thanks for the link. I'll check that out.

[grey_whiskers]

I'd have more confidence in the people pushing evolution if they wouldn't make the implied claim that the theory of evolution is somehow as valid or demonstrable as the fact of gravity.

Why not? It is.

Not to the lay person.
Gravity can be intuitively understood (or experienced!)
from everyday life...
Think falling down a flight of stairs, or dropping your pencil.

Evolutionary theory cannot be so easily demonstrated.
Although practicing the breeding part can be quite
entertaining!

[grey_whiskers]

Not all early paleontologists accepted that dinosaurs were slow-moving, cold-blooded critters (more creationist misinformation).

OTOH, Bill Watterson--the creator of Calvin and Hobbes wrote in one of his books that he first drew the dinosaurs in Calvin's fantasies based on his childhood recollections of scientific descriptions of dinosaurs.
He was pretty surprised to find out that the accepted description of dinosaurs had drastically changed by the time he grew up and started the strip.
I suspect the difficulty elucidated by the poster you are here responding to, is the apparent contradiction between the ex cathedra pronouncements of evolution as absolute, unquestioned fact, and the revisions in consensus among scientists over time. Another such revision (in the popular mind) can be seen by looking at the section of Disney's Fantasia based upon Stravinski's The Rites of Spring in which the death of the dinosaurs was portrayed as due to rising global temperatures and drought, as opposed to (say) impact of earth by an Iridium-rich meteor...

Recall most lay people don't get as far as peer-review journals, or even Dawkins or Gould. Disney or Time Magazine is as far as they get.

[grey_whiskers]

Actually, that would be a pretty ridiculous argument. The MSM also wholeheartedly supports the eating of food and the breathing of air - I guess if you eat or breathe, you must not be a true conservative.

OTOH, there was another crevo thread within the last week in which one of the posters stated that 'Hitler was a Creationist' and quoted Mein Kampf to demonstrate that Hitler believed in Intelligent Design.

So by implication if you advocate intelligent design, by that logic, you'd be a Nazi.

Full Disclosure: Hitler also developed the concept of the Volkswagen (~= "people's car) as well as pushing for the German equivalent of the US Interstates (autobahn), long before the US Interstate system was started in the 1950's... So if you are driving your Tuareg down I-95, you're a Nazi...

Cheers!

[D Edmund Joaquin]

they set themselves up for failure and even ridicule

Well y'all should know by now we could care less

[grey_whiskers]

If interpretation of Scripture flies in the face of the physical evidence, Scripture must be reinterpreted in light of that evidence.

Not necessarily.

[Opening yet another can of worms...]

Miracles by definition 'fly in the face of evidence';
but they claim ab initio as it were, to be exceptions, directly resultant from extra-natural activity.

If miracles are claimed to be "how things normally work", or (sometimes) when something with an everyday explanation, of which the viewer is ignorant, is asserted to be a miracle, then the red flags should go up.

[grey_whiskers]

Who is Big Jule?

[js1138]

Hitler also developed the concept of the Volkswagen...

And millions of jews refused to buy them for many decades.

The same Nazis who worshipped Hitler tried to discredit Relativity because Einstein was Jewish.

The truth of a scientific idea is unaffected by the ethnicity or morality of the person who discovers it, and it is unaffected by the good or evil use to which it may be put.

[Junior]

That they have some knowledge and understanding of what it is you are talking about but have rejected it for the truth.

You wouldn't know it from the blatant falsehoods they post about the theory.

[grey_whiskers]

"Almost the truth" is like "almost pregnant"

Sorry to act like I'm channeling Clinton here, but it ain't necessarily so.

"Almost pregnant" could result from such things as:

1) Amazingly, actually pulling out in time (if he'd gone for one more thrust, she'd have got knocked up).
2) Premature ejaculation. 3) A statement clinically describing the condition, resulting from what will later prove to be a successful fertilization, but describing the interval of time before the sperm have actually fertilized the egg...

Off-topic humor and (hey, this is Free Republic!) anti-French joke:

Three Frenchmen were practicing their English, and the subject arose that one of their wives was just not getting pregnant, no matter how hard they tried.

The first Frenchman said: "She's impenetrable."

No, no, the second Frenchie said. "She's impregnable!"

"Mais, no, je connais" cried the third, triumphantly.
"She's INCONCEIVABLE!"

Which brings us back to 'almost pregnant.'