Looks like they didn't ask the really big question:
"Wanna slurpee?"
Posted on 04/22/2005 4:21:47 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Evolution found a home Thursday in the oldest church in Kansas during a forum about the controversy over science instruction for public school students.
"There is no conflict between evolution and the Christian faith," said the Rev. Peter Luckey, the senior pastor of Plymouth Congregational Church, 925 Vt.
Luckey was preaching to the choir during a five-hour forum that featured scientists, teachers and politicians who argued in favor of teaching students evolution because it is the foundation of science, knowledge of which will be needed to compete for jobs in the growing bioscience industry.
About 75 people attended the forum at Plymouth, which was founded in 1854 and was the first established church in the Kansas Territory. Attempts to inject intelligent design -- the notion that there is a master planner for all life -- into science class should be rejected, they said.
"Intelligent design is nothing but creationism in a cheap tuxedo," said Leonard Krishtalka, director of the Kansas University Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center.
‘Think critically'
The forum was another round in the debate that has thrust Kansas on the national stage.
With control of the State Board of Education in conservative hands [AAARRGGHHH!!], state officials again will consider science standards that will guide teachers.
A committee of scientists has drafted standards that include evolution teaching, but a minority report, led by proponents of intelligent design, wants criticism of evolution included. A State Board of Education committee, comprising three conservative [AARRGHH!!] board members, plans six days of hearings that will revolve around that debate.
The speakers at Thursday's forum were adamant that evolution instruction not be reduced, watered down or dumbed down.
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' science adviser, Lee Allison, said when the state approved a $500 million bioscience initiative, it included a provision to recruit top scholars who met the standards of the National Academy of Sciences, which supports evolution without equivocation.
"The state really has taken a position on this in a broad, bipartisan way," Allison said.
Charles Decedue, executive director of the Higuchi Biosciences Center, said teaching evolution was critical because bioscience companies want to locate in places where the work force has received a solid education in chemistry, physics and biology.
"They want people who can think critically," he said.
‘Hayseed state'
Andrew Stangl, a Kansas University sophomore, said his high school science teachers in his hometown of Andover refused to teach evolution.
He bought books and taught himself. He said fear of teaching evolution would hurt the United States in the long term. "I don't want to see other countries pass us by. We are going to economically suffer as a result," he said.
In 1999, Kansas made international news, much of it negative, when a conservative [AARRGGHH!!] board de-emphasized evolution. The 2000 election returned moderates to power, and evolution was reinstated. But with conservatives [AARRGGHH!!] back in control, international criticism was starting again, several panelists said.
Rachel Robson, a doctoral candidate at KU Medical Center, said one of her friends was applying for a job with a Japanese company, and the company officials made fun of Kansas and questioned whether good scientists could come from there.
Thursday's forum attracted national attention from National Public Radio and NBC.
Krishtalka said even though the battle over evolution was going on in several states, "Kansas will be tarred and feathered by the media as the hayseed state."
Carol and Tom Banks, of Prairie Village, attended the forum, saying they were getting tired of conservatives [AARRGGHH!!] controlling the political agenda.
"If intelligent design were taught, that would be teaching religion in public schools," Carol Banks said.
But Jerry Manweiler, a physicist from Lawrence, said he supported teaching intelligent design. "It's important to know the theory of evolution, but it's also important to understand the nature of God," he said. Manweiler said he was put off by the forum speakers' "lack of humility."
Don Covington, vice president of networking for Intelligent Design Network Inc., said he disagreed with the speakers.
"They want their kids to know how to think, but you can't develop critical thinking skills when you tell them to memorize Darwin," he said.
• May 5-7: Science standards hearings in auditorium of Memorial building, 120 S.W. 10th St., Topeka. Time to be determined later.
• May 12-14: Science standards hearings, time and location to be determined later.
Looks like they didn't ask the really big question:
"Wanna slurpee?"
If they're "fighting" under the banner of the truth of reality, I imagine they would prove decisive on the "battlefield of ideas." Time is "the mother of truth"... in our 4D world, of course. Stay tuned, dear Patrick! :^)
Thanks for the laugh.
All a Republican candidate needs to do is promote his support of Creationism and he'll be in like Flynn.
Yep, Mill said that. And I gather this is the context in which you are evaluating the question of whether "Right-wing conservatives are hijacking the Republican Party," in ways (I imagine) directly analogous to the hijacking of Islam by Wahabbist terrorists.
Mill is a philosopher closely associated with utilitarian thought. And yet Mill doggedly adhered to the idea of the sovereignty of the individual; and drew from that insight the idea of a universal, common humanity that was somehow "sacred" in some way, yet a part of Nature -- such that man -- considered from either the individual or social standpoints -- could never justly ever serve as mere grist for utilitarian machines. If you catch my drift....
As for me, "a pox on political parties!!!" As for you: know thy sources, dude!
Thanks so much for sharing your thoughts, Oztrich Boy.
I didn't know that Hillary was a creationist...maybe she believes that Bill and herself created the universe...
LOL. I doubt she is, but the point is that "backbone" or no, creationists aren't enough, by themselves, to carry the day, electorally speaking.
No, of course not. But conservative evolutionists alone can't carry the day, electorally speaking, either. For better or worst, we need each other.
Can't we all just get along? (Don't answer that!)
Dum spiro, spero.
;)
IMHO, of all the concepts of infinity - timelessness is the most difficult to embrace. I suspect this may be due to the "arrow of time" we mortals sense as present becomes past, we age, clocks tick, physical entropy sets in, cause seems to have effect and so on.
And yet none of these are applicable in timelessness. Jeepers, they aren't even applicable with a second temporal dimension.
I think the big problem is that, as usual, the media is lying about the facts of the case:
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i1/scopes.asp
William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925)Quite a guy. I've got no problem with women's suffrage, but as for the rest of it, Bryan seems like the worst American of his generation.
Bryan was a famous politician and orator, who unsuccessfully stood three times as the Democratic candidate for the USA Presidency. He became Secretary of State under President Woodrow Wilson, where he tried his best to keep the USA out of the First World War. A great Populist leader, he was known as the Great Commoner. He was influential in the eventual adoption of such reforms as popular election of senators, income tax, creation of a Department of Labor, Prohibition and women’s suffrage.
Correct. The result should be essentially similar.
The "No True Scotsman" argument doesn't hold water even in this guise. Unless, of course, you are defining theism to be anti-science (which is what most anti-conservative scientists believe.)
That's exactly what all the creationist and ID proponents do. However, they compound their felony by failing to do any observation or experimentation.
Stop the suffraging.
Hello Doc! You wrote the above in response to my claim that some scientists have theological commitments that are undisclosed in their work. Certainly creationists cannot be held guilty of such non-disclosure. And it seems to me that ID at the present time is more cosmological in its focus than strictly scientific. That is, ID has yet to produce a comprehensive, detailed theory that is testable by means of present methods.
As I've mentioned before, it seems to me that ID is more a catalog of unanswered problems than an elaboration of a comprehensive theory directly leading to experiments. However, I don't think it's fair to say that ID makes no observations. Indeed, observation is what is driving ID in the first place. Primarily what has been observed is the insufficiency of the materialist explanation.
For all its cosmological character, however, my sense (FWIW) is that ID is correct to note that matter requires information in order to produce the world that we observe all around us, and that information is not an epiphenomenon of matter nor of the physical-chemical laws nor is it a product of 4D space-time. One supposes that the reverse is more likely to be true. This is a cosmological statement, not a scientific one.
Yet all science involves cosmological premises of some type, for the simple reason that cosmological premises necessarily lay at the root of all human thinking. When the metaphysical naturalist tells you that all there is, is matter in its motions (contingent on physical laws), that is a cosmological statement, having obvious theological implications. It is fundamentally a statement of faith, for it seems impossible to falsify/validate. And I would say, well, that's just fine -- except for the simple fact that the statement seems hopelessly reductive -- that is to say, insufficient to take into account all the real phenomena that we observe.
ID, it seems to me, seeks to open up the conceptual space in which science is done by not restricting inquiry to only the material, physical features of the universe. Laws aren't physical or material, for openers; yet materialists need them all the same, otherwise their science would be impossible. This to me is a case of fundamental inconsistency, even self-contradiction in the materialist view. It is a tacit admission of the very thing that materialism most strenuously denies -- i.e., the real existence of non-physical entities in the Universe.
I understand that some will say ID cannot be science because it seeks to investigate non-physical components of nature (such as laws and their origin). But that's only true if the purpose of science is limited to the exploration/explanation of the physical. My understanding, however, is that the purpose of science is to tell us about the nature of reality, of the Universe.
My conjecture is that the Universe is more than just its material component, more than its physical "expression." You give every indication that you disagree with me about this. And yet I would say that Doctor Stochastic is more than his material component. Indeed, the most important part of Doc isn't the matter that composes his physical body.
But then, our thinking follows from our seeing. And since neither of us can "see" for the other, I imagine we will continue to have interesting debates.
Thanks so much for writing, Doc!
I think that's what some of have been saying for quite a while.
Primarily what has been observed is the insufficiency of the materialist explanation.
Science doesn't have all the answers, true.
ID is correct to note that matter requires information in order to produce the world that we observe all around us, and that information is not an epiphenomenon of matter nor of the physical-chemical laws nor is it a product of 4D space-time.
This is a baseless assertion, and almost certainly false. Let's just say that every time it has been put to the test it has failed. Perhaps you could cite an example to the contrary.
And I would say, well, that's just fine -- except for the simple fact that the statement seems hopelessly reductive -- that is to say, insufficient to take into account all the real phenomena that we observe.
Like representative democracy, science is worse than anything except the alternatives.
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