Posted on 05/06/2005 10:47:50 PM PDT by Jeff Gordon
CHARLES DARWIN’S theory of evolution is facing a new challenge in America from Christians who argue that life shows an “intelligent design”.
The Kansas Board of Education has begun taking evidence from anti-evolution scientists in a bid to rewrite the state’s teaching standards to ensure that pupils learn alternatives to evolution that suggest a guiding hand in the origin of life.
Kansas is one of a growing number of states to consider authorising schools to teach religious alternatives to Darwin — but a four-day hearing of the Kansas board has outraged mainstream scientists, who are boycotting the meeting and holding protests outside.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science declined an invitation to testify, arguing that the hearings would confuse rather than educate the public.
“This is a showcase trial,” Jack Krebs, vice-president of Kansas Citizens for Science, said. “They have hijacked science and education.”
On the first day of testimony in Topeka, the audience heard lectures on “primordial soup”, fruit-fly mutations and whether human beings were related to worms as six anti-evolution scientists argued that the theory of evolution could not explain gaps in the fossil record, the complexity of DNA or the origin of life itself.
William Harris, a professor of medicine who specialises in omega-3 fatty acids and co-founded the Intelligent Design Network, said that Darwinism clashed with the biblical teaching that life was created by God. “Part of our overall goal is to remove the bias against religion that is currently in schools,” he said. “This is a scientific controversy that has powerful religious implications.”
Other witnesses included Jonathan Wells, an embryologist and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, who described himself as “an old Berkeley antiwar radical”. “The way Darwinian evolution is usually presented is that the evidence is overwhelming, and there is no controversy about it,” he said. “That’s clearly not the case.”
Dr Wells, who holds PhDs in theology from Yale University and in biology from the University of California, Berkeley, confirmed under cross-examination that he was a member of Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church.
Pro-Darwin scientists distributed an internet posting outside the hearing in which Dr Wells declares: “Father’s words, my studies and my prayers convinced me that I should devote my life to destroying Darwinism.”
The anti-evolution scientists faced sharp questioning from Pedro Irigonegaray, a lawyer defending Darwin at the hearings. He said that he fantasised that he was defending John Scopes, a Tennessee biology teacher who in 1925 was found guilty of illegally teaching evolution at what became known as the “Monkey Trial”.
“The delicious fantasy of being in a courtroom-like environment, with the overhead fan slowly twisting and being able to question witnesses about all of these issues, is very appealing,” he said.
The US Supreme Court outlawed the teaching of biblical beliefs, or “creationism”, in state schools in an Arkansas case in 1987, forcing Christians to embrace “intelligent design”.
All three members of the Kansas sub-committee support a change in the standards to tell students that evolution is only a theory, not a fact, and to include alternatives. The full Kansas school board, which is controlled by a 6-4 conservative majority, is expected to rewrite the standards in June, joining Ohio, which took a similar step three years ago. Legislators in Alabama and Georgia are also considering Bills to allow teachers to challenge Darwin in class.
YEC SPOTREP
Slow and steady progress.
This is the wrong time for this.
Notice how the Darwinists get so bitter when their religion is challenged. They get absolutely rabid. That says something about their real agenda.
> Notice how the Darwinists get so bitter when their religion is challenged.
Most Darwinists are Christians.
The problem is that they are fighting against the knowledge of Himself that God has put in each one of us (Psa 19).
They are driven to distraction by any suggestion that they have trouble deceiving even themselves.
Madelyn O'Hair didn't disbelieve God; she hated him.
Evolutionists are the Shamans (Shamen?) of our day. They dance around muttering mysterious words to make themselves sound educated. No one dare question them. And the thought that they should lose their power base in pathetic American public schools frightens them.
> Slow and steady progress.
... back to the 12th century. Germ theory is "just" a theory! Equal time for teaching that diseases are caused by an imbalance of the humours!
Most Darwinists are liberals.
Most Darwinists make comments such as yours.
Disease, or Dis-ease. When the body is under stress, it's immune system is lowered. There's is a bit of truth behind that logic. That's why holistic medicine is now mainstream.
Jesus healed the sick, and told them to "Go, and sin no more."
> Most Darwinists make comments such as yours.
What, factually accurate ones?
Maybe pagans are that dumb, but most informed christians realize the truth, that a lot of the early Bible is allegorical in nature. There was a time in which the Church nearly put to death Galileo, one of the greatest intellects in history for saying the obvious, that the Earth revolved around the sun. You have to understand that if YOU had been alive at that time, with your mindset, you would have joined the clamor to hang this man for stating the obvious, as your are essentially doing now.
> That's why holistic medicine is now mainstream.
As is aroma therapy, touch therapy, Feng Shui, and a whole lot of other utter bilge. Why not give them equal time in school? If we are to gut biology by denigrating established science and replacing it with superstition, why stop there? Why not teach the "stars are lanterns hanging from crystal spheres" theory in astronomy?
> Jesus healed the sick, and told them to "Go, and sin no more."
And yet, many still repeat the Creationist lies. Sad.
There's obviously some real idiots running the show in Kansas. With the sad state our public schools are in today, it's a real shame that so-called conservatives would choose to make fools of themselves attacking science. Imagine if they would put the same effort into contesting socialism as they do biology.
No. They're not mainstream, although some think it helps. If they believe it helps, so let them have it. Even a sugar pill can send cancer patients into remission.
Holistic medicine, the treating of the whole person, is now the norm. Stress or hidden shames could cause headaches. In order to cure them, the doctor gets the patient to talk to cure the mental pain as well as offer something to aid the physical pain.
The mind is the builder, the physical is the result. It's not what goes into a mans mouth that makes him unclean. It's what comes out of his mouth that makes him unclean.
Modern science also agrees with this. The science of quantum psychics is on to it!
A better title would be "Guild Members Protest Denial of Automatic Authority to their favorite Theory".
The nature of the arguments one hears on the coherency and intelligibiliy of Darwinian "just so" stories resembles the centuries of theological billingsgate tossed back and forth between sectarian opponents.
Science as a truth-seeking enterprise is very powerful, but loses that power when its participants become so committed to their interpretation of data based on past arguments, that they lose sight of new evidence that challenges the accuracy of the assumptions underlying these arguments.
Do we live in a universe driven by irrational random processes or is it an artifact of an intelligent being? What evidence might settle the choice between these alternatives?
These are open questions, worthy of discussion. The discussion will not progress, however, as long as some participants (or mere observers) are convinced that they already have a definitive answer, and that arguments contrary to their views must be forcibly ejected from and permanently barred from the discussion.
That certainly appears to be the view of these official guild members who want to shut down the discussion. They are protesting a challenge to their monopolistic authority claims. Their protest should be noted, and rejected.
And today, the pendulum has swung the other way, where evolution belongs in the stone age. New sciences are opening the door to something even greater.
Evolution is a fact.
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