Posted on 08/05/2005 9:50:00 AM PDT by wallcrawlr
Back in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1981 Louisiana law which mandated a balanced treatment in teaching evolution and creation in the public schools. The Court decided that the intent of the law "was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind," and therefore violated the First Amendment's prohibition on a government establishment of religion. In other words, the Court adopted the atheist position that creation is a religious myth.
In speaking for the majority, Justice William J. Brennan wrote: "The legislative history documents that the act's primary purpose was to change the science curriculum of public schools in order to provide an advantage to a particular religious doctrine that rejects the factual basis of evolution in its entirety."
Of course, no one bothered to remind the learned justice that some of the world's greatest scientists were and are devout Christians, and that it is atheism that is destroying true science, not religion. Also, Justice Brennan seemed to be totally unaware that an "establishment of religion" meant a state-sanctioned church, such as they have in England with the Anglican Church, which is the official Church of England. Belief in God is not an establishment of religion. Belief in a supernatural being who created mankind is not an establishment of religion.
Also, there is no factual basis to key tenets of evolutionary theory. The fossil record shows no intermediary forms of species development. No scientist has been able to mate a dog with a donkey and get something in between.
But homeschoolers, although not affected by what the court forces on government schools, should know how to refute the fairy tale called the Theory of Evolution. Justice Brennan called it fact, which simply indicates the depth of his ignorance.
First, what exactly is the Theory of Evolution? For the answer, we must go to the source: Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species," published in 1859. Darwin claimed that the thousands of different species of animals, insects and plants that exist on Earth were not the works of a divine creator who made each specie in its present immutable form, as described in Genesis, but are the products of a very long, natural process of development from simpler organic forms to more complex organisms.
Thus, according to Darwin, species continue to change or "evolve," through a process of natural selection in which nature's harsh conditions permit only the fittest to survive in more adaptable forms.
Darwin also believed that all life originated from a single source – a kind of primeval slime in which the first living organisms formed spontaneously out of non-living matter through a random process – by accident.
The first false idea in the theory is that non-organic matter can transform itself into organic matter. Pasteur proved that this was impossible. Second, the enormous complexity of organic matter precludes accidental creation. There had to be a designer. There is now a whole scientific school devoted to the Design Theory. William A. Dembski's book, "Intelligent Design," published in 1999, is the pioneering work that bridges science with theology. Dembski writes:
Intelligent Design is three things: a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes; an intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its naturalistic legacy; and a way of understanding divine action ...
It was Darwin's expulsion of design from biology that made possible the triumph of naturalism in Western culture. So, too, it will be Intelligent Design's restatement of design within biology that will be the undoing of naturalism in Western culture.
Dembski proves that design is "empirically detectable," because we can observe it all around us. The birth of a child is a miracle of design. The habits of your household cat is a miracle of design. All cats do the same things. These are the inherited characteristics of the species. The idea that accident could create such complex behavior passed on to successive generations simply doesn't make sense. The complexity of design proves the existence of God. Dembski also notes:
Indeed within theism divine action is the most basic mode of causation since any other mode of causation involves creatures which themselves were created in a divine act. Intelligent Design thus becomes a unifying framework for understanding both divine and human agency and illuminates several longstanding philosophical problems about the nature of reality and our knowledge of it.
Intelligent Design is certainly proven by the fact that every living organism lives through a programmed cycle of birth, growth and, finally, death. That very specific program is contained in the tiniest embryo at the time of conception. The embryo of a cow probably does not look any different from the embryo of a human being. But each has been programmed differently: one creates a cow, the other a human being.
In the case of the latter, that tiny embryo contains an incredibly complex biological program that causes the individual to be born, pass through infancy and childhood, develop into maturity, middle age, old age and, finally, death – a process that takes sometimes as much as a hundred years. How can an accident know what is going to happen 100 years after it has happened?
But since Intelligent Design infers the existence of a designer – God – it is likely that evolutionists will resist any change in their views, since the acknowledgment of the existence of God is too nightmarish for them to contemplate.
Darwin's should be named "Origin of Genus" - we all agree with "Origin of Species".
Darwin explained Survival of the fittest, not arrival of the fittest.
I have "Alpha-phonics." I never have to get all the way through before the kids can read on their own and lose interest!
"Who created the creator?"
Foamy Squirell?
I don't think this writer really knows what he's talking about. For one, Intelligent Design is in no way contradictory to evolution.
One is that all the matter/energy of the universe was crammed into an infinitesimal point, and then it exploded.
The other is that there was nothing, and then it exploded.
Classic fantasy land of evolution..."Nothing...exploded"
Seriously!
Complex things in the universe. God is not a "thing", God is a personal being, not comprised of matter as you or I or any other substance in the universe. The Law of First Cause still stands, and extrapolated to infinity reaches an uncaused first cause. It is unavoidable. You don't have to believe it, but your unbelief does not negate it's truth.
Obviously, since you believe you evolved from rocks, you believe what you want to believe.
And, your believe is a convenient way of rationalizing away being accountable to a higher being other than yourself.
Well, that would explain the existence of viruses! ;o)
I don't see how you arrive at that conclusion. You are in the same family, primates, as a gorrila, and you may very well look like a gorilla, yet still be gentically distinctive. Corn is in the grass family, but corn is not the same as fescue or bermuda or other grasses.
Differintiation within species isn't a problem, neither is differentiation within a family. Its when you have a species mutate to the point of being a totally new and separate phylum where you run into the fallacy of Darwinism.
That a species mutates into a totally new and separate phylum is the premise of Darwinism. If you cannot observe it and then reproduce it in the laboratory, then Darwinism fails the standard of empiricism, and is nothing more than pseudoscience and a faith based religion.
Yeah, that's one of the major fallacies of "nowadays".
Did you happen by mere chance?
There is no necessity it must be done in a laboratory at all. As long as observations and experiments are reproducable that is all that matters.
You have a very simplified notion of what the scientific method is. An experiment is not something that must be done with test tubes in a labatory by scientists in white coats. The scientific method boils down to formulating hypothese about phenomenon in the natural world and then testing those hypotheses against other observations. Experiments, in the literal sense can be performed, but it is not necessary. There is no condition that the hypothese must be directly observed, just as long as they can be tested and potentially falsified. This is the same in evolution, cosmology, geology, paleontology, etc.
That's why Darwinian evolution is not real science any more than social science or political science is real science.
The scientific method as used in the historical aspects of the theory of evolution is the same as used in geology and cosmology.
Geologists observe natural phenomenon in geology and produce hypothese to explain them. They then test those hypothese against other observations (these are experiments too). They can't reproduce the past in the lab, but that isn't necessary for it to be science.
What about Cosmology? Noone can reproduce a star forming in a lab. Does this mean it is not real science?
So, Copernicus and Galileo were also wrong, and the sun still goes around the earth? After all, they just used telescopes to come up with empirical proof that the earth was revolving the sun.
Also, what about chemistry? There's no proof for that other than watching stuff happen in a lab. By your logic, particle physics is not real science any more than political science is, either.
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