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.
That is as ridiculous as saying "produce an experiment where a cloud of gas turns into a red dwarf star - then you can talk about cosmology being science.
Or "Produce an experiment where a continent moves several thousand kilometers - then you can talk about plate techtonics being science.
Science is not reliant on experiments in the traditional sense. Observations alone can be used to create and test hypothese (I say "in the traditional sense" because tests are a form of experiment)
Sure it does. That is precisely the claim Darwinism makes. That plants bacteria mutated into plants, plants mutated into animals, etc.
Patrick Henry doesn't bother with us, he saves his ping list for something more worth his time
One bacteria without resistance is put in an algae dish.
That one bacteria reproduces into a colony of lots of bacteria.
Some of those bacteria have resistance. When the anti-biotic is applied the resistant bacteria will survive.
Where did resistance come from if the original bacteria was non-resistant? Mutation
So different phyla couldn't have evolved into each other, but different species could. Where do we draw the line?
you have a lot of genetic similaries with common earthworms too. Are you saying you evolved from a worm?
Not an earthworm (they're on another branch of the tree), but a creature like a worm, sure.
Take the parts of 1x10? (?=who cares) standard spring type moustraps, put them unassembled into a really big bag, shake it up, and will you ever produce an assembled mousetrap? NEVER, regardless of how many times you shake it and look - infinite trials.
Even more so with any living organisms DNA.
BTW, the primordial soup developed the first organism that could find food, consume (absorb), digest, and reproduce - all at once!
That isn't what the theory of evolution says at all. How can you seriously attack something you haven't even studied?
If a first cause did not be the cause of your existence, or quantum mechanics, then there would be nothing to discuss, now would there.
Not by random chance!
A moment ago you argued that resistant bacteria were the same species as bacteria, so no evolution had occurred. Now you acknowledge that my garden and my lawn are different species, but you still claim that no evolution has occurred because they are the same family. Suppose someone did run a lab experiment where they grew fish that breathed air and walked on land. Would that prove evolution, or would you then claim that until it put down roots and drank water from the soil evolution is still false?
Anyway, continuing to claim that evolution doesn't exist doesn't tell me why you feel the need to claim it doesn't exist. What verse of the Bible says no fish shall ever grow legs, nor the lizard grow feathers, nor the monkey build a house?
Sure it does. That is precisely the claim Darwinism makes. That plants bacteria mutated into plants, plants mutated into animals, etc.
You are mixing up the past with the present. Common ancestorship allowed divergence we see today. You can't go back in time.
The claim is that some common ancestor mutated along different paths to lead to the animals we see today. Not that today's elephant can be turned into a mouse.
SD
Take a load of atoms in a bag, shake it up, never will you produce an assembled star. But hang on we know stars form naturally....hmm...perhaps my bag shaking example is a strawman...hmm..
Oh, so there aren't ancestral origins for you and everything else according to Darwinism?
Not by random chance!
Certainly not by random chance. I believe in a design and a Designer.
SD
animals did not evolve from plants
Take one set of parents - let them have lot of kids - and they will all be different - some good at math, some good at baseball,some are criminals - MUTATION? No, genetic variation!
How often is mutation been observed to be good vs. bad for the resultant organism?
" macroevolution is used to refer to any evolutionary change at or above the level of species. It means the splitting of a species into two (speciation, or cladogenesis, from the Greek meaning "the origin of a branch") or the change of a species over time into another (anagenesis, not nowadays generally used). Any changes that occur at higher levels, such as the evolution of new families, phyla or genera, is also therefore macroevolution, but the term is not restricted to the origin of those higher taxa.
If you're still talking about the lottery, yes it does. The chances of 1,2,3,4,5,6 hitting the lotto are just as good as any other set of 6 digits from 1 to 49 or whatever. Just the same. The ping pong balls don't know what's painted on them.
The chances of any given set of numbers hitting is so small, that's what makes the jackpots large. It will seem odd when 1,2,3,4,5,6 hits, but it is no more unlikely than any other.
SD
Bacteria are a distinct family. Individual species are subgrouped within that family. Your bacteria did not become something other than a bacteria. that is mutation within a species, not evolution.
Now you acknowledge that my garden and my lawn are different species, but you still claim that no evolution has occurred because they are the same family.
Your corn and fescue grass are species within the subgroup of grasses, but they are still grasses, and not trees or butterflies.
Really? Source, please. Time frame, please. Is that the only explanation? Is it possible the dust dissipating, or being gravitationally absorbed, revealed a star that was already there, doing the absorbing?
We know stars explode, but the forming part is guess, er, theory.
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