God vs. Darwin: no contest

Boston Globe ^ | 08.08.05 | Cathy Young

[wallcrawlr]

THE GOD VS. Darwin debate went to the White House last week when President Bush weighed in, stating in a roundtable interview with reporters that ''intelligent design" should be taught along with evolution in public schools. It's a move that has undoubtedly pleased the president's conservative religious base. However, it has also caused much unhappiness among those conservatives who want the Republican Party to be something other than a political arm of the religious right, including such strong Bush supporters as columnist Charles Krauthammer and University of Tennessee law professor/blogger Glenn Reynolds.

[joyspring777]

"If some public school teachers are using evolution as a vehicle for atheist propaganda, that's outrageous, and a proper matter for school boards to deal with."

This is done every day in every school all across the country, and they don't want anyone changing it.

[Elsiejay]

Proponents of intelligent design do not express any premise as to the age of the Earth; neither do they necessarily subscribe to the Genesis account of creation. Indeed, some of them are atheists. The misrepresentations of evolutionists to the contrary notwithstanding, intelligent design is not, per se, a doctrinaire religious concept.

[Asphalt]

go to any of the crevo threads. I have seen that numerous times. Way too many to count.

[PhatHead]

We've already begun a debate here in Nebraska about whether we should accept Kansas high school biology credits.

That sounds a bit over-wrought. I don't know about Kansas, I guess, but in Texas evolution takes a rather cursory couple of hours out of the year-long course. The rest of the year is spent with the usual Punnett squares, frog and pig dissections, body systems, cell anatomy, etc.

To be honest, I am often puzzled at how much time is spent debating how to teach evolution high school biology when it currently is really more "mentioned" than "taught."

[ndt]

"they say they won't debate with a creationist because they only debate scientists"

I'll debate with you. Please provide me with a list of predictions made by ID and descriptions of experiments I can use to validate those predictions. Once I receive and rerun your experiments, we can begin.

[joyspring777]

Bravo! But not possible, so we need to allow everyone on the field or no one.

Evolutionists currently own the field and the rules, and they are up to their ears in religion...Atheism and Secular Humanism.

[js1138]

...they said that the neantherdal man was a DIFFERENT SPECIES than modern humans. They are NOT our descendant as I had always been taught.

LOL

[Question_Assumptions]

The problem is that the issue is frames as God vs. Darwin. So long as evolutionists use the theory to promote the idea of a Godless universe, it's going to be controversial. Give people a choice betweeen God or Darwin, don't be surprised if lots of people pick God.

[Elsiejay]

Good question. And why, therefore, do evolutionists insist that one cannot possibly understand biology UNLESS one subscribes to evolutionism? No course of study in biological sciences in my personal experience, including at the post-graduate level, depended for its understanding or utilization on an evolutionary framework of interpretation.

[PhatHead]

...biology is much, much bigger than that. ...

True, but none of those things are generally taught in high school biology classes. Basic anatomy is, though. I think that was his only point...

[rob777]

Obviously an opponent of ID shouldn't be used as a source to define the ID movement. ID gets the cold shoulder from the secular materialists because it dares say that both Intelligence and Design are in evidence in our world.





You are right. ID's opponents incorrectly lump it together with Creationism and yell about the separation of Church and State. In truth, the argument from design goes back to Aristotle. In his book, The Physics, he argued against an early form of random evolution theory, which came through Empedocles, and rejected it as an irrational account of nature.

Aristotle spelled out Empedocles’ theory and then answered it:

“Why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but of necessity? What is drawn up must cool, and what has been cooled must become water and descend, the result of this being that the corn grows. Similarly if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this-in order that the crop might be spoiled-but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in nature, e.g. that our teeth should come up of necessity-the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food-since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose that there is purpose? Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come be for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his 'man-faced ox-progeny' did.

Such are the arguments (and others of the kind) which may cause difficulty on this point. Yet it is impossible that this should be the true view. For teeth and all other natural things either invariably or normally come about in a given way; but of not one of the results of chance or spontaneity is this true. We do not ascribe to chance or mere coincidence the frequency of rain in winter, but frequent rain in summer we do; nor heat in the dog-days, but only if we have it in winter. If then, it is agreed that things are either the result of coincidence or for an end, and these cannot be the result of coincidence or spontaneity, it follows that they must be for an end; and that such things are all due to nature even the champions of the theory which is before us would agree. Therefore action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature.”


The debate over evolution didn't begin with Bush, Creationists, or the school of Intelligent Design. The debate goes back to the time of the Greeks.

[Right Wing Professor]

No course of study in biological sciences in my personal experience, including at the post-graduate level, depended for its understanding or utilization on an evolutionary framework of interpretation

So you're claming, for example, you can comparatively analyze gene sequences without an evolutionary framework? Wow. Where did you do you post-graduate work?

[HungarianGypsy]

That's interesting re: Neanderthal Man. I remember reading an article a while back that if Neanderthal man were given a haircut and put in street clothes (going by what he probably looked like in life) he wouldn't look much different than any one else. Although he may have had rickets.
I saw a documentary on Hobbits. Yes, they called them hobbits. The reconstruction of the skull sure looked like a person, so hearing "humanlike" grated on my ear.

[MEGoody]

There is a great deal of fear in some circles when talk arises of teaching problems with evolution or teaching a theory that competes with evolution.

[bvw]

There's a free market for education today. No one HAS to attend the government school. In fact, the alternatives that seem to work are nearly all religious. So that's a pretty dang good predictor of which schools smart parents will enschool their bairns at, if the government moves to privatize existing government free-schools or voucher-ize them.

[Right Wing Professor]

So long as evolutionists use the theory to promote the idea of a Godless universe, it's going to be contr

Very few people do that. Many evolutionary biologists are in fact Christians; and most of the rest would prefer to leave religion out of biology entirely.

[Modernman]

they said that the neantherdal man was a DIFFERENT SPECIES than modern humans.

Well, that's the debate these days, from what I understand. Some scientists believe they're a separate species, others think they are a subspecies of Homo Sapiens.

How do evolutionists explain this?

What's to explain?

[wallcrawlr]

I watched about 20 min of it.

The part where the old dude discovered "tool man"...well at least he first discovered a skull and arbitrarily called it his long lost tool man. Then after some time passes the wifey finds another skull...so now this one is the new tool man.

Since the tools and skulls were found "within" the same rock they are all dated the same.

[Elsiejay]

Let us not lose sight of the central fact that President Bush did not introduce the subject of ID and its place in education. He responded to a question, and in so doing expressed his OPINION of the pedagogical value of exposing minds to different points of view. (What a concept!) Neither did the President demand that schools teach ID,or anything else.
In this venue, let us avoid putting words in the mouth of President Bush, or anyone else.

[wallcrawlr]

the Theory of Evolution is the unifying theory of the biological sciences.

Its unfortunate but not surprising.