Posted on 10/07/2005 4:59:16 AM PDT by shuckmaster
How should evolution be taught in schools? This being America, judges will decide
HALF of all Americans either don't know or don't believe that living creatures evolved. And now a Pennsylvania school board is trying to keep its pupils ignorant. It is the kind of story about America that makes secular Europeans chortle smugly before turning to the horoscope page. Yet it is more complex than it appears.
In Harrisburg a trial began last week that many are comparing to the Scopes “monkey” trial of 1925, when a Tennessee teacher was prosecuted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. Now the gag is on the other mouth. In 1987 the Supreme Court ruled that teaching creationism in public-school science classes was an unconstitutional blurring of church and state. But those who think Darwinism unGodly have fought back.
Last year, the school board in Dover, a small rural school district near Harrisburg, mandated a brief disclaimer before pupils are taught about evolution. They are to be told that “The theory [of evolution] is not a fact. Gaps in the theory exist for which there is no evidence.” And that if they wish to investigate the alternative theory of “intelligent design”, they should consult a book called “Of Pandas and People” in the school library.
Eleven parents, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, two lobby groups, are suing to have the disclaimer dropped. Intelligent design, they say, is merely a clever repackaging of creationism, and as such belongs in a sermon, not a science class.
The school board's defence is that intelligent design is science, not religion. It is a new theory, which holds that present-day organisms are too complex to have evolved by the accumulation of random mutations, and must have been shaped by some intelligent entity. Unlike old-style creationism, it does not explicitly mention God. It also accepts that the earth is billions of years old and uses more sophisticated arguments to poke holes in Darwinism.
Almost all biologists, however, think it is bunk. Kenneth Miller, the author of a popular biology textbook and the plaintiffs' first witness, said that, to his knowledge, every major American scientific organisation with a view on the subject supported the theory of evolution and dismissed the notion of intelligent design. As for “Of Pandas and People”, he pronounced that the book was “inaccurate and downright false in every section”.
The plaintiffs have carefully called expert witnesses who believe not only in the separation of church and state but also in God. Mr Miller is a practising Roman Catholic. So is John Haught, a theology professor who testified on September 30th that life is like a cup of tea.
To illustrate the difference between scientific and religious “levels of understanding”, Mr Haught asked a simple question. What causes a kettle to boil? One could answer, he said, that it is the rapid vibration of water molecules. Or that it is because one has asked one's spouse to switch on the stove. Or that it is “because I want a cup of tea.” None of these explanations conflicts with the others. In the same way, belief in evolution is compatible with religious faith: an omnipotent God could have created a universe in which life subsequently evolved.
It makes no sense, argued the professor, to confuse the study of molecular movements by bringing in the “I want tea” explanation. That, he argued, is what the proponents of intelligent design are trying to do when they seek to air their theory—which he called “appalling theology”—in science classes.
Darwinism has enemies mostly because it is not compatible with a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis. Intelligent designers deny that this is why they attack it, but this week the court was told by one critic that the authors of “Of Pandas and People” had culled explicitly creationist language from early drafts after the Supreme Court barred creationism from science classes.
In the Dover case, intelligent design appears to have found unusually clueless champions. If the plaintiffs' testimony is accurate, members of the school board made no effort until recently to hide their religious agenda. For years, they expressed pious horror at the idea of apes evolving into men and tried to make science teachers teach old-fashioned creationism. (The board members in question deny, or claim not to remember, having made remarks along these lines at public meetings.)
Intelligent design's more sophisticated proponents, such as the Discovery Institute in Seattle, are too polite to say they hate to see their ideas championed by such clods. They should not be surprised, however. America's schools are far more democratic than those in most other countries. School districts are tiny—there are 501 in Pennsylvania alone—and school boards are directly elected. In a country where 65% of people think that creationism and evolution should be taught side by side, some boards inevitably agree, and seize upon intelligent design as the closest approximation they think they can get away with. But they may not be able to get away with it for long. If the case is appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, intelligent design could be labelled religious and barred from biology classes nationwide.
Given that there are not 24 hour days in Alaska, is the 24 hour day geographically specific????
First, they are not millions of years old. Second, a worldwide flood could and would leave millions and millions of dead things laying around in hundreds of feet of mud worldwide. Which, I might add is exactly what we have, millions and millions of dead things trapped in hundreds of feet of mud worldwide.
ID does not really oppose evolution. It opposes atheism taught as science.
No He doesn't. He said Adam and Eve would die. You're reading your ridiculous pseudoscience back into your Bible.
BTW, you never answered me from a previous thread. How does this "no death of anything" stuff actually work? You realize animals can't grow, develop, or even ultimately remain alive and functional without cells dying?
God' word teaches that it [the Grand Canyon] came about via a world wide flood.
Again, no it doesn't. It was the writings of the self-proclaimed "prophet" Ellen G. White, founder of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, which taught that the Genesis flood was geologically significant and responsible for the deposition of fossils; and it was the belief in the inerrancy of her writings that was directly responsible for the formulation of modern "flood geology" by Seventh Day Adventist George McCready Price in the 1920's, which was later popularized among fundamentalists generally by Henry Morris and others in the 1960's and 70's.
The Bible says NOTHING about fossils or the geological effects of the flood. Anything on that matter is being read back into the Bible based on the "theories of man". What little the Bible does say is, at the very least, consistent with a tranquil flood that had little or no geological effects. For instance the Bible refers to some of the same place names (e.g. the Euphrates River, IIRC) both before and after the flood.
His world, His creations, His rules, He judges.
He says, "Unless and man is born again he will not see the kingdom of God." Belive it, ignore it, scoff at it, makes no difference, for He said it and He will abide by it.
So, tell me how long is a day in Alaska? And a week and a month? Do they have a calendar that has other than a 365 day year? Alaska has a 24 hour day, just different numbers of hours of daylight depending upon the time of year, but so does Maine, Florida, and Antarctica. Speaking of Antarctica can you tell me where the leaves came from that they keep finding in the ice there?
Not really. Phrenology was accepted by the scientific community when it appeared (as was Freudian psychoanalysis; a steady-state universe; spontaneous generation of life; global warming; eugenics etc.)
No, what the Hebrew says is "dying you will die."
But more important He said:
"And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. "
No death till Adam sinned.
If you want me to paraphrase it I will via an email request.
Not at all. But students should be presented with ALL of the evidence for and AGAINST the theory of evolution, not just one side. The theory has many weaknesses - there are many scientists who don't buy it. Present them with all of the evidence in an unbiased manner and then let them decide for themselves which evidence is more convincing. Quit pushing it like a religion. Censorship of evidence against evolution is un-American and un-scientific, and makes the evos who seek to censor look dishonest.
They came from trees. What else would you like to know?
Some of the northernmost parts of Antarctica were less than completely frozen several million years ago, when the Earth was warmer.
A major part of science education is to inform students of the current position of scientific knowledge, which is defined by the scientific community. Ignore the scientific community and in my opinion you aren't really teaching science at all. You might as well call the class something else like "Truths Of Our Community", because Colleges and Industry aren't going to fall for it. If Colleges and industry don't accept the standards of a student's science education then they don't have to employ.
If Scriptrue actually came from God, there should be a way of verification. Otherwise, anyone can say they've got a direct pipeline to the Almighty and claim their writings to be divinely-inspired.
Is there an independent method of verifying the authenticity of Scripture?
Not at all. But students should be presented with ALL of the evidence for and AGAINST the theory of evolution, not just one side.
Uh huh... And after they've spent the FORTY YEARS, at least (eight hours a day, five days a week) it would require to work through "ALL of the evidence for" the theory of evolution -- and a day or two covering "ALL the evidence against it" (and I'm being generous), how much time is that going to leave them for anything else?
I've got a better idea, why don't we stop wasting students' time on this sort of "have them completely review an entire field of science from top to bottom just because some fringe folks don't understand it"?
Ooh, here's an even BETTER idea -- why don't you anti-evolution folks go spend *YOUR* time actually having a look at "ALL of the evidence for the theory of evolution" before you spout off any more nonsense about it? That should keep you busy for about half a lifetime, at least, which will produce two great results: 1) It'll keep you from bothering us for a very, very long time, and 2) by the time you get done actually LEARNING the field for a change, you'll understand why 99+% of biologists consider evolutionary biology to be a settled issue, and you'll almost certainly come to the same conclusion yourself once you've actually worked through the ENORMOUS volumes of evidence supporting it.
Deal? I'll even point you to the libraries.
Here's part of a post I wrote a while back trying to get across the magnitude of the evidence:
And speaking of PubMed, a search for journal articles containing the word "evolution" returns 165,096 hits -- remember, you're advocating having schoolkids read all of *those* as well. Let's see, at a brisk thirty minutes per paper, that'd eat up only 39 years (spending 40 hours a week, no vacations), no problem!I am not claiming that all of TOE is crap, just that parts of it, i.e. ape to man is simply speculation based on a few bones and common genes found over a million years. I just don't buy it.
It is far, far more than "simply speculation". First, see the "mega-post" linked above. Then note that even though it's *HUGE*, it's only a vanishingly small fraction of one percent of the amount of evidence that has been accumulated supporting and validating evolution.
I recently went to a large university library in order to find a copy of a paper I couldn't get online (and PubMed, an online database of biology-related research papers, has over TWELVE MILLION papers cataloged). The archived biology journals filled the second, and half of the third floors of the library. Each volume of bound journals held around a thousand pages, and was the size of a big-city phone book. Each shelf held about twenty volumes in a row. Each 8-foot-tall rack held eight shelves. There were about twenty five racks to a row (fifty when you count both sides of the "aisle"), they were *really* long. It was a chore hiking up and down them. There were about seventy rows. I got lost in them several times. And that was just the one floor, there were more upstairs.
And of course, those weren't all the journal articles, just the ones from the biggest journals, and not a lot of the ones published in languages other than English.
*That's* the kind of magnitude of evidence we're talking about. You could hike into those stacks, walk as long as you like, and then pull out a volume at random and flip it open to any page you chose, and I'd make money betting you that if the exact page you chose didn't contain a study providing supporting evidence for evolution, flipping 2-3 pages on either side would. You could literally spend the rest of your life trying to read it all, and not make it through a fraction of it.
Even just the dozens of different specific ways in which "ape to man" has been validated involves enough evidence to literally bury people under.
"Simply speculation"? Not hardly.
The theory has many weaknesses
Oh? Name your top two.
- there are many scientists who don't buy it.
...a tiny fraction of all scientists, actually, most of whom aren't actually in the biological sciences (*and* most of the "lists of scientists" who doubt evolution which the creationists like to wave around tend to *really* stretch the definition of who counts as a "scientist"). You can also find "many" scientists who aren't convinced that the Apollo Moon landings weren't faked. So?
Present them with all of the evidence in an unbiased manner and then let them decide for themselves which evidence is more convincing.
See above. Showing them "all the evidence" would take most of a lifetime. That's how much evidence has been accumulated supporting evolution. Deal with it.
And what other topics would you like to waste time on in a likewise fashion? Shall we show students *ALL* the evidence for the atomic theory of matter, and all the evidence against it, then just let them make up their own minds? That'll take another half a lifetime, at least.
Quit pushing it like a religion.
It isn't. Quite pushing your religion and pretending it's science.
Censorship of evidence against evolution is un-American and un-scientific, and makes the evos who seek to censor look dishonest.
There is no such censorship. Nor is there any such evidence, unless you can come up with something better than the last several hundred clueless anti-evolutionists I've talked to. Feel free to show us what you've got, though. But don't waste our time with this manure, we've seen it a thousand times before. Try something new and original.
Take it up with newsgatherer -- he claims that the Bible is rock-solid proof that nothing lived more than a few thousand years ago, much less "millions upon millions".
As soon as you guys can agree on what the Bible actually does and does not say about natural history, get back to me, *then* we can talk about whether it's a good basis for what we ought to teach in science class.
You mean like this?. It sounds vaguely familiar, but I can't quite put my finger on where I've heard something like it before...
Not ALL of the scientific community agrees with evolutionary theory. The scientific community is what the people in power say it is. Real science does not inhibit open exploration and re-evalution of the evidence. Real science goes where the evidence takes it. Disallowing evidence (and there is plenty) that places doubt on evolutionary theory is not only unscientific but smacks of dogma.
Proof positive the Creationists sites are only out for your money, and folks who frequent them are gullible. Darwin's writings are available online for free.
"As soon as you guys can agree on what the Bible actually does and does not say about natural history, get back to me, *then* we can talk about whether it's a good basis for what we ought to teach in science class."
So long as man is still in flesh, there will be the argument over what the Bible does in fact say and instruct.
I do not expect to convince either one of you differently. Interestingly enough all wails against evolution that are heard from the creationists, there is not a dimes worth of difference in the ideologies if Christians are told to believe that there were only two fully grown adults created in the beginning, even given what DNA tests prove.
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