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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.
Nope. You said exactly what you are now denying in post 23.
other poster: "Nowhere does the theory of evolution in and of itself, espouse atheism."
newsgatherer: "It most certainly does!"
Fun? No, simply reinforces what I said earlier, we have a fundamental disagreement and believe. I belive God and His word, you believe man and his word.
I believe Genesis 1-11 and you believe the account of the evoltionist.
Fun? No! Sad? Yes!
You know, one of us is right the other wrong. If I am right, and you don't change your ways, you're in for a terrible eternity. But, if you're right and I'm wrong I have lost nothing, nothing at all.
Why? To do that I would have to use valuable time reading a book I deemed a lie back in the early 60's, and that I do not care to do.
With this one post, you've convinced me that you have the most disingenuous screen name of them all.
No, atomic physics were "Jewish physics". Lenard and Stark told him so.
LOL!
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I am not saying anything, I am simply going to show you three statements that Jesus made:
Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.
I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by Me.
Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Do with them as you choose.
But, as for me, I know that no one who is not a Born Again Washed in the Blood of the Lamb Christian will have his or her name written in the Lambs Book of Life.
Are you reading what yu're posting?
It's darwin talking about guess what.
As God said it???? - I think you mean "as man wrote it".
Worse than that - it want's to make "I want tea" part of the scientific method!!!
If you honestly believe that no animal became extinct before 6000 years ago, there is no amount of evidence, logic, or reality that could penetrate your halo of ignorance.
I usually check that, but missed it on this one.
Thanks.
You failed to answer my question. Is everyone who doesn't agree with your evolution-rejecting interpretation of Christian Scripture an atheist or are you backtracking from that claim? That group includes a majority of Christians, and billions of those who follow other faiths. Are they all atheists?
Failure to address Spunkets' valid point noted.
This is interesting. Which book are you referring to? On what basis did you deem it a lie?
Did you not catch the irony in the sentence? Probably not; you simply had a knee-jerk reaction about what you thought it said, not what was actually written.
That was smarmy.
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
They're going fast!
I believe fact. Observable, provable, testable fact. If God created the universe, then His stamp is on all of it -- not just between the covers of one narrow book.
You choke on a gnat and swallow a camel. While you have your nose pressed to the pages of the Bible, you not only ignore but dismiss as Satanic all the glories of creation, from mosquitos to nebulae. Do you really think that you honor God by dumbing his creation down to a level you can understand? Do you honor God by claiming that your tiny mind can contain His thoughts, while you condemn those sho spend their lives striving to comprehend a tiny sliver of them?
You're like the drowning man who, sitting on his roof, waved away rescuers in a canoe, a boat and a helicopter, believing God would come to his rescue. When he stood before the throne, asking God why He did not provide, God said: "I sent two boats and a helicopter. What were you waiting for?"
Yours is the true blasphemy, the belief that the mind of God can be neatly wrapped and placed in this room by the Gideons. His creation is intricate in its complexity and infinite in its variety, and if you try to boil it down to something that fits your narrow little understanding, you're ignoring most of it.
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