Posted on 10/19/2005 5:10:52 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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Not exactly. Half of the population is below median intelligence.
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Half below the median! I'm shocked! Something must be done!
"And I'm sure you remember the hero of all atheists, Madelyn Murray O'Hare (God rest her soul - lol). She led the charge to get God out of schools. Perhaps you've heard of her.
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I have heard of her, but she spelled her last name O'Hair, not O'Hare, which is an airport near Chicago.
I suppose the prayers you heard were Christian prayers, not Jewish ones. What about the kids in your classroom who were Jewish. Were those prayers fair to them?
I'm afraid that we live in a country that has citizens who worship every known religion. Their children attend classes in our public schools, too. The Bible is not the scripture of any religions other than Christianity. Even Judaism does not use the Christian Bible as scripture.
The reason the Bible is no longer read in public school classrooms, nor are prayers recited in those classrooms is not because of Mrs. O'Hair. It is because it is inappropriate when all students may not use the same scripture, nor recite the same prayers. Their parents teach them some other religion at home, and do not wish their children to be taught a different religion in the public school.
It's very simple, and fair. Nobody prevents anyone from teaching whatever religion they wish to their children. That's not the job of the school.
"Do you REALLY expect anyone to believe that when the primary opponents of ID is the Anti Christian Lawyers Union?"
I expect nothing at all, quite frankly. I merely observe.
Looser. Open any biology textbook, or chemistry, or physics, or philosophy, or religion, or politics, its all mechanisms, methods, processes.
"Not exactly. Half of the population is below median intelligence."
Well, that's true. Distribution of intelligence, however, pretty much follows a bell curve, so the median and the average are pretty darned close, at least based on the research I've read.
Undoubtedly. But it still does have to conform to the law against teaching someone's religion as (or in lieu of) science. Whether the schools obey or flout it is their choice.
And I wouldn't be surprised if it happens in many high school biology classes across the country.
I share your gutter-low expectations about our public schools. All manner of irrationality is taught there, some of it even legally.
How is one to know what is purposeful without knowing the intent of the designer. How is one to know the intent of the designer without knowing who the designer is or at least what he thinks. As far as I know it is not possible to know an alien's mind well enough to assume intent. In fact the only possible designer that we have any putative knowledge of would be the God of the Bible.
I think this is a big "whoops" from Behe
"This country was founded by Christians whether you like it or not. Knowledge of the Bible should be part of any good curriculum."
Perhaps, but they were very careful to avoid making this nation officially Christian and to guarantee that all citizens, regardless of their religion, would have equal rights.
I doubt that the Bible readings in your school, never mind the prayers, had the intention of merely being an education on what the Bible said.
My point stands. Citizens of this nation are of all faiths, with about 5% or so having no religious beliefs at all. Every single one of those citizens is equal to every other citizen. Religious education belongs in the home and church, not in the public schools.
Wrong. No atheist is proposing or supporting ID. Everyone proposing or supporting it has their pet deity in mind. And if they say otherwise they are telling pork-pies. I may be wrong about the lack of atheists. You can prove me wrong by citing an atheist ID supporter if you wish. I won't be holding my breath for that.
"Well, why do you stop at Islam and leave the atheists out? Their candidate would be ET, right?"
ET? Well, there are those who believe that some extraterrestrial entities seeded our planet with life, but I know of no scientists who believe that any entity dwelling in this universe designed the universe itself. That would be impossible, really, since the universe would have to exist before they did.
You're a little confused here. For any entity to have designed the universe, it would have to exist outside of the universe. That would make it supernatural in nature. Atheists do not believe in supernatural entities.
I would prefer not to be on the same side as the ACLU, but for once they've got it right. When the ACLU harasses Christians for silly items they're over the top. But in this case, they're attacking Christians who are transparently fraudulent in their attempt to subvert the foundations of science.
The focus of ID is a lie. The claim is that some "intelligence" created species, when virtually all ID proponents actually mean "God" created species.
Those ID proponents are bearing false witness, and as such they don't deserve the support of honest Christians.
"If it is true that an influx of doubt and uncertainty actually marks periods of healthy growth in a science, then evolutionary biology is flourishing today as it seldom has flourished in the past. For biologists collectively are less agreed upon the details of evolutionary mechanics than they were a scant decade ago. Superficially, it seems as if we know less about evolution than we did in 1959, the centennial year of Darwin's on the Origin of Species." (Eldredge, Niles [Chairman and Curator of Invertebrates, American Museum of Natural History], "Time Frames: The Rethinking of Darwinian Evolution and the Theory of Punctuated Equilibria," Simon & Schuster: New York NY, 1985, p.14)
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"When discussing organic evolution the only point of agreement seems to be: "It happened." Thereafter, there is little consensus, which at first sight must seem rather odd." (Conway Morris, Simon [palaeontologist, Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge University, UK], "Evolution: Bringing Molecules into the Fold," Cell, Vol. 100, pp.1-11, January 7, 2000, p.11)
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"Darwin and evolutionism stand astride us, whatever the mutterings of creation scientists. But is the view right? Better, is it adequate? I believe it is not. It is not that Darwin is wrong, but that he got hold of only part of the truth. For Darwin's answer to the sources of the order we see all around us is overwhelmingly an appeal to a single singular force: natural selection. It is this single-force view which I believe to be inadequate, for it fails to notice, fails to stress, fails to incorporate the possibility that simple and complex systems exhibit order spontaneously."
"... "The creationists so animating one another, the lay public, and our contemporary court system today rest uneasy with Darwin's heritage. Natural selection, operating on variations which are random with respect to usefulness, appears a slim force for order in a chaotic world. Yet the creationists' impulse is not merely misplaced religion. Science consists in discovering that point of view under which what did occur is what we have good grounds to expect might have occurred. Our legacy from Darwin, powerful as it is, has fractures as its foundations. We do not understand the sources of order on which natural selection was privileged to work. As long as our deepest theory of living entities is the geneology [sic] of contraptions and as long as biology is the laying bare of the ad hoc, the intellectually honorable motivation to understand partially lying behind the creationist impulse will persist." (Kauffman, Stuart A. [theoretical biologist, Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico, USA], "The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution," Oxford University Press: New York NY, 1993)
Cordially,
"And gender differences are not significant.
If this is how your mind draws conclusions from data given it, I can finally understand why you are incapable of understanding the logic behind the evolutionary sciences. It really is an all or nothing thought process.
"And that all life can be explained by random mutations and natural selection.
This is the conclusion that can be logically drawn from the enormous amounts of evidence available.
Wow.
This went on for a while. Every time Rothschild would ask Behe about a statement, some he wrote himself, he'd say he'd have to disagree that it said what it said.
Wow wow. When they make you contradict your previous statements, isn't that called 'impeaching your testimony'? In a case I worked on as an expert, when we managed to make the other guy's expert witness admit some of his past statements were wrong, our lawyer looked like a cat who'd just swallowed a canary. He was visibly purring.
Your opinion is noted. Also noted is the fact you are an atheist.
Google the "incorporation doctrine." Read. Understand.
Wrong. He doesn't know about the incorporation doctrine. (Do you?) That is why he is wrong.
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