A revolution for evolution - Intelligent design must not replace hard science in classrooms.

Minneapolis Star/Tribune (aka The Red Star) ^ | 11/11/05 | Editorial Staff

[MplsSteve]

Citizens in Dover, Pa, did the right thing this week by voting out most of its school board for its anti-science, pro-intelligent design stand. Voters there rejected a school leadership group that had tried to discredit the theory of evolution and teach students intelligent design (ID), the notion that lifeforms are so complex that a higher being must have designed them.

Under the leadership of the current board, Dover schools became the first in the nation to require that attention be paid to ID.

[MplsSteve]

Well, the Red Star has weighed in on the evolution vs intelligent design debate.

Not surprisingly, they're coming in on the side of evolution.

Truth be told, I don't have a dog in this fight - although I do lean towards evolution. I'm publishing this ONLY because I enjoy reading the give and take amongst Freepers regarding this issue.

Opinions - anyone?

[supercat]

How about simply saying "Nobody really knows how life on Earth began?" They can then suggest various hypotheses, but they should make clear that such things are, and probably always will be, impossible to know with certainty because there are many possible initial conditions that would have yielded, to all detectable accuracy, the same result.

[ECM]

Sure. Call me when evolution is based on "hard science." (and, no, I'm not an ID advocate).

[SamuraiScot]

Call me when evolution is based on "hard science."

You'll wait awhile.

The mainstream press and the university Left think that scientific thinking means taking God out of the picture—in other words, nihilism. (These are the people who believe that Marxist is scientific.)

Then they reason from the converse and believe that nihilism is scientific. That's why they assert so baldly that all meaninglessness (such as a random origin for human life) is the epitome of civilization.

As opposed to civilization's opposite.

[aruanan]

A revolution for evolution - Intelligent design must not replace hard science in classrooms.

Hard science, ha ha ha. Physics is hard science. Molecular biology is hard science. Evolution is not. If ID isn't hard science, then evolution shouldn't be in the classroom either because there's nothing in science more plastic than the theory of evolution or more indiscriminately used to explain everything under the sun in the most egregiously non-scientific, ad hoc fashion.

[SteveMcKing]

All politics is local, or should be. Individual schools should be left alone to decide their lessons.

Unfortunately, the Civil War dismantled this option. So have the courts, executive, and legislative branches of state and federal government.

[calex59]

Hard science? Evolution is not based on hard science but faith. Life forming from lifeless chemicals? A force that has not been proven changing animals from one species to another? It takes as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in ID. No, I am not an IDer or an evo person. I believe that no one knows what really happened or why. Until they get some hard proof, real hard proof, not conjecture, I will hold off my judgement on both.

They are both without proof.

[jennyp]

How about simply saying "Nobody really knows how life on Earth began?" They can then suggest various hypotheses, but they should make clear that such things are, and probably always will be, impossible to know with certainty because there are many possible initial conditions that would have yielded, to all detectable accuracy, the same result.

But that's basically what the textbooks do say about the origin of life.

[supercat]

But that's basically what the textbooks do say about the origin of life.

Then where is the controversy?

Scientists can't even tell with certainty how the Pyramids were created a few thousand years ago. How can they claim to know the origin of life?

[jennyp]

Hard science? Evolution is not based on hard science but faith. Life forming from lifeless chemicals?

That is on the bleeding edge of science, granted...

A force that has not been proven changing animals from one species to another?

You don't even accept speciation??? Heck, even AiG admits that speciation happens! It's just that, to save their souls they redefine the insurmountable barrier to be some ill-defined "increase in information".

It takes as much faith to believe in evolution as it does to believe in ID. ... They are both without proof.

Proof is for distillers & mathematicians. The best that any scientist can do is build up a big pile of circumstantial evidence.

[Senator Bedfellow]

I'm publishing this ONLY because I enjoy reading the give and take amongst Freepers regarding this issue.

Some folks flame, and some spectate. Flame on! ;)

[jennyp]

Then where is the controversy?

LOL, well... you mean within scientific circles or within red-state school boards?

[cpdiii]

The support for evolution is hard science and real and proved.
The great Apes have the same blood types as humans. Their genetic sequence is almost 99% the same as ours in relationship to genes. We did not descend from the great apes. They and humans had a common ancestor in the past. Even plants and humans share some of the same genes.
Evolution is real.

I think what every one is missing is who created all this so it could happen. It defies all logic that we had a big bang and all the elements of the universe were created from nothing. The belief in a Deity that created and guided or allowed it to take its natural course is just as logical as those that say this universe came into being from naught.

Yes, evolution is real, and so it the Deity. When the physicist can show us how this universe came into existence without the hand of god, I will drop the Deity portion of my statement.

[supercat]

The support for evolution is hard science and real and proved.

It is abundantly clear that natural selection is responsible for a substantial portion of the diversity of life on this planet. That in no way, however, implies that it is responsible for all of it. There were almost certainly other factors at work that we don't know about and may never understand. Whether those factors include divine intervention, or an extraterrestrial "ark", or something else entirely, is pure speculation.

[Rightwing Conspiratr1]

How about simply saying "Nobody really knows how life on Earth began?"

Unfortunately evilution theologists demand that children be force fed the whole religion. From the primeval soup creation myth to the Adam and Eve are children of the monkey god story. To allow the above statement to be made and questions to be asked undermines and subverts the communist and athiest goal of destroying Christianity. This isn't about science, it's all about stamping out Jesus.

[LiteKeeper]

mega-dittoes

[Mr Ramsbotham]

It is abundantly clear that natural selection is responsible for a substantial portion of the diversity of life on this planet.

If not, I'd be inclined to wonder why so many species use sexual reproduction.

[so_real]

My opinion : if a community desires their children to be taught the world is made of snow, I'll support their right to effect such an education in local schools for their children's benefit. Every school has a board and the community is welcome to elect board members reflecting their positions. I won't send *my* children to such a school, but I'll staunchly defend the parents' right and ability to influence the education of their children. In the words of Voltaire: "I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write." In the same breath, however, I also note that I would not send my children to a school teaching macro-evolution dogmatically or with absolutism. And, to be honest, I feel in a K-12 setting there are far more valuable subjects to address than evolution.

[Free Baptist]

The title speaks against ID in the classrooms. Which classrooms? I have read that now more than 10% of the nation's school children are either home schooled or attend a church or other religious school. The overwhelming number of these teach Divine Creation. Even more are in other private schools of a conservative nature (I'm thinking of those like the one affiliated with Hillsdale College in Michigan -- which takes no public funds whatsoever, by the way) which will not teach evolution as either fact or hard science.

The fact that such a high and G R O W I N G percentage of school-age children in this country are not becoming evolutionists must perturb the fire our of the humanistic left in this country.

[blowfish]

There were almost certainly other factors at work that we don't know about and may never understand.

Fine. Show your evidence. Otherwise, this is just philosophical armwaving, not science.