Posted on 08/18/2008 9:35:10 AM PDT by GodGunsGuts
With five seats on the State Board of Education up for grabs this year, education advocates say how children learn about evolution hangs in the balance -- and who voters choose could affect Kansas' national reputation.
A frequent flip-flop between moderate and conservative majorities on the 10-member board has resulted in the state changing its science standards four times in the past eight years.
Conservatives have pushed for standards casting doubt on evolution, and moderates have said intelligent design does not belong in the science classroom.
In 2007, a new 6-4 moderate majority removed standards that called evolution into question.
This year, none of the three moderates whose seats are up for election are running again. Only one of the two conservative incumbents is running for re-election...
(Excerpt) Read more at kansas.com ...
For the years of reading crevo debates, discounting credentials is one of the most common forms of debate that evos as a whole engage in especially when the guy with the degree is right about what he’s saying.
No matter what the level of degree nor where it was received, if a scientist does not toe the hardline FRevo party line, he’s dissed, without exception, as far as I’ve ever seen.
It's not a simple question. It is a well formed sentence in the English language, but your assertion that it is simple is bogus.
Even if you get technical and ask a relatively solid question such as, if you started evolution over, would the same species evolve, is not an easy question.
My best guess is no, but it's a guess.
As to why anyone should take me seriously, I suppose that depends on whether they find my reasoning adequate or interesting. as I have pointed out, I don't stand on credentials.
Credentials or the lack thereof do not make an argument right or wrong. Nor does your fervent desire that things be a certain way and not some other way.
You say it makes no difference what alternative to evolution is presented provided it doesn't violate your desires as to how the world works. But it does matter. It matters whether the description of the world is consistent with evidence or not.
They’d be just as happy with a billion “scientific” alternatives, as long as it kept God or anything but a completely random, naturalistic, we-don’t-know-how-it-came-about, but-it-couldn’t-include-any-hint-of-intelligence-or-design thinking.
That reads to me like another admission that the alternatives being promoted in LA and KS--and here--are not really scientific alternatives, but rather attempts to talk about God. Again, points for honesty; too bad about the smokescreen, though.
SEE #496! It can’t get much plainer!
Are you running from yet another debate, Allmendream? That’s three in a row.
so how about it then...at what point DID life become intelligent, purposeful, ordered...?
What a dilemma it must be to be so worried about God somehow influencing science to the point that if He does somehow seep into the argument, your entire worldview collapses!
How utterly far reaching could that be?
You have yet to explain yourself as to how you think Madison's reading of the 1st Amendment was incorrect. You just keep saying that somehow “the Father of the Constitution”’s opinion doesn't matter. Hard to continue a discussion with you when you will not state a position.
It seems that you also like ducking questions.
Do you believe that if someone loses at Dice that it was “just random” or that it was God’s plan that they lose at dice?
Why do you think God’s power somehow doesn’t extent to randomness?
Why do you feel that God’s plan for life didn’t include randomness, despite all the evidence that randomness is an essential component of life?
Why do you suppose the line “it happened randomly” somehow precludes the involvement of God?
==You have yet to explain yourself as to how you think Madison’s reading of the 1st Amendment was incorrect.
Do you concede that George Mason is the true father of the Bill of Rights, and that Madison only went along with the same because a refusal to do so would have scuttled the Constitution?
Is this an attempt to avoid the debate re: the First Amendment that YOU INITIATED?
Nope. It doesn't have to be about God and it's not about *religion*. The any-hint-of-intelligence-or-design thinking could be highly evolved extra-terrestrials but since that would remind the ACLU and its cronies about God, they have a hissy fit and reject it since it SOUNDS too much like *God*.
So tell me, which religion would it be that is being promoted by admitting that certain features of life and the universe are best explained by intelligence and design?
I ask again...
How is Madison's interpretation of the 1st at odds with the current understanding of its meaning?
“Because we hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, “that religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence.” The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable; because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also; because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him.” James Madison
I don't know, and I don't pretend to know.
And thank you for your concern, but God has a very comfortable place in my world view. You seem to think you know a lot about other people's relationships with God.
==How is Madison’s interpretation of the 1st at odds with the current understanding of its meaning?
Madison’s interpretation of the First Amendment is not at odds with the current understanding, it’s at odds with the original intent of the founders.
Now please answer my question. Do you concede that George Mason is the Father of the Bill of Rights, and that James Madison only went along with the Bill of Rights because to refuse to do so meant scuttling the Constitution? Do you concede this point or not?!?!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2061218/replies?c=527
Genetic variation arises through random mutation. If a gambler looses at dice isn’t it still God’s will that he do so, despite it being demonstrably random?
Now that I have asked it of you repeatedly will you answer it now?
If there were positive scientific evidence for that intelligence and action of a designer, it would not necessarily promote any religion. Any further answer will have to wait for the production of such evidence.
It doesn't have to be about God and it's not about *religion*. The any-hint-of-intelligence-or-design thinking could be highly evolved extra-terrestrials
So do you think the people pushing for the changes to the curriculum in LA and KS will be happy if God and aliens are discussed as equally plausible alternatives? That seems kind of naive.
That would be a problem for the modern day scientist to answer, or maybe just the FRevos. I've had more discussions than I can remember with frevos about order and complexity being indicators of intelligence and design and them denying that; saying that it's not because order and complexity can arise spontaneously amidst randomness.
Do you concede that Thomas Jefferson influenced James Madison to include a Bill of Rights?
Do you concede that James Madison is “the Father of the Constitution” and the AUTHOR of the Bill of Rights?
So you think the current understanding of the 1st is not at odds with the intent of the WRITER of the 1st; instead you say it is at odds with “the original intent of the founders”? OK then. Which founders? Certainly not Franklin, Jefferson, Madison or Paine. How do you think an amendment was passed when one group thought it meant what modern jurisprudence thinks it means, and the other group thought it meant something else (what exactly?)?
What do you think the original intent of the founders (but not the author Madison, or Jefferson, Franklin or Paine) was concerning the 1st?
And yet they can provide no examples of the same. Talk about BLIND faith.
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