Posted on 08/24/2008 2:16:12 PM PDT by GodGunsGuts
...In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history, over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years.
But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.
Some come armed with “Ten questions to ask your biology teacher about evolution,” a document circulated on the Internet that highlights supposed weaknesses in evolutionary theory. Others scrawl their opposition on homework assignments. Many just tune out.
(Click link for full article)
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That article amounted to propaganda, because author Amy Harmon failed to critically assess what David Campbell taught.
For example Mickey Mouse was created by a highly talented and intelligent artist, and the changes in Mickey Mouse’s appearance over the years were due to deliberate design decisions on the part of Walt Disney artists. (And note that Mickey Mouse did not change into a different kind of cartoon character, like Goofy say.) This cartoon analogy fits creation far better than evolution.
There are not thousands of fossils of transitional forms as teacher David Campbell asserts. At any time, there are only ever a handful of dubious and hotly disputed candidates, and these are invariably discarded (like the coelacanth) as more complete information becomes available about them. Further, Campbell’s comment about a tiny fraction of fossils is seriously misleading. Fossils of virtually every kind (order) of organisms have been found - see my article “Karl Kruszelnicki: still missing the missing links” http://creationontheweb.com/content/view/5872 .
Creationists like myself do not believe that God created each species in its current form. We believe that God created each kind, and that each kind had the genetic potential for variation. Thus the different species zebra, donkey and horse all belong to the ‘horse’ or ‘equus’ kind. There can be variation and change within a kind, but a horse has never been observed to change into a different kind of animal.
David Campbell irresponsibly perpetuates the peppered moths myth with his pecking-moths-off-tree-bark activity. His activity directly reflects the peppered moth story, which was discredited long ago when researchers revealed that peppered moths do not rest on tree trunks or branches, and that the movies of birds pecking peppered moths off tree trunks were fraudulent, involving gluing dead moths to the bark. And anyway, this hardly illustrated microbes-to-moths evolution, because there were both light and dark moths before soot darkened the tree trunks, and both light and dark moths after the industrial revolution. The only thing that changed was the ratio of light to dark. This involves only changes in the ratios of existing genetic information. But evolution would require the coming into existence of encyclopedic quantitites of new genetic information, coding for new types of organs, new kinds of organisms, etc.
Two things. First, I asked those questions of another poster and he stomped off in a huff. Second, it took you several hours and side trips before answering. It’s noth like typing yes or no takes a lot of time.
I’ve never understood people who say answer my question first. If someone asks a complex technical question, or perhaps ten of them at once, I may not be able to answer, or I may need time.
All I have to say about your answers is that people have been punished severely for violating dietary laws or for saying the earth revolves around the sun.
I noticed you didn’t actually admit the earth revolves around the sun.
Conflating God and Allah is intellectually dishonest and deceitful. They are not the same and you know it.
Attempting to equate the two to smear Christians who believe God and Scripture demonstrates the weakness of the evo position in that they can't make any better defense for their position but than to resort to attempted character assassination.
If you want to play that game, there's a whole list of really lovable people who were atheists that we could bring into the discussion.
Sources?
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Jung-il, Pol Pot......
You’re going to tell me that science did better under them than Christianity?
Is that the extent to which you have trouble squaring the use of taxpayer money in schools? Or are there other uses that cause you an equal (approximate) amount of anguish?
There was a time when the Supreme Court could have applied the rule of community standards to Bible reading in school, just as they have done with obscenity laws, but at that time the courts were not seized with the issue and saw no reason to even take notice of it. Now our society seems to have become too diverse to even intellectually entertain the idea in many communities.
Oddly enough, the veritable explosion of community diversity seems to have nearly coincided with an incursion of Federal influence and authority into what had been previously a state and local affair. Since the federalization of education virtually demands a uniformity of content and practice throughout the fifty, we have come to see diversity in the schools expressed in the most unlikely manner. Banning Christianity (even its mention) doesn’t seem to have solved very many of the pressing problems of education any more than has pumping enormous amounts of money into the system.
If you find yourself discontented by Education’s present muddle, a direct solution to the problem should present itself to mind. For some time now we’ve seen Education roiled by a great deal of political turmoil. If you want politics left out of an issue, then leave the issue out of politics. Otherwise . . . what do you think will happen?
By the way, have you examined the etymology of the word ‘diverse’?
Nope. Science suffers under all forms of tyranny.
I’ve heard it declared that smuggling philosophical and religious doctrine “through the back door” just simply isn’t done in government indoctrination centers, but I’ve not seen, or heard of, any hard data supporting or refuting that claim. What is clear to me is the proposition, with regard to public policy in education, that Christians may be granted access to the table, but only with the proviso that they remain silent and accept without comment any proposition laid before them.
I always took that to refer to a really jazzed up crat.
Now, my only question is; what's a crat?
Only if you think it supports evolution.
You mean after some 55+ years you STILL haven’t figured out God really WASN’T with the nazis?
Two things. First, I asked those questions of another poster and he stomped off in a huff.
Can’t see why!
Second, it took you several hours and side trips before answering. It’s noth like typing yes or no takes a lot of time.
no where NEAR as long as my question about what godless liberals havre done objectively!
All I have to say about your answers is that people have been punished severely for violating dietary laws or for saying the earth revolves around the sun.
Well that’s sad. And just like burning witches at the stake, it’s found NOWHERE in the New Testament.
I noticed you didn’t actually admit the earth revolves around the sun.
I merely took for granted it was a given and understood,
but come to think of it the way schools are today and the very sad results we see, I see your point...
you asked if it moved, I think both rotation and revolving qualifies.
autoCRAT, beauraCRAT, demoCRAT...a very officious official? :)
Hey, where’s the guy that tried to say the bible was saying the earth was flat because Genesis says that Eden was created “in the East”?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2067301/posts?page=232#232
232 posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 7:11:10 PM by tpanther
And My response came eighteen minutes later:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2067301/posts?page=239#239
238 posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 7:29:43 PM by js1138
I posted my question to you here:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2067301/posts?page=230#230
230 posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 7:02:26 PM by js1138
And your response came here, almost four hours later:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2067301/posts?page=255#255
255 posted on Monday, August 25, 2008 10:42:31 PM by tpanther
You asserted that my first answer wasn't satisfactory, but you failed to respond to the obvious point implied:
Do you think the government has the right to take children from their parents without an actual complaint of abuse? Your post to me implies that parents in a minority religious sect have no right to raise their children.
You post is still there for everyone to read.
The 14th Amendment applies the limitations to the States. So, state and local governmental bodies can't mandate Bible reading or study in schools, either.
But by using that argument, then my rights as a taxpaying Christian are being violated because secular humanism (basically the religion of atheism) is being forced on the kids in school and my taxes are being used to endorse a religion I don't agree with.
Schools should be religion-neutral. They should not teach or promote any religion nor should they promote atheism (of course, there is nothing wrong with discussing the effects of religion in history, literature or other relevant subjects).
Besides, teacher led Bible reading and prayer is not forcing the kids who don't want to participate to do so. Another fallacy.... that hearing something is the same as being compelled to participate. It's not.
It's promotion of one faith over another through the use of taxpayer dollars, which is unconstitutional. You are compelling non-Christian taxpayers to pay for Christian proselytizing. Would you object to a school in a heavily Muslim area having teachers lead in Koran reading and prayer during school hours?
Mackie's statement about the presupposition of randomness is very telling. It is a statement of faith - in his case, atheism.
Truly, a person cannot say something is random in the system if he does not know what the system "is."
Mathematicians know this. But oftentimes scientists like Mackie will use the term "random" as if to say they know what physical reality "is." They do not. For instance, they do not know and cannot know the number and types (temporal, spatial) of dimensions which exist or the existence of particles which have no observable effect. The word "unpredictable" would be more accurate when describing such phenomena in nature, but that word does not serve the activist atheist's agenda.
An example for the lurkers, if a person were to extract a series of numbers from the extension of pi, he might say the numbers are random. Indeed, he might be able to use stochastic methods in studying such extracted numbers.
But in reality, those numbers were highly determined by the calculation of the ratio of any circle's circumference to its diameter. The same numbers would appear in the same position regardless of how many times pi is calculated. So the scientist's declaration of "randomness" is only applicable to his methodology, it is not the truth of the matter.
The example can also be seen metaphorically, i.e. science is constrained to the right hand side of the formula by its own methodology, methodological naturalism. It is blind to the left hand side of the equation - for all intents and purposes, to science, the left hand side of the equation does not exist. Theology and philosophy, on the other hand, look at both sides.
For that reason, people greatly err when they practice theology/philosophy under the color of science.
I live in DC- so, yes, there are plenty of other uses of taxpayer money in schools that piss me off as much, if not moreso, than this (such as the bloated bureaucracy that runs the schools here).
There was a time when the Supreme Court could have applied the rule of community standards to Bible reading in school, just as they have done with obscenity laws, but at that time the courts were not seized with the issue and saw no reason to even take notice of it. Now our society seems to have become too diverse to even intellectually entertain the idea in many communities.
Which is my point, sort of- this wasn't much of an issue when the vast majority of Americans were Christians. But we have become much more diverse religiously in the last few generations. Non-Christians are going to fight attempts to use their tax dollars to advance Christianity in schools, and rightfully so.
Please remove my name from your ping list.
Thank you.
Sources?
Google 'Christian schools sue California'
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